Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 19:1 (NA 1968)
Article: The Image Of God In Man
Author: D. J. A. Clines

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TynBul 19:1 (1968) p. 53

The Image Of God In Man

D. J. A. Clines

Tyndale Old Testament Lecture, 1967

*The author’s irregular footnote numbering has been retained at the beginning of each footnote to acknowledge how it appeared in print.

The Old Testament references to the doctrine of the image of God in man are tantalizing in their brevity and scarcity; we find only the fundamental sentence in Genesis 1:26 ‘Let us make men in our image after our likeness’, a further reference to man’s creation ‘in the likeness of God’ in Genesis 5:2, and a final statement in Genesis 9:6: ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.’ Yet we become aware, in reading these early chapters of Genesis and in studying the history of the interpretation of these passages, that the importance of the doctrine is out of all proportion to the laconic treatment it receives in the Old Testament.1

One essential meaning of the statement that man was created ‘in the image of God’ is plain: it is that man is in some way and in some degree like God. Even if the similarity between man and God could not be defined more precisely, the significance of this statement of the nature of man for the understanding of biblical thought could not be over-emphasized. Man is the one godlike creature in all the created order. His nature is not understood if he is viewed merely as the most highly developed of the animals, with whom he shares the earth, nor is it perceived if he is seen as an infinitesimal being dwarfed by the enormous magnitude of the universe. By the doctrine of the image of God, Genesis affirms the dignity and worth of man, and elevates all men—not just kings or nobles—to the highest status conceivable, short of complete divinization.

There is perhaps in the doctrine of the ‘image’ a slight hint of the limitation of the status of mankind, in that the image is not itself the thing it represents and that the copy must in some

TynBul 19:1 (1968) p. 54

respects be unlike its original.2 Yet this limiting aspect of biblical anthropology is hardly to be recognized as an important element in the ‘image’ doctrine, which itself points unequivocally to the dignity and godlikeness of man. It is the context of the ‘image’ doctrine that conveys the complementary view of human nature: that man is ‘made’ in the image of God, that is, that he is God’s creature, subject to the overlordship of his Maker. G...

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