There God is dwelling too.
– Blake
Consider the following well-known passage from the Bible.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; may they rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the beasts and over everything of the earth and over all creeping things that creep upon the earth.” And God created man in his image: in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. (Gen. 1:26–27)Much Christian theology and anthropology is based on the doctrine that man is created in God’s image, but rarely is the connexion made today between man being made in God’s image and man being made to rule over the creatures of the world. Clearly, the Biblical text links the two, if only by their proximity. It is, moreover, possible to translate the first verse as, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, so that he may rule etc.” (c.f., the NIV rendering). Finally, it is not possible to soften the notion of man ruling over other creatures. The Hebrew verb used here (רדה) is consistently employed elsewhere in the Bible to denote ruling, having dominion, and even subduing (e.g., 1 Kings 4:24, Ezekiel 29:15, Isaiah 14:6).
