The Power of Positive Energy: Powerful Thinking, Powerful Life: Self-discipline is the key to success. Learn habits and systems to boost your willpower, and thrive your way to success! How to Eat More Vegetables: Are you struggling to eat vegetables? Buy this book and you'll learn how to eat more veggies and become healthier, happier, and have more energy. Engrave these life-changing quotes as brain tattoos. A step by step practical guide to implementing stoic philosophy and face the modern life challenges with joy and wisdom.
From the Back Cover This book represents a stage on a journey. Paulist Pr December 1, Language: Related Video Shorts 0 Upload your video. Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
He embodies all four of the major functions: Thinking, Feeling, Sensing and Intuiting. If you study the Bible further, you will realize that He's also the perfect balance between Extraversion and Introversion, as well as Perceiving and Judging. What a wonderful Shepherd we have: Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway. A Jungian Path in the Gospel Journey.
Set up a giveaway.
Why do I have to complete a CAPTCHA?
The ability and desire to love one's self and others, and therefore God, can become neglected and even opposed. The desire to repair the Imago Dei in one's life can be seen as a quest for a wholeness, or one's "essential" self, as described and exemplified in Christ's life and teachings. According to Christian doctrine, Jesus acted to repair the relationship with the Creator and freely offers the resulting reconciliation as a gift. For the past 2, years, theologians have examined the difference between the concepts of the "image of God" and the "likeness of God" in human nature.
Origen viewed the image of God as something given at creation, while the likeness of God as something bestowed upon a person at a later time. The theologian Irenaeus made a distinction between God's image and his likeness by pointing to Adam's supernatural endowment bestowed upon him by the Spirit. As Irenaeus' view progressed, what eventually arose was:. The image of God and the likeness are similar, but at the same time they are different. The image is just that, mankind is made in the image of God, whereas the likeness is a spiritual attribute of the moral qualities of God.
Medieval theologians made a distinction between the image and likeness of God. The former referred to a natural, innate resemblance to God and the latter referred to the moral attributes God's attributes that were lost in the fall. However, the medieval distinction between the "image" and "likeness" of God has largely been abandoned by modern interpreters.
It is common in speech and writing to repeat an idea using two different words to give reinforcement to the given idea. In this case the author did not intend to distract us from the idea but rather to insert a focal point. Scholars still debate the extent to which external cultures influenced the Old Testament writers and their ideas.
Mesopotamian epics contain similar elements in their own stories, such as the resting of the deity after creation. Christianity quickly came into contact with the philosophical trends and ideas of the Greek-speaking Mediterranean, as displayed in Acts. Some Christians sought to marry Greco-Roman philosophy with Jewish tradition in an effort to appeal to Gentiles and explain the existence of Christ. Just as some Christians argued that the Old Testament prophecies had prepared Jews for Christ, others argued that the classic philosophers also paved the way for Christian revelation for Gentiles.
Philosophy once again had a significant effect on Western Christian theology in medieval Europe after the re-discovery and translation of ancient texts. Aristotelian philosophy and an emphasis on applying rationality and reason to theology played a part in developing scholasticism, a movement whose main goals were to establish systematic theology and illustrate why Christianity was inherently logical and rational.
Reformation theologians , like Martin Luther , focused their reflections on the dominant role mankind had over all creation in the Garden of Eden before the fall of man.
Image of God
The Imago Dei, according to Luther, was the perfect existence of man and woman in the garden: In the Modern Era, the Image of God was often related to the concept of "freedom" or "free will" and also relationality. Emil Brunner , a twentieth century Swiss Reformed theologian, wrote that "the formal aspect of human nature, as beings 'made in the image of God", denotes being as Subject, or freedom; it is this which differentiates humanity from the lower creation.
Paul Ricoeur , a twentieth century French philosopher best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutics, argued that there is no defined meaning of the Imago Dei, or at the very least the author of Genesis 1 "certainly did not master at once all its implicit wealth of meaning. Regarding the Imago Dei, he writes, "Its nature as an image has to do with the fact that it goes beyond itself and manifests something that it is not…. It is the dynamic that sets the human being in motion towards the totally Other. Hence it means the capacity for relationship; it is the human capacity for God.
While some would argue this is appropriate, J.
Richard Middleton argued for a reassessment of the Biblical sources to better understand the original meaning before taking it out of context and applying it. In Christian theology there are three common ways of understanding the manner in which humans exist in Imago Dei: Substantive, Relational and Functional. The substantive view locates the image of God within the psychological or spiritual makeup of the human being.
This view holds that there are similarities between humanity and God, thus emphasizing characteristics that are of shared substance between both parties.
From Image to Likeness: A Jungian Path in the Gospel Journey
Some proponents of the substantive view uphold that the rational soul mirrors the divine. What is important is that the substantive view sees the image of God as present in humanity whether or not an individual person acknowledges the reality of the image. The substantive view of the image of God has held particular historical precedence over the development of Christian Theology particularly among early Patristic Theologians see Patristics , like Irenaeus and Augustine, and Medieval Theologians, like Aquinas. Irenaeus , unlike later Reformation Theologians, believes that the essential nature of humanity was not lost or corrupted by the fall, but the fulfillment of humanity's creation, namely freedom and life, was to be delayed until "the filling out the time of [Adam's] punishment.
Humankind before the fall see Fall of Man was in the image of God through the ability to exercise free will and reason. And we were in the likeness of God through an original spiritual endowment. While Irenaeus represents an early assertion of the substantive view of the image of God, the specific understanding of the essence of the image of God is explained in great detail by Augustine , a fifth century theologian who describes a Trinitarian formula in the image of God.
Augustine's Trinitarian structural definition of the image of God includes memory, intellect, and will. Augustine's descriptions of memory, intellect, and will held a dominant theological foothold for a number of centuries in the development of Christian Theology. Aquinas , a medieval theologian writing almost years after Augustine, builds on the Trinitarian structure of Augustine but takes the Trinitarian image of God to a different end.
Like Irenaeus and Augustine, Aquinas locates the image of God in humanity's intellectual nature or reason, but Aquinas believes that the image of God is in humanity in three ways. First, which all humanity possess, the image of God is present in humanity's capacity for understanding and loving God, second, which only those who are justified possess, the image is present when humanity actually knows and loves God imperfectly, and thirdly, which only the blessed possess, the image is present when humanity knows and loves God perfectly.
Medieval scholars suggested that the holiness or "wholeness" of humankind was lost after the fall, though free will and reason remained. John Calvin and Martin Luther agreed that something of the Imago Dei was lost at the fall but that fragments of it remained in some form or another, as Luther's Large Catechism article states, "Man lost the image of God when he fell into sin. Furthermore, rabbinic Midrash focuses on the function of image of God in kingship language. While a monarch is cast in the image or likeness of God to differentiate him ontologically from other mortals, Torah's B'reishit portrays the image as democratic: This leveling effectively embraces the substantive view and likens humankind to the earthly presence of God.
The rabbinic substantive view, conversely, does not operate out of the framework of original sin. In fact, the account of Adam and Eve disobeying God's mandate is neither expressly rendered as "sin" in B'reishit, nor anywhere else in Torah for that matter. It is instead likened to a "painful but necessary graduation from the innocence of childhood to the problem-laden world of living as morally responsible adults. Midrashim, however, finds common ground with the Thomist view of humanity's response to the image of God in the stories of Cain and Abel filtered through the, "Book of Genealogies" Gen 5: Insofar as the image and likeness of God is transmitted through the act of procreation, Cain and Abel provide examples of what constitutes adequate and inadequate response to the image, and how that image either becomes fully actualized or utterly forsaken.
The murder of Cain is cast as preempting the perpetuation of the image through Abel's potential descendants. Midrashim interprets Gen 4: The relational view argues that one must be in a relationship with God in order to possess the 'image' of God. Those who hold to the relational image agree that humankind possess the ability to reason as a substantive trait, but they argue that it is in a relationship with God that the true image is made evident.
Later theologians like Karl Barth and Emil Brunner argue that it is our ability to establish and maintain complex and intricate relationships that make us like God. For example, in humans the created order of male and female is intended to culminate in spiritual as well as physical unions Genesis 5: Since other creatures do not form such explicitly referential spiritual relationships, these theologians see this ability as uniquely representing the imago dei in humans.
Archaeology discovered many texts where specific kings are exalted as "images" of their respective deities and rule based on divine mandate. With the rise of contemporary ecological concerns the functional interpretation of the image of God has grown in popularity. Some modern theologians are arguing for proper religious care of the earth based on the functional interpretation of the image of god as caregiver over created order.
Thus, exerting dominion over creation is an imperative for responsible ecological action. One of the strongest criticisms of the functional interpretation of the imago Dei is the negative message that it conveys about persons with disabilities. Within the functional view, it is often thought that disabilities which interfere with one's capacity to "rule," whether physical, intellectual, or psychological, are a distortion of the image of God. The Imago Dei concept had a very strong influence on the creation of human rights. Stassen argues that both the concept and the term human rights originated more than a half-century before the Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke.
Imago Dei in reference to religious liberty of all persons was used by the free churches Dissenters at the time of the Puritan Revolution as an affirmation of the religious liberty of all persons. The concept was based not only on natural reason but also on the Christian struggle for liberty, justice, and peace for all. The background of this struggle lay in the time of the English Revolution. The king had been alienating many Christians by favoring some churches over others. According to the scholar of Puritan literature William Haller, "the task of turning the statement of the law of nature into ringing declaration of the rights of man fell to Richard Overton.
One of the themes that foreshadowed Richard Overton's reason for giving voice to human rights, especially the demand for separation of church and state , is implicitly connected to the concept of the image of God.
From Image to Likeness: The Christian Journey into God: William Simpson: Continuum
That the magistrate is not to force or compel men to this or that form of religion, or doctrine but to leave Christian religion free, to every man's conscience [ To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about From Image to Likeness , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about From Image to Likeness. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Oct 13, Ron rated it really liked it. This book represents to me, what Carl G. I found the tattered book tucked away in a Jesuit Library in St.
As a young man in my late 20's, I was at a low point, and looking for some answers. I also had recently taken the MBTI personality inventory "instrument. I turned to the back of the book and read about the authors Harold Grant, from Waverly, AL? That's minutes from my home town!
I later found Dr Grant's phone number small town! I told her about how I found her husband's book. Grant, he agreed to offer me hours of his time in spiritual direction. I am so grateful for my interactions with him. Grant continued her work by adding the life stages of function development. This is not the most significant book ever written about temperament, Jung's approach, type development, or the connection of religion with psychology, but it is ground-breaking, and for me personally, it was certainly significant. It put me on a path to prepare me to read Fr. Richard Rohr, currently my favorite author.
Customers who bought this item also bought
Jan 25, Sue rated it liked it Shelves: Interesting but quite heavy. Discussion of how the Jungian functions and their development through life can help us grow from being made in God's image as we all are to becoming more like Christ.
Apr 05, Nathan rated it liked it. Really heavy literature -- essentially like an encyclopedia of instances where Christ used the sensing, feeling, intuitive and thinking aspects of personality type development.