More on Image and the One and the Many

Unity and Diversity in Ephesians and the Song of Songs

In my last Substack, I suggested that the image of God in every individual, male and female, from all the tribes and tongues and nations of this world, is a revelation of God’s own essence. It is irreducible and not composed of parts. In other words, the human essence is not chopped and divided among us, each one of us getting a chunk, so that we all bear the human essence, but none of us the same essence. My suggestion is that man’s nature, the image, exists in all of us in the same sense and to the same degree. I wrote that this is the basis for God’s call for us to love him, our Maker, who is the stamp of his impression on us. And it is also the basis for us to love our neighbor, who has received the same imprint of his nature. Admitting that man’s essence is similar to God’s essence because it is simple, indivisible, and not composed of parts does not, however, say what the image is. 

I do not know what the essential image is, but I think I know some reasons God gives it to us, and at the heart of it is love (Gen 9:6; Acts 17:26-28, James 3:9). I think that the image is a mystery that concerns sacred union, both our relationship with God himself and our relationship with our neighbor. As I wrote last week, Vos speaks of image using the analogy of a stamp and an impression made by that stamp, but he goes beyond the act of impression to the goal of impression. He writes, “Both fit together.” The image is bound up in our “fittedness” to God by nature. We are from him, stamped by him, with his own image, formed to him in a way common to all of us and unique to us as mankind. Vos, like Calvin, ties the image to the whole-hearted disposition of Adam and Eve to God before the fall in a bond of fellowship. And Vos, like Calvin, also ties the image to the whole-hearted disposition of man against God after the fall. They seem to indicate that the part of man formed and fitted to God before the fall is the same part of man that is against God after the fall. 

To be fair, I should mention that Calvin and many Reformed theologians divide the image of God into the “broader image” and the “narrower image.” They may admit some of what I am saying in their definition of the broader image, while they associate the narrower image with the true righteousness and holiness of Ephesians 4:24 and the true knowledge of Colossians 3:10.  But I think we need to ask an important question. Does dividing the image lead to the “othering” that works against the love that we are called to have for our neighbor? Is the ethical summons to put on the “new self” about anthropology, what we are (Gen 1)? Or is it about our sanctification (Rom 8:28-30)? To put it in theological language, are we confusing anthropology, the study of man, with soteriology, the study of salvation?  

It seems odd that the image is the reason we are called to preserve our neighbor’s life in Genesis 9:6, if that very image consists in hostility to God. Is it proper to take this glorious mystery which tells us what our neighbor is and make it about what our neighbor is not? I have begun to think that a misunderstanding of the image hinders our love on many levels and inhibits our obedience to Christ’s final commission. We fail to see what God is telling us about himself and his plans for us when he made us in his image, mankind, male and female, tribes and tongues and nations. 

Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash

So I go back now to one mankind, an equally ultimate unity and diversity. I suggested that we mirror God’s own unity through the simple (undivided) essence given to us and our neighbor in the same sense and to the same degree.  That, of course, does not mean we are the same in all respects. There are things about you and me which could be otherwise, but those things are not part of the natural image and therefore do not alter the call for us to love one another as we love ourselves.

My next step involves another way we mirror God’s unity.  Our unity as image-bearing mankind is found not only in our common essence (simplicity) but in our numerical unity. We are one adam (mankind) before the fall, and we are often portrayed in our unity as one people, nation, body, or bride after the fall, especially as we are united to Christ. Again, both are reasons to love our neighbor deeply from the heart. Our numerical unity spans revelation. At the end of Revelation, the people of God are one bride, prepared for her husband, Jesus Christ. That singular Bride with the Spirit beckons all to join her with the word, “Come.”  Mirroring God himself, we are an equally ultimate unity and diversity throughout Scripture. God is one and many. We reflect him in being an equally ultimate one and many.

Revealing a shadow of the glorious mystery of God as he is in himself, we are a unity in diversity as well as a diversity in unity.  In Ephesians, the church is his body, made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself (1:22-23). Her complexity in unity is seen in chapter two. We are one household with many members, one structure with a diverse foundation (apostles and prophets), and one temple that must be “joined” and “built together” to be filled with his Spirit. The mystery of Ephesians 3 is that the nations in all their diversity as Gentiles are part of the one body in order that the angelic realm might marvel at the revelation of the nature and plans of God through us. In chapter four, our essential unity amidst diversity is the foundation for the call for us to love one another, eager to maintain unity. There is one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father, and yet beginning in 4:11, diversity. The end of that diversity is a visible unity as parts are joined and the entire structure is built up in love, the subject of Ephesians 5. 

This glory of this “unity in diversity” and “diversity in unity” is a theme of the Song of Songs, beginning in the first four verses — “Let him kiss me . . . we will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine; right do they love you.”  The bride is one, and yet she is many. The bride is the individual soul of you and of me, and the corporate soul of all of us. She has many parts, each part lovely to behold, knit together to form the object of his love in all her loveliness, and yet she is one Shulamite, beloved, and bride. Though some commentators want to introduce something sinister like rivalry within Solomon’s harem, there is no jealousy present. The love she has for him comes with an invitation.  She says, “Draw me (singular) after you . . . Let us (plural) run” (1:4). She is the most beautiful among women, and yet she is not alone.  Her refrain, “His left hand is under my  head, and his right hand embraces me!” spurs her to warn the daughters of Jerusalem, “I adjure you. . . that you do not stir up or awaken love until it pleases” (2:6-7). It is as if she understands that each daughter of Jerusalem is the Shulamite — the one, the only one, the most beautiful, my perfect one. 

Photo by Petr Ovralov on Unsplash

She is a “we” and an “us” that does not detract from her understanding of herself as an “I” and a “me.” There is no exalting herself over her neighbor, but instead she has an understanding of herself that leads her to invite others into her joy. When she sees the king in his litter coming up from the wilderness like columns of smoke, perfumed in radiant splendor, she says, “Go out, O daughters of Zion, and look upon King Solomon” (3:6, 11). There is a complete lack of rivalry. Instead, her delight is multiplied by calling the daughters to join in her celebration of him. And they in turn invite others, “Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love” (5:1b). They ask her, “What is your beloved more than another beloved, O most beautiful among women?” (5:9). She answers, “His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O Daughters of Jerusalem” (5:16). Her evangelism wins them over, “Where has your beloved gone that we may seek him with you?” (6:1). Each is destined to become the object of his desire and delight to the praise and joy of all.  This is no description of the harem of a salacious king, as Miles Van Pelt has suggested. This is a bride who mirrors God in whom unity and diversity are equally ultimate. She is a lily (2:2), and she is lilies (6:2-3), as Charles Spurgeon has better suggested.

The bride of the Song is one sister, one bride, one garden, one locked spring, one sealed fountain, and yet she is filled with the choicest fruits and spices.  She represents to him all that is beautiful, fragrant, fruitful, and life-giving within nature. As one, she is a fountain and well, and as many she is flowing streams. In her unity, she is garden, but in her diversity, she is a feast for all his senses. She is an Ephesians 4 bride, fitted and held together. Just as the threeness and the oneness of God himself dwells in equal ultimacy and perfect harmony, so does her unity and diversity.

I suggest that the Song has less to do with what divides us as male and female and more to do with what unites us. We reveal the triune God in our equally ultimate unity and diversity (Gen 1-2), and we are set apart for a Shepherd-king (Gen 3-Rev 22). We are given the Song to tell us that our souls as individuals are loved as the only one. And the soul of our neighbor is loved as the only one. And the corporate soul as his people, his church, is loved as the only one. This is the mystery of the Song, and it is bound up in the mystery of God himself, three in one, one in three.  We are destined for something too glorious to fathom, so God gives us the Song. We step into its misty otherworldliness and begin to understand the mystery of the one and the many, bolstering our love for him and our love for our brother and sisters.