What Is Human?
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
Christianity provides the radical answer that humans are created in the image of God, or the imago Dei (Gen 1:26–27). But what exactly does this mean? Until the mid-twentieth century, Christian thought on the imago Dei focused on uniquely human capacities, usually reason and morality.[1] But if a capacity is absent, or damaged, does this mean that the imago Dei is degraded? A focus on capacities risks dehumanizing the very old, the very young, or those with disabilities. Recent advances in archeology and history provide scholars a much richer context for understanding how the Bible uses the word “image”—one which goes beyond mere capacity.[2]
