Being in the image of the image
Chapter Six
Inverting the inversion: idols and the perfect image in the New Testament
Christ is the movement of the invisible God into visibility in the life of a human being.
Turning the story upside down
In the New, as in the Old, Testament, the imago Dei is not a place marker for generic human nature. It has a distinctive theological role to play. That role is most clearly the unique office as a divine representative and divine reflection. In the New Testament the imago Dei is most directly connected to Christ (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15). In the case of Christ he is the ‘exact representation’ and that by which the invisible God has become visible (cf. Heb. 1:5 and John 1:18 respectively). Christ is the perfect image who suffers in our place and for our redemption (Eph. 5:25–26). As a consequence, human identity is most clearly seen in Christ, the one in whom, through whom and for whom humankind was made (1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16).
By contrast idols represent the inversion of the original theological order of representation and reflection. The idols depict an exchange of the glory of God for the foolishness of this world (Rom. 1:23). The practices of idolatry assumed that the gods were beings adequately represented by objects of gold or silver and could be shaped by their worshippers (Acts 17:29). The idol alleged to give purpose to its followers while being created by those same followers. This paradox is the crux of the theological argument against the idols that echoes across the canon. It is foolish to suppose that creatures can ‘make’ the Creator. Equating any part of the created order with the Creator is a category mistake of the highest order. Jews and Christians in the first century would have agreed that idols remained extremely dangerous. The peculiar claim of early Christianity was that Christ alone, as the perfect image, breaks the power of the idols.
The practice of idolatry was pervasive in the world into which early Christianity was moving and appeared to be tempting even to those who professed loyalty to Jesus Christ. The iconic traditions in which humanly manufactured objects represented transcendent deities pervaded the Graeco-Roman world and were difficult for newly converted Christians to repudiate in their entirety. Since there were no sharp sacred–secular distinctions in the ancient world, the religious customs associated with the temple cults were often considered normative for all citizens of the empire. Rejecting the customs entailed dissonance with imperial rule, and inevitably put Christians in danger of not being granted civil tolerance. The opposite danger was just as real as well. Showing any kind of loyalty to the idols would be viewed as unfaithfulness to Christ and thereby put one’s place in the covenant at risk. The number of continuing reminders in the New Testament to flee from idols is ample evidence of the recurring temptations of idol practices for early Christians (1 Cor. 10:14; 1 John 5:21).
In what follows I outline the contexts for the New Testament discussion of human identity and idolatry. Those contexts deal with the Christian interaction with Jewish backgrounds to idolatry and also with the then present practices of idolatry in Gentile lands. The theological arguments against idolatry appear quite similar in both of these contexts, though the practices described as idolatrous would have been quite different. Theological warnings about idolatry in the New Testament led inevitably to expositions of the redemptive mission of Christ as the ‘perfect image’. Surprisingly it turns out that God does have a visible image, and though this may appear as grounds for accusing Christianity of idolatry, the apostles claim that the visibility of Christ as the image of God is what inverts the corrupted order of idolatry. In Christ the Creator has entered creation and thereby recreated the cosmic order after his image. The apostle Paul in particular frames this mission by comparison of the first and second Adams, the man of dust and the man of heaven respectively (1 Cor. 15:48–49). We look in particular at the manner in which their respective temptation narratives illuminate the struggle of desires at the heart of idolatry. In the final part of this chapter we turn to consider the Pauline material on living as images of the perfect image.
Setting the context
The problem of idolatry crops up most frequently as a boundary question between Christians and the Gentile cultures into which Christians went as the gospel departed Jerusalem for Asia Minor. Idolatry was not a prominent theme in the disputes between Christians and Jews of the first century. Both of these groups had explicitly repudiated the religious practice of temple idolatry. At a confessional or covenantal level there was no theological space in Judaism or Christianity for the idols. This is not to say, however, that the temptations towards idolatry did not run strongly in both groups. The admonitions to avoid idolatry and the condemnation of idolaters makes little sense otherwise. Though there is a strong conceptual chasm between the worship of idols and the worship of the living God, it was difficult for many converts to distinguish the two entirely.
In contrast to Judaism and Christianity the Gentile nations thought of idolatry in positive terms. Idols were physical representations of the gods worshipped locally. In each location where temple worship took place the idols reflected the sacred presence of the people’s peculiar deities. As the cult of the emperor grew in the first century, temples were constructed to the Graeco-Roman pantheon, with the emperor now included. These ‘national’ gods and their idols were to be revered across the breadth of the empire. It is unclear exactly when the emperors themselves were included in the pantheon, but the cultural pressure to honour the emperor in semi-deific terms was very much present in the second half of the first century. This is the point at which Christianity was spreading throughout the empire – not yet posing any military threat to the Romans, but quite clearly not in step with the religious impulses of the empire.
In Jesus’ interaction with the Pharisees there is only one prominent place where idolatry is even implicitly mentioned. In Mark 12:14 the Pharisees ask Jesus whether Jews should pay taxes to Caesar. The question implicitly relates to whether the image of Caesar on the coins used to pay taxes constitutes idolatry. The reasoning would have been straightforward. Caesar claimed final loyalty over the citizens of the empire and therefore his image would have been construed as an idol by devout Jews. This would have led to the inevitable conflict between Caesar and YHWH, who likewise claimed final loyalty of all the citizens of his empire. The coin requested by Jesus did in fact portray the emperor as the Pontifex Maximus (High Priest) of the Roman religion. According to the inscription on the reverse side of the coin, Caesar was himself ‘Augustus’, a term connoting a quasi-deity to be worshipped.
In his response to the query of the Pharisees Jesus understood the challenge of coins, but resisted the assumptions behind the questions. Treating another human as God was wrong. But the question was about what practices constituted treating another human as God. Did paying taxes to Caesar entail treating him as God? Jesus reasons that the emperor can be recognized as important to the well-being of the empire without also attributing to him divine powers. In this sense Jesus is demythologizing the emerging emperor cult – Caesar is not God – while also granting the emperor his right to collect taxes for the well-being of the people. This became the pattern for Paul in dealing with food offered to idols. If the idols were treated as divine, then Christians should abstain from the food offered to them. But if the idols were treated simply as blocks of gold or silver, then eating food offered to them was permissible.
The emperor cult seemed to have become more aggressive after Jesus’ death, extremely so under Domitian (emperor AD 81–96), who demanded a test of loyalty from all Roman citizens because of his claim to deity. This would have been quite different under Augustus and Tiberius, the emperors in Jesus’ time, where there appeared to have been no such test. Relinquishing the coin to the tax collectors by Jesus amounted to no more than an affirmation that Caesar possessed some form of civil authority. Undoubtedly had Jesus been confronted with a claim about the alleged deity of the emperor, he would steadfastly have denied it. Towards the end of the first century, Christians faced this precise situation. As the book of Revelation manifests, martyrdom was the cost of refusing the emperor’s test of loyalty and denying his claim to deity.
Idolatry and the Gentile mission
When we turn to the rest of the New Testament, the central discussions of idolatry occur in the context of the mission to the Gentiles. The reason is apparent – engagement with the Gentile world meant confrontation with the pervasive and persistent temple cults of the Graeco-Roman world that openly flaunted their loyalty to idols.
The Gentile mission was already a source of considerable friction for other reasons among the earliest Christians. At the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 the apostles effectively headed off a schism in the early church by affirming together that Gentile converts to Christianity need not be circumcised. According to the council this would no longer be a boundary marker between Jewish and Gentile Christians. However, the apostles were clear that the Gentile converts ought to avoid idolatry – most likely a reference to the temple cults of Gentiles, where idol worship took place in honour of local as well as imperial deities. These temple cults were often accompanied by temple prostitutes, whose presence underscored for the apostles the connections between idolatry and adultery. The linkage between the two was important because the New Testament continued to insist that the bond between God and his people was a marital bond rooted in covenant fidelity. The sexual licence taken by unfaithful marriage partners was a concrete reflection of the infidelity expressed by God’s covenant partner.
The animal sacrifices of the temple cults were also prohibited for Christians. More ambiguous was the question of whether Christians could eat the meat that had previously been slaughtered in the temple sacrifices. Knowing where and when idolatry stopped and started was not easy. Was it permissible to buy meat from the idol sacrifices that found its way into the marketplace? Was it permissible to eat in Gentile homes where it was probably idol meat that was being served? How close or how distant should a Christian stay from the culture of idolatry that pervaded most Graeco-Roman towns?
At the Jerusalem council the apostles drew a strong line around the temple cults themselves, and thereby drew a strong linkage between idolatry, sexual immorality and certain kinds of food. The apostolic decree at the conclusion of the Jerusalem council was representative of these concerns. That decree insisted that Gentile Christians, as would have been the case for Jewish Christians, should ‘abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled’ (Acts 15:20). They were to resist the dominant religious practices of the Graeco-Roman world in which they lived while being fully cognizant of the need to survive in that idolatrous world. Practical questions therefore remained about what constituted resistance to the Gentile religious culture and what counted as accommodation to these practices. The changing shape of Gentile culture meant that the early church would have to continue to wrestle with these questions far beyond its initial contexts.
Sex and food rules were interpreted in the light of idolatry because of their probable connection to practices surrounding the temple cults of the first century. It is somewhat surprising then to find that greed is included as an idolatry-related vice. Greed was not related to the temple cults of the Graeco-Roman world; yet Paul denounced greed as idolatrous in Colossians 3:5 and Ephesians 5:5. No other vices in the New Testament are listed with such a straightforward connection to the larger theological umbrella of idolatry. Why greed? The initial clue may come from the reminder that idolatry is fundamentally defective worship. It is rooted in the desire to replace God as the proper object of worship. There are any number of alternatives that the Scriptures confront, including money. Jesus’ warnings against trying to serve two masters, God and Mammon, is a pungent reminder that money is all too often treated as an alternative deity to the living God (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:14). Treating greed as a form of idolatry is simply an affirmation that money, though not intrinsically evil, can nonetheless be worshipped as an idol.
Theologies of idols: Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 10
Repeating the pattern of argument from the Old Testament, the New Testament uses two primary arguments against idolatry. In the first case idolatry is prohibited on the grounds that it inverts the relationship between Creator and creature. Creatures cannot suppose that their Creator can be shaped according to their own imagination. It was God who made humankind and all efforts to fashion a god in their own image is thereby to be resisted. A second ground for the rejection of idolatry is that idols represent gods that do not exist. If this is so, then the idols are merely objects of gold, silver or stone.
Throughout the New Testament the apostles affirm the inverted relationship between image and original. There is most especially for Paul a fundamental flaw of logic in the practice of idolatry. The transposing of the original and the image is a fatal contradiction. Paul lays out the argument at greatest length in Romans 1, and applies it most directly in Acts 17 in his confrontation at Athens with the Gentiles.
In the context of the epistle as a whole, Paul’s argument about the idols/images in Romans 1:23 can be isolated for our purposes, though its significance for the Jew–Gentile tensions throughout the letter are important. A great and terrible exchange takes place in the practice of idolatry according to Paul’s account. The glory of God is exchanged for images of every sort of creature: men and birds and land animals and even reptiles. The Creator is exchanged for creatures from the heavens, the earth and the seas. This description of the tragic exchange of idolatry is a Pauline way of providing a big picture of human corruption. Never intended as an exhaustive account of human corruptions, nonetheless idolatry is a large conceptual framework by which Paul describes the moral transformation of humans. Created good, they became sinners through their own folly. They exchanged the truth for a lie. It was an inherently irrational exchange, and this is exactly why the reversing of the exchange is not primarily an intellectual matter. Redeeming what was corrupted centred on matters of the heart.
In Romans 1 the apostle issues the familiar canonical claim that there is no comparison between the Creator and the creature, and yet humans have persuaded themselves into thinking that other created things will satisfy their deepest longings. The apparent wisdom in this is the illusion that created things can be more easily controlled than the Creator. It is folly to suppose that created things can adequately replace the Creator without significant loss.
The futility (Rom. 1:21) in their thinking is the failure to recognize the change in their own security, all the while supposing they have determined the source of their security. Yearning for greater security, their identity has become more precarious and thin. Their grasp for control has in fact resulted in a loss of control. They are given over to the very idols in which their hopes lie. Paul is insistent that idols will not deliver on their promises. Instead they create consuming passions in which there is no deliverance. This inverted state is surprising from one angle – how foolish humans are to suppose they can have a god on their own terms. And yet the inversion produces an entirely predictable consequence – abandoning God results in an identity crisis wherein one’s safety and significance become endlessly fragile.
There are important contrasts throughout Paul’s argument in Romans 1 illuminating the emotional power of idolatry. Hoping to hold down the truth, humans are held down by unrighteousness (1:18). That which can plainly be seen is exchanged for darkness (1:20–21). Though they knew God, they now do not know him (1:21). Claiming to be wise, they become fools (1:22). The glory of God is exchanged for but a dim image. The shadow is embraced rather than the reality (1:23). Refusing to honour God, they dishonour themselves (1:24). Truth is exchanged for a lie (1:25). In each of these there is a turning upside down or an inside out of the created order. This is Paul’s way of ‘explaining’ sin. There are lists of vices in other Pauline texts that catalogue human corruptions in systematic order. In Romans 1 the intention is rather to describe the irrationality of sin and the danger of its consequences. Idolatry makes no sense when considered from the vantage point of the Creator–creature relationship. Idolatry is the height of human folly. And yet in its very irrationality, idolatry has a powerful hold upon the human heart. The seat of human desire is now settled in darkness (1:21). The addictive passions now rule the heart and the stench of corruption fouls the soul. Foolishness is now called wisdom.
In 1 Corinthians 10 Paul follows another familiar argument against idolatry. There he turns his attention to the Isaiah 44 argument that idols are neither living nor represent gods that exist. The non-living idols represent non-existent gods. Paul admonishes the Corinthians to flee from idolatry because the gods represented do not exist. In this light they cannot provide any grounds for hope in the face of adversity.
Paul’s concern in 1 Corinthians 10 is food offered to idols. If idols represent gods that do not exist, is there any harm in eating the meat left over from the animal sacrifices of the idol temples, which will later be sold in the market? The question is framed against the backdrop of the typologically significant episode of the Israelites and the golden calf (1 Cor. 10:7–8). Though the immediate controversy has to do with Gentile practices of idolatry, the theological grounds come from Israel’s own history of idolatry.
Israel were birthed as a nation in the exodus event. It was the departure from Egypt that for ever stamped Israel’s identity with the covenant-making YHWH. Paul writes of Israel’s having been baptized into Moses in both the cloud and the sea (1 Cor. 10:2). They were given a new identity in these nation-defining episodes. The sea quite clearly pointed at the surprising crossing of the Red Sea at the command of Moses. The cloud pointed at the divine presence that hovered over Israel as they wandered in the Sinai wilderness after the Red Sea crossing. Paul also references the episode of the manna in Exodus 16 and the water from the rock in Exodus 17. Five times in 1 Corinthians 10:1–4 he uses the language of ‘all’ to emphasize that everyone in Israel has been marked by these realities.
Israel’s rebellion evidenced in the golden calf episode was all the more striking when set in the context of YHWH’s provisions for them. Israel had witnessed the shrines to the Egyptian gods while in captivity in that land. Though they sustained a separate identity from the Egyptians, the Israelites inevitably accommodated the surrounding religious practices to their own context. And they brought those compromised practices with them into the Sinai desert.
Paul references Israel’s idolatry as a paradigm of the temptations of idolatries in Corinth (1 Cor. 10:11). The Graeco-Roman temples in Corinth were undoubtedly different from what Israel had experienced during their long sojourn in Egypt, but the pattern of idolatry was the same. Temptations arose when the Creator was confused with the creation. The idols were fashioned from wood and stone and were thereby no match for the living God. The dead idols may have been near at hand and could be manipulated for self-serving purposes, but were powerless to deliver the significance and security their worshippers so craved. They promised blessings on terms more easily manageable than YHWH’s terms. The problem was that the idols never delivered on their promises. They could not, since they were ‘nothing’. Their attraction was that they could easily be manipulated. Their great defect was that they were impotent to do anything. Their great danger was that they produced loyal subjects who would not question their impotence.
What did this have to say to the question of eating meat offered to idols? Paul’s initial response is to treat the idols with the respect they deserve, namely none. Therefore he encourages the Corinthians not to have any qualm of conscience about eating meat that might have been offered to idols (v. 25). Christians are free to share in meals in private homes that involve serving meat that has been bought in the meat market, which may or may not have been slaughtered in honour of some idol (v. 27). If God is the Creator of all, then nothing should be considered evil in itself – even meat intended for idolatrous purposes. After all, meat was meat and the idols themselves were ‘nothing’. However, practices associated with idol worship are prohibited by Paul. There is to be no dalliance with any object, real or imagined, that challenges God’s sole unique status as the singular Creator and Redeemer. There are to be no other gods in the hearts of God’s people. From this angle one should abstain from eating meat offered to idols if it encourages, even in the slightest way, the practices of idolatry.
The situation in Corinth as well as throughout Asia Minor was complicated by sociopolitical realities. Unlike Jews in the Second Temple period, Christians did not have civil protections for their strange religious habits or convictions. They were accused of maligning the local deities by which cities retained their status in the empire. Jews might be forgiven for their aniconic traditions because of their own long and peculiar history. Christians, however, were a new sect and could not be trusted to refrain from revolutionary actions against the civil order and against the pantheon that legitimated that civil order. The result was that Christians often found themselves having to tread warily with their former cultural customs. They feared retribution if they criticized idol worship of the local shrines too clearly, and yet also realized that their new-found faith could not be syncretized with any polytheistic paganism of the ancient world. All of this provided the emotional tension so frequently felt in the New Testament’s behavioural admonitions to Christians living in Gentile lands. They were not to cause more offence than necessary, but their commitment to Jesus also meant that all other pretenders to the divine throne must be rejected. To be in the world but not of it was a precarious vocation in the first century, even as it remains so in the twenty-first century.
Narratives of idolatry: Acts 7 and 17
Luke records two significant episodes in the book of Acts that narrate the precariousness of refusing to bow before idols. The first is Stephen’s speech before the Jewish ruling authorities in Acts 7, and the second is Paul’s presentation of the gospel at Athens in Acts 17. The former deals with idolatry in Israel’s past, whereas the latter deals with idolatry in the Gentile present. In both cases idolatry refers to a set of practices in concrete settings rather than a theological abstraction about the metaphysics of divine existence. In Acts 7 the acts of idolatry mentioned are those of the golden calf episode of Exodus 32. In Acts 17 the idols referred to are those Paul confronts in the city of Athens. Stephen and Paul refer to these practices in the context of larger arguments about the nature of belief and unbelief. In the context of the Israelites Stephen illustrates the pattern of their unfaithfulness to the covenant with YHWH, whereas Paul illustrates the Gentile confusions about God.
In the immediate context of Acts 7 Luke notes that Stephen has been appointed to deaconal service in the young church at Jerusalem. He has got into serious trouble with the Sanhedrin both for his testimony about Jesus and his performance of ‘wonders and signs’ (Acts 6:8). Accused of criticizing the temple and the law, Stephen is formally charged with religious treason. His defence is to tell the story of Israel in a manner to which his accusers will assent. He also tells the story in such a fashion that it highlights the pattern of idolatry of which he is accusing the Sanhedrin. He does not formally deny the charges against him but rather places them in the wider story of Abraham, Moses and David. From that perspective he draws attention to the long-standing pattern of Israel’s ruling authorities rejecting YHWH’s prophets and entrusting their security to alliances with the nations instead. That pattern now repeats itself in the Sanhedrin’s rejection of Jesus.
Stephen’s telling of the story begins with the claim that the God of glory initiated the covenant promises with Abraham, though great hardship and trial later came to the descendants of Abraham as well. In the face of hardship within Egypt Israel grew in number but also in their accommodation to the ways of the Egyptians. God’s anointed prophet Moses was rejected by Israel at first. Later God graciously redeemed Israel from enslavement to the Egyptian Pharaoh by miraculously bringing them out of the land of Egypt into the Sinai wilderness. Despite this remarkable act of deliverance, Israel responded by fashioning the golden calf in the desert and placing their hopes in the idol they had created with their own hands.
Stephen then appeals to the inner contradiction in this primal sin of idolatry – creatures fashioned an idol with their own hands, only then to suppose that the idol was the god who had made and given them security. Even the temple is prone to this pattern of idolatry according to Stephen. The temple was constructed by human hands under divine appointment, but could never thereby fully contain the most high God of the universe. He was not at Israel’s beck and call merely because they were the ones who had constructed the house of the Lord. The works of their hands did not grant them prerogatives over the living God or his messengers. As sacred as the temple was, it too was susceptible to the corruptions of the logic of idolatry. This was nothing intrinsic to the temple as such, but rather to the attempt to control the divine presence the temple represented. This is the logic of Stephen’s contention that God cannot be contained in a building made with hands. Neither God nor his people can be controlled by any creature’s efforts.
Stephen reminds the Jewish ruling court that this narrative of idolatry is embedded in Israel’s habits. The paradigm act of idolatry of Exodus 32 was followed by the continual habit of borrowing the patterns of worship from the surrounding nations. Stephen cites Amos 5 as evidence from Israel’s own history of the pattern of idolatry. He infers from the golden calf episode that all future idolatry, which the prophets later condemned, had its origins in the wilderness. Even the worship of Moloch and Rephan by the northern kingdom of Israel, which Amos cites, was linked to the pattern that began in the Sinai wilderness. As with their fathers, they too had become like the idol in the desert – stiff necked and uncircumcised in heart. Placing their significance and security in the works of their hands resulted in their identity reflecting these very works. Instead of controlling their gods, they were controlled by them.
It is not hard to understand why the religious authorities were furious with Stephen and demanded his death. Stephen had criticized the very power structures by which the Sanhedrin maintained its control over the religious affairs of Israel. Those ‘power structures’ had been interpreted by Stephen through the lens of idolatry. The Sanhedrin’s only hope according to Stephen was finally in the Redeemer sent by YHWH to free them from enslavement to themselves and the corruption of their own hearts.
The language of enslavement cut in two different ways. The Sanhedrin understood slavery in political terms and thereby refused to acknowledge that they were an enslaved people (cf. John 8:31–38). Though the Romans exercised military rule over them, they had maintained some semblance of religious freedom relative to the temple in Jerusalem. Stephen (and Jesus) by contrast uses the language of enslavement to address the theological character of their own hearts. Accordingly Stephen criticizes the rulers as being enslaved to their own corruptions. Whether Roman occupation of the holy land was a divine judgment was beside the point. The problem was not political but theological. The real issue lay with the long established pattern of refusing to worship God on his terms, and thereby to find security in the works of their own hands. Idolatry served as the conduit through which this long-established pattern became manifest. The practices of idolatry came under the most severe indictment, not because they were worse than all other sins but because idolatry was a typology for all other sins.
Turning now from the narrative of idolatry within Israel’s history to Luke’s primary account of idolatry among the Gentiles in Acts 17, the core theological moves were quite similar. Worshipping false gods or worshipping the true God falsely arose from the same mechanism – creatures inverting their rightful place relative to their Creator. The focus on the mission to the Gentiles in the second half of the book of Acts lacks the citations of Old Testament texts about idolatry as is the case in Acts 7. Common to both passages is the claim that Jesus is the rightful recipient of worship for both Jews and Gentiles. And idolatry is the theological means to explain the refusal by Jews and Gentiles to worship him.
In Acts 17 Paul confronts the common religious idolatry of the Graeco-Roman world at Athens. Saul the Pharisee was converted on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus (Acts 9). Transformed from one who once persecuted the church to one who now defends the gospel, the apostle Paul assumes a prominent place in the second half of Luke’s account of the diaspora of Christians after Pentecost. Luke’s narrative rendering of Paul’s encounter with Gentile idolatry in Acts 17 illuminates the wider theological concerns of the New Testament critique of idolatry, while placing it in the concrete world of first-century Athens.
Athens was a city filled with idols, which were probably more pervasive than in other cities of comparable size in the Graeco-Roman world. Its long and distinguished history had in part been tied to the heritage of temples and statues dedicated to a variety of emperors and gods. The two most famous were the statues of Athena and Hermes. There were also several altars to unknown gods to ensure that no gods were omitted from their rightful place within the pantheon. The idolatry Paul confronted at Athens was a point of considerable civic pride. Unlike the charges of idolatry Stephen levelled at the Sanhedrin, the Athenian idols were considered a sign of its cultural significance. Paul’s critique of idolatry in Athens would probably have struck the Athenian elites as odd.
The apostle’s argument against idolatry focuses on the altars to the unknown gods. These altars provided the context for engaging the larger argument about idolatry. Paul evinces evidence from the Greek poets that there must be a God who created the world (Acts 17:28). The question is what the nature of this Creator God is. The critical hinge in Paul’s argument turns on whether it makes sense to suppose that the Creator of the world can be fashioned out of gold or silver. God created humankind; not the reverse. He is not an image that can be formed from the imagination or creativity of human artists. Paul appeals to the inner logic of idolatry rather than denouncing the practice of idolatry. He claims that it is illogical to suppose that humans can find their safety and significance by creating the God who gave them meaning in the first place.
The close connection between idols and gods in the ancient world carried the assumption that the gods were materially present in the idols that represented them. Constructing idols supposed that the gods were not only adequately represented by the works of human hands, but that these works constrained the presence and power of the gods. Here was the dilemma to which Paul pointed. How could a god create all that is, and yet also be effectively controlled by the world that god had created?
In the context of the Graeco-Roman world the religious habits of the temple-cult system were well entrenched. Paul’s challenge to the whole system would have seemed to most rather preposterous. What made the challenge to the system at Athens significant, however, was the philosophical world into which Paul was speaking. Against the backdrop of the Epicureans and Stoics Luke reminds the reader that Paul is confronting the illogical nature of idolatry. Paul’s citations in this passage come from revered Greek philosophical poets, another reminder of the audience to whom he is speaking. It is the peculiar theological commitments of the Athenian traditions that are exposed by Paul and to which he addresses himself. It is less the political patronage at the heart of the temple cult system of Athens that concern him. Rather the inner contradictions of the world view represented by the idols focus his comments.
Lest there be any doubt that Paul is pointing at an incidental difference, he closes the speech by addressing the life-and-death character of the issues involved. Divine judgment awaits all humans. The Creator God must also be the God who holds final justice in his hands. From the implicit recognition that God created the world, it follows that this God will bring the world to its proper consummation. It may have appeared to some that Paul appeared to build intellectual bridges between the Athenian’s conception of God and his own. But Luke is quick to remind the reader that Paul just as abruptly tears down the bridge by referring to the resurrection of Jesus as the definitive statement about God. Though the audience apparently mocks Paul for his belief in the resurrection, Luke provides no indication that Paul is surprised by the reaction. There is an inner logic to idolatry, but there is also a deep addiction to the domestication of God by the human heart. Those addictions can be broken only by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The perfect image
What marks out the New Testament as different from the Old is the claim that the imago Dei attains a unique status in the person of Jesus Christ, not merely as a human but as the perfect image of God. This is not an abstract metaphysical claim, but primarily a confession about salvation. The claim that Jesus is the ‘image of the invisible God’ (Col. 1:15) is the means to establish that God is renewing, restoring or redeeming his people into his image. As the image of God, Jesus came to ‘reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross’ (Col. 1:20). Christ not only makes known the divine intention to reconcile his people, but effects the work of reconciliation in his own death. In Christ those who were far off are now brought near by his blood (Eph. 2:13).
In Christ God became visible. The knowledge of God was no longer hidden. In John 1 the Word who was with and was God becomes flesh and lives among humankind in such a way that God’s glory can be seen. And in John 14, in response to Philip’s request to show the disciples the Father, Jesus says, ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ (v. 9). Knowing or seeing the Father is centrally knowing God’s redeeming act in Christ. It is the soteriological function of Christ that is the focus of the New Testament. Jesus reveals God as the God who saves his people. Revelation and redemption go hand in hand across the canon.
Central to any discussion of the New Testament appropriation of the imago Dei construct are the Pauline texts 2 Corinthians 4:4 and Colossians 1:15. In the former the apostle argues for the character of the gospel as formerly veiled but now revealed in the person of Jesus, who is the image or likeness (eikōn) of God. The gospel is the glory of Christ, whose light illuminates those with eyes formerly blinded by idolatry. The ‘god of this world’ (theos tou aiōnos), like the golden calf did, blinds all those who seek security and purpose at its feet. The blind and dumb idol refashions its worshippers after its own image, whereas Christ, in a virtual act of recreation, restores the ‘inner self ’ (esō hēmōn; 2 Cor. 4:16) in an ironic reversal the second creation being enacted by one who is also the very image or likeness of God.
In the larger context of 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 Paul draws his readers’ attention to the encounter at Sinai when Moses’ face shone because he had been in the presence of God. The glory of God had been reflected in Moses’ face, hearkening back to the claim in Genesis 1 that humans are the images or reflections of God. Not only does Paul make the claim that Jesus is the image or likeness of God, but those who now know Jesus shine with a glory greater than Moses ever had. The divine presence has reached a redemptive climax in Christ and the glory of God shines in a qualitatively greater way than previously. The imago Dei is being filled with a ‘greater’ reflection of divine glory than that reflected from Moses.
Paul complements this description of the perfect image in Colossians 1:15 by again affirming that Jesus is the image of God (eikōn tou theou) and that the fullness of God dwells in Jesus. Jesus carries the full weight of divine glory. Paul also asserts that Jesus created all things both visible and invisible. Paul (like John) places Jesus in the opening act of creation as a means to argue that Jesus was the purpose, or telos, of creation – as God was the telos of humankind. ‘In him [Jesus] all things hold together’ (Col. 1:17), even as Paul affirms in Acts 17:28, ‘In him [God] we live and move and have our being.’ As the image of God, Jesus reflects him and mysteriously fills all things with that reflection. He is the new Creator, echoing his role as the original Creator. As Paul argues in Romans 8:28–30, the destiny of those ‘in Christ’ is to be conformed to the image of the Son by the redemptive power of the Spirit. Christ is the new Creator as well as the telos of the new creation, even as the Spirit is the one who constructs the new temple presence of God through Christ by means of setting up Christ’s (and the Father’s) residence in the believers’ hearts.
The imago Dei finds its fullest theological significance in Jesus, in whom the ironic reversal of the original reversal of sin has begun and will be consummated. Jesus took on our humanity and restored its glory as the reflection of God. Jesus was the royal son, on the basis of whom other sons and daughters would be adopted into the family of God. If idolatry was the theological act of honouring the creature above the Creator, Jesus was the one who reversed that theological move by reconstituting the imago Dei with the full reflection of the divine glory in his own person. Jesus was the true image in contrast to the false idol.
While Paul rejects any image fashioned from creation to represent God, he resolutely refers to Jesus as the image of God. In Jesus’ concreteness the invisibility of God is made visible. The Creator has imaged himself in the creation, all the while warning against humans taking any part of creation as the final image of the Creator. When the Creator stepped into creation, a new creation was effected. Though great mystery still attends the presence of God, the divine intention to recreate humans in the image of Christ became manifest in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. By a sovereign divine act the incarnation inaugurated the new cosmic order. The blueprint for the new cosmic order was to be found in the very one who brought that order into being. In Christ’s suffering he redeemed those whom God called his own. In Christ’s resurrection he defeated their final enemy, death itself.
The concreteness of Jesus made these divine plans evident. Those who are incorporated into Christ take on this divine image as well, not becoming messianic in their nature, but following the pattern of life, death and resurrection now experienced vicariously in Christ (Rom. 6).
The sharp contrast between the living image (Jesus) and the dead idols cannot be missed in Paul’s argument. In 1 Corinthians 15 the apostle asserts that Jesus is the ‘life-giving’ spirit, who defeats our final enemy, death itself. The idols do not bring life, but instead further embed death in our nature. The theological contrast between Adam and Christ in 1 Corinthians 15 captures this same sentiment. All of humanity bears the image of Adam, the man of dust. In Adam humans inherit death as their just sentence. In the resurrection Christ’s people will bear his image, the man of heaven, and will inherit an imperishable existence. Yet strangely, on this side of paradise God’s people bear both the image of Adam and the image of Christ. These images are not mutually exclusive. This argues that ‘image’ functions not as an ontological description of one’s essence, but as a theological depiction of the divided worship of the human heart. It is the question of one’s theological identity, of where one finds significance and security. The idols represent the attempt to find significance and security by the works of one’s own hands. By contrast Jesus is the one whose significance and security from beginning to end are found not in the labours of his own hands, but in sacrificing his life for others. Though he is equal with God, he does not consider that status as grounds to assert control on his own terms (Phil. 2:6–8). Rather he willingly obeys his Father even at the cost of his own life. He is the inverted idol of God, the one who humbles himself to the point of death on a cross.
The various uses of eikōn in the Pauline materials form a basic conceptual unity in this regard. Christ as the image of God makes the invisible God visible. The Christologically shaped community called ‘the church’ bears the image of Christ in that it makes the pattern of his life, death and resurrection manifest. The false images (idols) reflect the reality that there are false attempts to make the invisible God visible, and manifest the possibility of distorting the pattern of the perfect image of God (Jesus).
In the context of the canon the (true) divine image makes God known and enacts the divine intention of redemption. According to Scripture, the community of those who image the perfect image make Christ known and proclaim the divine intention of redemption. The theological inversion of these tasks is to be found in idolatry. Through human foolishness the knowledge of God was distorted and divine redemption turned into self-justification or self-worship.
Paul’s depiction of the first and second Adams draws these two alternative theologies of significance and security into sharp relief. In both Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 the apostle asserts important analogies between Adam and Christ, while also being quick to describe their critical differences. The Adam–Christ typology clarifies the manner in which the language of eikōn functions as a descriptor of the Creator–creature relation.
The Adam–Christ typology carried at its core the contrasting life–death and death–life cycles. Adam became a living being from the dust. Christ became a life-giving spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). By Adam’s act of disobedience death was introduced (Rom. 5:15). By Christ’s act of obedience the free gift of justification was introduced (Rom. 5:16). In Adam death descended upon all those in his image. In Christ new life is given to all those who bear his image (1 Cor. 15:49). Those who stand in solidarity with these two typological figures also stand in solidarity with their respective life and death cycles (1 Cor. 15:48).
Adam’s test in the garden also connects him typologically with the testing of Jesus in the wilderness. Christ is driven into the wilderness by the Spirit of God, a canonical means to assert that this is a divinely intended mission, though he stands in isolation in the wilderness. He has recently undergone the baptism of John, the canonical means of asserting that he identifies with all those in need of repentance. These two ‘signs’ connect him inextricably both to YHWH and to Adam.
The early chapters of Genesis represent the Adamic test occurring in the company of Eve. Jesus’ test occurs in isolation. The Adamic test occurs in the lushness of the garden. Christ’s test occurs in the desert. Adam is given every tree save one with which to feed himself. Christ fasts for forty days. The correspondingly contrasting contexts of the tests leads the reader to connect the two temptation narratives.
The theological patterns of the two tests are also strikingly similar in their differences. Under interrogation by Satan Jesus is asked, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.’ In the context of the preceding episode of Jesus’ being baptized with the Spirit and being told by his Father that he is the beloved son in whom the Father is well pleased, Satan’s words challenge the veracity of the divine word. In parallel fashion Adam and Eve were representatively asked by the serpent whether the divine prohibition against eating of the trees was to be taken with trust.
The first phase of the temptations is followed by a more direct assault on divine prerogatives. Satan seeks to strike a bargain with Jesus. If he worships Satan, in return Satan will give him all the kingdoms on earth. Jesus’ response exposes Satan’s bargain for its naked grasp for power. God alone is to be worshipped, the implicit assumption being that God alone is the Creator of all that is, and so all honour and worship belong to him. There are no realms over which divine authority does not rest. In corresponding fashion the serpent starkly asserts to Adam and Eve that if they eat of the tree they will be ‘as God’. They will determine good and evil for themselves and thereby usurp the divine prerogative.
The final phase of the temptation narratives also draws out the correspondences. Adam and Eve are confronted in the final step not by any words of the serpent, but by the desires of their own hearts. It is the eyes through which the final phase of the temptation comes to them. They look at the tree and it is a delight to their eyes. And so they eat. The corresponding contrast with Jesus is striking. Satan tempts Jesus in the final phase by an appeal to the Scriptures that promises the divine protection of the Messiah. Satan tells Jesus to test God by throwing himself down from the pinnacle of the temple. Jesus responds by asserting that the divine promise was not given in order to be tested according to ordinary whims and desires. The test rather was to restrain human desires in accord with divine promises.
Paul’s account of the Adam–Christ typology follows on from these correspondingly contrasting narratives of temptation. Adam is given life by God, but, in asserting independence from God, introduces death into the human experience. Jesus is the one who gives life in the first instance, but does not regard his divine right to life as something to be nakedly asserted. Rather he humbles himself, and by his act of righteousness brings life to many. By contrast Adam’s representative act brings condemnation to all. Whereas the pattern of Adam is life followed by death, in Jesus the pattern inverts to death followed by life.
Being in the image of the image
After Paul draws out the Adam–Christ typology in Romans 5, he argues in Romans 6 that identifying with Christ in his death will also result in being identified with him in his resurrection. Those who are baptized into Christ’s suffering and death will also be baptized into his resurrection. Then, in Romans 8, Paul claims that to share in being conformed to the image of the Son is to share in the death and resurrection pattern instituted and constituted by Jesus. Sharing the image of the one who is the image of God is to participate in his death and resurrection. This identification with the pattern (image) of Christ’s death and resurrection is nothing less than the gospel in summary form.
The gospel finds itself in seed form, then, all the way back in Genesis 1 when God created humankind in the divine image. As the perfect image, Christ completes the original vocation of humankind and thereby shows humankind who they were originally intended to be. This does not happen, however, without experiencing the cross wherein the power of the idols was broken and death lost its sting. The perfect image not only reveals what redeemed humans will eschatologically be but also loosens the bonds of their present enslavement to the idols they have created.
Being in the image of the image entails a new identity. Parts of the old identity persist until the final consummation, but with the coming of the perfect image the renewing project has begun. The New Testament has a variety of ways of speaking of the new identity – sometimes as a new self (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:1, 10), a new name (Rev. 3:12), a new future (John 14:3–4; Eph. 1:11) or a new age (Mark 10:30; Luke 18:30; Heb. 6:5). All of these bear witness to the reality that the old is fading while the new has not yet reached completion. While still bearing the old image, Paul’s promise is that ‘we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven’ (1 Cor. 15:49). It is the proverbial future breaking into the present.
One further important corollary of Paul’s use of eikōn is that being in the image of the image is primarily manifested in communal contexts. It is idolatry by which the self becomes selfish. Putting on the new self is about treating others with respect, not showing partiality, not lying to them and not discriminating between Greek and Jew or between slave and free (Col. 3:5–11). Being ‘in Christ’ bears the fruit of recognizing that all who belong to Christ are members who all belong to each other.
The claim that Jesus is the image of the invisible God in Colossians 1 is followed by the description in Colossians 3 that Christ is the very life of the church, and that the ecclesial community thereby is the image of Christ. The church now makes visible that which will only later become visible in Christ at the eschaton. So likewise in 2 Corinthians 3 Paul asserts that in the church’s gaze upon the face of Christ they are being renewed after his image from one degree of glory to another. It is not until 2 Corinthians 4 that Paul reveals that the next order of glory into which the church is being renewed is the eschatological glory of Christ’s resurrected life. The church bearing the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18) is derived from Christ who bears the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4).
The idolatries of the self that so strongly tempted the Corinthian churches were viewed as normative by the Gentile culture that surrounded them. But it was a common charge in the first century for the church to be indicted on the charge of atheism and idolatries of their own. In refusing to pay due honour to the local deities that protected the city they were suspected of inventing their own gods to serve their own needs. As a consequence Christians were viewed with deep suspicion.
It seems likely that Paul’s juxtaposition of idol terminology throughout his writing with the ‘one God, one Lord’ formula is not coincidental but deliberately intended because of the apparent paradoxical and potentially scandalous nature of the Christian proclamation of Jesus’ lordship. If the worship of another human is idolatrous, why would the worship of Jesus be any different? This was a strong and recurring indictment made by Jews of Christians in the first century. Paul argues that Christians are not guilty of idolatry in worshipping Jesus, because Jesus is not a deity separate from the one God but rather the latter’s image in the creation and restoration of the world. This solution to the ‘multiple gods in heaven’ problem is similar to that in the Gospel of John, where Jesus reinterprets the Shema as being compatible with the coinherence of the Father and the Son, because the two are ‘one’ (John 10:30; 17:11, 22–23).
In the we turn to a surprising reappearance of this indictment of idolatry levelled at Christians in the nineteenth century. It was focused not merely on the person of Jesus, but on the wider claim that all religious loyalties are fundamentally forms of idolatry in so far as they underwrite the project of creating a god in human likeness. It was a challenge that illuminated the remarkable conceptual power of idolatry, and also shook Christianity to the core in the Western world. It is an episode worth revisiting with a new set of lenses.