IMAGO DEI AND HUMAN RATIONALITY

Abstract

There is a pervasive trend in Western theology to identify imago Dei with human intellectual and cognitive capacities. However, several contemporary theologians have criticized this view because, according to the critics, it leads to a truncated view of humanity. In this article, I shall concentrate on the question of rationality, first, through theologies of Thomas Aquinas and contemporary Lutheran Robert Jenson, and second, in some branches of recent cognitive psychology. I will argue that there is a significant overlap between contemporary scientific interpretations of rationality and both a traditional Thomistic view and a contemporary ecumenical interpretation of imago Dei. Consequently, it is possible to give an account of imago Dei which takes structural features as central and which is in accord with contemporary science, without falling prey to the dangers that the critics of structuralism point out.In contemporary theological anthropology, theorizing about imago Dei is classified within three distinct groups: structural imago Dei, functional imago Dei, and relational imago Dei. Structural theories try to identify imago Dei with a particular cognitive faculty. Functional theories see imago Dei as a role: humans are representatives, or stewards, of the divine within the created order. Relational theories stress the fundamentally relational and communal nature of human existence, and, ultimately, understand humans as objects of God's address (Cortez 2010, 14-40).

A Heuristic Science‐based Naturalism as a Partner for Theological Reflections on the Natural World

“…Some authors have recently argued for a multifaceted approach to imago Dei , in which no aspect pertaining to personhood is set against the other (cf. Vainio ; De Smedt and De Cruz ). In the line of what has been suggested with regard to HSN, critical realism, and emergent monism, the distinctive human intellectual capacity (with reference to structural imago Dei ) can enable an effective apprehension of the physical world since humans are intentionally open toward the other (relational imago Dei ); this is quite clearly connected with the role of stewardship over creation to which humans are called according to scripture (functional imago Dei ).…”

Morality and Nature: Evolutionary Challenges to Christian Ethics

“…On the other hand compatibilists combine a moderately deterministic vision with the freedom to choose. This perspective is, for instance, assumed by psychologist Daniel Kahneman who explains in his dual‐process theory how a nonvoluntary, automatically operating model of reasoning (System 1) intertwines with a voluntary, consciously reflexive model of reasoning (System 2) (see Vainio on “ Imago Dei and Human Rationality”). Based on the idea that we could do something else than what we did (the principle of alternate possibilities), compatibilists believe that freedom of choice is possible, stating that indeterminism opens the possibility of robust moral responsibility and “ultimate authorship” (Mawson , 56).…”

Response to Melissa Raphael

“…(See e.g. Welz 2011, Vainio 2014 Raphael, for her part, engages in this discussion at length in the book Judaism and the Visual Image: A Jewish Theology of Art (2009), where she states 'that God creates people in his image and who themselves make images tells us something about the trans missibility of value and meaning from God to the world' (49). What 'something' might that be?…”