THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN - Tyndale House

THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN 69
believe that he is incorrect in linking this with the 'male and
female' of verse 27, which he regards as definitive of the image. 76
But perhaps he has correctly seen something in verse 26 which
Old Testament scholars have not seen, partly through reaction
to the trinitarian interpretation, partly through the difficulty
of reconciling duality or plurality in the deity with the strict
monotheist faith.
Barth, however, does not specify who God's partner here is;
we suggest therefore that God is addressing His Spirit, who has
appeared in verse 2 in a prominent though usually little understood
role (it is not simply a 'mighty wind'), 77 and has curiously
disappeared from the work of creation thereafter. In other
Old Testament passages, however, the Spirit is the agent of
creation, e.g. Job 33:4: 'The spirit of God has made me, and
the breath of Shaddai gives me life'; Psalm 104:30: 'When
thou sendest forth thy spirit they (animals) are created'; cf.
also Ezekiel 37 (valley of dry bones and the recreating spirit). 78
Of one compares the vivid personification of Yahweh's wisdom
in Proverbs 8 as His partner in creation it is perhaps not
inconceivable that the Spirit could have been similarly thought
of by the author of Genesis 1 as another 'person' within the
divine Being. 79 Certainly the Spirit is in a number of places
depicted as distinct from Yahweh (e.g. the Spirit of Yahweh in
Judges), though nowhere so obviously personal as in the New
Testament.
We do not press this point, and our general approach to the
doctrine of the image is not dependent on it. The transition
from the plural 'let us' to the singular ‘God created’ creates no
difficulty on this view since the Spirit, though able to be
distinguished from Yahweh, is nevertheless God, םיִהֹל ֱא divine.
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poses that there is in him a fulness of being so that he can deliberate with himself'
(‘Hexémeron', RB 5 (1896) 38i-407, especially 387). This view is therefore really
a development of the 'plural of self-deliberation'.
76 So J. J. Stamm in Antwort 94.
77 Cf. e.g. A. R. Johnson, The Vitality of the Individual in the Thought of Ancient
Israel 2 , University of Wales Press, Cardiff (1964) 32 n. 8.
78 See the full collection of references by P. van Imschoot, ‘L'esprit de Jahvé,
source de vie, dans l'Ancien Testament', RB 44. (1935) 481-501.
79 I find that my suggestion was anticipated 100 years ago by J. P. Lange,
Genesis 173: the plural of Gn. 1:26 'points to the germinal view of a distinction in
the divine personality, directly in favour of which is the distinction of Elohim and
Ruah Elohim, or that of God and his Wisdom, as this distinction is made, Prov.
viii., with reference to the creation'.