Category Archives: imago Dei

Biblical Humanism

Acts, free will, Genesis, imago Dei, Ruth, Tamar, wisdom literature

“The world come of age is more god-less and perhaps just because of that closer to God than the world not yet come of age.”  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letter dated 18 July 1944

Years ago, when I was interim pastor of a small church in Tennessee, a woman in the church stopped me in the hallway between Sunday School and worship to ask for prayer.  I am terrible with names, so, anticipating that she had news of illness, death, or difficulty in the life of a church member, family member, or friend, I took out the note pad I kept in my Continue reading Biblical Humanism →

An Easter Confession

atheism, Christian faith, church, cosmology, creation, cross, free will, imago Dei, Jesus, materialism, monotheism

“Who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29 and par.)

Yesterday churches across the world experienced the highest attendance levels that they will experience all year.  Attendance next Sunday, at least in the West, however, will confirm the trends indicated in the surveys about religion and the statistics concerning denominational decline.  For many reasons, some clearly identifiable and others

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Let us make God in our image and according to our likeness

atheism, Christmas, imago Dei, Jesus

“The chief end of [humankind] is to glorify God.”

The Westminster Shorter Catechism

Readers of the Bible will recognize the title of this entry as a paraphrase of Genesis 1:26, the statement of God’s intention to create humankind.  The paraphrase echoes a position often taken by critics of religion (Sigmund Freud, and more recently Christopher Kitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others), namely, that human beings simply project a super-human

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