In God's Image

An Anthropology of the Spirit

Michael Welker

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780802878663
• eBook ISBN:
  9781467462082
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Theologie

From the 2019/2020 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh 

In God's Image describes how centering our culture on the human and divine spirit can revitalize four universally acknowledged characteristics of a thriving human existence: justice, freedom, truth, and peace. Inspired not only by religious sources but also by scientists, philosophers, economists, and legal and political theorists, Michael Welker develops the idea of a "multimodal" spirit that generates the possibility of living and acting in the image of God. 

Welker's new approach to natural theology explains why the human and the divine spirit cannot adequately be grasped in simple bipolar relations and why the human spirit should not be reduced to the rational mind. Addressing the question What is the calling of human beings? in the context of late-modern pluralistic societies, he aims at explaining to believers and nonbelievers alike what it means to be persons created in the image of God, moved by a spirit of justice, freedom, truth, and peace .

Lecture 1

THE BREADTH AND ABYSSES OF HUMAN EXISTENCE

According to the will of the founder, Adam Lord Gifford, the Gifford lectures are “to promote, advance, teach and diffuse the study of natural theology.” That is, they are to serve “true knowledge of God” and advance knowledge of “the relations that human beings bear to God” and “knowledge of the nature and foundation of ethics or morals, and of all obligations and duties thence arising.” Moreover, as implied by the term “natural theology,” a strictly scientific approach is demanded, “without reference to or reliance upon any special exceptional or so-called miraculous revelation.” Of course, at this point Christian theologians must leave aside for a moment the central tenet of faith—namely, that God is revealed to human beings in Jesus Christ.¹ And finally, these lectures are to address a “general and popular audience,” including people critical of or indifferent to religion.

I perceive two fundamental ways of meeting these challenges. One is to start with scientific and related historical research and then try to reach out to human “belief” and “faith” in their various forms, without, however, losing touch with empirical reality. Agustín Fuentes’s Gifford Lectures of 2018, “Why We Believe: Evolution, Making Meaning, and the Development of Human Nature,”² are an excellent example of the approach that takes us from scientifically accessible nature and history to the realms of religion and theology.

The other approach, the one I intend to pursue, begins with cultural and social realities and incorporates into that discussion part of the wealth of philosophical, cultural, religious, and theological impulses. Throughout, however, it is ever alert to secure, within the framework of the program of “natural theology,” the connection with empirical and historical research and investigation as well as with commonsense perception. I describe this approach as “realistic theology.” Thirty years of dialogue with natural scientists has considerably enhanced my awareness of the rich possibilities of such a theological research and interdisciplinary cooperation.

I view Lord Gifford’s will and guidelines as a challenge whose relevance remains undiminished here at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The concern of many distinguished thinkers in the past to investigate to what extent the central content of religion and theology can genuinely be made accessible to all people is by no means an antiquated one. Immanuel Kant’s grand program of comprehending “religion within the limits of reason alone”³ remains vibrant even today, at least as a topic of discussion. And the burning desire to strengthen interreligious and interdisciplinary communication and shared searches for truth and conditions of peace underscore the vibrancy of such a project.⁴

The overall theme of these lectures is “In God’s Image: An Anthropology of the Spirit.” The fundamental question is whether and, if so, how human beings in their natural, social, and cultural existence can be understood as the image of God (imago Dei). Oddly, perhaps, this first lecture must necessarily question the very assumption that human beings are indeed made in the image of God. For it illuminates not only the tension between human weakness and wretchedness, on the one hand, and the enormous power and grand destiny of human beings as such, on the other, but also the alarming susceptibility of human beings to seduction; their violent, aggressive, destructive tendencies; and their outright maliciousness. Emphasizing the breathtaking breadth of human existence through simple reference to “human weakness” and the “grand destiny” of human beings, however, by no means excuses us from drawing equal attention to the dreadful and repugnant abysses of that same existence.

Negative aspects of the impressive breadth of human existence also include the dull, apathetic complacency toward the human race’s massive self-endangerment and toward the immense scale on which hatred and violence are being sown today. We are especially oppressed by the unthinking or simply lethargic attitude toward socially brutal behavior on many levels. Here one might mention especially the ecological brutality that ranges from overt destruction, to the denial and cover-up of dangerous developments, to dull indifference, even on a global scale. Indeed, do not these abysses of human existence render any talk of human beings as the “image of God” absolutely preposterous? Worse yet, with what sort of God are we then dealing if human beings, even in their abysses, are to be conceived as the “image of God”? Given these considerations, and taking our natural-theological point of departure from human beings themselves, is Lord Gifford’s program of articulating a scientifically sound, universally comprehensible, and ethically edifying understanding of God not doomed to failure from the very outset?

Immanuel Kant concludes his Critique of Practical Reason with the poignant remark, “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.” The starry heavens above, Kant goes on to say, with their “countless multitude of worlds,” annihilate, “as it were, my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided with vital power, one knows not how, must again give back the matter of which it was formed to the planet it inhabits (a mere speck in the universe).” By contrast, the second ground of admiration and awe for Kant “infinitely elevates my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the whole sensible world.”⁵

The biblical Psalter is even more drastic than Kant in its description of the breadth of human existence between frailty and sublimity, finitude and grand destiny. On the one hand, human beings are but “dust … their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more” (Ps. 103:14–16). Yet human beings are nonetheless made only “a little lower than God” and have been “crowned … with glory and honor” (Ps. 8:5).

Although the following lectures address these statements from a variety of angles, let us put them aside for a moment, change perspective, and focus instead on the “general and popular audience.” Rather than following Lord Gifford’s suggestion that one view that audience as those to whom we might impart knowledge, however, let us instead query them, here at the beginning of the twenty-first century, concerning how they themselves already understand the breadth of human existence. Probably not a single person would think to mention, as does Kant, the tension between the almost inevitable annihilation of one’s own significance and reality, on the one hand, and one’s elevation through the moral law, on the other. Just as little would we expect anyone to mention the tension between mortals being “mere dust” and yet simultaneously only “a little lower than God.” So how does popular culture understand the breadth of human existence today?

Human Charisma and Radiant Power, and the Dangers of Emotionalized Public Sentiment

One area in popular culture where the tension and breadth of human existence are clearly discernible is elite athletic competition, which is followed all over the world through the media. The enormous resonance elicited by competitive sports has deep anthropological roots. These sports focus intensely on that unique area of physical human existence that through an extreme engagement of body and mind produces extraordinary performances with global visibility. Physically and mentally gifted elite athletes transform into a superior performance what in and of itself is, to take but one example, the simple act of moving forward, an act most people are also capable of performing. The media make it possible for millions of spectators to become emotionally and passionately engaged in and identify with such performances. The fascinating anthropological power elicited by these sports heroes derives simply from their being simultaneously close to us and yet in possession of enormous charisma and radiant personal presence.

No one ever ran the 100 meter and 200 meter events as fast as Usain Bolt—and yet I, too, understand what it feels like to run as if one’s life depended on it. No one plays soccer today as well as Lionel Messi—and yet I, too, am quite able to kick a soccer ball around and be inspired by its flight.

The radiant force of attraction of such successful athletes, however, is based not only on a given performance but also on spectators’ admiration for their astonishing capacity for both physical and mental training, endurance, and persistence. For as a rule, years of training inevitably also involve years of self-discipline and asceticism.

The intense emotional attachment of spectators to elite athletes whose performances attain Olympic heights or who play on winning teams is always accompanied by equally intense feelings of community; and it is not just the media that heartily welcome such resonance but also political leaders. Victorious teams, moreover, also generate enthusiasm through successful team play. Such play, precisely for the sake of the team as a whole, results from individual team members engaging in unconditional self-assertion, on the one hand, and creative self-withdrawal, on the other. Perfect cooperation is rewarded, and the players’ own joy is transmitted to their fans.

Elite athletic performance, however, also reveals the enormous mood changes such athletes experience between individual triumph in victory and individual despair in defeat. Such mood swings also reflect the ambivalence experienced by spectators through their own intensive, emotionally charged, and shared identification with these athletes. We all have witnessed such ambivalence following national and international competitions in the more popular sports. Who can resist being swept up in the exuberant joy unleashed following a victorious team performance of top athletes? But failure, too—a lost match, a missed chance—generates experiences of mass shock and pain that in the heat of the moment are by no means assuaged by the fact that such pain generally passes rather quickly and indeed just as quickly transforms into optimistic hope for future victory.

We witness this familiar phenomenon of emotionally charged sentiment, however, not merely in elite sports but also in actions and demonstrations of civil societies when they usefully and creatively sound the alarm in oppressive situations. Under the dominance of organized politics, however, this phenomenon can easily acquire precarious forms whenever marches, parades, and mass rallies are functionalized to manipulate people politically or even to discipline them. Initially people may merely be voluntarily demonstrating loyalty, rejoicing with others in various communal places or stadiums. They demonstratively express that they belong to a particular circle of people who are engaging on behalf of a specific cause. All too easily, however, they can lose sight of a specific cause and become “hangers-on” who self-righteously demonstrate with those who “call the good good and the bad bad” (Niklas Luhmann).

Such emotionally charged sentiment, however, quickly derails when politicized moral aggression and hatred are intentionally roused, stoked, exploited, and sustained. It is enormously alarming to see how politics and propaganda today are successively compromising the free media, legal systems, and scientific and scholarly research in what were formerly free nations. For these same manipulated emotions can easily become utterly unfettered, expressing themselves then in racist, aggressively chauvinistic, or bellicose sentiment and strife. Although such belligerent disputes may initially generate feelings of triumphant enthusiasm among the masses, sooner or later they generally lead to universal misery and suffering.⁶

Ideologies and wars that incite hatred and aggression can prompt people to commit horrible crimes against the very idea of humaneness, and as such against humanity. The bureaucratically organized mass murder of millions of people in German concentrations camps during the Nazi period still vividly attests the most profound abyss of horror. The mass sexual enslavement of two hundred thousand Korean and Chinese women as “comfort women” by the Japanese during the Second World War provides an enduring image of human atrocity. Such violent excesses can as a rule be stopped only by colossal processes of destruction, as illustrated by so many cities of Germany—all in ruins—after the war. It was in the extreme form of the atomic bomb that the twentieth century vividly illustrated the unnerving possibilities of global destruction through man-made weapons.

Paths into Danger, Misery, and Ruin (Hannah Arendt)

Hardly anyone has presented a more penetrating examination of the political and moral paths that lead populations and nations into danger, misery, and ruin than has Hannah Arendt, who wrote from a perspective of profound existential experience as a threatened German Jew forced to live as a stateless person in the United States for several years. Her work deftly weaves this personal experience into her unique historical, political, and sociological training in the phenomenon of mass psychology and her equally profound and penetrating conceptual t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Lecture 1. The Breadth and Abysses of Human Existence
• Lecture 2. Human Spirit and Divine Spirit
• Lecture 3. Called to Justice
• Lecture 4. Called to Freedom
• Lecture 5. Called to Truth
• Lecture 6. Called to Peace
• Bibliography