The image of God and modernity.

The idea of the image of God is a big idea,

and it invites a large-scale ramble through the history of ideas.

So I hope to lead this ramble for you through some big ideas

that are important for at least

getting in touch with and I hope to do it without too much side-tracking but

there's a lot here so I've provided a chart with the authors and the big ideas

that I have in mind and hopefully we'll sort of braid them together as we go

along in the end I want to argue that being an intellect that I have in mind, and hopefully we'll sort of braid them together as we go along.

In the end, I want to argue that being an intellect in the flesh, and thus made to the image of God,

generates for us certain freedoms against some of the burdens that modern thinkers have unnecessarily laid upon us and upon

our way of thinking. So I'm going to breeze through some big personalities and try to give an

idea of how this primarily biblical idea cashes out for philosophy. As far as the moderns go, I've selected two of my favorite

archvillains of modernity. I'm not going to attempt to say what modernity is or gives

any kind of complete story. Often that would include something about Kant and Descartes. I assume

they'll come up later. But instead, I've picked Nietzsche and Hobbes to represent

the modern legacy with regard to the image of God. But let's begin with the Bible itself.

We would be naive to think that the Bible doesn't have philosophy. In fact, it has many

philosophies.

The image of God ties together many different biblical thinkers,

many sacred authors, beginning with the author of Genesis.

So we begin simple with Genesis.

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