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Imaging God: Creatureliness and Technology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Peter Scott
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The variety of ways of construing how humanity is in the image of God suggests a profound interrelation of tradition and context in theological reflection on the imago dei. For example, Colin Gunton has recently argued that the dominant ways of interpreting the imago dei at the present time are stewardship and the duality of male and female. It is not hard to see how contemporary discussions on the relations between humanity and non-human nature, and between men and women, inform such a selection. The recent work of Peter Hodgson furnishes us with a second example: being in the image of God, he argues, comprises three spheres: self-relatedness, other or world-relatedness and wholeness. Again, it is not hard to discern how such a construal is informed by the identification of three dilemmas which are, Hodgson considers, constitutive of our contemporary (Western) context: liberation from unjust social relationships; relations between Christianity and other religions; relations between humanity and non-human nature. In the presentation of the imago dei, we may safely say, tradition and context are deeply interrelated.

In what follows, I shall develop one aspect of recent Christian tradition—that sociality is the mark of the imago dei—in order to explore how humanity might be in the image of God in a technological society. Thus in the last two sections of this paper, I ‘expand’ Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s reading of humanity as social by including the themes of spatiality and temporality. It is as social, spatial and temporal, I shall argue, that humanity is to be understood as imaging God.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 79 , Issue 928 , June 1998 , pp. 260 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Gunton, Colin E., 'Trinity, Ontology and Anthropology: Towards a Renewal of the Doctrine of the Imago Dei', Schwöbel, Christoph and Gunton, Colin (eds.), Persons, Divine and Human (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991), pp. 57‐58Google Scholar.

2 Hodgson, Peter, Winds of the Spirit: Towards a Constructive Christian Theology (London: SCM Press, 1994), p. 200Google Scholar.

3 Bonhoeffer's work–especially Creation and Fall (London: SCM Press, 1959)Google Scholar, Act and Being (London: Collins, 1962)Google Scholar, Sanctorum Communio (London, Collins, 1963)Google Scholar–is central to the reaffirmation of human life as social for Christian self‐understanding. Barth took up, but then somewhat restricted, Bonhoeffer's account (see Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics III/1 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958), p. 194fGoogle Scholar. The Trinitarian renaissance in contemporary theology has supported and extended this direction. The work of Jürgen Moltmann is a good example; for his most recent detailed statement, see Moltmann, , God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation (London: SCM Press, 1985), pp. 215‐243Google Scholar.

4 Of course, Augustine does not interpret the imago dei as social. Instead, in a reading which became determinative for Western theology, Augustine on the one hand ascribed the imago dei to the faculty of reason (City of God XIII, 24) and understood the three‐fold form of the human intellect by analogy to the Trinity (De Trinitate XIV, XV)–both these point towards individualism. Yet, O'Donovan correctly notes that ‘In Augustinian political theology.sociality itself was given in creation’ (O'Donovan, Oliver, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 14)Google Scholar. For the nature of created humanity as social: see Augustine, City of God XII, 28; XIX, 5. An attempt to revive this Augustinian aspect is made by Daniel Hardy, W., ‘Created and Redeemed Sociality’, in Gunton, C E and Hardy, D W (eds.), On Being the Church (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1989), pp. 21‐47Google Scholar.

5 See Ihde, Don, Philosophy of Technology: An Introduction (New York: Paragon House, 1993), pp. 29‐44Google Scholar.

6 Heidegger, Martin, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in The Question Concerning Technology and other essays (New York: Harper and Row, Torchbooks, 1977), pp. 3‐35Google Scholar.

7 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”, p. 5.

8 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p. 22.

9 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”, p. 14.

10 Heidegger, , ‘The Spiegel Interview’ in Neske, Gunther and Kettering, Emil (eds.), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism: Questions and Answers (New York: Paragon House, 1990), p. 57Google Scholar.

11 Bemstein, Richard J., The New Constellation: The Ethical‐Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992), p. 118Google Scholar. In its reading of Heidegger's philosophy and politics, my account is deeply indebted to Bernstein's.

12 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p. 32.

13 Habermas, , Toward a Rational Society (Cambridge: Polity, 1987), p. 85Google Scholar.

14 See especially Marcuse, Herbert, One Dimensional Man (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964)Google Scholar. Habermas's detailed critique can be found in ‘Technology and Science as “Ideology”’, Toward a Rational Society, pp. 81‐122.

15 I rely here on the analysis of Vogel, Steven, ‘New Science, New Nature: The Habermas‐Marcuse Debate Revisited’ in Feenberg, Andrew and Hannay, Alastair (eds.), Technology and the Politics of Knowledge (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 23‐42Google Scholar. Cf. Vogel, Steven, Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory (New York: SUNY, 1996)Google Scholar, especially chapter 5.

16 Steven Vogel, ‘New Science, New Nature’, p. 28.

17 Vogel, ‘New Science, New Nature’, p. 24.

18 Gramsci, Antonio, Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), p. 286Google Scholar.

19 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, p. 296.

20 Ferré, Frederick, Philosophy of Technology (Athens & London: The University of Georgia Press, 1995), p. 26Google Scholar. In the report of Terry J. Tekippe, Bernard Lonergan also operates with such a view. Technology originates as an idea and, in a primary sense, always remains an idea. The idea of technology is always located in the mind of the inventor. Lonergan does not deny the importance of institutions, resources and markets; yet the origin of technology is not traceable to these. See Tekippe, Terry J., ‘Bernard Lonergan: A Context for Technology’ in Mitcham, Carl and Grote, Jim (eds.), Theology and Technology (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), pp. 71‐90Google Scholar.

21 Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘Henry Ford and Industrial Autocracy’, The Christian Century Nov. 4, 1926, p. 1354; ‘How Philanthropic is Henry Ford?’, The Christian Century Dec. 9, 1926, pp. 1516‐17. Niebuhr's experience with Fordism was direct: as a pastor in the Bethel district of Detroit between 1915 and 1928, he observed the process at first hand and recorded his thoughts in his diary; these reflections were later published as Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic (New York: Willett, Clark and Colby, 1929)Google Scholar. See also Niebuhr, Reinhold, ‘Autobiographical Reflections’, in Kegley, Charles W. and Brettall, Robert W. (eds.), Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social and Political Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1956), p. 5.Google Scholar

22 In this necessarily brief summary, the reader is directed to Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Scribners, 1960)Google Scholar; Niebuhr, Reinhold, Reflections on the End of an Era (New York: Scribners, 1934)Google Scholar for the detailed argument of Niebuhr's position.

23 Niebuhr, Reflections on the End of an Era, p. 284.

24 Fox, Warwick, Toward a Transpersonal Psychology (Dartington: Resurgence, 1995), pp. 16‐17Google Scholar notes how Christians use the imago to separate humanity from non‐human nature.

25 Such a contrast merely replays the antithesis noted by Karl Marx between the ethos of industrial capitalism and the sensibility of romanticism.

26 Bloch, Ernst, Principle of Hope (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), volume 1, p. 268Google Scholar.

27 Iowe this phrase to Daniel W. Hardy.

28 Cole‐Turner gives the example of the lack of corporate interest in a vaccine against malaria: see Cole‐Turner, Ronald, The New Genesis: Theology and Genetic Revolution (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), p. 54Google Scholar.

29 Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992)Google Scholar.

30 See Santmire, H. Paul, The Travail of Nature (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1985), p. 42Google Scholar. For a critique of the presumption of the capacity for good administration in stewardship models, see Palmer, Clare, ‘Stewardship: a case study in environmental ethics’ in Ball, Ian et. al. (eds.) The Earth Beneath (London: SPCK, 1992), pp. 67‐86Google Scholar; and Tanner, Kathryn, ‘Creation, environmental crisis, and ecological justice’ in Chopp, Rebecca and Taylor, Mark (eds.), Reconstructing Christian Theology (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1994), pp. 109‐13Google Scholar.

31 With particular reference to the Trinity, Moltmann has pressed the anthropological consequences of an abstract conception of God: see Moltmann, Jürgen, Trinity and the Kingdom of God (London: SCM Press, 1981), pp. 10‐20Google Scholar.

32 Hall, Douglas John, Imaging God: Dominion as Stewardship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), esp. pp. 183–87Google Scholar

33 Lash, Nicholas, Believing Three Ways in One God (London: SCM Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

34 Stanley Cavell, cited in Kerr, Fergus, Immortal Longings: Versions of Transcending Humanity (London: SPCK, 1997), p. viiiGoogle Scholar.

35 Borihoefier, Dietrich, Letters and Papers from Prison (London: SCM Press, 1971), p,282Google Scholar.

36 I am very grateful to Niels Henrik Gregersen for his insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article.