Biblical Image of God

In light of Nietzsche’s presentation of his new image of man, a Biblical contemplation of the image of God is relevant. The Biblical data unequivocally identifies man as being created in the image of God, but nowhere does Scripture offer an explicit definition or description of what possession of the image involves.[1] Rather than being presented with a concise picture, the Christian is invited to explore the intricacies and nuances of the mystery, and in doing so, discover a dynamic, living reality. Though the topic is dense, several points are clearly established. The first pages of Scripture present the fundamental fact that man, having been created in the image of God, is distinct from the animal.[2] It follows, then, that a survey of the Biblical text reveals that the image of God in man is inextricably related to the moral order reflecting the moral God.

The Biblical picture is for man, created in God’s image, to mimic God’s person and thus participate in his power. Undoubtedly, every human individual possesses the image of God, but it seems to be the Biblical portrayal that it is those redeemed by the blood of Christ and cooperating with the inner work of the Spirit that most properly and appropriately reflect it. To this point, a robust embodiment of the image of God is directly linked to moral transformation produced by knowledge of God. Since Nietzsche adamantly rejected God, the divine and morality, he was unwilling and unable to claim the inherent difference between man and animal, and his philosophy reflects his attempt to establish a distinction that is granted at the very baseline of Christian theology. Nietzsche’s new image of man, embodied by the Ubermensch, reflects his craving to be like God, but by grasping for the power and glory of God apart from knowledge of the moral person of God, he failed.[3] In these ways, Nietzsche craves and fabricates an existence of meaning and substance for his new image of man that has been granted and supplied only by God himself.

Knowledge and Moral Transformation

            As the result of Jesus appearing for men as, “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), all of his image bearers are able to be redeemed, restored and transformed in knowledge of God.[4] “If the image is that which believers and God share, then to be like God must be to have that image fully restored,”[5] and appropriately, Ephesians 4:24 specifically identifies “righteousness and holiness” as the attributes of God that are to be produced in his image bearers.[6] According to Colossians 3:10, the new self, righteous and holy, is renewed “in knowledge of its Creator.” In his song of praise following the birth of John the Baptist, Zechariah rejoiced that the redemption of God’s people was near, the effect of which would be rescue from their enemies and enablement to serve God “in holiness and righteousness” (Lk. 1:75). Evidently, the incarnation of God marked the inauguration of a new era when humanity would be more dynamically empowered to fulfill its created purpose by living like him in holiness and righteousness. There is an explicit sense in which the Biblical picture depicts knowledge of God as the simultaneous first and last steps of being made like God.

            The direct result of knowing God is being made like him, a transformation which is explicitly moral and relationally transformative.[7] Given the created order established in Genesis and now being perfected through the Spirit, the individual has a fundamental responsibility to mirror God’s character. The Apostle Paul, for example, exhorted Colossian believers regarding their image marked by moral transformation. Each individual bears God’s image, but only those redeemed by Christ appropriately and robustly reflect it. Paul speaks in descriptive language, essentially instructing the believers to spiritually take off their old, tattered clothes and put on the new. With the “old self” put off and the “new self” put on, the image of God “is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col. 3:10). Those who live according to the image imprinted on their nature are then marked by the characteristics of God himself. In light of God’s compassion, they are to be compassionate; his kindness, humility and gentleness must produce the same in them, and his long-suffering and forgiveness is to be replicated in both motive and operation. Due to the living, working reality of the Spirit, man’s resemblance to God is to be profound.[8]

It is worth emphasizing that the directive to “put on the new self” is not a command for ethical modification, but an invitation to put on, more clearly and completely, the very image of God (Rom. 13:14; Col. 3:3-4). Christians are not to possess the moral characteristics Nietzsche despised simply because doing so builds a certain society and benefits other people, but because it is a fundamental Biblical fact that doing so is a cooperative reflection of the presence of God himself. To this point, the Apostle Paul names the attributes that are to be possessed by those whose created image has been restored and renewed by God: “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another…forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive,” and as a type of overcoat that encapsulates it all, “above all these put on love” (Col. 3:12-14). To the one who knows God, the command is only natural, for “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Christians are to live as Christ by living through Christ, putting his image on display by experientially knowing his nature and power.

When the pages of Scripture are turned back, it becomes obvious that Paul did not make a random selection of virtuous characteristics here. The New Testament epistles’ list of qualities finds its carbon original not only in descriptions of Jesus (Phil. 2:1-11), but first in God’s declaration of his own nature to Moses. Encountering God’s image is the source of transformational knowledge and the moral pattern for man’s proper possession of his own image. Alone with God at the top of Sinai, Moses, painfully aware of his own weakness and that of Israel, asked in humble desperation to actually see God. He could settle for nothing less than really knowing and powerfully experiencing the one he had determined to follow. The language Moses used in Exodus 33, and the language God used in response, suggests interesting insight on the larger issue of the image of God. Moses asked to be shown God’s “ways, that I may know you” (33:13), and when God agreed, Moses further asked to see God’s “glory” (33:18). In cooperation, God declared that he would show Moses his “goodness” and proclaim to him his “name” (Ex. 33:19).[9] Moses, it would seem, in asking to know God’s ways and see his glory, asked to understand God’s motives and his brilliant character. To accomplish this, and to produce something lasting in Moses, God responded by revealing to him his very value system, his goodness, and his intimate person, his name.[10]

Interestingly, the text does not paint a picture of what Moses saw. Instead, the reader is given the recording of God’s spoken declaration, a pronouncement sufficient to satisfy these requests. God showed himself as: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty…” (Ex. 34:6-7). Almost to the letter, the attributes characterizing God’s self-disclosed nature inspires exhortations to believers in the New Testament. By being characterized by compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness and love (Col. 3:12-13) the believer more clearly reflects the image of God. In fact, it is conceivable that the master list from which the virtues are taken is the one both dictated and possessed by God himself at Sinai: mercy and graciousness, long-suffering patience, love, faithfulness, forgiveness and justice (Ex. 34:6-7).[11] Paul’s directive to the Christian readers is undoubtedly inspired by a careful reflection on the person of God. These moral and interpersonal virtues are to characterize the believer because they depict the glorious, good and personal likeness of God. By possessing these virtues, believers more brilliantly reflect the image of God.

Given his revelation to Moses,[12] God himself links his glory and image to his communicable attributes. It is no surprise, then, that 2 Corinthians 3:17-4:6 suggests that God’s glory and his image are conceivably interchangeable. As the glory of God was displayed in the face of Jesus (2 Cor. 4:6), it is to be displayed in the face of the image-bearing believer (3:18), affecting moral transformation and inter-personal restoration. “As the image of God is increasingly perfected in redeemed humanity, persons are enabled not only to relate more adequately to God but also to other people.”[13] In the act of reconciliation at the cross, God put his image on display and restored a clearer depiction of image in those willing to be redeemed (Col. 1:15, 19-20).[14] In doing so, he brought men back into harmony with himself, thereby enabling them to operate functionally and relationally as his image bearers.[15] Nietzsche wanted the life, authority and power of God apart from the person of God, and he thought that knowledge of himself would be a fine substitute for knowledge of the Divine, but he was mistaken.

Grace as Power

Whereas the will to power is the lifeblood of Nietzsche’s new image of man, the one convinced of his identity as the image of God anchors sure hope for victory in divine grace. The reality of divine grace through the work of the Spirit enables the believer to live a life of power, which is divine both in origin and operation. Without grace, the image of God is shrouded in confused self-effort. Living as a reflection of the image of God is not a call to attempt to mimic God and manufacture personal versions of Christianity’s favorite attributes. It is a call to reflect God at an organic level, as one possessing and reflecting his image and therefore taking part in the divine life to a fuller and more perfect extent. Therefore, the grace of God displayed through the work of the Spirit is the exclusive means of fulfilling God’s design and experiencing a powerful existence. Inevitably, Nietzsche’s philosophical propagation that the Ubermensch is one who has learned self-mastery proves to be an empty promise that perpetuates frustration. Submitting to God’s design for the image of God, on the other hand, grants this goal not as a possibility but as a guarantee (Heb. 4:16).

Nietzsche’s attempt to exercise power over his humanity and distinguish himself from the masses was not achieved in his new image of man. His last act as a sane man was a display of compassion that he would have despised and condemned in anyone, including himself, and in terms of his uniqueness and recognized distinction, he never did sense that he was properly understood and praised.[16] A Christian contemplation of this reality takes into account the fact that those things which Nietzsche sought are only fully attained when man knows and operates according to his created purpose. Nietzsche’s desire for value, distinction and power over self reflects the appetite given to every individual. Nietzsche attempted to satisfy his cravings with his new image of man, particularly embodied in the Ubermensch, will to power and eternal recurrence, but satisfaction is found when the image of God in man is recognized and experienced through transformational and experiential knowledge of God.

Joy in Perfection

The Christian counter to Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence is, most naturally, eternal life, and interestingly, a close examination of the two doctrines reveals a fundamental distinction related to morality. Initially, there is a sense in which Nietzsche’s means-to-an-end view on suffering is, superficially, not far from the Christian belief in suffering. To the Christian, pain and suffering are embraced not for the purpose of living in misery, but because of the reality that they actively and effectively achieve for the individual a strength of character that more clearly reflects God’s and is able to persevere (Rom. 5:3-4; James 1:2-4).[17] Suffering is to be endured with confidence and faith because God has granted hope that perfection and eternal joy will be the result. Yet it is at that point, where hope is born out of a confidence in moral perfection, that Nietzsche decidedly makes his nihilistic break.

Nietzsche was determined to present a captivating alternative to nihilism, but by rejecting morality, he relinquished his right to aspire to perfection and thus perpetuated the meaninglessness he despised. The divine promise for the image of God is not only eternity, the hope of joy, but eternal perfection. Where Nietzsche’s new image of man hoped for power, the one recognizing his possession of the image of God hopes for perfection. As a result, at each point where Nietzsche was disappointed, the Christian is satisfied.[18] By turning himself into God, rejecting divine grace in place of the will to power and embracing power in eternal recurrence rather than perfection in eternal life, Nietzsche’s new image of man embodies and perpetuates hope-defying nihilism.

Conclusion 

Though Nietzsche is heard articulating an existence for man that functionally is void of every vestige of meaning and inspirational hope, he does seem to be expressing desires fundamental to humanity. At the root, though, the issue is the fact that Nietzsche embarks on a quest for meaning, power and joy that is entirely independent of God. Nietzsche desired transformation, both of himself and of his humanity, but what Nietzsche could not achieve, God affords. Nietzsche attempted to escape nihilism, which he detected both in the admission that God does not exist and that he might.[19] In an effort to pull himself up by his own amoral bootstraps, Nietzsche blazed his own trail by presenting the new image of man as God’s successor and trading knowledge of God for knowledge of himself. [20] This new image of man, then, is seen to be a sad corruption of the image of God. Nietzsche inadvertently reminds the Christian that knowledge of God is the catalyst for experiencing the depths of his power and beautifully and captivatingly reflecting the image of God.

Had Nietzsche known God and thus had a proper view of God and of himself, he would not have been desperate to create a new image of man that possessed some possibility for relative meaning. He would have recognized that the very imprint of God on his nature made him capable of infinite power, a possessor of inconceivable worth and a resident of a perfect eternity. Nietzsche would have been convinced that it is the very life of God that gives to man infinite and personal meaning. He would have seen that where the will to power fails, grace succeeds, and he would have been able to answer his own cry for eternity with the assurance that one day night would give way to perpetual day when all would be well and he, God’s image bearer, would be eternally whole.

 

Notes:

[1] R. Ward Wilson and Craig L. Blomberg, “The Image of God in Humanity: A Biblical-Psychological Perspective,” Themelios 18, no. 3 (1993): 9.

[2] Ibid., 8.

[3] While he was certainly dedicated to embodying his philosophy to the best of his ability, Nietzsche’s own words reveal that he lived a tortured existence that sought after what did not exist in his reality. If the life of the Ubermensch could achieve Nietzsche’s ideal, certainly, he would have been the one to know. While the Christian experiences frustration because of personal failure to experience the very real and available abundant life through the powerful Spirit, Nietzsche’s frustration seems to stem from a desire for what cannot be achieved, that is, mastery of himself by himself alone. Frustration is common to all people, but the Christian’s frustration is born out of laziness in aspiring to much less than what can be experienced, while Nietzsche was frustrated by aspiring to something other than what can be experienced.

[4] Wilson and Blomberg, “The Image of God,” 8. Along with Augustine, Thomas Aquinas is responsible for some of the fundamental Christian conceptions of what is entailed in man being made in God’s image. Aquinas identified three ways in which God’s image is reflected in humanity, one of which being man’s ability to know and love God by conformity with his grace.

[5] Ibid., 9.

[6] Ibid., 9. According to Luther and Calvin, the capacity for righteousness and holy living make up the essence of possessing God’s image (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24).

[7] Ibid., 9.

[8] The Spirit works in the image bearer, producing both the “desire and power to do what pleases him,” Phil. 2:13. Nietzsche complained that Christ was the only Christian, but the Biblical expectation is that believers intentionally “put on” Christ, living just like him. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ (New York: Tribeca Books, 2010), 50.

[9] 2 Peter 1:3 states that men are called by God according to his “glory” and “goodness.” It is surely in keeping with God’s ways that men are called to God’s name according to God’s glory and goodness.

[10] Wilson and Blomberg, “The Image of God,” 9.

[11] Direct quotations of the divine personality profile of Exodus 34 is repeated in eight other Old Testament passages (Num. 14:18; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 86:15, 103:8, 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jon. 4:2; Nah. 1:3).

[12] It is worth contemplating that this grand revelation involved Moses, the one with whom God was pleased to speak, “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Ex. 33:11). The ability to know God intimately and thus be made like him prefigures Jesus’ declaration that this intimacy is now normative for those who have been restored to better reflect the image of God: “I no longer call you servants…Instead, I have called you friends, for everything I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). Evidently, friendship is contingent upon knowledge, and Biblically, this knowledge is transformational.

[13] Wilson and Blomberg, “The Image of God,” 9. In Leviticus 19:1, God commands his people to be holy as he is holy, and he then goes on to enumerate a specific list of attributes that echoes the traits given in Exodus 34:6. In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew records Jesus’ reiteration of Lev. 19:1 with the command that his hearers, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). In Luke’s account of this message, he substitutes Matthew’s “perfect” with “merciful,” It is worth considering whether this replacement is synecdochic, given that mercy is the first quality God discloses in Exodus 34:6-7. According to Joel Green, Luke’s birth narrative establishes the mercy of God as his primary characteristic. “Here we find the fundamental basis for God’s behavior in any time, and it is surely significant that Jesus will later identify mercy as the primary motivation behind God’s activity and as the basis for ethical behavior for the community of disciples,” Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 117.

[14] 2 Corinthians 3:7-18, a clear reflection on the event described in Exodus 33-34, reflects on the glory of God revealed in the Old Covenant in light of the transformation of those redeemed by Christ. “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image (eikōn) with every-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). The same word eikon appears in the LXX Genesis 1:26. Those made in the essential image of God are designed to be further transformed through the sacrificial activity of God.

[15] James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: William B. Eerdmans Publishing; Paternoster Press, 1996), 221.

[16] Hollingdale, Nietzsche: Man and Philosophy, 131.

[17] James’ language is particularly striking. Those who allow suffering to accomplish its purpose are made “perfect and complete.”

[18] Interestingly, an argument can be made that, despite his writings, Nietzsche himself could not practically bear up under the burden of what he taught. Though he preached isolation, he despised his own loneliness, and though he endured, with great strength, a lifetime of suffering and illness, he seemed to be tortured by his own existence. Nietzsche does appear to embody his philosophy, but the point made here is that he was miserable doing so. He argued that the will to power produces joy, but his life suggests that the belief in power without perfection produces meaninglessness.

[19] Walter A. Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 101. “To escape nihilism – which seems involved both in asserting the existence of God and thus robbing this world of ultimate significance, and also in denying God and thus robbing everything of meaning and value – that is Nietzsche’s greatest and most persistent problem.”

[20] Ronald E. Osborn, Humanism and the Death of God: Searching for the Good After Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche (Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017), 175.