Few ideas have so ambivalently influenced views on human identity than the Christian notion of the imago Dei. This declaration of Genesis 1.26 has been a guarantor of universal human dignity just as much as it has encouraged domination of animals, land, and peoples; and it is impossible to ignore when reflecting on the divine-human relation in a Judeo-Christian context. Rather than dwelling on some ontological disparity or analogy, this paper will address the key dynamic or functional relation between the two. If, in Genesis, it is the act of creation which defines God, and if humans are made in God's likeness, the immediate implication is that humans are in some reduced manner creators. This crucial idea—seemingly discovered only in the Renaissance—will be traced, in a manner not done to date, through a number of remarkable passages from the late-ancient Greek Christian corpus. The creativeness-view of the imago Dei offers both a refined and an uplifting conception of human identity, and, moreover, corrects the overtones of domination which have historically beset the notion of the imago Dei.