UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA

GSW 310 –week 3

What does it mean to be created in the
image of God?

1
Feedback

Think for a moment, what does it mean or what is the

implications:

– To label people as poor

– To talk in general about the poor. They are
individuals with names
– Of your gifts from God – what do you give to the
poor?

2
 Mark 10:35-46
• The Request of James and John
• 35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said,

“we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” 36 “What do you want me to do for
you?” he asked. 37 They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at
your left in your glory.”
• 38 “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink

or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”

• 39 “We can,” they answered.

• Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism
I am baptized with, 40 but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These
places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”
• 41 When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and

John. 42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are
regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise
authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great
among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of
all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give
his life as a ransom for many.”

3
Summary

• Missional diaconate • Development

• From where? – God • Need
• Focus ?- Holistic • Physical
• How? - Relational • Problem solving
• Purpose? – Fullness • Better physical life
of life
• Outcome – salvation • Relieve
• God’s empowerment • People’s power

4
Outcomes:

• After this study unit students will be able to:

• Determine the implication for being created in

God’s image for mission
• Discuss the relation between salvation, liberation
and conversion.
• Explain the consequences of conversion
• Describe missional diaconate (building relations)
as the opposite of sin (incurvatus in se).

5
Implications of being created in
God’s Image

• God’s image is not so much something we possess, as

who we are. To be human is to be the image of God. It
is not an extra feature, it is what it means to be human.
• I would say to live ethically.
• This has the following missiological implications:
– All human beings are addressable by God
– All human beings are accountable to God
– All human beings have dignity and equality
– The Biblical gospel fits all, and applies to all

6
All human beings are
addressable by God

• All humans are aware of God through rational

communication and address, without any regard for
ethnicity or covenant status.
• Fundamental God-awareness or God-openness that
is common to all humanity.
• The living Creator God of all flesh needs no
permission, no translation, no cross-cultural
contextualization when He chooses to communicate
to any person
• To be human is to be addressable by one’s creator

7
All human beings are accountable to
God

• Every human being on the planet is loved and known

by God, considered and evaluated by God, called to
account by God. What does this mean?

• There is some universal sense of moral obligation

that human beings share, which is an important
missiological foundation.

• What would some of the moral obligations be?

8
All human beings have dignity and
equality
• All human beings are created in the image of God, so this forms the
basis of radical equality of all human beings, regardless of gender
ethnicity, religion or any form of social, economic, or political status.
• These affirmations of faith differs from other religions, in which
differences between human beings are not merely cultural or social, but
ontological (ontology is the philosophical study of being).
• For example the Akkadian proverb: “ A man is the shadow of a god; and
a slave is the shadow of a man”, found no endorsement in Israel.
• Christian mission must treat all humans with dignity, equality and
respect.
• This implies we need to think critically about our methods, attitudes and
assumptions. The validity of evangelism does not legitimise any and
every method of evangelism in practice.
• 1 Pet 3:15-16 “do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear
conscience”

9
 The Biblical gospel fits all

• We are not only all created in God’s image, we are also all sinners
and rebels against our Creator God.
• God’s image includes the restoration of people to that true image of
God, of which Jesus is the perfect model.
• Christian mission is not inviting people to become more like…, it is
inviting people to become more fully human through the
transforming power of the gospel.
• Therefore conversion of the Gentiles in the NTES is not to become
Jews. The Gentiles were welcomed into God’s people on the same
basis the Jews were welcomed – repentance and faith in the
Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.
• The Gospel of Christ was the power of God for salvation to all who
believe, Jew or Gentile.

10
Created for a task
• Humanity’s responsibility = to rule over, to keep and to care for the rest
of creation. Thus ecological concern and action is a valid part of mission.
This includes urbanisation
• kabas – to utilise its environment for life and survival, this implies for
humans the task of “agriculture”. This is different from other species,
since all species in some way “subdue the earth”.
• rada – role and function that is only described to human beings – the
function of ruling and exercising of dominion.
• In ancient times Kings put up a image of themselves in the corners of
their domains, representing the authority of the King. Similarly God
installs the human species as the image, of the authority that finally
belongs to God, Creator and owner of the earth.
• Human domination must reflect the character and values of God’s own
kingship.
• We are called to be “imitators of God” (Eph 5:1)

11
Created in relationship
• Relationship is part of the very being of God, and therefore also part
of the very being of humanity, created in his image – Love your
neighbour.
• Gen 2 sets human gender in the context of the human task. Gen 2:18
- it is not good that the man should be alone – this is not a
psychological problem (being alone/loneliness) but a creational one
• Creational problem is the immense task that God has prepared for
humans in creation “to work it and take care of it” – he needs help.
God did not create a companion to stop feeling lonely, but a helper to
work besides him as participant, servant, keeper, filler, subduer and
ruler of creation.
• Our evangelistic task is not only limited to helping individuals come to
the right relationship with God – we share God’s passion for a healthy
human relationships here and now between individuals, in families, in
the workplace, throughout society and between nations.

12
Humanity in rebellion

• Gen 1-11 show us at least three things about sin that

must be taken into account in biblical mission
– Sin affects every dimension of the human person
– Physical, rational, spiritual, social
– Sin affects human society and history
– Horizontally within society, vertically between generations (history),
– What is bad/good news, horizontally in structures, and vertically in
history?
– Sin affects the whole environment of human life.
– Fall radically distorted and strained our human relationship with the
earth itself and also frustrated creation’s primary function in
relation to God (Rom 8:20)
– Cursed earth (since Adam), covenanted earth (since Noah).
13
 Salvation, liberation and conversion

• In their important overview of mission over the centuries, Constants in

context (2009), Bevans and Schroeder, following González and Sölle,
distinguish between three types of mission:
• Type A Theology tends to emphasize that we have transgressed
the law of God and that Jesus took our punishment on him – what is
important is the saving of souls and the extending of the church
(Tertullianus was the strongest early proponent of the underlying
theology of this approach)
• Type B Theology: mission helps people to discover the ultimate
truth in Christ (Origenes was the strongest early proponent of the
underlying theology)
• Type C Theology: Mission as commitment to liberation and
transformation within history and in life (Irenaeus was the
strongest early proponent).

14
 Salvation, liberation and conversion- 2
• Bevans and Schroeder maintain that all these approaches are
important, that none can be dismissed, and look for ways in which
the aspects that we focus on can be integrated with the total ministry,
based on the whole Biblical message, even if some aspects are
emphasized in a given context.
• The emphasis on Type A theology during the past few centuries has
left an unfinished task for the church: to make clear to herself and
others that conversion is not confined to the inner and private
experience of the individual’s disembodied soul, and that the ministry
of the church is not confined to nurturing such experiences, but that it
inherently includes comprehensive life-giving patterns of conduct.
• The theology of the South as described by Kirk can be regarded as a
Type C theology, and the theology of the North, which asks about
the truth of the Gospel, is a Type B theology.

15
 Everything must change Brian McLaren

• McLaren makes a clear choice for Type C theology.

• He wants to promote a more life-giving culture.
• In our context, we may follow another strategy: not to
ask questions about the truth of people’s beliefs, but to
emphasize the consequences and implications of
our Christian confession in a context of extreme need
and the destruction of the very natural resources that
are needed for a sustainable solution to poverty.

16
Everything must change Brian McLaren

• McLaren takes two questions as point of departure: What are the

biggest problems in the world? What does Jesus have to say
about these problems?
• For McLaren, the problem is that our civilization has
become a global suicide machine that co-opts the main
mechanisms of our culture – our economic, military and
political systems – and reprograms them, by way of a
framing story, to eventually destroy those they should
serve (p 5).
• Jesus provides us with an alternative framing story that
gives us hope and a chance to escape death and find life,
but it requires us to stop believing the framing story of our
civilization and to belief in Jesus’ story and follow him.

17
Everything must change Brian McLaren
• McLaren’s second problem is that the organised church has been
domesticated by our civilization. He criticizes the church’s preoccupation
with religious esoterica that, “…in comparison to racism, genocide,
carelessness towards the poor and various minorities, exploitation
of the environment, and unjust war – seem shamefully trivial,
weapons of mass distraction” (pp20-21). The church has privatised
faith and has lost social significance, so that people find the church
irrelevant and leave (p 33); “…our current politicians and religious
leaders, as those in Jesus’ days, seem hell-bent on trivial matters” (p
252).

• McLaren uses a good metaphor: “…we have a jigsaw puzzle in a box,

but someone has put the wrong lid on the box” (p 91): the jigsaw puzzle
is the Bible and the wrong picture is the framing story that the
domesticated church, under influence of our civilisation, presents. When
the church tries to fit the pieces of the Bible together according to the
framing story of our civilization, they do not fit. People recognize that and
lose confidence in the church.

18
Everything must change Brian McLaren
• McLaren quotes Watson and Meeks: “As long as evangelism
presents a gospel centered on the need for personal salvation,
individuals will acquire a faith that focuses on maximum benefits
with minimum obligations, and we will change the costly work of
Christ’s atonement into the pragmatic transaction of a salvific
contract.”
• McLaren’s answer is that alternative church and governance
structures are emerging, that are fundamentally constituted by
relationships (2007:262): “In an integrating world, governance,
not governments, is the key to effective management of the
global system because networks, not nations, are the emergent
powers of the future” (quoting Jim Garrison), and p 265: “If there
is a force in the world powerful enough to overcome the grinding,
destructive momentum of the suicide machine, it is to be found,
not in organized religion seeking institutional self-preservation,
but in religion organizing for the common good”.
19
Incurvatus in se as an opposite of healthy relationships

• The gravity of sin. Augustine, Luther and Barth on homo incurvatus in

se, by Matt Jenson (2006).
• Jenson argues that the image of being “curved in on oneself” is the
best paradigm for understanding sin relationally.
• Augustine described the City of God and the city of man in relational
terms. All people strive for happiness, the difference is that some seek
happiness in God and some seek happiness in themselves: “…the
earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord. The
former look for glory from men, the latter finds its highest glory in God”
(pp 6, 15, 25).
• Karl Barth also used the concept incurvatus in se to describe the core
meaning of sin, but he broadened the metaphor of sin (KD IV/1 and KD
IV/2).
• Firstly, it is important to note that Barth’s anthropology is thoroughly
relational: we exist only because we exist in relation to Jesus Christ.
• He recognised three primary forms of sin: pride, sloth and falsehood.
All three “…are characterized first and foremost by broken relationships
in which people live for themselves rather than for God and others”.
20
Incurvatus in se as an opposite of healthy
relationships
• Like Augustine, Barth describes sin as pride. Man
tries to conceal his pride, but it becomes visible in his
self-deification (the incident of the golden calf of
Exodus 32), his self-exaltation (the kingship of Saul),
his desire to judge himself rather than be judged by
God, his desire to take care of himself, rather than be
cared for by God.
• Sin as falsehood is our counter-movement against
Christ’s prophetic office. We do not accept the truth of
Christ but want to present our own truth.
• Sin as sloth is our counter-movement “to the elevation
that comes to man from God Himself in Jesus Christ”
(p 173). We refuse to live for God and others.
21
Incurvatus in se as an opposite of healthy
relationships
• This will lead to very specific questions, e. g. “one cannot speak of greed
without attending to a network of relations of power and possession in
which the very category of ‘greed’ finds it meaning. And yet, defining
greed as ‘wanting more for me’ would seem to serve as a suitable
definition for many. Such a definition is woefully inadequate for Christian
theology, abstracting as it does from the far more important questions of
those from whom we want more in our greed” (p3).
• We learn to be attentive to the effect of the things we do on other people
and on creation. Where do the things we use – water, electricity, cotton,
plastics, food, metals, paper, come from? What was the ecological and
human price for making these things available to us? What happens to
the things we throw away and other forms of waste we produce? And
what impact do they have?
• We begin to look at such questions, not like a moralist who wants to
induce guilt, but like a doctor who wants to promote healing and life. We
begin to understand sin as broken relations, and we can see its gravity,
not merely because it is morally wrong, but because it is harmful and
dangerous.
22
• In the end, Jenson modifies Jüngel’s comment that
the sinner is a ‘person without relations’.
• Barth’s theology leads us to say that the sinner is a
person who tries to be without relations, but we
maintain hope – “hope that the sinner’s cause has
been taken up (like it or not) by one who will not let
her fall out of relationship with him” (p 191).

23
Assignment

• In 500 words. Please describer your

understanding of sin, and the impact it has on
your life.

• If you believe you don’t have sin please explain

and describe your understanding in no less than
500 words.

24
Thank you!

25