scholarly journals Colin E. Gunton’s Christological Anthropology: Humanity’s Relationships in the Image of Christ

Perichoresis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-81
Author(s):  
Elaina R. Mair
Keyword(s):  
Future Study ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
The Trinity

Abstract The anthropology of Colin E. Gunton begins with the Trinity and specifically, the person of Christ. From trinitarian persons, Gunton deduces the ontological definition of what it means to be a person, that is, a being in relationship and in distinction, or ‘free relatedness’. To be a person is to be in the image of the personal God, which is christological language, for it is Christ who bears the image of God in its fullness. As the true image bearer, Christ’s humanity is paradigmatic of what it means to be in relationship: with God, with the world and with other human persons. Gunton’s christology is also thoroughly pneumatological, borrowing Irenaeus’ metaphor of God’s ‘two hands in the world’: The Son and the Spirit. Not only do the Son and the Spirit mediate God’s presence to creation according to Irenaeus, but Gunton builds on this metaphor to include the Spirit’s mediation of the eternal Son to the Father as well as the Incarnate Son to humanity. The Spirit also reshapes humanity to be in the image of Christ, through his relationships with God, with the world and with other human persons. This is an eschatological project, for in this reshaping, the creation is recreated toward its teleological perfection. The article concludes with a potential direction for future study within Gunton’s christological anthropology. To conceive what it means to be human theologically, Gunton insists that we must look to Christ’s own person.

scholarly journals Is the Whole Being of Man Created in the Image of God?

2020 ◽  
pp. 80-103
Author(s):  
Сергий Фуфаев
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Original Image ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
The World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
Comprehensive Study

В данной статье предпринята попытка ответить на вопрос «Всё ли существо человека создано по образу Божию?» в свете некоторых библейско-богословских аспектов Предания Церкви. В святоотеческой экзегезе существуют противоречивые суждения относительно того, что именно в человеке соответствует образу Божию. В этом плане святоотеческие суждения можно условно разделить на две основные позиции: 1) образ Божий заключён в душе человека и её силах; 2) образ Божий заключён во всём существе человека. Вторая позиция более проблематична. Однако и первая позиция содержит в себе проблему. В целях выяснения того, какая святоотеческая позиция является наиболее обоснованной, автор обращается к повествованию Книги Бытия о сотворении человека, некоторым местам Нового Завета, в которых говорится, в каком отношении к Богу должен находиться человек, к святоотеческим толкованиям, а также к догматам Православной Церкви. По итогам данного комплексного исследования автор пришёл к двум основным выводам: 1) образ Божий заключён во всём существе человека, которое при этом, однако, содержит в себе и образ мира; 2) образ Божий предельно похож на Первообраз. This article attempts to answer the question «is the whole being of man created in the image of God?» in the light of some biblical and theological aspects of the ecclesiastical tradition. There are contradictory judgments in patristic exegesis as to what exactly in man corresponds to the image of God. In this regard, patristic judgments can be divided into two main positions: 1) the image of God is enclosed in the human soul and its forces; 2) the image of God is enclosed in the entire being of man. The second position is more problematic. However, the first position also contains a problem. The purpose of research is to find out what patristic position is the most reasonable. To this end, the author refers to the narrative of Genesis about the creation of man, some passages in the New Testament that say in what relation to God a person should be, to patristic interpretations, as well as to the dogmas of the Orthodox Church. Аccording to the results of this comprehensive study, the author came to two main conclusions: 1) the image of God is enclosed in the whole being of man, however, the whole being of man contains the image of the world; 2) the image of God is extremely similar to the original Image.

scholarly journals Reformatie van de rentmeester. Een voorstel tot integratie van de zorg voor de schepping in gereformeerde theologie

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-277
Author(s):  
M. Van Reenen
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Creation Care ◽  
Ten Commandments ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Image Of God

Christians throughout the world feel the need to answer the questions arising from the climate debate. Orthodox-reformed theology in the Netherlands, however, pays these matters comparatively little attention. Three possible causes of this problem are: stewardship as discussed under the heading of creation; a certain slowness in consideration; and the suggestion that the Ten Commandments do not bear directly on this theme. This essay proposes a more integrated position. First, stewardship of the creation should be more closely linked to the image of God. Second, the Ten Commandments has the creation in view more often than assumed: ‘creation’ is also ‘your neighbour’. Third, in considering creation care as part of God’s ‘normal’ obligations towards us, the threefold function of the law must not be diminished.

scholarly journals Response to Melissa Raphael

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-25
Author(s):  
Ruth Illman
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Human Face ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Jewish Art ◽  
Contemporary Issue ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
Ethical Demand

A response to Melissa Raphael’s article ‘The creation of beauty by its destruction: the idoloclastic aesthetic in modern and contemporary Jewish art’. Key themes discussed include the notion of human beings as created in the image of God, Levinas’s understanding of the face and its ethical demand as well as the contemporary issue of the commodification of the human face in digital media.

scholarly journals Beeldspraak over oorlog en schepping, geweld en geweldloosheid in de Openbaring van Johannes

2008 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Decock
Keyword(s):  
Image Of God ◽  
Divine Power ◽  
New Creation ◽  
Divine Warrior ◽  
The World ◽  
Prophetic Witness ◽  
The Image Of God

Images of war and creation, violence and non-violence in the Revelation of John Much of the violent imagery of Revelation can be seen as inspired by the image of God as the Divine Warrior who will overcome the chaotic forces threatening creation and who will bring creation to its fulfillment. This violence is reserved for God and the exalted Jesus although the prophetic ministry of churches shares to some extent in this divine power and even in its violence (11:5-6). However, human victory is won through worship of God instead of worship of Satan and the Beast, and through prophetic witness unto death in order to bring the inhabitants of the world to repentance and so to overcome sin that destroys creation. This human victory is made possible by the “blood of Jesus” and requires that his followers persevere in the works of Jesus to the end (2:26) in order to share in the new creation of which Jesus is God’s agent from the beginning (3:14).

‘What Am I in a Boundless Creation?’

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-50
Author(s):  
Hilary Marlow
Keyword(s):  
Life Forms ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Ecological Perspective ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Environmental Pressures ◽  
Ben Sira ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Image Of God

Drawing on insights from the field of ‘ecocriticism’ within literary studies, this article examines the creation poem of Ben Sira (16.26-17.14) from an ecological perspective. The text is significant for such a purpose because of its reuse of the Genesis creation accounts, in particular the notion of human beings as the image of God and with dominion over creation, which has caused some critics to label the biblical accounts as exploitatively anthropocentric. Preceding sections of Sirach include discussion of human significance ‘in a boundless creation’ and human free will and moral responsibility, and these themes are developed in the poem itself. The poem’s description of the creation of humankind suggests both human finitude, a characteristic shared with other life forms, and the uniqueness of the divine image in human beings. These characteristics are set within the context of the cosmos as a stable and ordered whole, obedient to God, and of the responsibilities stipulated in the Torah to deal rightly with one’s neighbour. Reading this text from an ecological perspective invites recognition of the ambiguity of human place in the world, transient yet earth-changing, and of the ethical challenges in caring for global neighbours in the face of growing environmental pressures.


4. The religions of Abraham

2014 ◽  
pp. 55-71
Author(s):  
John Bowker
Keyword(s):  
Relationship With God ◽  
The World ◽  
The Trinity

‘The religions of Abraham: Christian understandings of God’ looks at Christianity beginning with its development from its Jewish Bible roots. Christianity began as one interpretation among many at that time of what it should mean to live in the Covenant relationship with God. Jesus' followers believed that Jesus, with whom they had lived and knew so well, was God in their midst. The Jewish understanding of God as One, the Creator of all things and of all people, did not change, but what did was their understanding of who God is and of how God is related to the world. The questions of Christology, Atonement, and the Trinity are then discussed.

Nature

1965 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Evdokimov
Keyword(s):  
Image Of God ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Direct Relation ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
The World ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
Progressive Course

The biblical narrative describes the progressive course of creation ending with man. Man appears as its culmination, as a centre on which all the planes of the world converge, a ‘microcosm’. But, ‘created in the image of God’ he is also, according to the Fathers, a ‘microtheos’. This central position of man explains the normative subjection of nature to man as to its cosmic logos, as to one of its multiple hypostases. Man ‘cultivates’ nature, gives a name to creatures and things, ‘humanises’ them. His direct relation with the Creator is constitutive of his being.

Summaries of Doctoral Dissertations

2011 ◽  
Vol 104 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-505
Keyword(s):  
Integral Relation ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Philosophical Discourse ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Doctoral Dissertations ◽  
The Image Of God

THOU ART is an interdisciplinary and christological aesthetics that theorizes an integral relation among Christ, representation, and the formation of human subjectivity. Through a critical poetics it addresses the space of difference between a theological discourse on the creation of human being in the image of God—understood as creation in Christ, Word (logos) incarnate—and a philosophical discourse on the constitution of human subjectivity.

Coleridge and Preaching a Theological Imagination

2005 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-94
Author(s):  
Stephen Edmondson
Keyword(s):  
Image Of God ◽  
The World ◽  
Imaginative Thinking ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
Interpretive Process

ABSTRACTThis article explores Coleridge's understanding of imagination, Scripture, the spirituality of the world, and our reality as the image of God. I begin with Coleridge's understanding of the inspiration of Scripture and the interpretive process. By locating the imagination in this interaction among writer, reader, and God, I surface Coleridge's more significant description of imaginative thinking as a spiritual act that calls us into the truth of our being and of the world's reality. Implicit in Coleridge's vision is a correlation between human imaginative creativity and the creative being of God as a dimension of our reality as the image of God. Thus, I claim that imaginative preaching, when seen through Coleridge's lens, renews that image within us, awakening us to our reality as spiritual, free beings, but only when we enact our freedom within the context of God's freedom and action which we know through our reading of Scripture.

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