The Image of God and Human Dignity

In the first chapter, we saw that the phrase “image of God” was a royal term that described humanity as the official representative and regent of God in this world. This leads to the biblical teaching of human dominion over nature, but at the same time limits that dominion to acting as God’s steward in the world and taking care of it appropriately as His possession.

Since in Genesis 1, the description of humanity focuses entirely on the image of God, it follows that this is the most essential element of what it means to be human. But this in turn has implications well beyond dominion and stewardship. In particular, it provides the only real foundation for human dignity and human rights.

Human Uniqueness

First of all, the image of God distinguishes us from everything else in creation. Movements for animal rights (and, in the case of the Swiss constitution, plant rights[1]) generally seek legal protections for basic rights such as life, liberty (i.e. freedom from being held captive in zoos or entertainment venues), and freedom from abuse or exploitation. This is sometimes defined in terms of legal personhood, but at the same time these groups recognize that animals would not have the same rights as humans. For example, they would not have the right to vote.

There is much that is worth considering in the animal rights movement. Animal cruelty and abuse of God’s creatures is a violation of our stewardship—remember, we are to tend and protect the Garden. But it often goes too far. For example, Ingrid Newkirk, the founder of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), is often quoted as saying “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” Her point was they all feel pain, and so there should be no moral hierarchy between them.

Regardless, for our purposes, the discussion misses a key point: In the absence of God’s call on our life or some higher spiritual responsibilities, what is wrong with animal cruelty? Cats play with mice; other carnivores eat animals alive. So why can’t we do the same? Or why do we have responsibilities to care for animals? Do any other species have a responsibility to protect other species? Has any other species held itself in check to try to prevent another species from going extinct?

The very fact that we can talk about rights and that we recognize our responsibilities toward other creatures puts the lie to the idea that we are just another species on the planet, no different from any other, as some of the more extreme animal rights rhetoric suggests. If that’s the case, why insist that we must protect and respect other species? If we don’t ask that of termites in a house, which destroy our habitat, or of a lion meeting a lone wildebeest, why expect it of humans? Or should we put predatory animals in jail?

We do in fact have responsibilities to other creatures, and for that reason anyone who denies a special place for humans is wrong. It is precisely our creation in the image of God that gives us those responsibilities and that distinguishes us from the rest of Creation. The claim that this outlook is “speciesism,” a moral failing akin to racism, is self-refuting unless those leveling the charge are also willing to say that all other species have the same responsibilities—not just rights—that we do.

Christians have supported an appropriate form of animal rights for centuries. For example, William Wilberforce, the British evangelical who led the fight in Parliament against the slave trade, also was a founder of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He understood that our creation in God’s image meant not just respecting human rights but caring for all of God’s creatures.

The Value of Life

In Biblical terms, humanity’s unique dignity flows from our creation in God’s image. Since we are God’s regents on the earth, His official representatives and ambassadors, an attack on any human being is tantamount to an attack on God Himself. Thus God tells Noah after the Flood:

Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image. (Gen. 9:6 ESV)

The justification in this instance for capital punishment was the fact that human beings are made in God’s image. Murderers forfeited their right because of their attack on one of God’s image bearers. That is how seriously God takes human life.

Human Dignity

Taking this one step further, since the value of human life flows from the image of God, so does human dignity. And since the image of God is shared by all people, all of us have an intrinsic dignity that is distinct from anything else about us. The supreme value of the image of God far outweighs any other consideration in determining our worth.

To put it simply, any time you value something more than the image of God in how you think about yourself or others—whether race, sex, class, appearance, age, mental capacity, ability, disability, anything—you are quite literally insulting God to His face.

This includes valuing people on the basis of their religious beliefs. Christians who think they are better than others because of their faith have forgotten a fundamental element of the Good News: we are all sinners who can bring nothing good to God that would make us worthy of salvation. But what we could not provide for ourselves, God provided for us, and the fact that we are Christians says more about the mercy and grace of God than it does about us. Christians thus have no claim to being better than anyone else, and we must insist that all human beings are equally valuable regardless of faith, lifestyle, vices, criminal background, or anything else, because we all share the image of God.

There is therefore never any excuse for any form of bigotry, whether racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, or any of the other “-isms” of our culture. As a result, Christians should be (and historically have been) on the forefront of fights for civil rights.

Equality before God

From its earliest days, Christianity has argued for human equality before God. The apostle Paul tells us that in Christ, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female.” (Gal. 3:28 ESV) All are morally and spiritually equal: All equally need salvation, and all share in the same means of salvation. Race, class and gender thus are irrelevant before God.

This emphasis on moral and spiritual equality led Christians to be the first people anywhere in the world to pass laws against slavery, as documented by Rodney Stark, sociology professor at Baylor University.[2] Slavery was condemned as a sin in Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, and when the Europeans tapped into the African slave trade, no fewer than four different popes condemned it.[3] And of course, the British abolition campaign in the late 1700s was led by evangelical Christians, among them William Wilberforce.

Martin Luther King’s leadership in the Civil Rights movement was based on a profound understanding of Christian natural law theory going back to Augustine in the fourth century and Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail is based on just these arguments, anchored in the Christian tradition that recognized both our equality and intrinsic dignity and the importance of an objective moral foundation for law.

Early Christians promoted the rights of children and the unborn as well. In an era in which infanticide was mandated by law for the handicapped and allowed for any children, Christians saved babies from death, bringing them into their own households, and petitioned the government to end this legalized murder. Similarly, following the lead of the Jews, they also opposed abortion as murder since it was the taking of a human life made in the image of God.

Christians pioneered rights for women as well. Christianity resulted in a tremendous increase in prestige, opportunity, and freedom for women in ancient Rome, well beyond what had been available to them in the pagan world.[4] We will return to this topic in a later chapter.

Universal Human Rights

Ultimately, the logic of our creation in the image of God led to the development of the idea of universal human rights. This is a uniquely western concept, built on theories of unalienable rights developed by Medieval Christian theologians from their studies of the Bible. And all of it is founded on the spiritual and moral equality of people in Christ, going back ultimately to our creation in the image of God.

No other culture, religion, or civilization has advanced a comparable idea, because none of them have the worldview foundation for it. Even Jürgen Habermas, one of the leading public intellectuals in Europe and an atheist, points out that modern secular ideas of human rights have their origins in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and though secularists can appropriate these ideas, denying their foundation is intellectually dishonest:

Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct heir of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.[5]

All of this obviously just scratches the surface of this issue. But in an era of easy abortion coupled with ultrasounds and genetic testing to determine if the child is worth keeping alive, of designer babies, of surrogacy, of legalized euthanasia, and a host of other challenges to human life and worth in our culture, we as Christians need to rediscover and recommit to the centrality of the image of God for determining human value.

Questions

1. Read Ps. 8. What does it tell you about human dignity?
2. What is the basis of your self-image? How does your creation in the image of God factor into it?
3. How does our responsibility to be God’s stewards in the world affect our ideas of animal rights? How do those rights differ from our rights as image-bearers of God?
4. Read Gal. 3:38 and Col. 3:11. What do these verses tell us about our equality before God?
5. Are there any groups in which you have a hard time seeing the image of God? Are there any groups that you see as being more valuable than others? How should our common creation in the image of God affect how you think about these groups?
6. We live in a world where rape, torture, genocide, and murder happen. How do we reconcile the idea that even the people who do such things are created in the image of God, with the demands of justice and our very natural revulsion for their actions?
7. What is the connection between the image of God and human rights? Medieval theologians found unalienable rights in Scripture. Can you think of any biblical passages that support the idea of human rights in general or of specific rights? (If you are interested in pursuing the biblical and historical reasoning behind universal rights, see my book Slaying Leviathan.)

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[1] http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/065njdoe.asp.

[2] Victory of Reason, 29-31

[3] Ibid., 200-202.

[4] Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, 95-128.

[5] Time of Transitions, 150.