Two Fundamental Realities of Our Common Humanity

In his book A Theology of Reading: A Hermeneutics of Love (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001; p. 57), Alan Jacobs writes of a passage in The Brothers Karamazov, with reference to Simon Weil in Waiting for God,

"Dostoevsky is appealing here - again, not with conclusive affirmation - to precisely the universal or common humanity that Weil appeals to and that has two sources in Christian thought: the doctrine of creation in imago dei ('Let us make man in our own image') and the doctrine of universal sinfulness ('All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God')."

This is an interesting remark by Jacobs about our universal or common humanity being known or experienced in two fundamental aspects or realities: (a) being made in the image of God and (b) being sinful. We possess a shared humanness in being imago dei and in being sinful. None of us is not made in the image of God. None of us is not sinful. As human, we all share these. This is not to say that God made us in his image and made us sinful. It is not to say that God makes us human by his image and by sinfulness. Yet in a world created by God but also fallen from that created goodness, the imago dei and universal depravity coordinate inextricably and uneasily (even painfully and sufferingly) in what it means to be human for each and all of us. If we could say nothing else to each and every other person in trying to identify how we are alike, we could and must say we are alike and identify with each other as humans in our being made in God's image and in falling short of that image. Thus, in a sinful world, we share a common humanity.

The theological, ethical, and pastoral implications of this twofoldness in our humanity - in this life in this world - are wide, deep, and utterly incumbent.