Human nature

Kathryn Tanner

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511803499.002

1 - Human nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

Kathryn Tanner

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Kathryn Tanner: Affiliation:
University of Chicago Divinity School

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Summary

What light might be thrown on the well-worn idea that humans are created in the image of God, if Christ were the key to understanding it? Theological treatments of the topic often concentrate on human nature in and of itself, in the effort to specify some set of well defined and neatly bounded characteristics that both make humans like God and clearly distinguish them from other creatures. Humans are created in the image of God, as the Genesis verses say, because unlike other creatures they have reason, free will, or the ability to rule over others as God does. In contrast to these theological tendencies, I show that a Christ-centered treatment of our creation in the image of God turns attention initially away from the human altogether; and when attention returns to the human what is of theological interest about it is its lack of given definition, malleability through outside influences, unbounded character, and general openness to radical transformation. A whole Christ-centered account of humanity, from creation to salvation, we shall see, might be fruitfully developed on this basis.

What humans are thought to image – God, the trinity, or the Word – determines in great part whether theologians focus primarily on human nature in and of itself as the image of God. When human beings are thought to image God generally, without, that is, the need for any further trinitarian specification of who or what God is, general human characteristics tend to be identified with the image of God.

Type: Chapter
Information: Christ the Key , pp. 1 - 57

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803499.002 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

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