The concept of human nature and destiny is the crucial apologetic issue for Christianity today. In an age when atheism is militant and nontheistic religions are numerous, it is often said that the beginning point for Christian apologetics is the question of humankind.

There is no more appropriate topic for the commencement of this study than the image of God in human beings, identified in classic Christian theology as the imago Dei. Any Christian theological undertaking which would take seriously the basic concepts of the Bible must deal with the term “the image of God”, and any Christian theologian who takes seriously the history of Christian doctrine can ill afford to bypass or neglect this theme.

I. BIBLICAL TERMS AND TEXTS#

This theme is not to be found in all segments of biblical literature as a recurring theme. Rather the specific texts are, with one exception, confined to the early chapters of Genesis and to the epistles of Paul.

A. OLD TESTAMENT#

Two basic Hebrew nouns are used in the Old Testament for the divine image in human beings. Except for two passages in the Old Testament Apocrypha, which are canonical only in the Roman Catholic Bible, the occurrences of these terms in reference to the divine image in human beings are limited to Genesis.

1. The noun selem, meaning “image” but also meaning “shade” or “shadow”, is used in Gen. 1:26a and twice in Gen. 1:27. Again, the term is used in Gen. 9:6.

There are no further direct statements about the image of God in man in Genesis, in the Pentateuch, or in the rest of the Old Testament. Early Genesis neither states nor implies that human beings lost or failed to retain this image.

According to Wisd. of Sol. 2:23, “For God created man for immortality, and made him the image of his own eternity” and in Eccls. 17:3 we read “He [the LORD] clothed them with strength like his own, and made them in his own image”.

2. The noun demut, meaning “likeness” or “similitude”, is used in Gen. 1:26a and in Gen. 5:1b.

Throughout most of the history of Christianity, the relationship betweem selem and demut has been a topic for consideration, if not for dispute. Many exegetes and theologians have regarded the two terms as representating two very different realities, whereas many others have taken them to by synonyms. Among present-day Hebrew and Old Testament scholars, the great majority seems to hold to the synonymous view on the basis that the usage in Gen. 1:26 is an instance of synonymous Hebrew parallelism.

B. NEW TESTAMENT#

The Greek New Testament likewise uses two nouns for the image of God in humankind, although one of these occurs only once. Since these words do not appear in the same passage, it is difficult to determine to what extent they parallel the two Old Testament words.

1. The noun eikon, meaning “image”, appears four times in the Pauline letters in reference to the divine image in humankind.

• In 1 Cor. 11:7, in the context of the veiling of Christian women, Paul declared that the male human is not to cover his head “since he is the image and glory of God”

Presumably Paul saw in the imago Dei an application to human males that did not apply to human females, even though such distinction was not made in Gen. 1:26-27.

• In 2 Cor. 3:18, when speaking of the ultimate glorification of believers, Paul affirmed that they “are being changed into his image from one degree of glory to another”

• According to Rom. 8:29, “those whom he [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren”

• In Col. 3:10, the same apostle, admonishing his readers to Christian living, contended that they had “put on the new nature [“new man”, “new self”], which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator”

Although the passage does not use eikon, Eph. 4:24 declares that Christians have been taught to “put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness”

2. The noun homoiosis, meaning “likeness” or “similitude”, is to be found only once, in Jas. 3:9 “With it [the tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who are made in the likeness of God”

Whereas 1 Cor. 11:7 and Jas. 3:0 seem to refer to the image as something which human beings (or male humans) have by virtue of creation, 2 Cor. 3:18, Rom. 8:29, and Col. 3:10 refer to the image as something into which or toward which Christians are being “changed”, “conformed”, or “renewed”.

II. MAJOR INTERPRETATIONS: PAST AND PRESENT#

It seems best to examine the various answers that have been given to the question, “What is the image of God in humankind?” by a unified approach that does not separate the historic answers from the contemporary ones.

A. MAN’S ERECT BODILY FOMR OR STATURE#

This view stems partly from the fact that the Hebrew word selem can mean “figure, form, statue” as well as “image”. Advocates of this view see the distinctiveness of the image to be man’s upright physical posture in contrast to the quadruped animal. Such a view is capable of being defended as being quite consonant with the biological evolution of human beings.

It is difficult to relate or apply this view to the New Testament texts pertaining to the image. Indeed the erect or upright posture of human beings may be a symbol of the divine image, but the image itself would seem to be something more.

B. HUMAN DOMINION, OR LORDSHIP OVER NATURE OR LOWER CREATION#

This view of the image has been advocated on the basis of the dominion which is so integrally related to the image in Gen. 1:26-30 and so classically expressed in Ps. 8:5-8. This view has had numerous advocates.

• The Polish Socinians in their Racovian Catechism (1609) rejected on the basis of Gen. 9:6 the view that the image could mean immortality and instead affirmed that it means “the authority of man, and his dominion over all inferior creatures, which result from the reason and judgment communicated to him”

• Frederick Rober Tennant (1866-1957) held that, although the meaning of the imago Dei in the Genesis texts “is uncertain”, in Eccls 17:1ff the image “would appear to be identical with supremacy over the beats and with rationality”

• On the basis of Gen. 1:26-27, Leonard Verduin (1897-) affirmed that “man is a creature meant for dominion-having and that as such he is in the image of His Maker”. Such “dominion-having” is “closely akin to achievign sovereignty”

• Frank Stagg, after considering that the image may be reckoned as the personal, spiritual capacity of human beings, then concluded that dominion is the central idea.

• Norman H. Snaith, commenting on Mowinckel’s view, embraced dominion.

Whereas this view of the image can claim strong support from Gen. 1:26-30 and from Ps. 8:5-8, although the words selem and demut do not appear in the latter text, there are serious problems relative to the New Testament. None of the New Testament texts relative to the image directly connects the image with dominion.

Some have regarded dominion as the consequence of man’s having been created in the image of God, not its content. Karl Barth, who came to another conclusion about the basic meaning of the image, did refer to dominion as the “consequence” of the image. William W. Stevens called dominion one of the chief “privileges of being in the image of God”

C. MAN’S REASON, OR THE INTELLECTUAL FACULTY#

This view locates the “image”, though not the “likeness”, in human reason, or the intellectual faculty. It predominated in the patristic and medieval periods and in the continuing Catholic tradition, as the study of David Cairns has shown. Moreover, it necessarily presupposed that “image” and “likeness” are to be markedly differentiated from each other.

Irenaeus likely fathered this distinction between the two terms. It was common among the Church Fathers to locate the image of God in man’s soul or spirit rather than in his body, but other writers, and sometimes also the very same writers, would locate the image in the reason or mind of human beings. In this developing tradition as to the image/likeness:

• Image came to mean the human endowment of reason. Image was seen as natural.

• Likeness was the true or actual spiritual and moral likeness to God. Likeness was seen as supernatural.

For Augustine of Hippo, there are various “vestiges” of the Trinity in the minds of human beings. He also sought middle ground between an unharmed image and a totally lost image.

John of Damascus interpreted the image as the “mind and free will” and the likeness as “virtue so far as possible”.

This tradition was continued in Thomas Aquinas, and the result was that the likeness was held to have been lost in the fall of humankind, but the image was not.

Eastern Orthodoxy has even in the twentieth century maintained this position

• Image is free will, reason, and the sense of moral responsibility and can never be lost.

• Likeness is the kinship of human beings to God or the “point of contact” between human beings and God; it can be destroyed by sin and must be acquired by human efforts.

Twentieth-century Hebrew exegetes have been virtually unanimous in rejecting any genuine differentiation between selem and demut in Gen. 1:26. Such a conclusion greatly weakens the case for the image as reason by removing any exegetical basis for the linguistic and terminological distinction on which the entire view rests.

D. HUMAN SPIRITUAL AND MORAL INNOCENCE, OR MAN’S ORIGINAL, PRELAPSARIAN RIGHTEOUSNESS#

This view finds the image to be man’s untested original innocence or obedience or perfection prior to the fall of Adam and Eve and theri posterity.

Martin Luther turned from the Scholastic interpretation of the image, built upon Augustine and other Fathers, and embraced this view.

• In his sermon on Gen. 1:26 in 1527, he connected the text with 1 Cor. 15:48-49 and Eph. 4:22-24 and distinguished between the “earthly” image of Adam and the “heavenly” image of Christ.

Human beings bear Adam’s image, having become like the devil, and need to bear the image of Christ.

• In his lecture on Gen. 1:26-27 delivered in 1535, Luther again rejected the Scholastic view, according to which “similitude” could be understood as faith, hope, and love. Instead Luther taught that the image was lost through sin, and so was the likeness.

The image is to be restored by Christ through the gospel, and this restoration is not to be finished before death.

John Calvin followed Luther’s understanding of the image but modified it by a greater stress on a remnant or vestige of the image after the fall. Deliberately rejecting five other views, Calvin opted for the perfection of unfallen Adam - “righteousness and true holiness” - and located the image chiefly in the “mind and heart.”

Calvin could say that the image was destroyed and obliterated by the fall, but he could also affirm that there were “remaining traces” or was “some remnant” of the image. But even the remnant was “vitiated and maimed” and “completely polluted.” The image is being “renewed and restored” among Christians, but such a transformation is indeed a process.

Similarly C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch, after rejecting dominion and spiritual personality and after equating selem and demut, concluded that selem and demut is man’s possessing “a creaturely copy of the holiness and blessedness of the divine life.” This “was shattered by sin,” and through Christ believers are being “transformed” again “into the image of God.”

The Pauline uses of eikon in respect to transformation (2 Cor. 3:18), conforming to Christ (Rom. 8:29), and renewal (Col. 3:10) seem to be quite supportive of or conformable to this fourth view of the image. Gen. 9:6, however, seems to contradict it by its basing of the prohibition against murder on man’s being in the image of God.

E. CAPACITIES OR POWERS OF HUMAN BEINGS AS SPIRITUAL AND MORAL CREATURES#

This view locates the image in the cluster of capacities or powers that belong to human beings as creatures of God. This cluster is more extensive than reason, or the intelleectual faculty. Although it may be traced to some extent to Augustine of Hippo, it has been essentially a modern view. Indeed its indebtedness to the philosophy of personalism may be more important than scholars have yet acknowledged. Furthermore, its advocates seldom cite the biblical texts relative to the image or seek an exegetical base for their conclusions.

W.T. Conner interpreted the image as human’s being “spiritual persons” with certain capacities or powers that constitute human beings as human beings and that belong to them despite their sin. He named five:

1. Intelligence, or the power to think, plan, recall to memory, and be self-conscious

2. Freedom, that is, real, though limited, self-determination

3. Rational affection, or the power, above instinct, to love

4. The moral sense, or conscience, including an innate awareness of a distinction between right and wrong and an obligation to do the right and avoid the wrong

5. A spiritual affinity for God

A.C. Knudson identified the image with endowments of knowledge, morality, and religious faith.

William W. Stevens considered the image to be existence of a human being as “a spiritual being, capable of fellowship with God, and capable of reflecting something of the character of God”.

Eric C. Rust limited the image to one capacity, “human freedom, man’s ability to respond truly in love”

Millard J. Erickson has advocated what he has called “the substantive or structural view” of the image, arguing that the image “refers to something man is rather than something he has or does”

This view does have the advantage of assembling and correlating several characteristics of human persons which differentiate them from animals. But the view appears to be incompatible with the Pauline texts relative to the imago Dei, which uniformly presuppose that the image must be renewed or restored.

F. JUXTAPOSED CONFRONTATION OF MAN AND WOMAN, ESPECIALLY IN MARRIAGE, AS ANALOGOUS TO THE I/THOU NATURE OF GOD#

This view, majoring on the fact that Gen. 1:27 and 5:1-2 closely associate image/likeness and maleness/femaleness, concludes that the image consists of the confrontation or juxtaposition of human beings as male and female, especially in and through marriage, as analogous to the I/Thou nature of the Triune God.

Karl Barth in his Church Dogmatics has been the principal exponent of this view, but he acknowledged that Wilhelm Vischer and Dietrich Bonhoeffer had anticipated and taught aspects of the view. Barth saw an analogy:

God and man both include an “I” and a “Thou”. Indeed God created human beings so that God is the “original” or “prototype” and the human beings are the “copy” or “imitation”.

This analogy of relationship does not mean complete likeness, but rather “the correspondence of the unlike”. Human bisexuality and the persons of the Trinity are not alike, but only analogous.

G. OLD TESTAMENT SENSE OF THE IMAGE (RESPONSIBLE CREATUREHOOD) AND NEW TESTAMENT SENSE OF THE IMAGE (SPIRITUAL AND MORAL CONFORMITY TO GOD)#

This view differentiates the Old Testament (Genesis) sense of the image from the New Testament (Paul) sense of the image, holding them to be complementary, not contradictory.

Emil Brunner has been the chief exponent of this view. He referred to the Old Testament sense of the image as the “formal” image and to the New Testament sense of the image as the “material” image.

• The former, common to all humans and not lost by sin, means that human beings are responsible creatures before the Creator

• The latter, presupposing a loss through sin, means restoration through Jesus Christ

Rather than differentiate selem and demut, as does the third view above, this view differentiates Genesis and Paul but only to correlate or combine them.

This view has no long tradition in the history of Christian doctrine, but it does span the two testaments and gather up all the pertinent passages into one comprehensive view.

H. COMPOSITES OF SELECTED VIEWS OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN HUMANKIND#

Some theologians have opted not for a single view of the image but for a composite of selected views, but normally they have done little toward the integration of the views placed in the composite.

John L. Dagg set forth a fourfold answer: “intelligence”, “righteousness and the true holiness” (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24), “dominion… over all inferior creatures”, and the “spirituality and immortality” of the human soul.

Dagg was unspecific about the first, declared that the second was lost through the fall, taught that the third was altered by the fall in that thereafter other creatures rebelled against human beings, and concluded that the fourth remains.

Charles Hodge opted for a threefold composite:

1. An “intellectual” nature, meaning “reason, conscience, and will”

2. Moral perfection, or “original righteousness” (lost by the fall)

3. “Dominion over the creatures”

John Miley listed “the spiritual nature of man”, endowments of intellect, emotions, and moral nature, personality (“the central truth”), and holiness.

E.Y. Mullins had eight categories: “rational nature”, conscience, “emotional nature”, will, “self-determination”, original sinlessness, dominion over nature, and immortality.

H.C. Thiessen chose three categories:

1. “Mental likeness”, including reason, conscience, and will

2. “Moral likeness”, which seemed to include both the capacity for communion with God and original righteousness

3. “Social likeness”, or the idea that God has a social nature and made man to have such

H. Orton Wiley, after tracing the history of the doctrine, affirmed both “the natural or essential image” (that is, “personality”), and “the moral or incidental image”, or the responsible use of the powers of the “essential image” (that is, “holiness”).

A more extended and more integrated composite has been set forth by Anthony Hoekema in his monograph on the image:

1. Humankind in the image of God, as created, was “to mirror God” and to represent God

2. The image has both “structural” (“broader”) and “functional” (“narrower”) meanings

3. As sinners human beings have not “totally lost” the image, but it has been “perverted or distorted by the Fall”

4. Christ as the “true image of God” is “wholly directed to God”, “wholly directed to the neighbor”, and ruler over nature

5. Humankind in the image of God has three interrelated relationships: “to be directed toward God”, “to be directed toward one’s fellowmen”, and “to rule over nature” - to “subdue” it (Gen. 1:28) and to “work” or serve and “take care of” or guard it (Gen. 2:15)

6. The renewed image means the enablement of the Christian to function again in all three relationships

7. “Men and women together are the image of God.”

8. The image “in its totality can only be seen in humankind as a whole”

9. Only with the perfected image will human renewal be completed

Protestant confessions of faith have generally not made precise statements or taken definitive positions concerning the image of God in humankind. Church councils and denominational bodies have tended not be decisive about this doctrine, possibly because they were not being constrained to be.

III. CONTEMPORARY NON-CHRISTIAN VIEWS OF HUMANKIND#

The Christian doctrine of the imago Dei has numerous implications as to the uniqueness, accountability, and worth of human beings. But this network of ideas is not shared or accepted by most of the contemporary non-Christian ideologies. Christians with their teaching about the human must interface with various contemporary views of human nature, origins, and destiny which have come to be expressed in biology-anthropology, politics-economics, psychology, philosophy, and other disciplines.

IV. SOME IMPLICATIONS OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN HUMAN BEINGS#

A. HUMAN BEINGS AS RELIGIOUS BEINGS#

Human beings are religious and engage in religous effort and practices, even if of a base, sensuous, and corrupt sort. A human being is conscious “of a higher Power to whom he is related and seeks to know how to adjust himself to this Power so as to secure his own peace and well-being”. The study of religions gives evidence that this religious consciousness is universal. The Christian doctrine of the image of God in humankind helps to explain why the human person “is religious by virtue of the fact that he is human”.

One aspect or implication of the image is the innate capacity of humans to worship and yearns for God. Even those humans who deny the existence of a personal God tend to “personify Humanity, or Nature, or the Universe”. The human craving for an object of worship indicates that “man was made for the gospel, and the gospel was made for man”.

B. HUMAN BEINGS AS VALUABLE TO GOD#

The Christian teaching is that, in spite of their sin, human beings are valuable in the sight of God. Jesus taught that human persons are of greater value than animals, religious institutions, and even the whole material universe (Matt. 12:12; Mark 2:27-28; Matt. 16:26). The entire redemptive purpose and plan of God, including the incarnation and death-resurrection of Jesus as the Son of God, is predicated upon the veritable worthwhileness of God’s redeeming human beings.

Careful distinction must be made between “man’s being worth saving”, which is to be affirmed; and “his being worthy of salvation” which is to be rejected.

During the twentieth century, the Holocaust occurred, atomic bombs were invented and used and more lethal weapons were amassed, more Christians were put to death for their faith than in any preceding century, world population soared to new heights, and abortion became a major theological, moral, and civic issue. In view of these considerations, it is especially important that the Christian doctrine of the value and worth of human life be believed, confessed, taught, and implemented.

C. HUMAN BEINGS AS NEVER PERMANENTLY SATISFIED WITH ANY OF THE REDUCTIONIST VIEWS OF HUMANKIND#

Once human beings are seen as being “in the image of God and after his likeness”, human beings find that the various reductionist views of human life are less convincing or less satisfying. These inlcude:

1. Marxism’s view of man as an economic animal with class struggle, not God or man, as the basis for ethics

2. Freud’s view of humans as primarily and essentially the product of sexual drives and as dominated by aberrant sexual activity

3. Totalitarianism’s view of human beings as the political tools of the omnicompetent civil state

4. Racism’s view that racial/ethnic differences and conflicts are a very important aspeect of human life and that superior and inferior races are to be differentiated

5. Naturalism’s view that a human being is “the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms”

6. Postmodernism’s denial of nay absolute truth and of linguistic coherence