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Our bodies are not an accident of evolution any more than the Incarnation is a divine afterthought to the Fall. God did not become incarnate in order to look like us. Jesus could ascend to heaven because he has been the Son from eternity, and our bodies will be glorified in heaven because their form is a reflection of his. This does not mean that the flesh of Jesus is the same as the second person of the Trinity, but it does suggest that the imago Dei is a thread that runs through and ties together the pre-existent Christ, the uniqueness of humanity, the specificity of the incarnation, and the resurrection of the body.
How else do we explain why Paul calls Jesus "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15)? And how else do we explain all of the passages in the Old Testament that imply the corporeality of Yahweh? When God appears to Ezekiel as having "something that seemed like a human form" (Ezek. 1:26), is Ezekiel the victim of a crude anthropomorphism? Or does Ezekiel see the Son of God, who, as the original copy, so to speak, is the prototype for the image in which humans are made?
The problems involved in conceiving how the identity of the eternal Son is the key to the uniqueness of humanity are, no doubt, overwhelming, which might suggest that Middleton's interpretation of the imago is on safer ground. In the ancient Near East, it was common for kings to set up statues of themselves as a symbol of their rule. These statues—or images—were a reminder that the physical absence of the king did not prevent his exercise of power. Middleton argues that the author of Genesis both draws from and subverts this practice by democratizing the idea of a king's image. Genesis portrays all humans as "God's living cult statues on earth."
But Middleton's position is not without problems of its own. The Genesis creation account, for example, portrays God as an artisan and not a king. Moreover, most scholars think that the beginning of Genesis reflects a priestly tradition that would hardly have imagined humans taking the place of, or even sharing in, God's power. In answering these questions, Middleton argues that God does not simply abdicate his power by transferring it to us. The royal function of humanity cannot be taken to mean that God is active only in human history while humans are delegated to rule over nature. The Psalms are full of declarations of God's providential rule of nature.
As this discussion demonstrates, the connection of the imago Dei to representations of royal rule leads immediately to a host of questions that extend beyond the confines of Genesis. Middleton is up to the challenge. He argues that Genesis is "intentionally subversive literature" because it allows ordinary people to be "significant participants in the historical process." The imago Dei thus grounds Israel's egalitarian social organization prior to the monarchy. Middleton even goes so far as to suggest that the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers can be found, in latent form, in the imago Dei. If this seems like a stretch, his discussion of idolatry is theologically illuminating. The most fundamental problem with idolatry, he suggests, is not that it imbues something physical with divine power, but that it diminishes the honor of the idol worshipers, who should not be so quick to give up their own status as representatives of the divine.
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