According to the Book of Genesis, human beings were created in the image of God. It is this likeness to God which distinguishes humans from all other animals.
But what exactly is this likeness? How are humans like God?
Beyond any presumed physical appearance, the likeness seems to consist in the fact that humans act. Human action, as understood by the Austrian economists, involves choosing a goal and a means to achieve it. Action is thus purposeful. It indicates a mind at work. It requires a symbolic mind that can formulate causal relationships between means and ends. For action to occur, a means must first be related to an end in the mind of the actor. For instance, if the goal at hand is to satisfy one’s thirst, then drinking a glass of water may be selected as a means to that end. In this case, the actor must have some knowledge of the thirst-quenching properties of water. Success depends on whether this causal relationship between the chosen means (drinking water) and the end (quenching one’s thirst) holds true.
Truth, then, becomes an all-important matter when pursuing one’s goals, when human well-being and survival are at stake. The symbols of language enable humans to form and express their ideas about the world, about cause-and-effect relationships, and to test their validity by means of observation and reason. Language thus renders the world accessible and transmutable for human purposes.
This brings us to that perennial controversy regarding free will. That acting human beings are confronted with choice presupposes free will, not to mention a diversity of ends and means from which to choose. The negative commandment God gives to Adam, the prohibition against eating a certain fruit, implies that Adam possesses a free and independent will of his own. If this were not the case, if Adam lacks free will and therefore is incapable of choice, then God’s commandment is rather pointless. Given this commandment, Adam, it would seem, is capable of choice. He can choose one thing over another. He is free to obey or disobey God.
So, God commands Adam to restrain himself from doing something that he is inclined to do. Adam must resist an inner prompting and thus forego the enjoyment of some pleasure to secure God’s continued blessing and perhaps eternal life. In other words, he must sacrifice something of value in the present to obtain something of greater value in the future. Does he value appeasing his appetite more than pleasing God? Does he value enjoyment in the present to such an extent that he is willing to jeopardize his future well-being?
In case there was any doubt, Adam demonstrates his free will by disobeying God. And, by choosing to eat the forbidden fruit, he demonstrates his preference. He thus reveals in action his rank order of values. Being human—the first human—Adam has what Austrian economists call “high time preference.” He tends to value present enjoyment over the prospect of future enjoyment. Consequently, he sacrifices future well-being at the altar of the here and now. In doing so, he hastens his own demise, however unwittingly. This seems to be an iron law of human nature—this preference for the here and now—and there is grave danger in overindulging this appetite. This seems to be what the doctrine of original sin is really getting at.
Now let’s return to the story of creation. In Genesis, God acts by speaking the world into existence and declaring it “good.” This declaration implies a standard by which God evaluates the results of His action. (Is it conceivable that a perfect and good God could ever fail to achieve His goals, i.e., the good?) That the biblical writers attribute the origin of the cosmos to God’s use of words foregrounds the importance of symbolic language. “In the beginning was the word,” John the Apostle writes, “and the word was with God.” This is significant because humans do likewise, albeit on a much smaller scale, in microcosmic imitation of God.
Like God, human beings rely on the creative power of language to achieve their goals and to adapt to a most inhospitable environment, the world outside Eden. They use language to create their own symbolic world of culture, in which they wrap themselves, so to speak, like clothing, thus shielding themselves from the dangers and vicissitudes of life in the state of nature (i.e., the struggle for existence).
Human action thus mirrors God’s creation to the extent that it is purposeful and proceeds on the basis of symbolic thought. Humans do not necessarily speak things into existence as God does, but they do form and convey their ideas using symbols. These ideas, in turn, inform their actions. Human action would not be possible without an idea to guide it. As we have seen, we must first have some idea of how to go about satisfying a desire before we can choose an appropriate means for achieving that goal, however right or wrong the idea turns out to be when we evaluate the results of the action we take.
So, we enact our ideas with certain consequences, some highly visible, others less so. We judge an action as “good” if it succeeds in bringing about the desired state of affairs, just as God judged His creation of the world. This capacity for action, for discerning a potentiality and actualizing it for “the good,” may be that spark of divinity in each of us which gives human life its value.
Human action thus reflects that aspect or “image” of God in which Adam and Eve were created. It is also that trait which distinguishes human beings from the rest of God’s creation. No other form of life (except perhaps the talking serpent who tempts Eve) behaves in such a purposeful, willful, and symbolic manner. To be sure, other animals are not so free. They are genetically “wired” to behave in accordance with the dictates of nature. They have no choice, for they have no will. They are chained to their biology.
Now here’s the rub. And I’m not sure how to resolve this, except to say that God remains an inscrutable mystery.
We know, of course, that all action is rooted in desire. Desire motivates action. We also know that desire arises from a felt lack of something, a nagging discomfort or intense pain, whether physical or psychological. The goal of any action is thus conceived in a state of imperfection. There is a feeling that things are not what they could be or should be. Things could be better. It is our desire to improve our circumstances or state of being that prompts us to act. Action, then, aims at some improvement. It seeks to remove that feeling of pain or discomfort.
What remains unclear in Genesis is how God, who is perfect, we are told—”perfect” meaning “not lacking” in His totality–how could a perfect God “act” in the first place? How could God, in His perfection, feel desire and, moreover, act to fulfill that desire unless He lacked something? In other words, how could God improve upon His own perfection through His creation of the world, a world which, by all accounts, has gone terribly wrong, beginning with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden due to some (foreseeable) glitch? At one point, things get so bad that God regrets creating the world. He then acts to destroy much of His creation with a global flood. What are we to make of a God who acts in such a way, a God who acts at all?
A caveat is in order. By applying praxeology to the Book of Genesis and asking these questions, I am not trying to make an argument for atheism. That is not my goal. I am instead exercising my God-given reason in an effort to understand the nature of God or, more precisely, what the biblical writers are telling us about God. In this regard, reason can only take us so far, I admit, perhaps as far as the edge of faith. There, on the edge, we must either turn back and strike out on our own, as Nietzsche did, or reach out and take the hand of Beatrice. The choice is ours.
Be that as it may, there does seem to be a problem with the biblical account of God’s creation. The problem, I suspect, stems from this attempt to anthropomorphize something that is beyond human comprehension. It also causes me to question whether we are dealing with the literal word of God. After all, God gets anthropomorphized to such an extent that He appears to be all too human, not to mention petty and capricious in His destructive rage, personality traits that seem rather unbecoming to an omnipotent deity.
Here, I believe it is important that we not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself, so to speak. It is equally important that we separate the baby from the bath water.
To be continued…