IMAGE OF GOD. The meaning of the “image of God” is basic to any Christian understanding of the doctrine of man.

Outline

1. OT background. Primary evidence for the “image of God” is in Genesis with some poetic support in Psalm 8. The basic description of man’s creation is as follows: “And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness....’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:26, 27). Other passages use “likeness” and “image” where the likeness of man to God and the image of Adam in Seth are brought together in the same treatment (5:1-3), and the special value and dignity of man, because he is the image of God, are emphasized (9:6). In poetic form, the psalmist writes: “Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor” (Ps 8:5). Linguistic studies bring out no sharp distinction between the two nouns, “image” and “likeness.” The Heb. word for “image” is צֶ֫לֶמ֒, H7512, which means literally “shadow.” The Heb. word generally tr. “likeness” is דְּמוּת, H1952. Undoubtedly the writer wished to make some distinction, or increase the impact, of the word “image” in some way when he used the word “likeness.” The first word, צֶ֫לֶמ֒, H7512, occurs seventeen times in the OT; in addition to the five usages in the Genesis passages, ten of the remaining usages are quite concrete and may be tr. “statue,” “model,” or “picture.” In the remaining two passages (Ps 39:6; 73:20) the root meaning of צֶ֫לֶמ֒, H7512, namely, “shadow,” seems to be called for. The general use of the word, therefore, seems to demand the idea of “image” in some concrete sense, and preva lent scholarship always calls for this as the first interpretation.

The second term, the word tr. “likeness,” דְּמוּת, H1952, appears to call for a more abstract notion of “image.” The author seems to be attempting to express a very difficult idea in which he wants to make clear that man is in some way the concrete reflection of God, but at the same time he wants to spiritualize this toward abstraction.

It must be borne in mind that the OT writers, being Semitic, leaned heavily on concrete terms and spoke about God in an anthropomorphic way to make themselves clear at all to a people untrained in philosophic abstractions. The use of “likeness” in addition to “image” is a Heb. solution insofar as a Hebrew may deal in abstractions at all. It must be pointed out also that in Heb. thought, the total personality is not treated as a body over against a spirit, but as an “inspirited” “inbreathed-by-the-breath-of-God” kind of a body. It is not a dichotomy of flesh and spirit, but the total personality, which is treated in modern times as a gestalt. The representation that man was made “in the image of God” might mean superficially to the simple-minded that man looks like God, but to the writer it meant much more. It meant likeness in the inner man as it is embodied in a physical manifestation—powers of thought, of communication, of transcendence, creativity, a sense of humor (which is a kind of transcendence), powers of abstraction, and what are generally put together in personality, i.e., self-consciousness and self-determination. Just as art, architecture, poetry, and music may set forth the person of the artist, so man’s physical body may set forth to some extent the nature of the Creator.

Interpretations of the image of God, therefore, may swing between two extremes: the absolute, literal, physical resemblance, which seems to be supported in Genesis 5:1-3 where the image of God is clearly paralleled with Seth as the image of his father, Adam; and over against this, the necessary spiritual interpretation supported by Jesus’ classic definition of God, namely, that “God is spirit” (John 4:24). In addition to this, the OT seems to support the idea that no one ever really looks on God. There is the necessity of a sacramental interpretation, where a sacrament is best defined as “the physical sign of a spiritual reality.”

2. The NT approach. The OT view of the image of God moves into the NT with much the same vocabulary, with the same problems of interpretation, but with what appears to be a very radical shift in emphasis. One discovers again the “image of God” (1 Cor 11:7, “image and glory of God”), and the word for image uniformly used is εἰκών, G1635, (the LXX rendering of צֶ֫לֶמ֒, H7512). Also used is the word “likeness” (James 3:9), which is uniformly here and elsewhere ὁμοίωσις, G3932, (the LXX rendering of דְּמוּת, H1952).

There is no question that εἰκών, G1635, (Heb. צֶ֫לֶמ֒, H7512) refers in the NT to perfect reflection. In the NT however, it is no longer man who is the image of God but Christ who is that perfect reflection, or perfect correspondence; Christ is the prototype of essential man perfectly reflecting God. “He [Christ] reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature” (Heb 1:3). To whatever extent “image” in the OT had as its root meaning “shadow,” there is no question that reality has now come to take the place of shadow. In Christ there is the true man, and there is no longer the question of man in essence, or man fallen. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), to see Christ is to see the Father (12:45; 14:9), and what the NT emphasizes is that man, whatever his condition may have become after the Fall, may now be a “new creation in Christ,” a new man. “We shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). The intercessory prayer of Jesus has in it the amazing possibility of union with Christ in such fashion that man is caught up into the very life and nature of God. “That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us” (John 17:21). Man is to be “conformed to the image of his [God’s] son” (Rom 8:29). Followers of Christ are directed to “put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God” (Eph 4:24). Paul seems to bypass the whole nest of problems growing out of man’s creation in the image of God to emphasize Christ as the real “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). He thinks of the first Adam as physical. He was “a living being,” but the last Adam [Christ] is “a life-giving spirit.” “It is not the spirit ual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual:...Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:45-49).

3. Persistent questions. Continued study on the image of God keeps raising the same questions, which to date at least have no final answers. The first question is the nature of the image itself; the second question is some understanding of what was lost of the image of God in the Fall; and the third question has to do with what is restored or re-created when a man is saved.

Both Roman Catholic and Protestant theologies, with some few exceptions, hold that the idea of image in the first Adam has to do with spiritual qualities and powers. Roman Catholics hold that man had a similtudo Dei, which was destroyed by original sin and which can be restored only by baptism. Other qualities in man were obscured but not lost in the Fall.

Protestants are in virtual agreement with this with some changes in vocabulary. Adam was by nature endowed with original righteousness. He had a moral likeness to God; he possessed holiness, although he was in no sense equal to God, nor need one argue that he had attained to the fullness of his own potential. At least the slant and direction of his life were toward God. What he lost in the Fall was original righteousness, and thenceforth the slant of his life was affected by sin, i.e., sin at the origin of every act. But there are elements in man that he did not lose—elements having to do with his image of God as a person or a personality—traits such as self-consciousness, self-determination, superiority over nature, creativity, and the like. It must be pointed out, however, that after the Fall these powers were impaired and could not be used together harmoniously. The restoration (a process) of these human powers plus original righteousness awaits the new creation, the new birth, the indwelling of Christ, so that a Christian may say with Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). The hope of the Christian faith is the full attainment of that “new nature...after the image of its creator” (Col 3:10).

4. Modern discussions. In Protestant theology, primarily in the Barthian tradition, the image of God has been a live issue. There is a clear recognition throughout of the terrible and radically disintegrating effect of the Fall. Brunner argues somewhat after the manner of Roman Catholic doctrine that there was a “formal” image, that which constituted man as man, which could not be destroyed without destroying mankind. The remains of this “formal” image are necessary for any point of contact for the grace of God. Only what Brunner calls the “material” image has been lost.

Barth rejected the “formal” image, held that man was utterly corrupted by sin—that man was quite incapable of discovering any kind of truth about God or his own condition—and Barth constantly demanded the “break in” of God Himself in a new creative way. Both Barth and Brunner engaged in a running fight for many years over the possibilities of natural theology, natural revelation, and the salvability of man. In general, however, Protestants still hold to Calvin’s view that there is a natural revelation, or natural theology, but also that apart from the effectual work of the Holy Spirit through the special revelation of Scripture, man cannot see and grasp this knowledge in any saving way.

Another turn in the modern discussion on the image of God is generally related to the writings of Emil Brunner. In brief, it is a shift of emphasis in the use of the term by which one is not to think of the term “image of God” as a noun. It is not that a man has the “image” of God, but that a man “images” God.

This particular approach is characteristically Christian although it has no basis in the straightforward use of the nouns in the OT. It is more helpful as an interpretation or as an illustration than as an exegesis. Emphasis is laid at the outset on Jesus’ perfect obedience. “My food is to do the will of him who sent me” (John 4:34). Whereas the first Adam fell in disobedience, Jesus brought “Paradise Regained” when He, under the awful pressure of temptation, continued to obey absolutely. Followers of Christ are not so concerned therefore with the “image” of God as they are with “imaging” God, by obeying Him. It is clear how this kind of thinking lends itself to an existential decision, with its emphasis on action rather than on being.

Bibliography F. Turretin, Opera: de Hominus Creatione (1847); A. M. Fairbairn, The Philosophy of the Christian Religion (1902); A. B. Davidson, The Theology of the Old Testament (1904); Strong, Systematic Theology (1907), 514-532; H. Wheeler Robinson, The Christian Doctrine of Man (1911), 4-150; W. P. Paterson, The Rule of Faith (1913); E. Brunner, Der Mittler, (1927); The Mediator (1934); Natur and Gnade (1934); K. Barth, Nein! (1934); L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (1941), 202-208; “The Biblical Doctrine of the Image of God,” INT, IV (1950), no. 3, 259-270;

See also: Hodge, Systematic Theology, II, 42-116; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, II, 4-114; IB, vol. I, 482-485; IDB, vol. II, 682-685.