IMAGE OF GOD

According to book of Genesis human beings are created in the image of God (see Gn. 1:26). The Scripture teaches that both men and women are equal in the sight of God because they are both made in God’s image. Therefore everyone has the same dignity and status before God. Also, in the Scripture we can find that the summary of the Ten Commandment is “love God and love your neighbor” (see Mt 22:37; Mk 12:30; and Lk 10:27). According to this summary believers are invited into a deep relationship with God and humankind. Thus, Christian anthropology is theological in that it concerns humankind and its relationship with God and Others. Our human condition is essentially relational in which the recognition of the Other is required.

Christ followers are challenged to recognize the Other as neighbor, to begin an “I-Thou”

relationship, which is a profound relational anthropology, where both “I” and “Thou” are

subjects-agents relationship. This kind of relation opens us not only to the Other as individual but as person and opens us to the community of faith.

38 Society of Jesus. General Congregation 32, d4. n. 77/28.

In the Good Samaritan parable we see that for Jesus, the Other who is half-dead is his most important concern. All the Good Samaritan’s merciful actions were oriented to help this man. For Jesus, the human condition, salvation, and dignity are beyond any kind of particular situation (The Sabbath and man [see Mk 2:27]; human dignity restoration [see Lk 10:30-35]).

For Jesus, as previously discussed, the term “neighbor” is uncategorized. Jesus recognizes the other as a person in this profound “I-Thou” relationship, which is rooted in a deep relationship with Abba, his Father. Jesus fulfills the double commandment of love because of his

comprehension of humankind as the image of God, which affects all his life, and then he could recognize the presence of God in the Other.

If we are created as the image of God, then we are called to practice it through our

relationship with God and Others. We must recognize the Other as a subject, as a person in an “I-Thou” relationship and treat all humans equals. As Keenan affirms, “while we recognize the priority of the love of God, we are also commanded to love our neighbors. Essential to

understanding this command is that we love our neighbors not as objects of our devotion [‘I-It’], but rather as subjects: that is, as person [‘I-Thou’].” Keenan continues “We can only love one another as subjects, just as God love us.”³⁹ In this sense, it may be suggested that the corruption of this profound relationship with God and Others will be considered a sin, a rejection of

participating in a life giving community. Countering such rejection, grace makes us free and responsible, disposing us to a deep and faithful relationship with God and the Other. Luke chapter 10 teaches us that we are always related to Others and responsible for them. In this regard, Gilleman notes, “When we love ourselves or our neighbor for the sake of God, we do not consider them merely as means to which we would refuse friendship, but we rather see them as

39 Daniel Harrington and James F. Keenan. Jesus and Virtue Ethics: Building Bridges between New Testament Studies and Moral Theology (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 86.

participations of the ultimate end, as images of God permitting them to be included in our love for Him.”⁴⁰ Thus, this theological anthropology becomes not only deeply relational, but also the telos of our fullness as human beings.

This relational anthropology challenges us to engage our own reality and transform it according to the reign of God as the Samaritan did. This anthropology demands ethical tasks by calling people to be participants rather than audience, agents rather than dependents. It is an invitation to restore the human dignity of the last and the least. Lucan Jesus’ understanding of neighbor falls under the divine mercy category. Therefore, as image of God our relationship with God and Others must engage the totality of our hearts, souls, strengths and minds (see Lk.

10:27), that is, our whole person. Luke chapter 10 highlights a relational anthropology that requires concrete acts by linking love and praxis, so the true measure of our love for God is our love for our neighbor (see 1 Jn 4:20b-21).

CONCLUSIONS

The Good Samaritan parable unveils a profound relational anthropology in which the recognition of Others as oneself is primary. The Other is considered as subject beyond any religious code.

The Lucan Jesus presents a parable that is both God-centered and human-centered. In both cases, the parable demands an “I-Thou” relationship that bridges ortodoxia and ortopraxis. The parable roots its praxis as ethical task in love, i.e., a real and authentic relationship with God and our neighbor. Therefore, to make an ethical reflection we need an anthropology that agrees with Scriptures and God’s commands.

The paradox analyzed in chapter one shows how the Samaritan and the mugged man are saved in a dialectical way. To understand this dialectical movement it is important to point out

40 Gérard Gilleman, The Primacy of Charity in Moral Theology, trans. William F. Ryan and André Vachon (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1961, c1959), 116.

that the verb splanchnizomai as well as the Samaritan’s actions reveal important feature of God’s, his mercy. This paradox lets us introduce the saving categories otherness and affinity, and to reinforce the “I-Thou” relationship, and then a deep relational anthropology. To this

anthropology the recognition of the Other as person and real subject is highlighted to restore the human dignity and human condition.

Relational anthropology demands not only recognition of the Other as neighbor, but as image of God. The double commandment of love demands an “I-Thou” relationship with God and the Other who may be poor or non-poor, believer or not believer, but s/he is a person, child and image of God.

The Lucan Jesus challenges us to “go and do likewise” (v. 37b) looking for the image of God who would bring us salvation. The Other as person, subject, and image of God becomes our end, our horizon, our telos.

The parable of the Good Samaritan teaches that the true measure of our love for God is our love for our neighbor, who is beyond all human categories. If we have not absorbed such an anthropology from the parable, we are danger of becoming priest and Levite, believers only in theory and far away from the Samaritan’s merciful actions.