Imago Dei means “in the image of God.” To say that humans are made in the image of God is to recognize the special qualities of humans.
Genesis 1:26 says “Then God said, let us make man in our image in our likeness and let them rule over the livestock over the earth and over all the creatures that move across the ground.”
Notice the plural language that is used. There are good reasons to conclude that in the first chapter of Genesis we see something about the doctrine of the Trinity. This plural language appears in a couple of other places as well.
Verse 27 says “so God created man in his own image and in the image of God he created him male and female he created them.”
Human beings are the only ones in the Bible said to be created in God’s image. That is not true of animals or Angelic beings. We can say that human beings are as much like God as any finite creature could be. So this image takes on great significance and has much to say about the dignity, value, capacity, and ability of human beings.
To be made in the image of God includes the capacity for rational thought. We are capable of following logical principles and understanding arguments. We have volition. This is very different from the animal kingdom. Not only are we able to think, reason, and draw conclusions; but we are also able to deliberate and make moral choices. And just as there is plurality within the nature of God, humans have advanced relational needs and abilities.
An important part of being made in God’s image is the capacity to take dominion over nature. We are to be supervisors over nature in positive and ethical ways. Hebrews shows that it is not always going to be easy to take dominion over nature.
Spiritual components are set forth in the image of God. We are spiritual beings. We are the only beings on the planet that repent of sin and think about our death and realize that we have moral accountability before God.
When Adam took the human race into sin by his actions, how has sin affected the Imago Dei? This is an important question. The Protestant reformers of the 16th century used to talk about total depravity when they spoke about sin. What they meant is all of man is affected by sin. Our mind, body, will, original state, etc… is all affected by sin.
In Ephesians 2 & 4 Paul describes the effect of sin on human thinking and reasoning and how humans draw the conclusions that they do and the moral decisions that are made. Humans are obviously affected by sin. We are left out of synch. We can still think and make choices but those choices are often out of synch with God’s righteousness.
On our own power, spiritual righteousness is gone. Our spiritual element has often been perverted even while human beings still sense their need of God. Yet human beings are not capable of always doing the things of God. Chesterton used to like to say that when people give up belief in the Biblical God, they don’t stop believing in everything: no rather they begin to believe in almost anything.
In light of Romans 1 and Psalms 19, it is clear that human beings know at the core of their being that there is a God and are accountable but it is also clear that because of their fallen condition they resist him. They seek a way out of their situation. This is not a healthy state of the soul. Freud finds the fallen condition of humanity the natural state of humanity. Freud has no idea that this is not normal. Sin has affected the original image of God in man.
The reformers used to say the image has been effaced but not erased. Beat up and bruised but not eradicated. But in Jesus Christ, the image of God is being restored. So the good news is that even though the image of God has been affected by the fall of humanity, that by God’s grace and the work of the Holy Spirit, humanity can begin the process of being restored back to the right image of God.
God is an infinite being with no limitations or boundaries and complete power and knowledge and everywhere present. The only limitations are those of moral and rational character. God can’t break his promises or lie. By nature God is a being of integrity and truthfulness. God is a rational being. He does not act irrationally. The only limitations, if you want to call them limitations, are limitations of character.
But notice that we do have many limitations. We are finite, dependent on God, suspect to the laws of physics that God has created. God creates creatures and creatures have limitations. God does not create himself. As righteous as Adam was, he was still a created being. And notice that in Genesis 2; God does not say the world is perfect, he says instead that it is good. But it doesn’t reflect the same moral character that God does.
Notice a paradox; God has made us personal creatures dependent on God in mind, body, and soul but as persons we have a relative independence. We have free agency. Adam and Eve made their own independent choices. So we are like God yet unlike God. And that is one of the central characteristics of being a human being.
How do human beings differ from the animals? From a Biblical perspective we are not surprised to notice that when it comes to physiological characteristics humans and animals are similar. When you read Genesis, you see that God creates Adam from the dust of the ground in body (as he created animals) but then creates something brand new spiritually within him which is not present in the animals or previous creations.
In terms of raw DNA there are similarities between chimpanzees and humanity. And this is exactly what we expect to see in scripture. But a high degree of similarity when it comes to raw DNA factors really teaches us nothing about the image of God contained within humanity. Man has an eternal spirit and an animal does not.
Chimpanzees are about as smart as average four or five year old children. But if you are impressed with the chimpanzee, then let me introduce you to a bright seven year old. The qualities and character of small children immediately begin to transcend what the primates are capable of. So, we shouldn’t expect that their would not be any similarity. There are going to be physiological similarities and this is in accordance with Genesis (scientists who are Christians certainly are not alarmed when scientists bring these similarities out) but there are also very real differences.
One would be language skills. Humans are able to communicate with each other through symbols which they manipulate. If we have evolved by natural processes purely by accident, then why is it that human beings who have different brains and brain chemistry are able to network and communicate with each other in a highly developed manner and create for often abstract reasons? Another would be our ability to recognize abstract reasoning with a capacity to draw logical inferences. Animals are absolutely necessary to life on earth but it is not a put down on animals to recognize that human beings are in a different category. You don’t have to tell a fourth grader that Aristotle discovered laws like the law of noncontradiction, excluded middle, and identity. They have natural capacities to reason. And those natural capacities are what we expect from the Bible; the image of God.
It has been suggested that if you lived at the time of the Civil War you would have more in common with the Patriarch Abraham than with the technology of today. We can all agree that there has been an explosion of technology since the Civil War as was predicted to happen in the last days.
Have you noticed that when people are alienated from their Creator and do not have a proper spiritual relationship they gravitate toward various things. For some people things become their God.
We have unique needs. We are attracted to the aesthetic. We appreciate music and beauty. We create laws and argue with each other about what is right. There is nothing like that in the animal kingdom. They don’t anticipate the future. Animals feel pain but they don’t suffer in the human sense. Animals feel pain but when faced with cancer, for example, they don’t worry about when they are going to die or the condition of the results of dying on others around them. Worrying about what their future is in light of this, etc… They feel pain but suffering, the characteristic that goes along with it, is uniquely a trait of being a person made in God’s image. This is an appropriate response to people who say that animals and people are the same. When we begin to discuss these things, there is a difference in kind. And this is what you would expect with the God of the Bible. God has made us to be part of his world and to be drawn to it.
Human beings repent and confess their sins. Human beings realize they are going to die. Human beings are drawn to worship God and think about the eternal. These are all signs of our religious nature. Even many of those who reject God conduct their lives often in religious-like terms. Marxism, atheistic existentialism like Sarte, Camu, Nietzsche, etc… characterize themselves in a very religious like manner. C.S. Lewis indicated that human beings have a need to worship and believe in immorality that is on the level of our need for food, shelter, and clothing. We would expect to see this with the God of the Bible.
But this is rather odd in a world of random chance. Perhaps this helps explain why those who believe in random chance, like the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), are quick to equate the butchering of chickens for food (i.e. read El Pollo Loco) as exactly the same as the slaughter of the Jews under the Nazis in the 1940s. They equate gassing a human being with what a farmer does when he wrings the neck of a chicken so he can take it in into the house and feed his family. Yet these same thinkers see nothing wrong with supporting a holocaust on the unborn. They view the unborn child as a dixicup that can be eliminated or used in any way that we think we need.
This thinking does not reflect the concept of the Imago Dei. The Biblical view is that animals have value and that human beings are foolish if they treat the animal kingdom with disrespect and abandon but the type of thinking of those who reject the Biblical God does not factor into the Biblical view. The Biblical view does not give animals exactly the same rights as human beings. Genesis 9:3 says "Everything that lives and moves will be food for you." This gives us the right to kill the animals for food, which shows that they are not made in the image of God.
Again, sin has had an effect on human thinking and reasoning and how humans draw the conclusions that they do and the moral decisions that they make. Humans who reject God think and make choices but those choices are often out of synch with God’s righteousness as they seek to establish their own. Freud thought this was normal but Freud was an atheist. He had no idea this was not normal but merely the effects of sin and the fall.
Animals don’t build enterprises of science; develop mathematics, have written languages, study philosophy, pursue truth, etc… There are real differences between humans and animals. Yes it is true that animals relate to each other and some animals have unique traits and ability to communicate with each other but when we begin to compare that with something that would be communicated let’s say in the Gettysburg Address; the difference is obvious. Animals are wonderful but human beings have unique abilities to express love, the human condition, and the human need. Evolutionists conclude improperly that the only difference is the degree and that everything arises by chance from a common ancestor. In the evolutionary hypothesis, human beings are very much at odds with a great body of empirical evidence which overwhelmingly supports Imago Dei.
