Glorious and Depraved (2): Mankind Before the Fall (Part One)

Any biblical anthropology must recognize humans as they were before they sinned and the changes that occurred in them after they sinned.

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make adam (man) in our image, and according to our likeness, and let them have dominion…²⁷ So God created ha adam (the man) in His image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:26,27)

Adam (ah·dahm´, אָדָ֛ם) is the Hebrew word for “man” and the name of the first man, Adam. But when God speaks of making man in his likeness and image, He speaks of “them” having dominion, and He creates “them” male and female, so He is thinking of adam or man collectively.

Because we know from the rest of Scripture that God does not have a physical image (Colossians 1:16; 1 Timothy 1:17; Hebrews 11:27; John 1:18), the image He speaks of must be spiritual, for lack of a better word. And what does God’s image look like in this context, that is, who is God? God is a creator, who has wisdom (Proverbs 3:29), power (Jeremiah 10:12), emotion (Genesis 1:31), and choice (Revelation 4:11). God is a ruler, who has authority (Romans 13:1,2), justice (Psalm 119:172), and goodness (Psalm 119:68). God is righteous, holy, and fair (Ephesians 4:24).

Consequently, humans, made in the image of God, are also intellectual, thinking and imagining beings, who feel powerful emotions like anger, love, joy, etc., have the ability to make choices based in those intellectual and emotional aspects, and are capable of ruling and creating under God as His vice-regents.  Before the fall we were also characterized by holiness or righteousness.

But we also, unlike God, do have physical bodies.

Yahweh Elohim formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being [nephesh, soul]. (Genesis 2:7)

It is our souls, then, the nephesh, that bear the image of God, breathed out from Him (Genesis 6:17 and 7:15 call it the ruach [spirit] of life) into our soil-derived bodies. The nephesh (soul) or ruach (spirit) within our physical bodies reflects the image of God in the world, seeing it, tasting it, smelling it, interacting with it in tangible ways, our bodies communicating sensations to our minds of pleasure and pain.

In the created world, only humans are said to be created in God’s image, not animals (which are also, however, formed out of the ground, Genesis 2:19) or plants. What about beings who are not of this world, what we commonly call angels?