Topic 20: The Image of God

Both male and female are created in the image of God. This suggests that God’s intention for male and female is what the church says about the Trinity: “no one is before or after, greater or less than the other.”

Genesis 1: 26-28:  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 air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” [27] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. [28] 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 air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

Female and male, like the Trinity in whose image they are created, are partners-in-fellowship.

 (A) “[vs. 26] Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image'”:  The Persons of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are “equal in glory, coeternal in majesty … no one is before or after, greater or less than the other; but all three persons are in themselves, coeternal and coequal; and so we must worship the Trinity in unity and the one God in three persons” (Athanasian Creed).

(B) “[vs. 26] Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image ..'”: The Hebrew term here is adam, the form of which is the generic term for humanity.   By the term “man” is meant both male and female human beings, as Scripture defines them in Genesis 5:1-2 (NIV): “This is the written account of Adam’s line.  When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.  He created them male and female, and blessed them.  And when they were created, he called them ‘man’.”  The term “man” here refers not to the male gender, but to humankind, both female and male.

(C) “[vs. 26] Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image‘”: “… man ..” equals “humanity.” Humanity is created in the image of God.  By implication, aspects included in the image are:

(1) both male and female are created in the image of God (“… in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”; note the pairing); woman is not created in the image of the male, but of God;

(2) distinctions (1:27b [“male and female he created them”] explains 1:27a [“in the image of God he created him”]);

(3) equal responsibility within the created order (“let them have dominion…”; “… said to them, ‘Be fruitful …’”);

(4) equal function/position within the created order (“let them have dominion over the fish of the sea … and over every creeping thing …”);

(5) parity, partnership: both are created simultaneously (“male and female he created them”); the text, at the least, suggests parity, not priority or secondary derivation.

(D) “[vs. 26] …Let us make man in our image“: The nature of the Godhead is Persons-in-fellowship where “no one is before or after, greater or less than the other”; for humanity to be in the image of God, then, suggests both male and female within God’s created order are beings-in-fellowship, as male and female, both equal (“no one is before or after, greater or less than the other”), mutually dependent and singularly independent and jointly interdependent.

◆ “…the image has to do with spiritual qualities – features that correspond and relate to the Creator … This equality is a spiritual equality of man and woman before God” (“Women in the Church,” study document of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations, September 1985, pg. 19).

(E) The text suggests, contrary to the CTCR suggestion, that the image is also a “material equality” lived out in history and time in concrete relations.  The two are to be “fruitful and multiply;” the two are to “have dominion” over the created order.  Woman is “his equal before the Creator” and also his equal in creation.

◆ “Man was woman’s head from the first moment of her creation, but after the fall the will to self-assertion distorts this relationship into domination and/or independence” (CTCR-WIC, page 24).

(A) In Genesis One there is no suggestion of superordination or subordination or superiority or inferiority in the relationship between male and female.

(B) “[vs 26]  … let them have dominion …”: The only reference to dominance (and by inference, subordination) is that of humankind having “dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28).  The suggestion is that humanity is to exercise this dominion as beings-in-fellowship, in partnership (“… let them…”).

(C) This understanding sheds interpretive light on 1 Corinthians 11:11-12:  “Nevertheless, in the Lord” — that is, as in relationship to each other and in faith toward the mutually interdependent Trinity — “woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man so man is now born of woman.”

(D) These beings-in-fellowship, where neither “is before or after, greater or less,” live, as God intends, in mutual relationship and work and have mutual dominion in the historical, created order.

(E) Woman does not receive her identity and purpose from her relationship to man, but to her Creator.

(G)  “[vs 26] … Let them have dominion … over all the earth …”: ◆ “Man and woman are equal in having the same relationship to God and to nature [emphasis added]” (CTCR-WIC, page 20).

(H) The conclusion, apparently drawn by the CTCR-WIC document, is that female-male equality is both spiritual (in the realm of grace: “the same relationship to God”) and natural (in the created order: “the same relationship …to nature”). Yet this conclusion about equality in nature is consistently ignored throughout the document.

(I) Genesis 1 offers no support for an “order of creation” theology.