in the open space: God & culture

A few months ago, I ran across another image to add to my collection of what living in the Kingdom looks like here-and-now: Scot McKnight’s humans-are-Eikons illustration. If I’m reading McKnight correctly, Eikon is the Greek translation of “Tselem” and “Demut”, two Hebrew terms that are related to “Image,” as in “Image of God.” We humans are Eikons, and our mission is “to eikon” — to “glorify God by relating to God, to self, to others and the world,” to “express, embody, incarnate and bring glory to God.” But, as a result of the Fall, humans are cracked Eikons who have forfeited their relationship with God (what we are created for). When that happens, “the Eikon unravels and begins to live in its cracks. The cracks seethe with sin. Dwelling there leads to diminishment: mental and moral.” Yeah, that’s about right—at least in my experience. There’s only one way, McKnight says, to be un-cracked: a relationship with God—but this has nothing to do with making ourselves better and ever...

Yesterday, my kids and I began reading through the stories of the Bible. We’re using a children’s story bible that I really love because it doesn’t oversimplify the stories—it’s more like a children’s paraphrased bible with some added commentary explaining the meaning of the text we’re reading. As we were reading through the story of what happened after Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the forbidden tree, however, I was struck anew by how we tell the Story depends a lot on how we understand who Jesus is, why he took on flesh and bone, and what happened as he lived, died and rose again. In this story bible, for example, how the writer(s) understand what happened to the human condition as a result of eating the forbidden fruit—and what Jesus did with in his incarnation, life, death and resurrection—seems to be filtered mostly through what I think seminary folks generally term a “penal substitution” understanding of atonement. If I’m getting this term right, this concept says that because G...

It’s a bit late, but here's a head's up that Next Wave posted an article by Scot McKnight called What is the Gospel? It is rather long, but well-worth the read. McKnight puts the gospel in the context of the story it is—and then asks, Where do we begin that story? Here’s a snippet: Instead of beginning the gospel story with the Fall, I am suggesting we begin with the Creation of humans, both male and female, as Eikons of God. That is, as made in the image of God (imago Dei). The gospel begins, and only begins, because humans are Eikons of God. Instead of seeing humans first and foremost as sinners, we need to see them as Eikons of God, created to relate to God, to relate to others, and to govern the world as Eilons. The Fall affects each of the previous: our relation to God, our relation to others, and our relation to the world. Humans, then are cracked Eikons. There is all the difference in the world in depicting humans as simply sinners and seeing sinfulness as the conditi...