THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN - Tyndale House

98 TYNDALE BULLETIN
image, and his being the image means, without any further
addition, that he is already ruler.
The same conclusion is reached from a general view of
Genesis 1. Here God is presented as sovereign Creator of the
universe; since to make means to possess, He is therefore
sovereign Owner or Lord of the world. As the image of such a
deity man is made and rules the world in the place of God as
His locum tenens or vizier. It is precisely because he is the image
of the God of Genesis 1 that he is ruler; dominion is not some
donum superadditum which is not intrinsic to the image.
Man's dominion over the animals may seem to be a re-
markably non-religious expression of his spiritual status as the
image of God. Perhaps also we find this a rather uninteresting
conclusion, for it is obvious to us that man is superior to the
animals, however like them he is in some respects. Nevertheless
it may be suggested, that this statement about man as master
of the animals conveys more than at first sight appears.
In other Ancient Near Eastern thought the worlds of the gods,
man, and animals were inextricably intertwined. Man was as
much a servant of animals, or at least of theriornorphic deities,
as master of them. Genesis 1, by its precise structuring of the
universe in which man stands between God and the animals, 189
liberates man from the bondage which results from the divini-
zation of the animal world. 190 Moreover, it empties the realm
of the divine of its non-moral, sub-personal, animal elements.
The doctrine of man as God's image is also a doctrine of the
moral, personal, and non-animal, character of God. 191
The image doctrine is not, however, concerned to deny the
links between man and the animals. 192 Man shares with them
the day of his creation; and like them he is corporeal, bisexual,
herbivorous, a created being. All that differentiates him from
them and that elevates him above them, according to Genesis 1,
is the task which God lays on him, to be His image. Were he not
God's image, he would not be man, but a mere animal. But
since he is God's image, no philosophical or psychological
189 Gn. 2 makes the same point in narrative form.
190 Animal gods are usually the focus of religious terror (K. H. Bernhardt,
Gott and Bild 52f.). Similarly, the humanization of animals as ancestors in a
totemistic society leaves little room for the personal freedoms essential to man's
humanization; cf. C. Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, Weidenfeld and Nicolson
London ( 966).
191 Cf. H. Renckens, Israel's Concept of the Beginning 112.
192 Cf. P. Heinisch, Theologie des Alten Testaments, Hanstein, Bonn (1940) 133.