S10: The Idolatry of Identity

E1: Foundational Thoughts

This next season of blogs is all about the subject of human identity from various positions. In this first blog, I want to lay a foundation for what follows that supports a biblical understanding of human identity. The reason for this series is self-evident in our world, at least in the West: identity politics[1] is now atomized and organized in such a way that history is now anti-history, religion is anti-religion, and culture is now anti-culture. A brief explanation will help.

If history, religion, and culture can be reinterpreted by manipulating the lens in which we view the past, sacredness, and values, the outcome is a radically changed worldview. For example, when history is reinterpreted through the lens of victims and victimizers, the former become heroes, and the latter inherently oppressive. History is then taught and understood as the oppressed and oppressors. Also, when moral values are informed through the lens of emotivism[2] grounded in social assumptions, sacred things are no longer sacred. And when the lens of cultural iconoclasm[3] becomes the way we view culture, beliefs and values handed down from the past are cancelled along with the institutions that housed them. I will expand on history, religion, and cultures as lenses in successive blogs.  

In laying the foundation of a biblical understanding of human identity, two things come to mind. First, the ancient Near Eastern world of the Old Testament and the Greco-Roman world of the New Testament were not like our own world. So, the discipline of exegesis is needed to discover the meaning of human identity understood by the author and audience within these ancient worlds. Also, the discipline hermeneutics is needed to understand truth about human identity. I shall concentrate any exegesis in the creation story and the latter in the teachings of – and about – Christ as the central figure of the redemptive story.[4] I will keep it concise and simple presenting meaning and truth to the best of my ability but the nature of blogging – different to a book – means the reader will have to do some work for themselves[5] or post questions and comments in the space provided.

The second thing that comes to mind is somewhat ironic. If identity politics has dispensed with the lens of the sacred that informs moral values, why lay a biblical foundation? Despite the rise of social assumptions fueled by emotivism, I do hold to the sacred and its institutions that inform moral values, namely, the Bible and the Church in the religion of Christianity.[6] Though Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) claimed God was dead in terms of idealism, I do hold to the Christian ideal. I also recognize that proponents of identity politics do not necessarily make the same claim as Nietzsche, but in their view, God is certainly inconvenient and increasingly unnecessary to the ideas of human identity today. Rather than disposing of God, the creative dynamic is used: God did not make us in his image and likeness, but from a need in our own spirituality, we made God in our image and likeness. Again, I will address this reversal in successive blogs. 

So, a biblical foundation in this blog is just that, an underpinning for what is built on it. The substance of this foundation summarizes the redemptive story: (1) mankind is made in the image and likeness of God; (2) the fullness of human identity was lost when mankind rejected God and wanted to be God; and (3) Christ reclaimed the fullness of human identity for all mankind in a reconciled relationship with God.

Mankind is Made in the Image and Likeness of God

(Genesis 1:26) “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our own image, and in our likeness…”. Because God made mankind in his image humanity was granted a particular likeness to God. Historical theology[7] grounds the image of God in mankind’s superiority to lesser creatures seen in the capacity for rationale, spirituality, and to know God and worship him summed up as “Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”[8] The New Testament reflects back to Genesis stating that mankind “was created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:24). This reflection sheds light on the necessary context for mankind’s relationship with God: righteousness and holiness.  

Staying with historical theology, St. Augustine (354-430) believed that the image of God resided in the memory, understanding, and will of mankind.[9] Others speak about human personality, self-awareness, and a conscience for making moral decisions. Solomon observed that God “has put eternity into the heart of man” (Eccl. 3:11). Views may vary in their particulars, but all affirm that the image and likeness of God embedded in mankind is superior to everything else in creation.

Again, the New Testament reflects back to Genesis stating that mankind can “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Col. 3:10). Paul was talking about a lost identity being reclaimed through the death and resurrection of Christ. This tells us that true human identity was intrinsic to knowing God – but was lost – yet remains equally intrinsic today. We must not interpret the words of Christ, “that they know you, the only true God” (John 17:3) as a search for information. Rather, we must look at the relationship of mankind and God in Genesis chapter one in the context of righteousness and holiness.

The ancient Near Eastern world understood the image of God represented only in the king. A cursory reading of the Old Testament shows the king was the image of God, or a son of God, who acted on behalf of God for the people. We must not confuse the role of a high priest with this understanding. Whereas a king represented the image of God, a high priest was the chief religious functionary. With this in mind, the language and narrative in Genesis is radical considering the cultures of the ancient Near Eastern world.

The name of Adam means human in Hebrew. Throughout Genesis, the name Adam is used in a variety of ways. The first is generic where the text talks about human beings as a species (Gen. 1:26-27; 2:5; 3:22; 5:1-2). The second is where Adam is a human representative (Gen. 2:7, 18, 21-23). Representative can either be an archetype (all mankind embodied in one), or federal (serving as one elected on behalf of mankind). In both cases, the representative role is far more important than the individual. The third refers to Adam as a historic person (Gen. 5:1, 3-5).

In summary, the language and narrative in Genesis tell us that Adam was an individual person, but also someone beyond a singular person representing all human beings. In contrast to the ancient Near Eastern world, because Adam is an archetype for mankind all human beings are made in the same image and likeness of God, not just a king. As such, the implications of all human beings made in the image and likeness of God speak directly to abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide and much more. I shall address some of these subjects in successive blogs.   

When Mankind Rejects God and Wants to be God the Fullness of Human Identity is Lost

If we understand that Adam was an individual person but also an archetype in the language and narrative of Genesis, what comes next is nothing short of catastrophic for all mankind. We must remember that true human identity is found in a relationship with God as the Creator of mankind in the context of righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:24). Because Adam disobeyed God the image and likeness of God was shattered but not destroyed.

The shattering was not just a matter of doing something Adam was told not to do – eat the forbidden fruit (Gen. 3:1-5) – it was far more involved. If historical theology grounds the image and likeness of God in our rationale, spirituality, in memory, understanding, personality, self-awareness, and a conscience for moral decisions, it paints the picture of externally untouched but inwardly corrupted.   

The Bible calls Adam’s disobedience sin. The archetypal Adam who sinned is seen in Paul’s statement, “just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way, death came to all people, because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12). He repeats himself, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Nothing short of catastrophe. Without the works of Paul in the New Testament reflecting on Adam in Genesis, we would not know what sin is. Genesis only tells us what sin does: alienation from God.  

We must go back to Genesis to understand how the ancient Near Eastern world understood creation. I think John Walton does an excellent job of describing it in his book The Lost World of Adam and Eve.[10] He explains that before creation there was chaos (Gen 1:1-2) but God brings order and sacredness into chaos (Gen 1:3-31; 2:1-3). When Adam sinned, creation did not fall back into chaos, rather, creation fell into disorder because Adam asserted himself as God who is the center and source of all order. We see this in the words of the serpent to Eve, “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God” (Gen. 3:5).

It was not enough to be made in the image and likeness of God. Mankind had to be God. The catastrophic disorder on human identity is the loss of relationship with God in righteousness and holiness. When we continually reject God by asserting ourselves as God it produces nothing short of an idolatry of our human identity. The evidence of the idolatry of identity is seen in how race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality are weaponized by human beings against other human beings. A view of history as anti-history results in “my [race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality] is superior to yours”. Children are indoctrinated with the ideology of social movements deployed by adults and detonated by curriculum without any regard for the sacred. And when parents have passed down inherent beliefs and values to their children, certain teachers make it their goal to undermine them as a superior voice.   

Interestingly, Michel Foucault (1926-1984) talked about the role of power in society was to “re-inscribe [truth] in social institutions, economic inequalities, in language, in the bodies themselves in each and every one of us.”[11] Re-inscribing involves creating, teaching, and compounding truth over time until it becomes the acceptable way of doing things.[12] If there is power in truth, the one who creates truth is the one in power.

In summary, God created order in Chaos, but sin takes God’s order and brings it into disorder. Sin is not defined as being caught with our hand in the cookie jar, rather, as a position of asserting ourselves as God as the center and source of all order. As a result, truth is re-inscribed through social institutions, language, and economic inequalities. Sin will always re-inscribe truth with a lie. Mankind scrambles to redefine human identity through re-inscribing truth.   

 Christ Reclaimed the Fullness of Human Identity for all Mankind in Relationship with God

In many ways, Genesis paints the picture of mankind as the rulers of the creation (Gen. 1:26-31). And because of sin, mankind is now painted as the servant of creation, “So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken” (Gen 3:23). Henri Blocher put it this way, “We must state both that after his revolt mankind remains mankind, and also that mankind has radically changed, that he is but a grisly shadow of himself. Mankind remains the image of God, inviolable and responsible, but has become a contradictory image, one might say a caricature, a witness against himself.”[13]

The catastrophic impact in Genesis is not only dealt with in its particulars, it is universally dealt with once and for all by Christ (Heb. 10). Vital to our understanding reclaimed the fullness of human identity is how Christ accomplished it. Paul brings together the catastrophe in Genesis with the birth, life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ incarnate[14]. Remember that Adam was an historical person, but he was also an archetype representing all mankind. Paul takes this idea and tells us that Christ is also an historical person and an archetype for all mankind using the same name Adam. Quoting Genesis, he writes, “So it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit…The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven…and just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so we shall bear the image of the heavenly man” (1 Cor. 15:45-49).

In short, the first Adam brought about catastrophe by asserting himself as God shattering the image and likeness of God. The second Adam humbled himself even though he was God and became a man to reclaim the fullness of human identity in relationship with God in righteousness and holiness. A relationship with God becomes possible because Christ gives his own righteousness to mankind (1 Cor. 1:30). Paul makes it very clear that, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Cor. 5:18-19).

Conclusion

Having laid a biblical foundation for successive blogs about human identity I will conclude by restating why I am writing about the Idolatry of Identity. Today’s society (in the West) is the first in recorded history that have absolutely no explanation for what we are doing here. The grand narratives of history, religion, and culture have been reinterpreted in such a way to fit the social agendas of identity politics. Anything or anyone on the wrong side of these reinterpretations is quickly labeled [something] phobia/phobic.  

Identity politics is nothing more than an attempt to re-inscribe truth about describe human identity by asserting certain ideologies into every area of society. In short, to be like God. The demands such ideologies ask us to believe things that are unbelievable while being told that objecting to them means we are oppressive or [something] phobia/phobic. It is demeaning to go along with truth claims we do not believe are true but are not free to discuss them without personal cost.  

Without these historical, religious, and cultural narratives I am left with what Kenneth Minogue (1930-2013) called “St. George in retirement”.[15] So the myth goes, St. George is a dragon slayer. But take the dragon away from this noble knight he will eventually swing his sword at the air imagining a dragon was attacking him. Without a dragon he becomes paranoid about real life so he creates a surreal world of safe spaces so he can cope with the basics in life. But real life is not safe or fair.     

The grandest of all narratives is essential. It begins with the story of creation where the nobility of mankind is distinguished with the image and likeness of God. Adam asserts himself as God thereby corrupting human identity in all mankind. But God sent his own Son as the second Adam to reclaim the fullness of human identity by reconciling mankind back to God by making available his own righteousness and holiness to those who ask him. Without this narrative, I am only informed by emotivism or what I feel asserted by my own identity as I see it.   

[1] Identity politics is a phrase widely used in the social sciences and humanities to describe human identity as a tool to frame political claims, promote ideologies, and orientate social and political action, usually in a larger context of inequality or injustice asserting group distinctiveness gaining power and recognition.

[2] An ethical theory grounded in self through expressions of subjective feelings or attitudes.

[3] Attacking or assertively rejecting cherished beliefs and institutions or established values and practices.

[4] Creation story in Genesis 1-2 and the redemptive story through the gospels and epistles.

[5] Whether a reader agrees or disagrees with me is not my concern. What does concern me is that the reader knows I am employing disciplines beyond my own inward and subjective feeling about identity to write these blogs.     

[6] I am using the word ‘religion’ as a common understanding held by the religious, non-religious, and anti-religious.

[7] History if Christian doctrine and its development.

[8] Westminster Catechism.

[9] Philip Edgecumbe Hughes, The True Image: The Origin and Destiny of Man in Christ. Eerdmans, 1989, 17. 

[10] John Walton. The Lost World of Adam and Eve. IVP Academic, 2015, 141-148. 

[11] Michel Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972 1977. Edited by Colin Gordon. Translated by Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper. Pantheon Books. 1980, 90.

[12] One example of that Foucault (1980, 57-58) gives are the social institutions of the nineteenth and twentieth century as a result of Marxism.

[13] Henri Blocher. In the beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis. Intervarsity. 2003, 37.

[14] God in complete human form.

[15] Kenneth Minogue. The Liberal Mind. Liberty Fund. 2000, 1.