Program / Course 25: Theological Synthesis / Lesson 3.3
What you will learn
- Describe the three main approaches to the meaning of the image of God: substantive, functional and relational.
- Explain how the image of God grounds the claim that every human being has dignity.
- State how the Christian traditions understand the effect of the fall on the image.
- Connect the doctrine to concrete questions about how people should be treated.
The big idea
Genesis 1:27 says that God made humanity in his own image. Christians have taken this to mean that every human being has a special status and worth, apart from ability, usefulness or achievement. What the image consists in is debated: a capacity such as reason, a role of ruling on God’s behalf, a relationship with God and others, or a status given by God. Most theologians combine these. The doctrine is one of the main foundations of Christian ethics and of the belief in human dignity.
Key terms
- Image of God (imago Dei)
- The biblical description of humanity as made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26 to 27).
- Substantive view
- The approach that locates the image in a quality or capacity of the human being, such as reason, will or the ability to love.
- Functional view
- The approach that sees the image as a task: to represent God and exercise care over creation.
- Relational view
- The approach that sees the image as the capacity or fact of standing in relationship with God and other people.
- Dignity
- The worth that belongs to a person simply as a person, and that calls for respect.
- Likeness
- The second word in Genesis 1:26. Some early writers distinguished it from image, and most modern scholars read the two words as a pair meaning the same thing.
- Theosis
- The Orthodox term for the human calling to share in the life of God, sometimes translated as deification.
Background
The phrase appears in Genesis 1:26 and 27, where God says Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and then creates male and female. It appears again in Genesis 5:1 to 3 and Genesis 9:6, where the image is the reason that murder is forbidden. In the New Testament, Christ is called the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), and believers are said to be renewed in the image of their creator (Colossians 3:10).
In the ancient Near East, kings set up statues of themselves in conquered lands to show their rule. Some scholars think this background lies behind Genesis, which would mean that every human being, and not only the king, is given a royal role. This reading is widely discussed but not universally accepted. The text itself does not define the image, so interpreters have proposed answers for many centuries.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: The substantive approach
Many early and medieval writers located the image in reason or in the soul. Augustine found the image in the mind’s ability to remember, understand and love, and saw in this a faint reflection of the Trinity. Aquinas held that the image is found most fully in the intellect and will turned toward God.
Strength: it explains the human power to think, choose and love. Weakness: it raises hard questions about people who lack some capacities, such as infants or those with severe cognitive disability. Most defenders reply that the image belongs to the kind of being a person is, not to what a person can do at a given time.
Step 2: The functional approach
In Genesis 1:26 the image is joined to the command to have dominion over the animals and the earth. Many modern interpreters, drawing on the ancient Near Eastern background, read the image as a role: humans represent God and care for creation on his behalf. The word dominion has been misused to excuse exploitation, and most scholars stress that the model is a caring rule, like God’s own.
Strength: it fits the text and links the doctrine to responsibility for the earth. Weakness: it can seem to make worth depend on performing the role.
Step 3: The relational approach
Karl Barth, a Swiss Protestant theologian of the twentieth century, and others noted that Genesis 1:27 joins the image to the creation of male and female and read it as pointing to relationship. Humans are made to be addressed by God and to live with one another. Some Orthodox writers add that the image is a call to communion that reflects the Trinity.
Strength: it captures the biblical stress on love and community. Weakness: critics say it turns a text about creation into a text about relationships and risks claiming too much about the original meaning.
Step 4: What the fall does to the image
Christians agree that the fall damaged human nature. They disagree on how far. The Catholic and Orthodox traditions generally hold that the image remains in every person, while the likeness, understood as a perfection toward which humans grow, was lost or wounded. Reformed theologians distinguish a narrow sense, in which the image was lost, from a broad sense, in which a person remains human. Luther and Calvin both stress the depth of the damage.
All of them agree that the image is not erased. Genesis 9:6 gives it as the reason against murder after the flood, which suggests that it persists. And all hold that Christ, the true image, restores it.
Step 5: What follows for dignity
If every person bears the image of God, then every person has worth that does not depend on usefulness, health, ability, status or belief. This is a basis for Christian opposition to slavery, murder, abuse and neglect, though the historical record shows that Christians have sometimes failed to apply it. Many philosophers, including some secular ones, ask whether human dignity can be grounded without a doctrine like it. Others argue that it can.
A student should state what grounds dignity in their own view, and test whether the ground is strong enough to hold when it is challenged.
- Which of the three approaches seems closest to the text, and why?
- Does dignity depend on what a person can do?
- How does the doctrine apply to people I find hard to respect?
- What does it mean to say that the image is damaged but not lost?
- Can human dignity be grounded without God? What would a good argument look like?
- How would my daily conduct change if I took the doctrine seriously?
Examples
A person with severe disability
A child cannot speak or reason as others do. A theory that locates the image only in reasoning would seem to exclude the child. The Christian reply is that the child is fully a human being made in God’s image, and that the dignity belongs to what she is. (A constructed example.)
Genesis 9:6
After the flood God says that whoever sheds the blood of man will have his blood shed, for in the image of God made he man. The text gives the image as the reason that human life is protected, and it has often been cited in Christian arguments about the value of life.
Stewardship
A farmer who cares for the land and the animals as a trust, not an unlimited possession, understands the functional approach in practice. A neighbor who exploits the land without limit is a case of what the approach warns against. (A constructed example.)
Different perspectives
Catholic
The Catechism teaches that human beings are created in the image of God, are persons capable of self-knowledge and free self-gift, and that their dignity is inherent. The image is in the whole person, body and soul. Aquinas’s emphasis on the intellect and will remains influential.
Orthodox
Orthodox theology distinguishes image, the nature all humans share, from likeness, the growth in holiness that leads toward theosis. This distinction goes back to Irenaeus and to later Greek fathers. The image is never lost, but the likeness must be realized.
Protestant
Reformed and Lutheran theology stress the damage of the fall and the restoration of the image in Christ. Calvin held that the image is seen above all in the soul but extends to the whole person. Many modern Protestants, following Barth or Old Testament scholarship, favor relational or functional readings.
Jewish and secular views
Jewish tradition affirms that every person is made in the image of God (tselem Elohim) and draws from it the dignity of each life, and rabbinic sources discuss what the image includes. Secular thinkers ground dignity differently, for example in rational autonomy, in the capacity to suffer or in human rights, and debate whether these grounds are sufficient.
Why it matters
A view of the human person underlies politics, medicine, the law and the way people treat one another. A student who can say what grounds the dignity of the person, and can explain why a given ground holds, is better prepared to face hard cases. The doctrine also joins the study of creation to the study of ethics, which the last module of this course takes up.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: The image of God means that God looks like a human being.
Correction: Christians hold that God is spirit and has no body, except in the incarnation. The image concerns a resemblance in capacity, role or relationship, not physical form.
Misunderstanding: Image and likeness are two clearly separate things in the Hebrew text.
Correction: Some of the church fathers distinguished them, but many scholars today read the two words as a pair that means the same thing. The distinction is respected in Orthodox thought on theological grounds.
Misunderstanding: The fall destroyed the image of God.
Correction: Most traditions say it was damaged and not destroyed. Texts such as Genesis 9:6 and James 3:9 speak of the image as still present.
Misunderstanding: Dominion means that people may do what they like with the earth.
Correction: Interpreters across traditions stress that the model is God’s own care for what he made, which implies responsibility.
Knowledge check
What are the three main approaches to the image of God?
The substantive approach locates the image in a capacity such as reason or will. The functional approach sees it as a task of representing God and caring for creation. The relational approach sees it as the capacity or fact of relationship with God and others. Many theologians combine all three.
How does the image of God ground human dignity?
It says that every person has a status given by God, which does not depend on ability, usefulness or achievement. This is why Genesis 9:6 protects human life and why Christians argue for the equal worth of all people, including the weak.
How do traditions differ about what the fall did to the image?
All hold that the image was damaged but not erased. Catholic and Orthodox teaching tends to say that the image remains while the likeness is wounded. Reformed teaching distinguishes a narrow sense of the image, lost in the fall, from a broad sense that remains. Luther and Calvin stressed the depth of the damage.
Why might a purely substantive view be a problem?
Because if the image is a capacity like reason, then people who lack the capacity, such as infants or those with severe disability, may seem to lack the image. Defenders reply that the image belongs to the kind of being a person is, not to what a person can do at a given time.
Think it through
- Whom are you most tempted to treat as having less worth, and how would the doctrine address that?
- Do you think human dignity needs a religious ground? Why or why not?
- What practical difference would it make if your community took the image of God seriously?
Independent assignment
Dignity in a hard case
In your own notebook, write 400 to 600 words. Choose one situation in which a person’s dignity is at stake (for example care for the elderly, treatment of prisoners or a case from your own life). State which approach to the image of God you find most helpful, and explain how it bears on the case. Name the strongest objection and your reply.
Further study
- Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies On image and likeness.
- Gregory of Nyssa, Dogmatic Treatises, etc. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, vol. 5) Gregory of Nyssa on the making of humanity.
- Augustine of Hippo, On the Trinity Augustine finds the image in the mind.
- Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church The sections on the human person.
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Book 1 on the image and the knowledge of humanity.
- Genesis 1:27 God created man in his own image.
- Genesis 9:6 The image as a reason for protecting life.
- Colossians 3:10 Renewed in the image of the creator.
- James 3:9 People made after the similitude of God.