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On “moral images”

On “moral images”

Last updated on: May 27, 2026 at 4:16 pm by Dan Peterson

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On “moral images” 2026-05-27T16:16:57-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The Laie Hawaii Temple was dedicated in 1919 (LDS Media Library). It is adjacent to the Polynesian Cultural Center and to the Hawaii campus of Brigham Young University, where Professor Matthew L. Bowen teaches.

This article went up earlier today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Reprint: “I Will Bless thee and Make Thy Name Great”: Sacralizing Names and Spaces as a Function of Etiology in the Abrahamic Narratives,” written by Matthew L. Bowen:

Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Abraham and His Family in Scripture, History, and Tradition, edited by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, John S. Thompson, Matthew L. Bowen, and David R. Seely. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/abraham-and-his-family.

“While etiology abounds in the Pentateuch as a whole and occurs throughout the narrative portions of the Hebrew Bible, the book of Genesis is particularly etiological in character. In using and applying the terms etiological and etiology, I follow Michael H. Floyd, who states that etiology “refers to stories that tell how something came to be or came to have its definitive characteristics. In Scripture such stories are typically told about names of persons and places, rites and customs, ethnic identities and other natural phenomena.”

From his Hawaiian Islands paradise, Professor Bowen has spearheaded the organization of this weekend’s conference, at BYU-Provo, on the Small Plates of the Book of Mormon . The conference is being convened in honor of President Jeffrey R. Holland, whose love for the Book of Mormon was infectious. Admission to the conference is free and attendance is open to all. Presentations at the conference will be recorded for later posting online, and the papers presented at it will eventually be published as a book.

The Creation of Adam (a Wikimedia Commons public domain image of a detail from Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling in the Vatican)

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Genesis 1:27)

One way of understanding the above verse, for those who don’t wish to believe that it refers to humans literally looking like a corporeal God, is to talk about humans having been created in the “moral image” of the Supreme Being. I’ve never known exactly what that means. What is a “moral image”? And, to the extent that I can fathom it, I’ve never found it plausible. Given such stellar specimens as Pol Pot, Vladimir Putin, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy, it seems to me much easier to believe in a physical resemblance to Deity than to believe that we’re somehow stamped with the moral image of God.

I may have to revise my opinion, though. Mr. Donald Trump has recently enjoyed a remarkable string of successes in his project of freeing the Republican Party from incumbent politicians such as Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) who’ve failed to genuflect with sufficient enthusiasm to his suzerainty. And now, with the resounding defeat of Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) at the hands of Mr. Trump’s endorsed challenger, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, I begin to grasp what it means for someone to create or re-create something in his “moral image”:

But is it really Mr. Trump’s doing? Well, maybe yes and maybe no. Consider this, from Jeffrey Blehar, in National Review: “Texas Republicans Roll the Dice with Paxton”:

“The fact that the race wasn’t terribly close suggests that it wasn’t Trump’s endorsement that nudged Paxton over the line; as I suggested earlier, Trump picked Paxton because he knew Paxton was going to win, and now he can claim credit for backing the winner. But even if Ken Paxton didn’t win this primary because of Trump’s intervention, Trump has every right and reason to claim him as one of his own: Paxton’s sordid and disgraceful career would have collapsed in any other era — this is a man who was impeached as attorney general by his own party a mere three years ago — and really only exists as a collateral result of the Trump phenomenon.”

Although I remain the serious limited-government, free-market, libertarian-leaning, strict-constructionist, federalist, social conservative that I’ve been since my late pre-teens, I can no longer call myself a Republican without caveats, reservations, apologies, and a degree of nausea. I’ve never voted for a Democrat in any partisan election, but I also haven’t voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 2012 and, as an expression of impotent protest, I most likely won’t vote for any Republican candidates come this November. The party needs to fix itself, but I’m aware of nothing to suggest that it has any interest whatever in doing so.

A newly installed statue at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

Have I become pro-Democrat? No. Not even close. I won’t be endorsing Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom, let alone Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, any time soon. I’m simply nearing political despair. Karen Bass is the incumbent Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, running for reelection. (See this relevant news article from The Babylon Bee: “Zillow Adds New Feature For California Homes Showing Whether They Are Currently On Fire.”) And Graham Platner — or, as I recently saw his name spelled (for reasons that some will instantly understand), Grähäm Plätner — is the Democratic candidate to replace Senator Susan Collins (R-ME). “O brave new world, that has such people in it!”

In the meantime, with Democrat Zohran Mamdani (of the Democratic Socialists of America) as the mayor of New York City and Democrat Katie Wilson (also a self-declared democratic socialist, though not a party member) as the mayor of Seattle, I wish that I could be in Washington DC for this: “An Anti-Communist Film Festival William F. Buckley Would Heartily Embrace.” The list of films is excellent. (For example, I loved and I recommend The Lives of Others.)

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