Genesis 1:26-28
Recommended Resources:
Image of God | The Bible Project YouTube video
What Does “Image of God” Mean? | Biologos.org article by Pete Enns
Reformed Basics on Dichotomy and Trichotomy | Heidelblog.net article
The Bible for Normal People Episode 147: Benjamin D. Sommer - Does God Have a Body? | Podcast
Theology in the Raw S2 Ep1078: What Does It Mean to Be God's Image? Dr. Carmen Imes | Podcast
Being God's Image: Why Creation Still Matters Dr. Carmen Imes | Book
https://www.monergism.com/topics/anthropology/trichotomy-vs-dichotomy | Web page with links to several different perspectives on the trichotomist/dichotomist debate
Commentary:
1:26- We left off last week with the question, “What does it mean to be God’s image?” Several theories were proposed.
Some suggested it means the way we look as humans. One might counter that God is a spirit, but it’s also worth noting that when God appears to humans in Scripture, it’s usually in human form, eventually culminating in the incarnation of Jesus. This then is a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. Did God manifest in human form because it made sense to us, or did He create us in this form because it had some preexistent meaning to Him? A point in favor of this position is that the verse says we are made according to His likeness as well. The word likeness means form or appearance. It could just be synonymous with image, or it could be helping to explain what being the image of God means.
Some pointed to shared character qualities we have with God, but there is no definite list of those in Scripture. Eventually you have to draw a line somewhere since we don’t share all of God’s character traits. We are not omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, etc. Furthermore, there is no indication in the text that character is the focus here.
Some noted that we are like God in how He gave us the ability to create life through reproduction and to bring order into the world by subduing it like how He established order in Creation. This is a common view, but there’s a danger to locating the image of God in what we do. What about humans who for one reason or another cannot rule and subdue the world well? What about people who cannot participate in procreation due to infertility? What about the elderly who are not able to work as they used to? What of those with mental disabilities? Are they now less human because they are not able to image God in their actions?
Another common view addressed is that image refers to humanity’s three-part nature. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirt, and He created humans to be body, soul, and spirit. While it is true that we view God as a Trinity, the Jews do not. That would imply then that the meaning of this verse was obscured from the majority of Yahweh-worshippers until Christians came around and developed the doctrine of the Trinity. The concept of God’s being a Trinity, while orthodox Christian belief, does not appear to be on the radar of the author of Genesis.
Furthermore, nowhere does the Bible specifically state that we are three part beings so as to reflect God or that we are three part beings at all. (For those of you thinking of proof text verses already, hold your horses; we’ll get there.) Granted, the lack of explicit mention in Scripture does not mean the position is wrong, but it is worth noting.
In order to understand the mindset of the ancient authors and audiences of Genesis, we need to jump ahead to Genesis 2:7. There, God breathes into the newly formed human’s nostrils the breath of life in order to make him a living soul. The Hebrew word often translated soul (nephesh) literally means throat and can also refer to breath. Here’s the connection—if you cut someone’s throat, they can’t breathe, and thus their soul leaves them. From an ancient perspective, spirit and breath are the same thing. They’re inextricably connected. Even the word for God’s Spirit that hovered over the chaos waters of Genesis 1:2 is a word (ruach) that can mean spirit or breath or even wind. So, in Genesis, we do not have a three-part division, but rather a two-part. Humans are physical and non-physical, body and spirit/soul. Spirit and soul are basically used interchangeably to mean life essence.
This idea carries through most of the Bible with passages using words for soul and spirit interchangeably (cf Job 7:11, Isaiah 26:9, Luke 1:46). These verses mention spirit and soul parallel to each other. They are not suggesting a distinction, but rather a way of saying the same thing from a different angle. In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Old Ben tells Luke about the Clone Wars and how the Jedi knights were the guardians of peace and justice “before the dark times, before the Empire.” He is not suggesting that the dark times and the Empire are two different eras. They are the same era described in two different terms. Even into the New Testament, several passages keep this two-part view (cf Matthew 10:28, 1 Corinthians 7:34, 1 Corinthians 15:44).
There are two main passages people turn to for a trichotomist or three-part (body, soul, and spirit) view of humanity. The first is 1 Thessalonians 5:23—“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” However, this can legitimately be translated, “I pray God your whole spirit, even your soul and body be preserved blameless. . .” implying that the whole spirit, the whole being of a human, can be summarized in soul and body.
But even if you take the position that three parts are listed, you have to ask what the difference between soul and spirit is. The Bible never says. We tend to say that soul is personality and spirit is the part that relates to God, but not everyone agrees on that. In fact, a few paragraphs down in the notes in the second quote, you’ll see that the ancient Greeks actually believed the reverse. To them, the spirit was personality and the soul connected to the divine. The Bible never gives a definition one way or the other.
The other main passage used by trichotomists is Hebrews 4:12. “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Many will point to this and say, “Aha! God divides soul and spirit!” To which I respond, “Aha! The whole point is that those things aren’t supposed to be separated.” The author of Hebrews is comparing Scripture to a razor-sharp blade that can cleave anything in two, even substances that couldn’t normally be split. If Hebrews was written today, he might have said that the Word of God can split the atom. Dangerous things can happen when you split an atom. If you remove marrow from bone, that’s probably going to hurt. If you remove soul and spirit, surely the person is no longer a person.
And I might also add that this verse splits two entities (spiritual and physical) into four (soul, spirit, joints, marrow). You can’t take a list of four, pick your three favorites, and call it a doctrine. Either the Bible is saying here that we’re two-part or that we’re four-part. You can’t accept the splitting of the first grouping but not the second.
Furthermore, you have to deal with other verses that divide a human up into different categories like Deuteronomy 6:5 (heart, soul, mind). “The trichotomist must admit, along with the dichotomist. . . that there is a certain ‘imprecision’ at times in the Bible's use of the relevant terminology. One has only to consider the several New Testament quotations of Deuteronomy 6:5, for example, to see this. Where Luke 10:27 reads that we should love God with all our heart (kardia) and soul (psyche) and strength (ischys) and mind (dianoia), Matthew 22:37 reads that we should love God with all our heart and soul and mind, omitting strength, while Mark 12:30 reports that we should love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength (reversing the order of the last two Lukan words), and in Mark 12:33 that we should love God with all our heart and understanding (syneseos) and strength, using another word for ‘mind’ and omitting ‘soul’ altogether. In all, five different words are employed without even mentioning the body. Surely, no one would insist, on the basis of these series of words connected by ‘and,’ that each of these words refers to an immaterial, ontologically distinct entity, and that therefore Luke was a quintchotomist, Matthew was a quadchotomist, and Mark was a sexchotomist. . . . We must all admit that these parallel admonitions are simply saying that we are to love God with our entire or total being.” -from https://thirdmill.org/answers/answer.asp/file/40572
“The tri-partite conception of man originated in Greek philosophy, which conceived of the relation of the body and the spirit of man to each other after the analogy of the mutual relation between the material universe and God. It was thought that, just as the latter could enter into communion with each other only by means of a third substance or an intermediate being, so the former could enter into mutual vital relationships only by means of a third or intermediate element, namely, the soul. The soul was regarded as, on the one hand, immaterial, and on the other, adapted to the body. In so far as it appropriated the nous or pneuma, it was regarded as immortal, but in so far as it was related to the body, as carnal and mortal.” -from Reformed Basics On Dichotomy And Trichotomy by R. Scott Clark on Heidelblog.net
With that wonderful rabbit trail aside, we return to the original question. What is the image of God? “In recent scholarship, it is argued here that the translation of beṣalmēnū (‘in our image’) and kidmūtēnū (‘according to our likeness’) ought to be ‘as our image’ and ‘according to our likeness’ respectively. That is, man is not in the image of God, he is the image of God. The text speaks not of what man is like but of what he is to be and do. It is a functional statement and not one of essence.” -from A Biblical Theology of the Old Testament by Roy B. Zuck and Eugene H. Merrill.
This may sound like hair-splitting, but it’s an important distinction. In the Ancient Near East, only one human would ever be elevated to the status of the image of a god—the king. Yet here, the Biblical message is that we are all that elevated status. We are all the image of God simply by virtue of being human. Thus, every single human being, immediately from birth, has value. They are the representative of God. Granted, not all humans image (represent) God well, but they are all His representation.
Someone from the original audience would have heard “image of God” and immediately thought of all the images of gods he saw all around him every day. That word image (Hebrew, tselem) is the same word often translated idol in the Tanakh. This is why Yahweh commanded on Sinai that no images, no idols, be made of Him. He already made images of Himself at Creation.
Drawing on this in conjunction with the initial discussion, being in God’s image then implies that His character is your character. If your life is dominated by trying to climb up some social or vocational status ladder, you’re forgetting that God is love. And since you image God, you are not just supposed to love. You are made to love. If your life is dominated by knowledge, you are forgetting that God is a God of action. He acts on that knowledge wisely for the good of others and His own glory. His image calls us to balance in our personalities.
The image of God also includes the right/authority to rule on His behalf per Genesis 1:26-28, to spread His policies through the world. Thus, in a way, many of the prevailing theories regarding the image of God are all partially correct. None of them alone makes up 100% of the meaning, but perhaps all of them together get us closer to the full meaning.
It’s also worth noting that even after the fall narratives in Genesis 3-11, the Bible never says that the image of God was affected or removed. We tend to assume that the image of God is marred, but I’m not convinced that it is. Yes, we sin. Yes, we often have a bent toward wrongdoing. But the image of God is about who we fundamentally are as human beings, not about what we do. No one person is any less the image of God than another, even if he isn’t fully living up to all he should be.
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” -C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory
1:26- This particular word translated rule or dominion (radah) is often noted to have a very harsh connotation of dominating or treading under foot. It comes across perhaps even a tad too strong for most people. So it is worth noting that Hebrew, as with any other language, can have a wide range of meaning in its words. Just because a definition is in the dictionary does not mean it is the appropriate definition for this verse. Context helps to determine the intended meaning of the word. The word can also mean to rule over or possess, and it is well within legitimate interpretive grounds to choose that definition. In the next paragraph, I touch on a possible rationale for taking the harsher meaning.
While many translations have “and over all the earth” toward the end of the verse, there is an argument that it should be translated “and over the wild beasts of the earth.” To me, this makes more sense since the phrase is surrounded by animals humans are to rule over. This also matches verse 28 better where the blessing to rule is repeated but without mention of the land. One could even argue that it helps to understand the use of the harsh word radah for rule. We are not told to tread on and dominate the land, just the animals in it. That is not to say we should abuse or mistreat animals, but it does open up the possibility of eating animals prior to the Flood. We also have to consider some of the untamed chaos creatures out there at the time. This verse isn’t saying to kick puppies and destroy animal populations. It’s talking about an untamed land where leviathan and behemoth live, where dinosaurs possibly roam, and where no animals have been domesticated yet. Dogs are still wolves. Cats are still lions and tigers and, well, not bears, but not pets either. In order to rule the land well, humanity has to take control of it from the animals and find a way to live in harmony with nature. Today, we have taken all of that to an extreme, not just taking possession of the land and the animals, but often wiping out entire species. The concept of ruling in the story so far comes from how God has ruled the earth. He did not abuse its resources. He did not give a list of rules. He created beauty out of chaos.
1:27- If you ever wanted proof that it’s Biblical to talk like Yoda, here’s a good verse for you. This verse is like a little poem where the second line inverts the first line and the third line expands on the first two.
It’s worth noting that these are not the normal words for male and female. They do mean male and female; they’re just rarer words. Whether or not there’s something to that is a matter of debate, but it is odd when the more standard words are used shortly thereafter.
Remember to read this story without chapter 2 in mind yet. Pretend you don’t know the story of God’s creating Eve from Adam. In this Creation account, does God create one or two? Yes. He creates human (Hebrew word adam) but in so doing, He’s also created more than one. Part of imaging God is having two as one and one as two.
1:28- We call this the Creation Mandate, but the emphasis is on a blessing rather than a command. Even the imperative verbs must be read in light of the initial benediction.
This verse is not a requirement for all people to have lots of kids. There are certain fringe conservative groups that fall under the quiverfull movement. Based on a few misapplied passages, including this one, they often say that married couples should have as many children as possible. Not many in our circles would identify with that movement, but the mindset has trickled down subtly. We tend to put undue pressure on young couples to have children before they’re ready. And at the same time, we trample over those who struggle with infertility and those who do not share the same desire to have children. There is no Scriptural command to have children. If there is, you must say that Jesus sinned since He never married or had kids. (unless you’re Dan Brown, but that’s another lesson for another day)
We have to remember first and foremost that this is a blessing, not a command. We are free to populate the earth with God’s approval. But that does not mean we have to. If a young man asked for a father’s blessing on his marriage, we would not then say that he is required to marry the girl. He has approval and blessing to, but if for whatever reason, they choose to call it off, he is not disobeying or disrespecting the girl’s father.
We must consider the purpose of verses like this in the Bible. Narratively, this is placed at the start of the human race. People needed to have lots of kids in order to have enough people on earth. By the time of Jesus, the mortality rate for children was not great. If you had 10 kids, 6 might live to adulthood. So of course you’re going to have more. (I might add as well that those children were often from multiple wives, but we don’t like to bring that part of the ancient culture over into today.)
Some have suggested the Genesis 1 account is God’s second go at Creation since He tells humanity to replenish the earth. Today, replenish means to refill, but in the 1600s, it simply meant to fill. Thus any such arguments are not plausible. It’s also worth noting that the Hebrew word for fill (mala) can have a priestly consecration aspect to it. When the tabernacle and temple are constructed, they are mala-ed (filled) with the Spirit of God, and the priests mala (consecrate) those structures for sacred service. Several scholars surmise from this language that we are to imagine Eden as a temple with Adam and Eve as the priests. It was the meeting place of heaven and earth.