THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN - Tyndale House

56 TYNDALE BULLETIN
tality (König), his reason (Heinisch), his personality (Procksch,
Sellin), his vitality and innate nobility (B. Jacob). 9 (ii) The
image consists in man's rule over his fellow-creatures (Holzinger,
Koehler in 1936, Hempel). (iii) The image is the term
for the immediate relationship between God and man (Vischer).
(iv) The image consists in man's form, which is similar to
God's (Gunkel, von Rad in 1935).
Since 1940, according to Stamm's analysis, Gunkel's view of
the image as external form, a view which could be distinguished
as an under-current even in writers such as Dillin.an and
Procksch, who stress rather the spiritual character of the image,
came to the fore and dominated Old Testament scholarship.
The physical meaning of םֶלֶצ was emphasized in an influential
paper by P. Humbert, who concluded from a study of םֶלֶצ
and תּ ומּד ְ in the Old Testament that the phrase ּ ונֵתּ ומ ְדִכ ּ ונֶמְלַצְּב
‘in our image according to our likeness’ in Genesis 1:26 means
that man was created 'with the same physical form as the deity;
of which he is a moulded three-dimensional embodiment;
delineated and exteriorised'. 10 L. Koehler similarly considered,
in examining the use of םֶלֶצ in other Semitic languages, that
םֶלֶצ is primarily an upright statue, and that the image of God
is to be seen primarily in man's upright posture and more
generally, in man's creation according to God's םֶלֶצ, i.e. His
image in the sense of form. 11
There emerge, therefore, if we take the whole history
interpretation into account, two quite distinct approaches to
the meaning of the image. The first, which has been dominant
throughout the history of biblical interpretation, locates the
image in some spiritual quality or faculty of the human person.
If the image refers primarily to similarity between God and
man, it is only to be expected that the image will be identified
with that part of man which man shares with God, his spirit.
It would appear that no further arguments at this late date
9 We omit W. Eichrodt from Stamm's list; cf. Eichrodt, Theology of the Old
Testament II, SCM, London (1967) 529 n. 1. We may add here J. Muilenburg’s
view that the image is to be found in man's ability to choose and evaluate (‘Imago
Dei’, Review of Religion 6 (1942) 392-406, especially 399f.).
10 'Avec la même physique clue la divinité, qu'il en est une effigie concrète et
plastique, figurée et extérieure' (P. Humbert, Etudes sur le récit du paradis et de la
chute dans la Genèse, Secrétariat de l'Université, Neuchâtel (1940) 153-175,
especially 157). Cf. also his 'Trois notes sur Genèse I', in Interpretationes ad V. T.
ertinentes Sigmundo Mowinckel missae, Forlaget Land og Kirke, Oslo (1955) 85-96.
11 L. Koehler, ‘Die Grundstelle der Imago-Dei-Lehre’, Theologische Zeitschrift
(hereafter TZ) 4 (1948) 56-22, especially 20f.