Humanity in God's Image: An Interdisciplinary Exploration [Hardcover]

A study which suggests human beings are created in the image of an invisible God, an idea that can only be conceptualized in the imagination.How can we, in our times, understand the biblical concept that human beings have been created in the image of an invisible God? This is a perennial but increasingly pressing question that lies at the heart of theological anthropology.Humanity in God's Image: An Interdisciplinary Explorationclarifies the meaning of this concept, traces different Jewish and Christian interpretations of being created in God's image, and reconsiders the significance of theimago Deiin a post-Holocaust context. As normative, counter-factual notions, human dignity and theimago Deichallenge us to see more.Claudia Welz offers an interdisciplinary exploration of theological and ethical visions of the invisible. By analyzing poetry and art, Welz exemplifies human self-understanding in the interface between the visual and the linguistic. The content of theimago Deicannot be defined apart from the image carrier: an embodied creature. Compared to verbal, visual, and mental images, how does this creature as a living image refer to God--like a metaphor, a mimetic mirror, or an elusive trace? Combining hermeneutical and phenomenological perspectives with philosophy of religion and philosophy of language, semiotics, art history, and literary studies, Welz regards the imago Dei as a complex sign that is at once iconic, indexical, and symbolical--pointing beyond itself.Introduction: 'Imago Dei' and the Dialectics of In-VisibilityPart I: CREATION AND CREATIVITY1. Dialectics of Visibility and Invisibility: The 'Imago Dei' as a Complex Sign Pointing beyond Itself2. Subjectivity of Seeing: The 'Imago Dei' as Self-Interpreting ImagePart II: REVEALMENT AND CONCEALMENT3. Resonating and Reflecting the Divine: The 'Imago Dei' as God-Revealing Humanity in Jewish Theology, Philosophy, and Poetry4. Divil£¼