Creation and the Imago Dei

Responding to John Derbyshire's claim, to which Rob linked, that "[t]he idea that we are made in God’s image implies we are a finished product," philosopher and MOJ-friend John O'Callaghan writes:

[T]he doctrine of the imago dei does not imply that we are a finished product.  The very notion of being an “image” of anything implies that it is not identical with that of which it is an image.  Thus it differs to some extent from that of which it is an image, and that difference allows for growth in the image. . . .  And at the level of individual human beings, both Augustine and Aquinas, the figures I am most familiar with, taught that we are always seeking to become greater images of God, that every human being can corrupt the image, but can also refine the image.

In addition, the doctrine does not imply that we are the only creatures that are images of God. . . .  [Aquinas] claimed that not only is it the case that angels are images of God, but also that they are greater images of God than human beings are.  Whether we believe in angels or not, the larger theological point is that nothing in Catholic faith entails that only human beings are images of God.  Both Augustine and Aquinas taught that all creatures are likenesses of God.  ‘Imago’ had for them a technical sense—an imago was a likeness that held its likeness in virtue of being an intelligent creature.  From which it follows, that all creatures are in fact likenesses of God, and that any intelligent creature will be an imago dei, not just human beings.  In other words, nothing of Catholic faith implies that human beings in any stage of development are the only possible images or likenesses of God.

UPDATE:  Bryan McGraw -- a political theorist at Pepperdine -- adds:

It’s worth noting that in the “First” Creation story (Gen. 1) God doesn’t actually say that man is “good” – he only says that he looks at everything he has created and that it is “very good.”  So why doesn’t God say – like he does with the birds and the beasts – that his creation of man is “good”?  Leon Kass, in his book on Genesis, suggests that it’s because the term “good” as it’s used there means something like complete or whole and that man in the garden isn’t complete or maybe finished.  Now, I think Kass is off base with his overly Rousseauian interpretation of man in the garden (basically, we’re just dumb happy brutes) but when coupled with the story of the Fall, I’m not sure at all that the text would itself support a claim that somehow we were made Imago Dei and that was it.