THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN - Tyndale House

86 TYNDALE BULLETIN
matic unity; 152 it is therefore the corporeal animated man that
is the image of God. 153 The body cannot be left out of the
meaning of the image; man is a totality, and his 'solid flesh' is
as much the image of God as his spiritual capacity, creativeness
or personality, since none of these 'higher' aspects of the human
being can exist in isolation from the body. The body is not a
mere dwelling-place for the soul, nor is it the prison-house of
the soul. In so far as man is a body and a bodiless man is not
man, the body is the image of God; for man is the image of
God. Man is the flesh-and-blood image of the invisible God.
This is not to say that it is the body as opposed to something
else, e.g. the spirit, that is the image of God. For the body is not
‘opposed’ to the spirit; indeed as far as the image is concerned
at least, what the body is the spirit is. It is the homo, not the
animus or the anima, that is the imago Dei. 154
The importance of this understanding of the image is obvious;
the value of the body is strikingly affirmed. The body has been
consistently depreciated in Christian theology, under the
influence of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic conceptions of
man as primarily nous, 'mind' or 'reason'. Nous is that which is
unique in man, being a universal and immortal principle that
enters man from outside. Reinhold Niebuhr has analysed the
consequences of this belief in the supremacy of nous and its
concomitant body-soul dualism: 155 (i) It identifies rational
man with the divine, since reason is, as the creative principle,
identical with God. The concept of the individuality of persons
is insignificant, since it rests only on the particularity of the
body. (ii) It identifies the body with evil, assuming the essential
goodness of mind or spirit. Thus we find Augustine declaring
in neo-Platonist style: ‘For not in the body but in the mind was
man made in the image of God. In his own similitude let us
seek God, in his own image recognize the creator’. 158
In biblical thought a far higher value is set upon the body.
152
Cf. e.g. T. C. Vriezen, An Outline of Old Testament Theology, Blackwell,
Oxford (1958) 201.
153
‘[Man], and not some distillation from him, is an expression or transcription
of the eternal, incorporeal creator in terms of temporal, bodily, creaturely
existence.’ (D. Kidner, Genesis, Tyndale Press, London (1967) 51. Cf. H. Gross,
‘Die Gottebenbildlichkeit des Menschen’ 92.)
154
K. L. Schmidt, [Eranos—Jahrubuch] 15 (1947f.) 154.
155
R. Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man I, Charles Scribner's Sons, New
York (1945) 7.
156
Augustine, In Joannis Evangelium Tractatus CXXIV XXIII 5 (PL XXXV
1585).