Christians as “image-bearers” of God: “To be fully human is to be an image of the divine glory in God’s creation”

Over the last 50 years, our culture has been aware of the notion that the medium is the message. First it was simply TV, then it became personal computers, then the Internet, and now, we hold the medium/message is in our pockets and in the palms of our hands.

But there is another, greater theater going on, and we are part of it:

The Art of Being Calvinist: Imitating God in the Divine Drama.

In this article, Stephen Wolfe argues that in the Kingdom of God, the true art is “the everyday life of a Christian”. But this is not a passive thing. “The Adamic human race perverts the cosmos; the Christian human race renews it.”

The Reformation ushered in a way of looking at the world that had profound implications for what constitutes art. My purpose here is to suggest that Calvinists did not reject religious art. Religious art remained just an important as before. However, religious art did not remain in the old forms, but became redeemed life itself. Everyday life became images of God. Art, in a sense, became hidden within the daily life of the community of faith. I am not referring to everyday objects, but everyday activity. And I am not referring to everyday activity as captured in paintings or the other mediums, but in the activity itself in the world. The activity itself is the medium. The ordinary lives of redeemed people are religious images.

At first, one might think it rather silly to call everyday activity art. I admit that it is atypical. But the theology of the Reformation warrants it. As God’s image-bearers, being united to the true image of the invisible God, we are the art of the divine drama of history….

He cites Bavinck, who writes of “a faith which renews the entire man in his being and consciousness, in soul and body, in all his relations and activities, and hence a faith which exercises its sanctifying influence in the entire range of life, upon Church and school, upon society and state, upon science and art.”

Calvin called creation a “dazzling theatre, [for] the world was founded for this purpose, that it should be the sphere of the divine glory”. In that sense, “being united to Christ is being united to the True Adam”.

The second coming of Christ is the event in history when all things will be renewed, but in the meantime those “united” to Christ share in his resurrected life (Rom. 6:1-11). Christ, as the wellspring of life, is the source of redeemed life and redeemed activity for those united to him. In this age, prior to his return, Christians, being united to the second Adam, are agents of creation in the same way Adam was. Wolters writes, “It still is humanity that plays the pivotal role. Just as the fall of man (Adam) was the ruin of the whole earthly realm, so the atoning death of a man (Jesus Christ, the second Adam) is the salvation of the whole world….The Adamic human race perverts the cosmos; the Christian human race renews it.” The Christian duty then is to continue the work originally mandated to Adam, namely, to create civilization conducive to human flourishing and in harmony and in conformity to nature. We are not to exploit, rise above, or separate from nature, but conform to it and shape it. In a word, we are to rule it while being ruled by the creation Law-Giver.

Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Eph 5:1-2).

Read the whole piece here:
The Art of Being Calvinist: Imitating God in the Divine Drama.