Imago Dei: Man/Woman Created in the Image of God

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George Hobson. Imago Dei: Man/Woman Created in the Image of God

Imago Dei: Man/Woman Created in the Image of God

Table of Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The Explanatory Power of a Trinitarian Natural Theology

Resurrection and Life after Death

Reflections on the Imago Dei in a Modern Context

Christian Identity: Who Do You Think You are?

Notes for Short Talk on the Holy Spirit

Notes for Talks on Pastoral Care and Counseling

Notes for Talks on Identity and Inner Healing

The Question of the Efficacy of the Eucharist

Talks given at St. Michael’s Anglican Church, Paris

Beauty as the Radiance of Truth

Talk on Poetry

Notes for Short Talk on Beauty and Truth

Bibliography

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Implications for Theology, Pastoral Care, Eucharist, Apologetics, Aesthetics

George Hobson

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All this, then, and much more is involved when we say, with the inspired writer of the Genesis text, that “God created humankind, male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). It is clear that if men and women are created beings, they are essentially dependent on their Creator, both for their existence and for their maintenance in being. God does not impose on us a conscious awareness of this reality, because he wills that our relation with him be one of freedom, with no trace of a master-slave dynamic. The human being-as-creature is changeable, vulnerable, mortal: as created, he/she is an absolutely different order of being from the eternal, omnipotent being who is the Creator of all that is. What is important to see is that both the biological life of human beings, and the eternal life that they are offered (by virtue of Christ’s redemptive work) to share with their Creator, are gifts.

Man (man and woman) is not his own author; he is not and cannot be autonomous. Any creating he does, impressive and splendid though it may be, is derivative and secondary, using materials already at hand. Human beings cannot be original creators, since they themselves, and the world they inhabit, are already there as givens. Everything we have, we have received, as the apostle Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 4:7 in an effort to show the members of the church he is writing to that pride has no place among Christians (and should have none among men and women in general), since our very existence, and our existence as individuals with particular qualities, talents, and vocations, are gifts and come from God in the first place.

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