The Image of God in Education--Part 1

We should remember as Christian professors that creation was ordered by God’s love for worship. Students are doxological or they become deranged, and thus, creation is dependent upon love of God and of human to realize its very nature. At the heart of a biblical notion of personhood is the belief that human beings are the imago dei, the image of God (Gen 1:26-27, James 3:9), we are created to be illuminated by the Spirit and to participate in the whole cosmic sign language, ballet, and concert concerning God's beauty.

Christians have differed over where to locate this imaging of God in humans. Theologians have categorized these different understandings, thusly:

1. Substantive Views: The imago dei refers to certain kinds of innate qualities people have (e.g. reason, the will, our ethical sense, etc.)
   
2. Relational Views: The imago dei is found in humanity's relationship to God and/or the creation. To be the image of God means to be able to encounter God or others as God does, that is personally.
   
3. Functional Views: Our imaging of God is found in our acts as human beings, particularly in carrying out the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:28-29.

The imago dei has, therefore, been placed in the will, consciousness, reason, intuition, imagination, embodiment, an ability to respond relationally, an openness to future, our actions, and in a composite unity of all these.

It is this last option that I am most convinced by (Rom 12:1-2, I Cor 15:45). Our full humanity is what, in differing ways, images God. The right use of our reason as humbly guided by God's law is an expression of his purpose for education. But our reason cannot be entirely isolated from our desires, emotions, intuitions, and so on. Likewise, our volitional capacity, our free will, is always conditionally free as it finds fulfillment in learning and living out God's form of truth for us. Personhood offers a model of learning that is social in many of its elements, and the cultural nature of cultivating the creation points to a purpose for our learning--a set of mission statements and objectives to guide what we give priority to in our institutional evaluations.

The biblical conception of the heart is useful here (Prov 4:23, 27:9, Deut 6:5, Rom 2:29, II Cor 3:3, Rom 1:32, II Cor 9:7, Heb 4:12). The "heart" (whether the Hebrew Leb or the Greek kardia) implies the full person of a human being—the intellect, emotion, volition, even body. As Karl Barth affirmed: "[T]he heart is not merely a but the reality of man, both wholly of soul and wholly of body" (436) As such, to know with our heart is to employ our whole person. Human beings, indeed, all creation, has meaning as it references and imitates God: "Borrowing is the highest authenticity which can be obtained" (James K. Smith).

As our colleague David Naugle has suggested, worldview is an embodied way of living, not just a perspective, and it is one embedded in our contexts not a claim to absolute knowledge. It is, to use his coinage, kardi-optic. We need kardioptic pedagogy that recognizes this full measure of learning.