THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN - Tyndale House

THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN 87
The body is 'not an object which we possess, but which stands
outside our real being . . . . It is the living form of our essential
self, the necessary expression of our individual existence, in
which the meaning of our life must find its realization.' 157 The
doctrine of the image is thus the protological counterpart of the
eschatological doctrine of the resurrection of the body; like
eschatology, protology (the doctrine of the beginning) is
basically concerned to depict a truth of existential significance, 158
in this case, that of the indivisible unity of man's nature. In
turn, this doctrine of the union of physical and spiritual in the
nature of man has far-reaching implications in the sphere of
man's relation with the world and with God, on the under-
standing of sin and redemption, on the validity and significance
of the cult, on the development of the importance of the
individual; 159 but these broader issues can only be mentioned
here.
As far as concerns this aspect of the image, namely that it
denotes the corporeal existence of man, we have to stress that
what makes man the image of God is not that corporeal man
stands as an analogy of a corporeal God; 160 for the image does
not primarily mean similarity, but the representation of the
one who is imaged in a place where he is not. If God wills His
image to be corporeal man—union of physical and spiritual
(or psychical)—He thereby wills the manner of His presence
in the world to be the selfsame uniting of physical and spiritual.
At this point, where the doctrine of the incarnation lies close at
hand, together with the rejection of ultimate dichotomy
between sacred and secular, we must leave the exploration of
the repercussions of the image doctrine in so far as they stem
from the corporeal aspect of the image.
2. Reference has already been made to the function of the
image as representative of one who is really or spiritually pre-
sent, though physically absent. The king puts his statue in a con-
quered land to signify his real, though not his physical, presence
there. The god has his statue set up in the temple to signify
his real presence there, though he may be in heaven, on the
157
W Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament II 149.
158
'We can only know of the beginning in the true sense as we hear of it in the
middle between beginning and ending' (D. Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall 12).
159
Cf. W. Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament I 404f., II 149; R. Niebuhr,
The Nature and Destiny of Man I 54-92.
160
The function of the image is not to depict but to express (K. H. Bernhardt,
Gott und Bild 55).