What should we consider the source of our identity either as a human being or as a believer? And why do we end up falling into idolatry?
In "Identity and Idolatry: The Image of God and its Inversion," Richard Lints gives an interesting persective in this book. With all the emphasis on our individual identity (e.g. race, gender, etc.) I expected this to be a critique of this mindset and pointing out that image seeking could be rooted in idolatry. Nope. He goes back to the beginning (Genesis 1), and investigates what is meant when the Bible teaches mankind is made in the image of God. He then goes to how humans have rejected worship of God and have created idols, such as when a month after Israel heard the voice of God give them the Ten Commandments, they ask Aaron to make a golden calf, and then declared that statue was the God who delivered them.
Lints also looks at how Christianity attacked idolatry, and then how Enlightenment Philosohers like Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche use the arguments Christians employed to discredit idols to discredit Christianity (and religion as a whole).
Definitely a though provoking book. I recommend it and also the New Studies in Biblical Theology series "Identity and Idolatry" is a part of.
No comments:
Post a Comment