IMAGE
IMAGINE, IMAGINATION 453
is the prominent and prevailing sense of the rhristian dootrine that Christ is tlie Kevelation or Image of God. Tliis is the central teaching of the Incarnation. But in the few places wliere the word ' image ' or its equivalents is used in this conne.iion by the writers of the NT Epistles, it is employed in support of a special doctrine of Christ's essential divine personality. In this respect it stands ou the same plane as the title 4 vl6s, ' the Son,' used so widely throughout the NT writings, and 6 Xiyoj in the J ohannine passages.
Notice (I) that in the Hebrews passage, where Christ as u!6s is the subject of the assertion, the other terms supplement and complete the idea of His divine Sonship. To say that He who is the Son is the ' ell'ulgence of God's glory ' and ' the very image or impress of his substance,' is not only to reassert the Sonship, but to add to it the idea of ' likeness.' It affirms community of nature with the Katlier in the same way as wlien He is called ' the Hon oi God.' It thus strengthens the expression of Christ's place in the Godliead by allirming at once His likeness to God and yet His personal distinctness, for how can any one be spoken of as ' the image' of himself?
Further, note (2) how this term ' image' as used of the pre-e.\istent Christ, echoes, like i X070S, a form of older or pre-Christian speech. EiKuf and awaiijaiyfxa are both applied to the ' Wisdom ' of Old Testament literature, e.f/. in Wis 7^ 'For she is the "brightness" of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the " imaue " of his goodness.' XapaK-rrip is applied by I'hilo to the Logos ; so also tUuv, as where he says the Logos is eUiiv Si' 08 0 koojio^ iorifxiovpyetTo. It is probable, therefore, that the writer of the Fourth Gospel, the writer ' to the Hebrews,' and St. Paul were all drawing on ancient terms, common to the Jewi.sli Alexandrian schools, whicli had been applied in pre-(-'liristian thought to a personilied divine attribute. The NT writers are in these passages rescuing these terms to describe their Master's Person and glory. Judaizing Gnosticism had employed some of these expressions to uphold tlie doctrine of a graduated hierarchy of divine manifestation, more especially that of a secondary or representative divine being alongside of the supreme and invisible God, — a notion which, when applied to the Person of Christ, became afterwards the Arian heresy. The apostolic writers ajiply these terms 6 XAyot, i] eUuv, and the like, to their Lord in a way litted to bring out what is true in tlieni and to repudiate what is false ; — conspicuously, so as to repel the notion of inferiority in the second member of the divine Trinitj'.
Note (3) how this is clenched by the fact that in the context of the three passages Jn l'■^ Col 1">-", and He 1"' the sjiecial function of creating and upholiling the universe is asjcribed to Christ under His titles of Word, Image, and Son respectively. The kind of Creatorship so predicated of Him is not that of a mere inslnimcnt or artificer in the formation of tlie world, but tliat of One ' by whom, in whom, ami for whom' nil things are maile, and through whom they subsist. This implies the assertion of His true and absolute Godhead. It was evidently meant so to do. For there is no more direct and successful method of allirming that Christ is God than to ascribe to Him the making and governing of all things in the supreme form wliiih tlie a.scription takes in these passages.
Something remains to be .said of a lossible con- nexion between these two facts noted by biblical theology, viz. that 'man is made in the divine image,' and that ' Christ is,' in the supremo sense, 'the Image of God.' The older dogmatic was wont to distinguish the two, by saying that the
divine image in man was accidcntalis compared with that Godlikeness which belonged to the eternal Son as Imago substantialis. But what Scripture teaches of their connexion can be briefly stated. It has two distinct lines — one referring to the original creation of man, the other to his redemption.
Man is represented in Scripture as the crown or goal of that earthly creation of which the Eternal Word is the Author. He who is the ' Image of the Invisible God ' is also declared to be the ' Firstborn or First-begotten of all creation ' (Col 1'°), i.e. the absolute heir and sovereign Lord of all things. There is thus a propriety in hold- ing man to be a copy of the Logos. But there is no express Scripture for the assertion that man was created in the likeness of the eternal Son. On the contrary, it is always the image or likeness of God that is spoken of in this connexion. No doulit, it is implied that the Logos or Image of God is He ' in whom and for whom ' man was created. But it would be a misreading of these passages to take them as athrming that man was created after the likeness of the Son, and not of tlie Father or of the Holy Spirit. Everywhere Scripture represents man as created after the image of the Elohim, or of the Godhead. Man is said to be ' the image and glory of God,' not of Christ alone.