What Does it Mean that we are Made in God’s Image?

The human soul uniquely reflects the spiritual nature of the triune God, that is, the capacity for reasoning and moral deliberation. Being made in his image, we can only find truth and morality if we love God.

In the fall, most of our desire as his image bearers to seek God was lost. The soul remains, but it is corrupted. In Jesus, we have the exempla of the uncorrupted image of God. Only he can enable us by his Spirit to seek after and love God.

The highest expression of God’s image is not in our physical or functional attributes but in our moral likeness to God. This is demonstrated in Jesus – whose key uniqueness was not his biology but his character.

Every element of creation was designed to bring glory to God through Adam. Creation is like a musical instrument sitting there waiting for someone to come and play it. Image bearing is thus bound up in relationality – how we relate to God and creation in a way that glorifies God.

There are therefore different degrees of image bearing. Christians bear the image of God more distinctly, since they have the mind of Christ and are being transformed into his likeness. Christians are in this world only provisional in our likeness to God, which will be made complete on the last day.

Andrew Leslie.

What is a Soul?

Historically (since Plato) the body has been viewed as a temporary, morally suspect place where our souls dwell. Material reality is a mere shadow of true reality.

More recently the soul is seen as a figment of our imagination. There is only a physical reality of chemical reactions going on in our brains.

So what does the Bible teach us about the human soul?

The soul is the locus of the intellect and the will, reason and desire, mind and heart. But these faculties are dependent on the operations of the body for their function.

The proper object of the mind is truth, the proper object of the will is goodness. The fall distorts our perception of truth and goodness but we retain a remnant of these faculties.

Our human nature is a composite integrity of both soul and body. The greatest state of human integrity is both body and soul.

Therefore separation of body and soul (ie. death) is something not good. It’s a result of the curse of God on sin. The temporary state of separation of soul to be with Christ and body in the grave is actually a lingering effect of the curse. It’s something that remains unresolved until the final resurrection.

Human nature by its very design is a mediation between spiritual and physical – because we have both body and soul, we are uniquely equipped to be God’s regents on earth as a visible image of the invisible God.

Andrew Leslie

God’s Existence is Clear, but Humans Can’t Work Him Out

Summary of Book 1, Chapter 4 of The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin

Whilst men know God, their knowledge of him is based upon their own impression of what they would like him to be, rather than how he wishes to be known, and therefore even if they try to please God, really they are only pleasing themselves.

The Psalms attest to the foolishness of claiming there is no God. This is not a denial of God alone, but a denial of our instinctive knowledge of the divine. We see this exposed when this fool faces some calamity and cries out to God.

An apology for the knowledge of God:

1. The order and beauty of creation, it’s logic and rightness
2. The wonder of the human body, which is a shadow of a divine creator, an intelligent designer.  “From the mouths of babes you have ordained praise.” (Ps 8:2) In the complexity of the human body, an infant proclaims the praises of God as it takes its first breath. To say that the human body is an mere product of accident and evolution is ignoring the truth staring at you in the face.
3. The human soul. There are many activities that are distinctly human which go far beyond the actions of the human body. Humans measure and contemplate the action of the stars. Humans recall the past and imagine the future. These are surely divine attributes that we have been endowed with.

Creation does not create itself. God is necessarily eternal. This leads us to ask – what was it that led God to establish creation in the first place? His own goodness. If this is true, then nothing more is required of him in terms of revelation in order to be owed our devotion and love and worship.

Given this goodness, we also see God’s justice. Any judgment that is manifest in front of us reflects God’s hatred of injustice. Any crime left unpunished necessitates a judgment in reserve – the coming judgment to reconcile all things as they rightly deserve.

It is quite straight forward to trace out the existence of God: through his creating works. It is not as though through creation we can work out the details of his essence, but we merely that we might contemplate his majesty and goodness and thus be awed at him as we look at his works. This means every person is without excuse.

Not only this but we see the incompleteness of this creation in its brokenness and so desire a new creation where everything is made right.

Man in all his intellect has failed without exception to accurately contemplate the divine. This is testified to by the many false religions that exist and have existed throughout time. Even the most renowned and god-fearing philosophers fail in this regard when they come up with some error. This demonstrates  that God cannot be known in his fulness with any accuracy through the contemplation of the human mind. And yet his works leave us without excuse as to his existence and worthiness of our worship.

Key passages: Romans 1 – people are without excuse, Ephesians 2 – they were lost without God, John 4 – the Samaritans worshipped what they did not know, Psalm 145 – David’s reflection on Creation, Acts 17 – the conclusion of man’s seeking after God is “an unknown god.”