Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 07:2 (Fall 2025)
Article: The Christological Arc Of Man’s Original Goodness
Author: Michael Wilkinson

Eikon 7.2 (Fall 2025) p. 66

The Christological Arc Of Man’s Original Goodness

Michael Wilkinson

Michael A. Wilkinson (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the author of Crowned with Glory and Honor: A Chalcedonian Anthropology (Lexham Academic, 2024). He has served as a pastor-elder in Texas, the director of a national campus ministry at Harvard Law School, and an adjunct professor of theology in Montana. Dr. Wilkinson’s teaching, writing, and speaking ministries currently focus on applying Scripture to all of life by doing theology “on the Bible’s own terms,” especially in the areas of Trinity, Christology, anthropology, and theological method. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Trinity Law School and maintains a private law practice. He and his wife are members of Emmaus Road Church in Bozeman, Montana.

Eikon 7.2 (Fall 2025) p. 67

It has never been more important for the church to know and speak the truth in love regarding the original goodness of humanity. No previous generation has pushed up against the basic questions of human identity and dignity with so many confused and contradictory responses. In fact, a tragic irony marks our society’s point in history: we have never been so focused on humanity yet so wrong about it. And that holds a two-fold significance for the church. We need a robust understanding of what Scripture teaches about humanity for the sake of both our worship and our witness.

More specifically, our society (and many around the world) is witnessing the consequences of rejecting God’s goodness in the imago Dei and replacing it with an imago hominis of our own creation (see Rom 1:22). Such a humanistic worldview, especially in the last few decades, has brought our culture to the end of a long trajectory of dehumanization. There are many reasons for that. But underlying them all is a loss of the truth and significance that God created man in his image as the climax of making all things “very good” (Gen 1:1–31).

In this article, we will look briefly at the current anthropological confusion and then consider how the doctrine of man’s original goodness sets us on the road of anthropological clarity.

Anthropology At The Crossroads

What does it mean to be human? Is humanity basically good or bad? Is being human fixed or changeable? Is humanity

Eikon 7.2 (Fall 2025) p. 68

progressing or declining? Can one individual or group be more or less human than others? Is being human really that much different than being a mere animal? Should we press beyond human being itself?

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