I was reading an interview between Tony Payne and Oliver O’Donovan in some past issue of the Briefing. O’Donovan was explaining that to be able to live we have to be able to act; that to be able to act we have to be able to form purposes; that in order to form purposes we have to understand what is good and right to do. It reminded me just how foundational the knowledge of good and evil is to being the kind of human beings God intended us to be.
So I got to rethinking what it means to be human. A recent Philosophy Now focused on animal rights. Attempts to understand what it means to be human were centered around comparisons and contrasts between humans and animals. That’s a no-brainer. Inevitably, this approach ends up dehumanising people. For people are created “in the image of God” and it is this that makes humans unique in the Genesis 1 account. Consequently, essential humanity can only be understood with reference to God. Remove God from the picture and any resultant concept of what it means to be human is necessarily distorted.
When it comes to comparing and contrasting people with God there is one crucial point of differentiation. Only God, as the omniscient Creator, is in a position to know in absolute terms what is good and what is evil. That is, God alone can judge what is ultimately in tune with his purposes and what is not. Because we lack such a vantage point and the concomitant capacities we are simply not in a position to have the final say in what is good and what is not. It is idolatry in its ultimate expression for us to presume to think otherwise. And it was precisely such idolatrous presumption which was involved when the man and the woman ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For that was the point of the prohibition, to draw a line in the sand, to say, “Though you are made to be like me this is one area of correspondence which is off limits.”
After that fateful fruit was eaten God expelled them from the garden saying,
The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:22a).
As humans, whenever , without dependence on God and his revelation, we arrogate to ourselves the right to determine the moral standards on which our purposes, actions and lives are based then we necessarily dehumanise ourselves, having corrupted what it means to be “the image of God“. By contrast, God is the perfect moral agent. Being thoroughly and completely good his knowledge of good is flawless and therefore his purposes, actions and life express this perfect goodness. So after each stage of creation God alone can assess what has been done and declare it to be good, indeed, very good.
In past times many a theologian has wandered off the track in trying to define “the image of God” with reference to some supposed difference between us and animals. Let’s get back on track and recover our real humanity as we relate to God as we ought, especially seeking to discover his will and know what he regards as good and evil.
Posted June 21, 2008
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