IMAGE OF GOD
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IMAGE OF GOD
V, 5). Thus the Roman Catholic Church starts in its theory from the present state of man, as resulting from the fall, in regard to which state communion with God is something siiperadded. Some Eomanist theologians distinguish between original yMs/jce and original holiness (communion with God), maintaining the former to be the attribute of pure nature as it came from the hand of the Creator, and holding the latter to be exclusively the gift of superadded and supernatural grace. The evangelical Church, on the contrary, by considering the image of God as belonging to Adam's true nature, as he came from the hands of his Creator, obtains a doctrine at once more clear, more simple, and more true (Apol. i, 17 ; comp. Fonn. Concord, sol. decl. i, 10). It considers habitual communion with God as a state natural to man, and belonging to his normal organization before the fall, not as a special particular gilt. It maintains, further, that this original image of God was lost by the faU of man.
"But in the papal anthropology, man, as he comes from God, is imperfect. He is not created sinful in- deed, but neither is he created holy. To use the papal phrase, he is created inpiiris natiiralihus ; without posi- tive righteousness and without positive unrighteousness. The body is full of natural carnal propensities, and tends downwards. The soul, as rational and immortal, tends upwards. But there is no harmony between the two by creaiion. An act subsequent to that of creation, and additional to it, is necessary to bring this harmony about ; and this is that act by which the gift of original righteousness is superadded to the gifts of creation. In and by this act the higher part is strengthened to ac- quire and maintain dominion over the lower, and a pos- itive perfection is imparted to human nature that was previously lacking in it. Original righteousness is thus, in reference to the created and natural characteristics of man, a sitpernaturcd gift.
"The second peculiaritj' in the papal anthropology consists in the tenet that cqMstasy involves the loss of a supernatural, but not of a natural rjift. By the act of transgression, human nature lapses back into that con- dition of conflict between the flesh and the spirit in whicli it was created. In losing its original righteous- ness, therefore, it loses nothing with which it was en- dowed by the creative act, but only that superadded gift which was bestowed subsequently to this. The su- premacy of the higher over the lower part is lost by the Adamic transgression, and the two parts of man, the flesh and the spirit, fall into theiir primitive and natural antagonism again. Original righteousness being a su- pernatural gift, original sin is the loss of it, and, in reali- tv, the restoration of man to the state in which he was created" (Shedd, Hist, of Doct. ii, 146).
The " image," or likeness of God, in which man was made, has, by some, been assigned exclusively to the body; by others simply to the soul; others, again, have found its essence in the circumstance of his having ^^ do- minion" over the other creatures. As to the body, it is not necessary to take up any large space to prove that in no instance can that literally bear the image of God, that is, be "like" God. Descant ever so much or ever so poetically upon man's upright and noble form, this has no more likeness to God than a prone or reptile one : God is incorporeal, and has no bodily shape to be the antitype of anything material. Not more tenable is the notion that the image of God in man consisted in the "dominion" which -was granted to him over this lower world. Limited dominion may, it is true, be an image of large and absolute dominion ; but man is not said to have been made in the image of God's dominion, which is accident merely, for, before anj' creatures existed, God himself could have no dominion but in the image and likeness of God himself, of something which constitutes his nature. Still further, man, accortUng to the histon,', was evidently made in the image of God, in order to his having dominion, as the Hebrew comiective particle ('■ and") imports. He who was to have dominiou must
necessarily be made before he could be invested with it, and therefore dominion was consequent to his exist- ing in the " image" and " likeness" of God, and could not be that image itself.
The attempts which have been made to fix upon some one essential quality in which to place that " image" of God in which man was created, are not only uncalled for by any scriptural requirement, but are even contradicted by various parts of Scripture, from which alone we must derive our information on this subject. It is in vain to say that this "image" must be something essential to human nature, something only which cannot be lost. We shall, it is true, find that revelation places it in what is essential to human nature ; but that it should com- prehend nothing else, or one quality onl}', has no proof or reason; and we are, in fact, taught that it comprises also what is not essential to human nature, and what may be lost and be regained. As to both, the evidence of Scripture is explicit.