Anthropology
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
The question that lies at the heart of the doctrine of man is one that has been pondered for ages. The question is simply, “What is man?” Job raised it long ago, asking, “What is man that You make so much of him, that You should set Your heart on him?” (Job 7:17). The Psalmist asked it more than once. We read it in Psalm 144:3: “O Lord, what is man that You take knowledge of him?”
Perchance most famously we read of it in Psalm 8: “What is man that You are mindful of him and the son of man that You care for him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor” (vv. 4–5).
Creation of God
A beginning point in considering the question is the Bible’s witness that God created human life. Scripture’s basic premise is not that humans gradually evolved from other life forms but that we are the direct creation of God. So our point of beginning in thinking about the doctrine of man is to confess that in the beginning God who created the heavens and the earth later said, “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). That is exactly what God did according to Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.”
In His image
Of all the living creatures God created only humans are said to have been made in His image and likeness. We are the part of creation that most resembles God. The obvious question is: What does it mean that we are in God’s “image” and “likeness”? These two terms do not suggest some difference in meaning between image and likeness. Rather by putting both terms together the two words serve to intensify or stress in a strong way that some correspondence exists between God and human beings.
We humans in some way uniquely reflect God in ways the beasts of the field, birds of the air and fish of the sea do not. We use modern photography to capture images of scenes and people. The images are not the scenes or people themselves but mirror them. We humans reflect something that is like God but we are not in possession of His divine attributes or perfections.
One-way street
We might go further to say this likeness to God is a one-way street. We cannot accurately analyze a human being in order to reason out what God is like, given we bear His image. That would amount to making God after our image and likeness. Rather the correspondence moves from God to us. We discover what God is like from what He has chosen to reveal about Himself, then seek to understand what that tells us about ourselves. We are created in His image and not the other way around. However, having been sullied by the fall of man we are imperfect reflections of what God is like.
In His full and perfect humanness Christ alone is the supreme representation of God. The Bible attests that Christ is the very image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15) thus Jesus could say with total accuracy, “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
Next week we will look more closely at ways that we are in the image and likeness of God.
Editor’s Note — Jerry Batson is a retired Alabama Baptist pastor who also has served as associate dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and professor of several schools of religion during his career.
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