Die post-moderne self en die Imago Dei: `n Gereformeerd-teologiese analise van kontemporêr-progressiewe opvattings oor identiteit en menswaardigheid

Abstract

Contemporary Western culture is characterised by profound geopolitical, socio-economic, and cultural shifts, accompanied by a radical inward turn toward the self. This self-oriented focus is especially evident in an omnipresent identity-consciousness, in which the individual's subjective experience and self-definition become the primary measure of meaning, truth, morality, and human dignity. The result is that human dignity is increasingly reinterpreted as a self- or group-determined construct, rather than as ontologically given and grounded in God's being and self-revelation. This shift is the outcome of a broader theological crisis in which the locus of knowledge and authority has moved from God to human existence, experience, and culture. The proliferation of critical-theoretical frameworks, as well as the rise of various genitive theologies, has further reinforced this movement by using the individual's social context and personal experience as the primary hermeneutical key for understanding God and Scripture. The result is a new form of anthropologized theology in which the Imago Dei (image of God) is increasingly reduced to the imago hominis (image of the human). This study critically investigates this shift and seeks to restore the Reformed understanding of the Imago Dei as the normative foundation for human dignity, identity, and theological discernment. Through a historical-philosophical- and theological analysis, it shows how the shift from a theocentric to an anthropocentric order shapes the contemporary debate about the self, and why a return to an analogically grounded, revelation-centered anthropology is essential for theology, the church, and society.