Paul and the Image of God. By Chris Kugler Foreword by N. T. Wright

Abstract

InPaul and the Image of God, Chris Kugler (assistant professor of theology at Houston Baptist University in Houston, TX) examines the origins and significance of Paul’s description of Jesus as the ‘image of God’. The study focuses on Paul’s use of the phrase εἰκῶν θεοῦ with Jesus Christ as referent in 2 Corinthians 3, Romans 8, and Colossians 1. Kugler argues that while these epistles remain rooted in a ‘fundamentally Jewish narrative worldview’ (p. 167), there are no direct parallels in Second Temple Jewish literature of another figure (whether angelic or human) who is included in the identity of God the Creator and receives worship and devotion. Thus, Jesus in early Christian thought and practice provides ‘our only evidence from this period of Jews both firmly maintaining the characteristically exclusive monotheism of the Jewish tradition and ascribing divinity to a separate, distinguishable figure’ (p. 33—emphasis original). To explain...