Images of God: Reflections on Christian Anthropology
By Rod Dreher
Rawlings School of Divinity
CLED 800: Biblical & Theological Foundations of Education
Genevieve Hamer
July 3, 2022
"A context in which to approach many of the difficult questions that confront" the Roman
Catholic and Anglican churches is presented in a document on Christian anthropology released
Dec. 22 by the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue in the United States. The national-level
dialogue group said it was hoped that this report would "offer a reasonable approach within
which each church can better understand the different teachings and practice of the other as
regards human sexuality, Christian marriage, the ordination of women to the ministerial
priesthood, Marian doctrines and devotions, and the communion of saints, and by which
further studies of our teachings on these questions can be conducted in more profitable and
less polemical ways." Each of those issues is discussed in the report— issues that are of central
concern to the ongoing dialogue involving the two churches. The purpose of the study, a
covering letter noted, was "to identify those areas in Christian anthropology which contribute
to the understanding of our relation as men and women in Christ and in Christ to one another."
The text of the report follows.
Introduction
1. For the past four years, ARC-USA has given its attention to Christian anthropology. We
have tried to explore together a large theological context within which several subjects of deep
concern to our two churches may profitably be considered: the church's teaching about human
sexuality and Christian marriage; the role of Mary in the life, devotion and theology of the
church; and the admission of women to the ordained ministry. The following paper indicates
the range of this theological exploration and some of the agreements and disagreements which
we have discovered. As in many other matters, our disagreements do not always follow along
lines of church membership.
I. Jesus as the Image of God
A. Jesus Shows Us What God Is Like
2. There is unanimous and complete agreement among us, based on a common
interpretation of New Testament texts and acceptance of the decisions of the early ecumenical
councils, that the only adequate "image" of God is Jesus Christ. One has only to recall such New
Testament passages as Colossians 1:15, "He is the image (eikon) of the invisible God, the first-
born of all creation," and Hebrews 1:3, "He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp
of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power."
3. Although God is a mystery which the human mind can never penetrate, God in his
mystery has revealed himself to us in a unique and ultimate manner in his Word made flesh,
Jesus Christ. Our ability to speak of God and apprehend what he has done in Christ, however, is
based upon the fact of creation. God was revealing himself in the act of creation, which
occurred before Jesus Christ, and even before human beings, appeared in the evolving
universe. The use of that creation is the only way we, a part of it, can refer to God.
4. The work of God in Christ and the new dispensation offered to the world by the Father
in his Son is best appreciated in terms of creation and recreation. Redemption in Christ is
recreation in him, a new type of total dependence upon him; in this sense, new life in Christ can
only be understood on the basis of the first creation which the Son came to restore and lead
beyond itself by the power of his Spirit.
5. The new creation, although it is more than nature, can only be referred to in terms of
the natural order God first created; in fact, Christians believe that the Word of God, the agent
of the new creation, is also the means by which God first created the universe. The Epistle to
the Hebrews, in the verse preceding the one we have already quoted, speaks of the Son as he
through whom the world was created (1:2), and the Gospel of John refers to the Word who
became flesh in Jesus as the one through whom "all things were made" (1:2).
6. Creation and recreation are the key to each other in the Christian life, and so it is that
the methodology we have employed in this study has found it necessary, on the one hand, to
use nature as a key to understanding who God is and what he does in Christ, and, on the other
hand, to use recreation in Christ as the key to understanding the purpose of the first creation,
which preceded it in time.
7. Theological anthropology is a central concern to our churches because it provides and
probes concepts, images and symbols from creation for receiving and appropriating, expressing
and communicating our understanding of the God in whom we believe.
8. God is infinite. Our finite minds can have no comprehensive knowledge of him, but
Christians believe that Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, indicates to us in human terms who
God is and what God is.
9. Our churches together affirm the Christology of the Chalcedonian definition: "at once
complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man (the word used was
anthropos (human), not aner (male),...begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the
Virgin, the God-bearer (theotokos); one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten,
recognized in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without
separation." Thus Jesus Christ is simultaneously one in being with the Father as regards his
Godhead, and one in being with us as regards his humanity. He is, therefore, described, as we
have seen, as the image of the invisible God.
10. Jesus' whole life of self-giving leads to his sacrificial death on the cross and
indicates the unfathomable depth of the love of God. It is through Jesus the Christ, truly divine
and truly human, that God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are revealed. God is shown to be
a communion of divine persons, mysteriously related in infinite, personal, self-giving love.
11. Our churches together affirm that God is triune. Both subscribe to the definitions
of Christian faith set forth by the first ecumenical councils: in the one God, who is love, there
are three persons, of one substance, untreated, and eternal — the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit. (cf. Quicumque Vult)
12. Jesus is truly human, truly endowed with human consciousness, intellect and
will. He has the same type of appetites and feelings, and goes through the same processes of
thinking and willing, that we do as we exercise our freedom, responsibility and rationality in the
world. Image of the mysterious God, Jesus as truly human also reveals what human beings are
called to be and do, namely, to love God with one's whole heart and mind and soul and to love
one's neighbor as oneself; to show such great love as to lay down one's life for one's friend.
Jesus' resurrection, the newness of life granted him after his sacrificial death on the cross,
reveals the power of such love to bring all human beings into that communion with God which
is their eternal destiny.
13. Because God incarnate as Jesus was truly human, he was committed to all
aspects of the created order, limiting as they are. He was a male. He belonged to a particular
family; he spoke a particular language. Joseph followed a particular trade, which Jesus also
followed (Mk. 6:3). Jesus belonged to Israel, and was heir of Israel's religious tradition.
14. Are these particularities relevant to the image of God in him? Although we may
affirm things about God on the basis of our knowledge of Jesus, those affirmations must be
subject to careful and critical evaluation to determine their theological significance. One source
of disagreement among us, not strictly according to church allegiance, is caused by different
opinions regarding the relevance of sexuality in the revelation of God in Christ in general, and
regarding the theological significance of Jesus' maleness in particular.
