Glorious earth man

     In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Creation and Fall, Bonhoeffer talks about God’s formation of man, John Paul’s “original man”:

He does not come to the earthly world from above, driven and enslaved by a cruel fate. He comes out of the earth in which he slept and was dead; he is called out by the Word of God the Almighty, in himself a piece of earth, but earth called into human being by God…Michaelangelo also meant this. Adam resting on the newly created ground is so closely and intimately bound up with the ground on which he lies that he himself, in his still dreaming existence, is strange and marvelous to the highest degree but just the same he is a piece of earth. Surely, it is in this full devotion to the blessed ground of creation’s earth that the complete glory of the first man becomes visible. And in this resting on the ground, in this deep sleep of creation, man experiences life through bodily contact with the finger of God (emphasis mine, p. 51).

I tried (not nearly as successfully as Bonhoeffer!) to approach some of these ideas in my post last Wednesday (here). We aren’t from or trying to escape to a world above. But we are reclaiming  our Original Man state when, in “full devotion to the blessed ground of creation’s earth” we respond to the “Word of God the Almighty in himself a piece of earth.”

     Bonhoeffer talks about the image of God in man being two things: “Man’s being-free-for God and the other person and his being-free-from the creature in his dominion over it is the image of God in the first man.” In contrast to man, the creation is the form of the Creator’s command and is determined because it is an event that has happened. It is not in God’s image, therefore. God’s image in us is the freedom seen in the possibility for relationship. “The likeness, the analogy of man to God…means that even the relation between man and God is not a part of man; it is not a capacity, a possibility, or a structure of his being but a given, set relationship.” This “freedom is a relationship between two persons. Being free means ‘being free for the other,’ because the other has bound me to him.” “Only in relationship with the other I am free.” So God enters into creation, he has bound himself to us by offering us love, and as a result we have the chance or freedom to be in relationship with Him. (quotes from the chapter “The Image of God on Earth, ” 38-43).

     God defines for us what freedom is. He is complete in himself and has no need for us. He doesn’t have to possess us. But in his freedom he enters into creation and binds himself to us in his offer of a love-relationship with us.

     Going back now to the original  quote above, Bonhoeffer continues on to say about Michaelangelo’s Adam, “God’s hand does not hold man in its embrace any longer, but it sets him free, and its creative power becomes the demanding love of the Creator towards the creature.” It is in that space between God’s and Adam’s fingers that love is born.