Human Dignity and Bioethics

The Mystery of the Human Soul | 75
To clarify this point, I will examine briefly some passages referring
to the Imago Dei, starting with the most famous passage in Genesis:
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness;
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth….’ So
God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created
him, male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26-27). A second
passage draws a parallel between God and Adam: “When God created
man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he
created them, and he blessed them and named them man (adam)….
When Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years, he became the
father of a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him
Seth” (Genesis 5:1-3). A third passage occurs in the story of the Flood
when God blesses Noah’s family: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill
the earth. The fear and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of
the earth…. For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning….
Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for
God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:5-7).
These are the only references in Genesis (and in the entire Hebrew
Bible) to the Imago Dei. They show that God created the natural
world as a hierarchy with the human species at the top, possessing a
special right of dominion over the lower species. In the first grant of
dominion, man is commanded to subdue the birds, fish, and cattle,
but his food is restricted to plants (Genesis 1:29-30). When Adam
and Eve are created in the Garden, they are further restricted by the
prohibition not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
lest they shall die. After they disobey, whatever dignity they previously
possessed is henceforth combined with depravity and mortality;
but their dignity is not entirely lost. In fact, in the story of Noah, the
grant of dominion is renewed and the image of God reaffirmed. According
to the second grant, the primitive vegetarianism is expanded
to include animal flesh as food; but the blood must be drained (Genesis
9:4). In addition, man is elevated by the respect that must be
shown to human life. This almost resembles a right to life, except that
it includes the death penalty for taking a life, which seems to imply,
as the scholar Umberto Cassuto notes, that a “murderer has…erased
the divine likeness from himself by his act of murder.” 21
We may thus infer that the divine image is a sign of special favor