The pro-life movement in Canada strives to secure legal protection for the unborn; it seeks to establish robust defenses for those menaced by the prospect of euthanasia and the temptation to assisted suicide; and it advocates for sane policies regarding marriage, family, and the recognition of both sexes. The issues and controversies which our threefold campaign impels us to engage are myriad; and yet, they all spring from one single source: namely, from our firm convictions about the inviolable dignity of the human person. We believe that the man is the imago dei: that he is made “in”—or, in some translations, “to”—the image of God. But what does this telling phrase, drawn from the first creation account in Genesis (1:26), really mean? And how does the idea of the imago dei motivate our movement’s daily work?
The Old Testament is uncompromising in its prohibition against idolatry which, in many ways, is the arch-sin against which the People of Israel are admonished. Idolatry, after all, not only deprives God of the worship which is due to Him alone, conferring it upon inert carved figures—and other, more metaphorical idols as well. More importantly, the act of idolatry is an affront to the unique relationship that God establishes with His people, and the unique revelation on which their covenant is based.
In Exodus, God reveals to Moses that He is Yahweh, “I am who am” or “I am what I am” (3:14). This revelation means, on the one hand, that comparisons are unnecessary: God is, without any recourse to images, analogies, or comparisons. At the same time, God’s very act of creating man, communicating with man, and communicating himself to man definitely captures the character of that super-essential “is.” God’s being, in other words, is identical with His way of being: one that is active, generative, generous, self-disclosing, and bountiful—the very antithesis of what can be captured through a graven image with its dull marks etched in dead stone.
This is why the only possible “image” of God must, by necessity, be alive; it must thrive in the same vital element of abundant giving and receiving in which its “original,” resides and it must course with the same lifeblood of dynamic, self-forgetting, fruitful love. Thus, the only image of God could either be a being like Him, man; or, as St. Paul tells the Colossians, it can be found in complete perfection Christ who is, at once, God and man, the Image of God and God Himself (Col 1:15).
But, in addition to vitality, there is another attribute which is essential to the imago dei as well. The Persons of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit—are all defined by their relations with each other. This is obvious in the paternal and filial names of the first two Persons, but it also pertains to the third as well, as when we use turns of phrase about “capturing the spirit of” something as a way of indicating an otherwise elusive essence that has been fully expressed. Therefore, the Image of God must not only be living, but it must be embedded in affectionate and generative relationships as well. This is why, since the Renaissance, depictions of the Holy Family have been ubiquitous in Christian art: they not only depict Christ Himself but render Him in the vibrant and loving relationships which, through the Incarnation, He voluntarily embraced.
For this reason, while man as such can be properly said to constitute the imago dei, the family discloses this image with especial clarity. St. Paul indicates as much when he prays for the Christians of the Church in Ephesus: “I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name” (Eph 3:14–15). The apostle here reveals that God, in the Christian tradition, is not anthropomorphic; instead, man, as it were, is “theomorphic,” a being whose very identity is rooted in the divine—and is so rooted by means of relationships established in the family.
These deep realities are the ultimate horizon for our ongoing efforts in the pro-life movement, the profound truths with which our daily work connects. For example, with the source of its sanctity in view, we can fairly characterize assaults on the family as a form of iconoclasm: they are violations of the very habitat and sanctuary of humanity’s fundamental dignity. The ongoing horrors of prenatal infanticide and, more recently, the tsunami of suicides and involuntary liquidations that legal euthanasia has wrought should both, in and of themselves, be sufficient to prick the consciences of our countrymen. These are evils which can be opposed without any recourse to revelation. And yet, an awareness of the sacrilegious nature of these evils points us clearly towards the spiritual dimension of our struggle. Because the human person itself and the family through which the person emerges into the world are images of the divine life, their perversion, mutilation, and destruction are, at some level, assaults on God by means of the degradation of His creation.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph 6:12). St. Paul’s clarifying counsel is as relevant for us as it was for the Ephesians. The people who advocate for and defend the reprehensible injustices which we seek to rectify may be our opponents, but they are not actually our “enemies.” Ours is a conflict of an entirely different order, one that may seem to play out in the realm of politics. But politics is really only a screen for the eternal contest between good and evil. But the victory of good over evil is assured—indeed, it has already been accomplished by Christ on the Cross.
Satan may, for a time, be permitted to oppress those who follow the Lord, and to further deface the image of God through sacrilegious violence committed against man and the family. But, in the end, his defeat will be total and his very attempts to mar God’s creation will be the means of its perfection and glorification. Although the outcome of this great struggle is sure, the timing of God’s triumph is a mystery on which we wait, and for which, in the meantime, we continue to work, to suffer, and to fight. Many have participated in this battle before us—and many more will follow after us in the years to come. It is, therefore, our privilege to take up our place in this fight now and to contribute, in some small way, to God’s great and inevitable victory.
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