The Image of God in an Image Driven Age - (Wheaton Theology Conference) by Beth Felker Jones & Jeffrey W Barbeau (Paperback)

About the Book

Humans are created in the image of God, yet by choosing to rebel against God we become unfaithful image-bearers. Jesus, who is the image of God, restores the divine image in us. These essays offer a vision of what it means to be truly human.

Book Synopsis

Whether on the printed page, the television screen or the digital app, we live in a world saturated with images.Some images help shape our understanding of ourselves and the world around us in positive ways, while others lead us astray and distort our relationships. Christians confess that human beings have been created in the image of God, yet we chose to rebel against that God and so became unfaithful bearers of God's image. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus, who is the image of God, restores the divine image in us, partially now and fully in the day to come.The essays collected in The Image of God in an Image Driven Age explore the intersection of theology and culture. With topics ranging across biblical exegesis, the art gallery, Cormac McCarthy, racism, sexuality and theosis, the contributors to this volume offer a unified vision-ecumenical in nature and catholic in spirit-of what it means to be truly human and created in the divine image in the world today.This collection from the 2015 Wheaton Theology Conference includes contributions by Daniela C. Augustine, Craig L. Blomberg, William A. Dyrness, Timothy R. Gaines and Shawna Songer Gaines, Phillip Jenkins, Beth Felker Jones, Christina Bieber Lake, Catherine McDowell, Ian A. McFarland, Matthew J. Milliner, Soong-Chan Rah and Janet Soskice, as well as original poems by Jill Peláez Baumgaertner and Brett Foster.

Review Quotes

"Bringing together art, literature and theology, these essays are a prism of Christian reflection on what is perhaps the most urgent question of our time: What does it mean to be a human being created in the image of God?"

"Poetry, literature, visual art and deep theological thinking collide here! What better way to think about what it means to be made in God's image, and what it means to bear God's image, to a world beset with so many false images? Students, pastors and theologians alike will find here a meaty conversation and, better yet, an invitation to bear God's image well."

"The essays collected in this volume explore the intersection of theology and culture. With topics ranging across biblical exegesis, the art gallery, Cormac McCarthy, racism, sexuality, and theosis, the contributors offer a unified vision of what it means to be truly human and created in the divine image in the world today."

"This is a fecund collection of essays on theological anthropology. In it one can find treatments of the image of God from biblical, systematic and constructive theology, but one can also find essays that reflect on the imaging of God in the arts: in poetry and in literary criticism. Here too there is reflection on our witness to the divine image in a culture of commodification and a world where the color of one's skin has displaced the divine image in which we are all created. These explorations of the doctrine of the image of God offer readers a rich and satisfying smorgasbord of essays and art that repays careful reading and reflection."

About the Author

Jeffrey W. Barbeau (PhD, Marquette University) is associate professor of theology in the Graduate School at Wheaton College. He is the author or editor of multiple books on the English writer S. T. Coleridge and his family.

Beth Felker Jones (PhD, Duke University) is associate professor of theology at Wheaton College. She is the author of The Marks of His Wounds: Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection and Practicing Christian Doctrine: An Introduction to Thinking and Living Theologically.