Abstrakt
At the outset of Genesis, we are presented with two different pictures of God. The first depicts God as the creator of the world and, thus, as transcendent to it.
This implies that we cannot understand his creative action in worldly terms. It implies, in fact, that God, himself, escapes human comprehension.
This, however, is what the second depiction of God by Genesis seems to deny. In a striking passage, it quotes God as saying: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ...
So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him" (Gen 1: 26-27). Here, the implication is that to understand God, we need to understand "man." The way to such comprehension is to see God's actions as analogous to our own.
If the first picture of God emphasizes his transcendence, the second depicts him as immanent. It links the understanding of God to our self-understanding.
How can such radically different descriptions be combined? In this article, I argue that both conceptions are involved in the flesh that incarnates us.