Theological Term of the Week: Image of God

image of God
A phrase used in scripture in reference to humankind as created by God and as distinguished from other creatures. Throughout history, there have been many different ideas as to what it means to be created in God’s image, but the bottom line is that in some way (or ways), human beings are like God and are meant to represent him in the world; also called imago Dei.) 

• From scripture:

Then God said,”Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good (Genesis 1:26-31 ESV).

• From John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.3:

[T]he image of God extends to everything in which the nature of man surpasses that of all other species of animals. Accordingly, by this term is denoted the integrity with which Adam was endued when his intellect was clear, his affections subordinated to reason, all his senses duly regulated, and when he truly ascribed all his excellence to the admirable gifts of his Maker. And though the primary seat of the divine image was in the mind and the heart, or in the soul and its powers, there was no part even of the body in which some rays of glory did not shine. It is certain that in every part of the world some lineaments of divine glory are beheld and hence we may infer, that when his image is placed in man, there is a kind of tacit antithesis, as it were, setting man apart from the crowd, and exalting him above all the other creatures.

• From Daily Doctrine by Kevin DeYoung, page 113-114:

Older theologians tended to emphasize the structural aspects of the image of God. They viewed man’s capacity for intelligence, rationality, morality, beauty, and worship as that which distinguishes us from the animals. Even in unborn babies and persons with severe impairments, there is still a unique human capacity for these qualities, however limited by physical or psychological constraints.

More recent theologians have focused on the functional aspects of the image of God. That is, they identify God’s image less with our essence than with our ethics. According to passages like Romans 8:29 (“predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son”) and 1 Corinthians 15:49 (“as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven), the image of God is not just what we have, it is what we are called to do and to be (1 John 3:2-3).

Both aspects teach us something important about the image of God, but the Bible allows us to say more about the functional (what we do) than the structural (what we have).

Learn more:

1. Aaron Armstrong: What Does It Mean to Bear God’s Image?
2. Richard Phillips: Man as the Image of God
3. Justin Taylor: The Image of God: A Primer
4. Peter May: What is the Image of God?
5. Westminster Seminary California: Basics of the Reformed Faith: Divine Image Bearers
6. Kevin DeYoung: Six Implications of Being Made in the Image of God

Related terms:

• cultural mandate
• fall of humanity
• federal headship
• vocation 

Filed under Anthropology

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Sunday Hymn: Great God, We Sing That Mighty Hand

Great God, we sing that migh­ty hand,
By which sup­port­ed still we stand:
The op­en­ing year Thy mer­cy shows,
That mer­cy crowns it, till it close.

By day, by night, at home, abroad,
Still are we guard­ed by our God,
By His in­ces­sant boun­ty fed,
By His un­er­ring coun­sel led.

With grate­ful hearts the past we own;
The fu­ture, all to us un­known,
We to Thy guard­ian care com­mit,
And peace­ful leave be­fore Thy feet.

In scenes ex­alt­ed or de­pressed,
Thou art our joy, and Thou our rest;
Thy good­ness all our hopes shall raise,
Adored through all our chang­ing days.

When death shall in­ter­rupt these songs,
And seal in si­lence mor­tal tongues,
Our help­er God, in whom we trust,
In bet­ter worlds our souls shall boast.

—Philip Doddridge

Theological Term of the Week: Free Agency

free agency
The ability to make one’s own decisions as to what one will do, choosing as one pleases in light of one’s own sense of right and wrong and the inclination one feels;1 sometimes called free will.

• From scripture:

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. (James 1:14 ESV)

But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.  (Matthew 17:12 ESV)

• From The London Baptist Confession:

Chapter 9: Of Free Will

1. God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty and power of acting upon choice, that it is neither forced, nor by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil. 

(Matthew 17:12; James 1:14; Deuteronomy 30:19) 

2. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom and power to will and to do that which was good and well-pleasing to God, but yet was unstable, so that he might fall from it. 

(Ecclesiastes 7:29; Genesis 3:6) 

3. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto. 

(Romans 5:6; Romans 8:7; Ephesians 2:1, 5; Titus 3:3-5; John 6:44)

4. When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and by his grace alone enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so as that by reason of his remaining corruptions, he doth not perfectly, nor only will, that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil. 

(Colossians 1:13; John 8:36; Philippians 2:13; Romans 7:15, 18, 19, 21, 23) 

5. This will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone in the state of glory only. 

(Ephesians 4:13)

• From Concise Theology by J. I. Packer, page 85:

Free agency is a mark of human beings as such. All humans are free agents in the sense that they make their own decisions as to what they will do, choosing as they please in the light of their sense of right and wrong and the inclinations they feel. Thus they are moral agents, answerable to God and each other for their voluntary choices. So was Adam, both before and after he sinned; so are we now, and so are the glorified saints who are confirmed in grace in such a sense that they no longer have it in them to sin. Inability to sin will be one of the delights and glories of heaven, but it will not terminate anyone’s humanness; glorified saints will still make choices in accordance with their nature, and those choices will not be any the less the product of human free agency just because they will always be good and right.

Learn more:

1. Michael Reeves: Do we have free will?
2. John Murray: Free Agency
3. Steven Nichols and Robert W. Godfrey: What does it mean to have free will?
4. Gene Edward Veith: Free Will in Bondage
5. J. I. Packer Inability: Free Will vs. Free Agency

Related terms:

• fall of humanity
• image of God
• inability
• sovereignty of God
• total depravity

Filed under Anthropology

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Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured as a Theological Term of the Week? Email your suggestion using the contact button in the navigation bar above. 

Clicking on the Theological Terms button above the header will take you to an alphabetical list of all the theological terms.