What you believe about man’s nature is at the center of all spiritual and societal determinations. The only belief that is more significant is what a person believes about God. Genesis chapters 1 and 2 tell us how God created the first man and woman. God then delegated dominion over the rest of creation to man and charged him with cultivating the Earth. This responsibility is as lofty as it gets.
I would summarize the importance of being created in God’s image in this way.
All people belong to the human race. Because all people are created in the image of God (Gen 1:26–28), they are essentially equal. Bearing God’s image is an essential and uniquely human property, which is the irreplaceable principal locus of our human identity. Other identifying qualities drawn from experience or development do not and cannot supersede that locus in priority or importance in understanding and describing our humanness as image bearers of God.
I suggest the following working definition of man to enable us to think biblically as we engage Scripture and culture. Humankind was created in the image of God, and this unique creation included the bestowal of some of God’s divine attributes (Gen 1:26–28, 5:1). These attributes do not make man God or a god but uniquely separate him from the rest of creation. Infants have these attributes in essence, and nurturing develops this essence in addition to developing the child’s physical being. Man was also given delegated authority over God’s creation
Bearing God’s image means that man and woman were created with a correspondence to God, an affinity with God. Mankind will always seek the transcendent, not merely to shield himself from the evils of life, not as merely an “opium of the people” as Marx and Lenin believed, not because of some unreal idea perpetuated by the Enlightenment, and not from a primitive, evolutionary survival instinct or a psychological primitive need or misfire, but because we are all created in God’s image.
This image consists of at least righteousness; holiness; right relationship with and true understanding of God, man, and the rest of creation; sacredness of all human life; otherwise choice (libertarian free will and the ability to act contra-instinctually); a sense of justness (now often evidenced by humans’ quest to justify self); moral and spiritual consciousness; extraordinary rationality (including self-awareness and intricate abstractional ability); relational complexity (need to love and be loved involving more than being instinctually relational); compassionate and merciful dominion (ability to exercise delegated authority); creation of other image bearers (procreation); redeemability; ability to exercise trust (seen within the Trinity and essential to all higher-level relationships); and creative ability (e.g., ability to transform matter into wealth for survival, pleasure, or beauty as seen in creation and creative production beyond necessities in the Garden).[1]
While some of these are similar to the attributes of angels and animals created by God but not in His image, others are either essentially dissimilar or dissimilar by an unattainable degree.[2] Essentially dissimilar attributes are, therefore, undeniably the direct creation of God (e.g., not a product of Darwinian descent). Some attributes that angels do not possess include redeemability, relational complexity, and procreating image-bearers. Also, angels may not possess creative ability or have it in the same degree and complexity as man, at least as far as we know. Animals do not possess those attributes, and they also do not have righteousness; a true understanding of God, man, and creation; a sense of justice; morals; rationality; spiritual consciousness; compassion; as well as libertarian and contra-instinctual choice, which, although, a significant force, it operates under God’s sovereign rule.[3] Although man was created in God’s image, man sinned (Gen 3:1–6), and the image of God in man was changed. The following seeks to explain this change.
The narrow sense of the image of God includes righteousness, holiness, and a right relationship with God. These attributes of the image did not remain in any sense after the fall of man (Rom 3:10–18). To restore those that were lost, God would have to recreate them through a redemptive and creative act, which He now offers through grace-enabled faith in Jesus Christ (John 3:1-8; 2 Cor 5:17; Col 3:9–10).
The broader sense of the image of God includes the rest of the attributes that were not destroyed in the fall and, therefore, still exist in man (Gen 9:6; 1 Cor 11:7; Jas 3:9). However, these attributes are severely corrupted and beyond human repair. They do, however, function at a lower level than before the fall of man.
In the attributes that remain, we still imitate God, albeit in a very diminished and distorted way. For example, in the area of cognition, Alvin Plantinga reminds us, “We resemble God not just in being persons, who can think and feel, who have aims and intentions, who form beliefs and act on those beliefs, and the like; we resemble God more particularly in being able to know and understand something of ourselves, our world, and God himself.”[4] Now, this cognitive ability is corrupted, not totally reliable, and can be used for evil, but it is still real. The same can be said of the other remaining attributes. Therefore, fallen man still bears the image diminutively and correspondingly manifests the attributes of the image. Redemption in Christ is the only path to complete restoration of the image of God (John 3:16; 2 Cor 5:17).
Being created in the image of God distinguishes man from the animal world. Man shares some physical characteristics with the animal world since the same Creator made both, and animals and man’s physicality were made from the Earth. Similar to man, animals exhibit social skills, but they are instinctual and much less sophisticated. Man is volitional, rational, moral, spiritual, and in authority over God’s creation. This essential difference is not based on instinct but because he has been created in the image of God; therefore, man is essentially different than the animals, not merely in degree but in kind.
There is simply an unbridgeable chasm between the truth of man’s lofty creation and the Darwinist’s view of man as merely the unintended product of natural forces. The Darwinist makes man another cog in the entirely natural world without distinctive and intrinsic sacred value, purpose, or goals above that of an ant.[5] The best that Darwinism can do is to proclaim that man possesses compatible moral freedom, which makes him morally responsible but incapable of choosing among various possibilities so that he can originate a new (non-determined) sequence of events. Although from a biblical perspective, man started in this lofty position of being created in the image of God, when man and woman chose to act on the temptation Satan proposed, they fell and became sinners, not merely in practice, but their very nature became corrupted. The image of God was not eradicated, thereby reducing humans to animals, but the image was marred and corrupted, making them incapable of experiencing their intended relationship with God and rightly fulfilling their assignment from God.
This first temptation involved two parts. The first was to trust someone else and, therefore, distrust God, which is the nature of all temptations even to this present hour. The second was to disbelieve God’s warning about death by accepting the serpent’s deception “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5, italics added). The serpent’s temptation was the same that he fell for, which arose from within him, misusing the gift of free will and bringing sin into God’s universe (Ezek. 28:15). The essence of Lucifer’s sin was the belief that he could have an independent existence from God and that godhood is achievable. That is also the essence of his temptation of Adam and Eve and every person since their fall.
Now, subsequent to the fall, there is not only the potential to believe such deception and be tempted, but there is also the driving predisposition to believe it. Therefore, the desire to prove and demonstrate that man is not only godlike; he is his own god. Science and its worldview of evolutionary naturalism have proven to be the most systematized and plausible argument for this view yet to be devised. Therefore, countless people will live eternally separated from God because they fell for Satan’s great lie.
[1]Matter becomes a resource when it comes in contact with humans; before such creative contact it is just raw matter.
[2] Essentially Dissimilar Things:
Two things can have dissimilarities and be the same, whereas essential dissimilarities between them means they can only be similar; they cannot be the same. For example, you and I can both be humans (same beings), even though we may be dissimilar in various ways; we still have humanness, created in the image of God. In contrast, a chimpanzee can be similar to a human (some abilities and physical characteristics), but a chimpanzee cannot be a human being because we are essentially dissimilar; they are not created in the image of God.
[3] See “Compatible and Libertarian Freedom” on my blog.
[4] Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 4.
[5] This ultimate meaning is not assuaged by relying on a compatibilist definition of moral freedom, which only results in defining determinism in a way that includes responsibility. Every actuality of origination (ability of man as the efficient cause to create a new sequence of future events) and choice is lost. For a fuller explanation and contrast of libertarianism and compatibilism, see “Compatible and Libertarian Freedom” on my blog.