THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN - Tyndale House

THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN 55
amor. For the Reformers 4 it was the state of original righteous-
ness enjoyed by Adam before the Fall, the 'entire excellence of
human nature' including 'everything in which the nature of
man surpasses that of all other species of animals', which since
the Fall is 'vitiated and almost destroyed, nothing remaining
but a ruin, confused, mutilated, and tainted with impurity'. 5
For the time of the Enlightenment, the seat of the image is the
soul, of which Herder exclaimed: 'It is the image of the Godhead
and seeks to stamp this image upon everything around it; it
makes the manifold one, seeks truth in falsehood, radiant
activity and operation in unstable peace, and is always present
and wills and rules as though it looks at itself and says: "Let us",
with the exalted feeling of being the daughter and image of
God'. 6 Barth concludes his catalogue with the sardonic remark:
‘One could indeed discuss which of all these and similar explana-
tions of the term is the most beautiful or the most deep or the
most serious. One cannot, however, discuss which of them is
the correct interpretation of Genesis 1:26.' 7
Old Testament scholarship has produced an equally varied
range of interpretations of the image. J. J. Stamm, in surveying
the history of interpretation, 8 has drawn a dividing line in 1940.
Before that date four groups of views may be discerned:
(i) The image is a spiritual quality of man: his self-conscious-
ness and self-determination (Delitzsch), his talents and under-
standing of the eternal, the true, and the good (Dillman), his
self-consciousness, his capability for thought and his immor-
4
For a significant exception, cf. G. C. Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God,
Eerdmans' Grand Rapids (1962) 46f.
5
J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I, xv, 3-4 (ET by H. Beveridge,
James Clarke, London (reprint 1953) 64f.). Cf. M. Luther, The Creation. A
Commentary on the First Five Chapters of the Book of Genesis (ET by H. Cole), Clark,
Edinburgh (1858) 91: 'Wherefore, when we now attempt to speak of that image,
we speak of a thing unknown; an image which we not only have never experienced,
but the contrary to which we have experienced all our lives, and experience still.
Of this image therefore all we now possess are the mere terms—the image of God! . . .
But there was, in Adam, an illumined reason, a true knowledge of God and a will
the most upright to love both God, and his neighbour.'
6
Cf. K. Barth, op. cit., 193.
7
Ibid., K. L. Schmidt has shown how earlier Christian writers than Ambrose
likewise borrowed from contemporary anthropology in interpreting the image
(‘“Homo Imago Dei” im alien und neuen Testament', Eranos-jahrbuch 15
(1947f.) 149-95, especially 158-162). Earlier still, the interpretation offered by
Wisdom 2:23 is plainly influenced by Hellenistic thought (cf. H. Wildberger,
Theologische Zeitschrift 21 (1965) 251 n. 29).
8
J. J. Stamm, 'Die Imago-Lehre von Karl Barth und die alttestamentliche
Wissenschaft' in Antwort. Festschrift K. Barth, ed. E. Wolf et al., Evangelischer
Verlag, Zollikon-Zürich (1956) 84-98, especially 86-92.