In God’s Image

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 4 falls into two parts. The first relates Bonhoeffer’s interpretation of the imago dei in the biblical creation account to patristic readings. Bonhoeffer’s anthropology stresses freedom, relationality, embodiment, and stewardship of creation, affirming a human bond with animals and the earth. Bonhoeffer warns against the distortive effects of disordered desire that perverts these relations. The second part describes Bonhoeffer’s highly original phenomenology of the Christian self that informs his humanism. Based mainly on his distinction between the pathological Sicut Deus and the restored Imago Dei states of selfhood, Bonhoeffer accords a central role to conscience as indicative of a divided self whose freedom for discerning moral action in Christ is only restored through God’s healing power of grace. Only in communion with God does a unified self and holistic, fully human existence become possible. The chapter ends by outlining implications of Bonhoeffer’s anthropology for the existential humanisms of Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus.