What is human?
The book of Genesis in the Hebrew scripture canon (also quite famous amongst Christians) gives us some kind of indication as to the significance of the human creation. Although it is not entirely valid to my point, as a prioi I should state that I don’t understand the book of Genesis as a scientific or historical text book, in a nutshell I swing far closer to the old earth creation-evolution theory, however that has no bearing on my view of God as presented in the book of Genesis, in fact it validates organic, artistic and oral traditions of ancient and indigenous people.
In case you’re unaware there are two different accounts present in Genesis 1 and 2, and are possibly written and edited by two different oral traditions, and quite possibly edited together by Moses or an associate of his. The first account was quite possibly a Priestly writing, commonly dated to the exile and concentrates on the cosmogony and the human beings place with that. In this account the God figure speaks and creation comes into being and there a strong rhythm until chapter 1, verse 26. It’s at this stage that God communicates with at least one other entity. Later Christian traditions have used this to refer to God’s Trinitarian nature here, and that is a fair assumption based on the notion of the inspiration of scripture. It is however probable that the author had different intentions, the author possibly refers the presence of other lesser gods in a heavenly court of which creator God ruled over and communicated with, again this is only a speculation. But the idea is that in this account at the creation of humankind, God communicates with others, indicating a more intimate and intensive work than that of the prior works of creation. It seems no other work of creation bears the identity that humans do, carrying divine image and divine likeness.
The unity of the whole human race is evident. Humankind is spoken of a singular. Both male and female are thus created in the image of God. It seems that only in community is God truly reflected in us. It can be disheartening for some to believe that grace and salvation are about personal salvation, about personal commitment, about what Jesus did for me, and about me being “right” before the throne of judgment. In no way do I desire to minimise the value of human autonomy. The truth is our human autonomy is quite possibly that which gives us the likeness of God. I strongly believe in the role of the individual to seek to establish community and build solidarity beyond our churches, our religion even our national borders. God created one humanity, and this ought to impact the way we see people and where we are heading. This idea might help with our ideas of poverty and injustice.
