Made in the image of the Trinity

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

1 When God began to create the heavens and the earth, ² the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. ³ Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

⁶ And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” ⁷ So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. ⁸ God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

⁹ And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. ¹¹ Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. ¹² The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. ¹³ And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

¹⁴ And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. ¹⁶ God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. ¹⁷ God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, ¹⁸ to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

²⁰ And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” ²¹ So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. ²² God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” ²³ And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

²⁴ And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. ²⁵ God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind and the cattle of every kind and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

²⁷ So God created humans in his image,    in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

²⁸ God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” ²⁹ God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. ³⁰ And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. ³¹ God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all their multitude. ² On the sixth day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. ³ So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

⁴ These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

If you start with a false premise, you will be wrong about everything that follows - or, if you happen to be right, it will be for the wrong reasons.  

The Bible begins with the statement that God created the cosmos, and at every step of the way God looked upon that creation and declared it good.  Jews and then Christians have long read this passage to say that God created out of nothing, ex nihilo - that there was no heavens and no earth, no anything, before God speaks them into existence.  God is not working with pre-existing matter; he doesn’t find the clay and start rolling out snakes.  God is not compelled to create by anything or anyone, nor is God's creation dependent upon or limited by anything or anyone.   God creates freely.  If this were not the case, then God would not be God.

From this simple and absolutely necessary doctrine flows all kinds of theological implications.  But if we don’t remember that this is how our story begins, we will make profound errors.  

For instance, how do we understand who Jesus is and what he does?   What is the nature of the problem and how does Jesus address it?   There’s a broad stream of Christian theology than treats creation as if it were not good  There are places in Scripture, John especially, where “the world” is presented as something to resist, to escape.  And indeed we must also insist that creation has been corrupted, that something tragic has occurred - but however marred or disfigured creation, and creatures,  have become, the fundamental goodness of creation cannot be negated.  

We sometimes tell the story that of Jesus coming to rescue us out of this world, almost as if he’s here to clean up a mess caused by someone else.   Jesus shows up to make the best of a bad situation, playing a bad hand dealt by someone else.  The story wasn’t meant to go like this, but Jesus is God’s creative solution to a problem that arose - but an imperfect solution since much, maybe most of creation is irredeemably broken and will be destroyed. 

To assert that God created out of nothing, however, necessarily entails that God is ultimately responsible for creation.  Unless we wish to deny God’s omniscience or omnipotence, as if God is caught by surprise when sin enters the world, it means that God foresaw the fall, the corruption to come, the pain, the misery, the despair, and God nevertheless freely created anyway.  Jesus said that you must count the cost before setting out to build, and that is exactly what God did in creation.   Every eventuality is already entailed when God first speaks, “Let there be….”  

Having called forth the sun and moon, and all the animals, God crowns creation by creating humanity.  At this juncture God, rather than just saying, “Let there be….” makes the curious statement, “Let us make humanity/man/adam in our image, according to our likeness…”  At this point obvious questions arise: Who is the “us” of which God speaks?  What characteristics does God share with these others that God can say “our image” and “our likeness”? 

If you’re an academic setting the answers to these questions are always going to come by way of the historical critical method - what did this mean in its original context, what assumptions lay behind it, who wrote it and why?  These are important questions for the faithful as well.  In this case, the original hearers of this passage would’ve understand the “us” and the “our” to refer to a divine counsel or heavenly court over which God presides as the god of gods.  A great deal of light can be shed on the text by reading it with this understanding (and if you want to know more, Jorma will be happy to discuss).  

If you’re in church, you’re more likely to hear it said that these “us” and “our” statements refer to the Holy Trinity, that God is speaking with the “royal we”.   I’m wary of this reading exactly because it potentially divorces the meaning of the text from its original meaning - and yet, because Scripture is living and active, we might also insist that its meaning is always yet furthered revealed.  To read well is not to treat it like the dead text of academics but the living word of the church, to regard the historical critical reading as informative of but ultimately subordinate to the theological reading.  

Which is to say that we might knowingly embrace the church’s long history of reading this text with the eyes of faith, to see in retrospect the presence of the Trinity from the beginning  - as indeed we must, if God is eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  (It’s no coincidence that this text is appointed for Trinity Sunday).   

I remember in university when I first heard a professor say that Israelites originally thought that their God was just a local deity, just one among many, tied to a people and place like all the rest.  I thought this was scandalous nonsense.  Now it seems obviously true.  We do find other gods in the OT, and we also find the Israelites, at times, regarding them as more or less equivalent to their own.    

But their own experience, especially in exile, combined with further theological reflection, led to the conclusion that there really was just one God - and that that God was their God.  Not only should there be no other gods before God, there could only be one God.   God necessarily belongs to a category of one.   Whatever characteristics God might share with the gods, the disparity between them is infinite.  

So when God says, “Let us make humanity/man/adam in our image, according to our likeness…” it is necessary to insist that God alone creates - the other gods are not lending a hand - and the image and likeness in which God creates is that which belongs to God and God alone.  And exactly because as Christians we take God to be three in one, the natural reading is to hear the “us” and “our” as God speaking to God, the very inner life of the Trinity on display.  

And because we take God to be Trinity, this also sheds light on what is that image in which we are created.  To say that God is Trinity is to say that God exists eternally in three persons, which is to say that God exists forever as a unified, indivisible community, that God is relationality as such.  

To be made in God’s image, in God’s likeness, is a claim that we are made as enteral persons whose very identity and existence depends on their relationship to one another.  We were made for relationship - relationship with God and with other creatures (humans) who share God’s image.  This is why we were created, the goal of our existence.  In our origin we find our destiny.  

This is fancy way of saying what we already know intuitively: that we need relationships, that to be alone, to or to be continually lonely, to lack  good friends, people whom we love and and who love us, is to have our very essence denied, our eternal purpose unrealized.  

A simple but exalted way of thinking about church is that it is a community that not only worships the Trinity but which is created in its very image, a people whose relationships with one another both reflect and point to the very God who exists eternally as a community of persons.  This is to be a place where we live into the potential for relationship with God and one another, and where we invite others to do the same.  

To conclude, it’s worth considering again the end of the story in light of how it began.  If God indeed creates us in God’s image and likeness as eternal persons made for eternal relationship - and if God knew exactly how things would go wrong but created anyway (if, in some sense, this was all necessary, a price that must be paid), then we might also consider that God would not create accepting the ultimate frustration of God’s purposes in creation, that God cannot allow the image of God to be denied.  If God made us for relationship, then relationship God will have.