In His Image
“To whom then will you liken Me that I would be his equal?” says the Holy One. Isaiah 40:25 NASB
Will you liken – When we use a verb like dāmâ (to be like, to resemble) with God, we usually form the question in this way: “What is God like?” But you can instantly recognize that this is not the question God asks us. His question is a lot more personal. He asks, “Who am I like?” We would never imagine such a question since the answer is so obvious—“No one.” You see, in our Western world, the word “God” describes only one being, so, of course, there is no one else like Him. But that’s because we have had thousands of years of anti-pagan training. We don’t believe in any other divine beings these days, so we would never ask the question, “Who is God like?” By the way, the only place where dāmâ is used as an image of God is in Genesis 2, just in case you thought the answer was always, “No one.” In biblical terms, there is someone who is like God, that is, who is in God’s image, but there is no one who is equal to God.
If this is true (and God Himself says it is), then what is the purpose of theology? Theology is, literally, theós as a subject of study. Its purpose and methods are no different than those of mathematics or biology, i.e., to gather information in order to comprehend. Of course, there are also practical applications aimed at prediction and control. In this formal sense, theology makes God the subject of Man’s inquiry, and for that to be the case, whatever God is must in some way be like what Man is. Behind this assumption lies another—that Man is capable of understanding the subject, God, as a rational exercise.
But this verse in Isaiah challenges all the pretentiousness of rational theology. God is not a subject available for Man’s rational exploration. The prophets’ effort to warn the people does not proceed on the basis of better information. “Prophetic inspiration involved participation, not merely receptivity to communication.”[1] What the Bible speaks about is God’s concern with men. The Bible is not about God communicating His true being to men. Heschel remarks:
“It is improper to employ the term ‘self-revelation’ in regard to biblical prophecy. God never reveals Himself. He is above and beyond all revelation. He discloses only a word. He never unveils His essence; He communicates only His pathos, His will.”[2]
If theology weren’t such a Greek-minded enterprise, then perhaps it might come upon the realization that there is no such thing as a study of the biblical God. There are, of course, studies of Man’s philosophical speculation about God—and the subsequent development of a rational system of consistent and compatible propositions in that system. But this is not about the God of Israel. The God of Israel cannot be understood in this way. He can only be listened to. He can elicit response, sympathy, commitment—not a carefully articulated system of attributes but a God of involvement, of relationship, with all its quirks, contradictions, and paradoxes, as is true of any relationship. If there is no one equal to God, then it’s time to stop acting as if we were up to the task of examining Him.
“ . . . the study of religion has two major tasks to perform. One, to understand what it means to believe; to analyze the act of believing; to ask what it is that necessitates our believing in God. Two, to explain and to examine the content of believing, to analyze that which we believe in. The first is concerned with the problem of faith, with concrete situations; the second with the problem of creed, with conceptual relations.”[3]
Theology follows the second path, but that path is a divergence from the purpose of God’s revelation. Isaiah reminds us that we are not called to examine the content of believing. We are called to act in the concrete situation God forces us to see. “Our dogmas are allusions, intimations, our wisdom is an allegory, but our actions are definitions.”[4]
Topical Index: liken, dāmâ, theology, Genesis 1:26, Isaiah 40:25
[1] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets: Two Volumes in One (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol. 2, p. 214.
[2] Ibid., p. 215.
[3] Abraham Heschel, God in Search of Man (Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, 1955), p. 6.
[4] Abraham Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, p. 5.
