Hi Bob,
Without getting into the details of each particular case (Job, Abraham, Jacob, Moses,…) I wonder if we step back a minute if we can determine what it is, if anything, that you have against my view.
So leaving the book of Job and all of these other texts aside, do you think there is something inherently wrong with my belief that human beings are made and called to Godlikeness? Granted, this idea has been twisted, for example, into justifications for exploiting nature, among other things, but if we understand how God rules is it wrong to think that we are made and called to take up that rule? To be God’s representatives on earth with the full wisdom and power of God?
That’s my basic faith, and it’s a faith that I believe is expressed from the very beginning (Genesis 1) to the very end (Jesus, who as a human being does impossible things and calls us to perform even greater deeds).
I also believe it would be a serious blow to a human being who earnestly believes this to suddenly have, or feel like, this belief has been undermined. That the call to fulfill this role has been revoked.
This is why I’ve been talking about this in a post about “Losing one’s religion”, primarily because I see the undermining of our status/station as humankind as a serious religious loss. One that doesn’t register often enough on our religious radars even though it is a constant theme, I think anyways, in the Bible, and in the book of Job especially.
So anyways, this is more of a point blank question on human Godlikeness, that we are made and called to image God or to be like God. Do you agree? Do you accept that this is, or should be, a fundamental part of the Judeo-Christian faith?
Once we’ve established this common ground then we can talk about what it means to be like God.
Does it mean confronting God when we perceive injustice, that we are called to stand up to God even? What kind of rule does it entail? Something like a democracy or more like a benevolent dictatorship?
It will also raise the question of the disparity between humankind and God. Or how that disparity is to be characterized. Is it one where God’s wisdom is inaccessible to ours, as I believe you (or at least others on this site) have suggested? Or is it more of an ontological disparity, such that God is God and we are only ever God’s image? If the latter, which I would suggest, is there any wisdom or power that is beyond our grasp? As mentioned already, the example of Jesus seems to suggest not. While he is the son (or image?) the wisdom and power he holds is the same as the father’s.
I agree with you that our children are gifts and not possessions. That we must not cling to the gifts in our lives as though they were possessions but, rather, once the gifts are called back we must deliver them up (as Abraham delivered up Isaac) so that they remain gifts. (Or so that they keep the ‘grace economy’ running.)
But I don’t think this is the teaching of the book of Job. This is perhaps what Job clings to in the beginning, or is what allows him to keep faith in God when his children and wealth are taken away (indeed, he declares as much as you note), but I certainly do not see this consoling Job in the end. Job knows this from the beginning. Thus it seems likely that he requires something else for consolation in the end (i.e., a confirmation of his status/station as humankind).
Also, I would argue that Job receives his children back in the end and that they are more beautiful as well. Job does not have to ‘move on’ but rather he is fully restored and then some. The book teaches resurrection of the dead, of Job and of Job’s children. (It is notable that the LXX adds a final line to the text after Job’s death: “And Job experienced the resurrection of the dead,” or something to that effect. But indeed, that the children are resurrected is not something I can easily prove.)