Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 38:2 (Spring 2024)
Article: The Image Of God As A Statement Of Mutuality: An Illustration
Author: Aaron K. Husband

PP 38:2 (Spring 2024) p. 18

The Image Of God As A Statement Of Mutuality: An Illustration

Aaron K. Husband

Aaron K. Husband serves as a campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of Canada in Montréal, Québec, primarily ministering to the fellowship at Concordia University. A husband and a father, he is originally from the Canadian prairies and loves to read, write, and research in his free time.

The image of God is only mentioned explicitly in three passages in the OT (Gen 1:26–28, 5:1–3, 9:6), yet it is likely the most foundational doctrine related to human identity in the entire Bible. As such, there is a vast bibliography available on its meaning. This essay will contribute to this literature by exploring an analogous experience my wife and I had that illustrates the image’s mutualist implications.

The most probable understanding of the imago Dei ("image of God") is the royal-functional view, a view well defended by J. Richard Middleton,1 who notes that it boasts a “virtual consensus” among OT scholars, though it is “quite distinct from the typical proposals found among systematic theologians.”2 This view typically sees the image of God to mean that embodied humanity is responsible for administering the earthly realm as the Creator’s authorized representatives with delegated royal power.3 I shall be using this view in a broad sense to include those understandings that either state the image of God is this representative royal function or that it entails or ought to entail this function. Regardless, the image of God necessitates the radical claim that all of humanity are kings under God, God’s royal representatives to the world and each other. It therefore implies—even more, is a direct statement of—true biblical equality between the sexes: a mutualist position over and above a hierarchicalist view.4 After a brief review of the merits of the royal-functional view, I will use a recent shared experience with my wife to demonstrate how the image of God concept makes a mutualist statement.

The Royal-Functional View

It is sometimes asserted that the meaning of the phrase “image of God” is left undefined in Genesis 1.5 This may be strictly true, but context shapes meaning, and there are enough textual and cultural background clues for us to arri...