The Vocational view

We’re busy looking at different views on the image of God. While these different views tend to be pitted against each other in the literature, we think they fit into a single picture, which we’ll be discussing once we’ve looked at each of the views individually. So far we’ve looked at the substantive view and the relational view. In this lesson we’ll look at the third major view that has been proposed, which we’ll call the vocational view. This view is also sometimes referred to as the functional view, or depending on how you cash it out you could call it the royal view. So if you’ve seen those mentioned before, then that’s what we’re talking about here.

A vocation is an important role or status given to someone which has some sort of responsibility associated with it. On the vocational view, then, God making humanity in his image is about God giving us a vocation. In particular, he gives us a royal status to rule or have dominion over the rest of his creation. In this lesson, we’re going to take a look at the biblical reasons for thinking about the image of God like this, and then draw out some implications and nuances.

Dominion and the image of God

The obvious place to start is when humans are first created and the image of God is mentioned for the first time. In Genesis 1 we read:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

And 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 heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen. 1:26–28)

We can see right away that the author of Genesis wants us to see a close connection between the image of God and dominion over the rest of creation. We can give three reasons for making this connection.

First, on the other days of creation, when additional information is given about the thing being created, it’s to describe its purpose or role within creation. For instance, on day 2, God says “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” Here the separation of the waters is the purpose of the expanse. On day 3, the waters are collected together for the purpose of making the dry land appear. And on day 4 the lights are created for the purpose of being “signs and for seasons, and for days and years”. Thus, when we get to day 6 and God says of humanity to “let them have dominion over [the rest of creation]”, it’s natural to understand this as describing the purpose of creating us as his image-bearers.

Second, the overall message of the creation week should suggest to us that the image of God is connected with being rulers. The author of Genesis uses the creation week to introduce us to God as the supreme and good creator who rules over everything. So, when we’re told that humans are made in the image of this supreme ruler, it’s natural to expect that to include something about ruling over creation as well.

And then thirdly, if we expand our view to include the cultural context of Genesis, we find that it was common to connect the image of God with dominion in the Ancient Near East. Almost all references to the image of God that we have from this time apply it to the king, as a way of emphasizing his divinely appointed responsibility to lead the people. Now of course, the author of Genesis disagrees that only kings are made in the image of God, but there’s no reason to think that he rejects the connection it has with ruling.

These are three reasons, then, for drawing a connection between the image of God and human dominion in Genesis 1. If we look elsewhere in the Bible, we see this as well. Consider three examples. First, in Gen. 9, when God is talking to Noah and his family after the flood, he again affirms side-by-side our dominion over creation and our being made in the image of God. Second, in Ps. 8, which is sort of like a poetic commentary on our creation, David wonders at the fact that God gave us dominion over the work of his hands. It’s true that he doesn’t explicitly mention the image of God in this Psalm, but if this wasn’t what he had in mind when speaking about our dominion, then it’s surprising that he doesn’t mention it—if you’re going to praise God for how he has created humanity then surely the image of God is the top of the list! And then third, in his letter to the Colossians, when Paul refers to Jesus as the image of God (1:15), this is connected to him being the creator and lord over everything. So once again we have the image of God being connected to ruling.

What dominion means

So, we have good reason to think that we are made in the image of God to exercise dominion over the rest of God’s creation. This is the human vocation which God has bestowed upon us as part of the order of his creation.

Now, the word “dominion” might conjure up images of a tyrannical dictator who seeks his own benefit at the cost of his subjects. But the biblical model of dominion is pretty much the opposite of this. On the biblical model, dominion belongs to a king who serves the people he rules over. We could quote a few different passages from both the New and Old Testaments to show that this is in fact the biblical paradigm (1 Kgs. 12:6–7, Ezek. 34:1–10, Mark 10:42–45), but something like it is already visible in what we’ve been saying: we’ve said that our dominion is tied to our bearing the image of God, but the God we are introduced to in the creation week is someone one who blesses his creatures to flourish in the world he has created for them. It’s difficult to see how we could fail to seek the well-being of his creation, then, and still live up to our vocation.

Huw Spanner has summed up this line of reasoning as follows:

If we have dominion over God’s other creatures, then we are called to live in peace with them, as good shepherds and humble servants. We cannot say that we are made in the image of God and then use that as a pretext to abuse, neglect, or even belittle other species, when God does none of those things. As kings, we have the power of life and death over them, and the right to exercise it in accordance with the principles of justice and mercy; but we have the parallel duty, not only to God but to them, to love and protect them.

So, our dominion is not a free license to do whatever we want, but a responsibility to care for God’s creation as his representatives. But what does this actually look like in practice? We don’t have the time to get into all the details, but we can say some general things about what it means for the way we treat animals and the environment.

On the one side there are those who think animals should have equal rights to humans, and that killing animals is immoral in the same way murder is immoral. On the other side there are those who don’t think about animals at all, and couldn’t care less about their mistreatment. The biblical view is somewhere between these two extremes.

We’ve already seen that we have a responsibility to care for the other animals, and so we can’t be indifferent about their mistreatment. As the Proverb of Solomon says:

Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel. (Prov. 12:10)

But this doesn’t mean we must go the other extreme, and treat animals as if they were the same as humans. Consider, for instance, what God says to Noah and his family:

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you… And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. (Gen. 9:3–6)

Here God makes a distinction between us and the other animals. Because we bear the image of God and the other animals don’t, killing humans has a weight to it that killing other animals doesn’t. It’s sort of like defacing the statue of a king versus breaking the statue of some random person. The weightiness of the action is partly determined in reference to the person whose image the statue bears.

So, the biblical view refuses to reduce animals to nothing, but it also refuses to elevate them to the level of humanity. Animals may be killed, but this must be done humanely without causing them unnecessary pain. And more generally, as God’s image-bearers we cannot be indifferent to their mistreatment or abuse.

For most of us, this should guide the way we think about the products we consume. We should not support companies that mistreat animals when testing cosmetics, or toothpaste, or other such products; and we should not support farming practices that produce food by being cruel to animals. That will sometimes mean choosing competing products that we wouldn’t have otherwise chosen because they treat animals better. Other times it will mean considering not getting the product at all, because there are no better alternatives. We need to put our money where our theology is, and encourage those around us to do the same, for the sake of living out our vocation to care for God’s creation.

Similarly, there is nothing wrong with using the natural resources of our planet, but when this happens to the detriment of the environment we need to seriously rethink what we’re doing.

Guaranteed to all

So, the image of God is connected to our dominion over God’s creation, and this dominion should be understood as servant-kingship rather than tyrannical rule. The last piece of the vocational view is to clarify how exactly the image of God is connected to the dominion.

The worry is this: if the image of God is constituted by our exercise of dominion over creation, and some of us are better at this or more capable than others, then it would seem that the image of God is not had by every human equally. That is, some people would bear the image of God more than others. This would be problematic, because the image of God is given to all of humanity without exception. The way we’ve articulated the substantive and relational views means that every human bears the image of God, regardless of their abilities—every human has the same nature, and God can reach every human being where they are. It would be good if we could articulate a version of the vocational view along the same lines.

We can achieve this by shifting our focus slightly, from the dominion itself to the royal status that grants us this dominion. When God creates us in his image, he confers the status of servant-kings upon us regardless of our abilities, position in society, or whatever. We each need to choose how we respond to this, but nothing we do will change the fact that we have this status. Because this status is granted by God, it can be guaranteed to every human, along with the dignity that comes with it.

I’ll close with a quote from Michael Bird which does a good job of tying this all together:

[The image of God] is a sovereignly and divinely bestowed status by which we become royal sons and daughters of our heavenly Lord, and it is universally true of every person irrespective of age, ethnicity, gender, or ableness. Out of that royal status, humanity as a whole, not necessarily every individual, reflects God’s goodness and exercises God’s reign. People who are disabled share in the royal status even if they are limited in the ways they can project God’s rule over the created order. Humanity is royal in God’s sight and is given the important task of ruling and stewarding creation as God’s vice-regent: this is the [image of God]. On this perspective, God is a generous Creator who adopts humanity as royal children and invites them to participate in his reign over the world.

So that brings us to the end of our lessons on the different views on the image of God. So far, we have considered them individually, but in the follow-up video to this lesson we’ll be discussing how we see these three views fit together into a single vision of the image of God, so keep an eye out for that. Our next two lessons will focus on how the image of God evolves through the biblical story, in the face of sin and then the work of Christ.