(1.) When God is called "the Father of spirits," a likeness is certainly intimated between man and God in the spi7-ituality of their nature. This is also implied in the striking argument of Paul with the Athenians: " Forasmuch, then, as we are the offspring of (iod, we ought not to think that tlie godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone graven by art, and man's device;" plainly referring to the idolatrous statues by which God was represented among heathens. If likeness to God in man consisted in bodily shape, this would not have been an argument against human representations of the De- ity ; but it imports, as Howe well expresses it, that " we are to understand that our resemblance to him, as we are his offspring, lies in some higher, more noble, and more excellent thing, of which there can be no figure, as who can tell how to give the figure or image of a thought, or of the mind or thinking power?" In spirit- uality, and consequently immateriality, this image of God in man, then, in the first particular, consists.
(2.) The sentiment expressed in Wisdom ii, 23, is ev- idence that, in the opinion of the ancient Jews, the im- age of God in man comprised immortality also : " For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity ;" and though other crea- tures, and even the body of man, were made capable of immortality, and at least the material human frame, whatever we may think of the case of animals, would have escaped death, had not sin entered the world, yet, without running into the absurdity of the " natural im- mortality" of the human soul, that essence must have been constituted immortal in a high and peculiar sense, which has ever retained its prerogative of eternal dura- tion amidst the universal death, not only of animals, but of the bodies of all human beings. See Ijimoutai.ity.
(3.) To these correspondences we are to add that of intellectual jjowers, and M-e have what divines have call- ed, in perfect accordance with the Scriptures, the natu- ral image of God in his creature, which is essential and ineffaceable. He was made capable of hiowledge, and he was endowed with liberty of ^vill.
(4.) This natural image of God, in which man was created, was the foundation of that moral image by which also he was distinguished. Unless he had been a spir- itual, knowmg, and wilUng being, he would have been wholly incapable of moral qualities. That he had such qualities eminently, and that in them consisted the im- age of God, as well as in the natural attributes just stated, we have also the express testimony of Scripture. "Lo this onl}' have I fomid, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions." There is also an express allusion to the moral image of God, in which man was first created, in Col. iii, 10, "And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him ;" and in Eph. iv, 24, "I'ut on the new man, which after God is created in rigliteousness and true holiness." This also may be finally argued from the satisfaction with which the his- torian of the creation represents the Creator as viewing
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the works of his hands " as very good." This is pro- nounced with reference to each individually as well as to the whole : " And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." But as to man, this goodness must necessarily imply moral as well as physical qualities. Without them he would have been imperfect as man ; and, had they existed in him, in their first exercises, perverted and sinfid, he must have been an exception, and could not have been pronounced " very good." — Watson, Imtilutes, ii, 9-13.
From this jioint of view we maj^ arrive at a correct apprehension of the idea of the divine image. God, as an absolute spirit, whose essential element of life is love, cannot but manifest himself in an eternal object of this love, of the same essence with himself. This is the Son, the eternal, absolute, immanent image of God. But as God, by virtue of his unfathomable, overflowing love, calls also forth (or creates) other beings, to whom he Avills to impart his bUssfid life by the establishing of his kingdom, he, the tj'pe of all perfection, cannot create them but after his own image, as he sees it from all eter- nity in the Son. This created image of God is man in his primitive condition. jMan was the real object of God's creative activity, as is seen in God's special de- cision with regard to his creation (Gen.i,2G; comp.Psa, viii), and mankind are called to be the real popidation of his kingdom. The whole universe (and even in some sense the angels, Heb, i, 14) -was only created for man, which is the reason why he was not created till all other things were ready for him. The faculties which other creatures present only in a limited, disconnected manner, were in him (as the (iiKpoKorrfiOc) united into a harmonious whole; moreover, in him alone (as the fii- KpoSreog}, of all creatures, was the personal spiritual life of God mirrored ; and by direct inspiration of the divine breath of life, the spirit was infused, by which he be- came a spiritual, self-conscious, free, and individual soul. Man was created God's image in his individualism. As God is not an abstract, but a real spirit, full of the living powers which created the world, so the image of God in man embraced his whole nature. It extended also to the body as the outward image, the dwelling and organ of the soul. INIan was created the image of God in the totality of his being. But, while man was thus made the image of God to himself, he was also made the im- age of God to the world before which he stands as the representative of God, a relation by which the mastery over the outer world ascribed to him in Scripture (Gen. i, 28-30) is shown to have an inner foundation. Thus far the image of God was innate in man and inaliena- ble. This innate state, however, bespoke a correspond- ing habitiud state. Inasmuch as God the Spirit is love, man was destined to a life of love, and was at once brought into it by communion with God. From the heart, however, as the centre of individual life, the pow- er of love manifests itself in the direction of knowledge as truth and wisdom (objective and subjective direc- tions), and in the direction of the will, as freedom and sanctity (formal and material directions), yet so that these spiritual conditions in their original working pro- duced a state partly of mitried innocence and partly of unfolding development. To the body, the image of God procured immortality {posite non mori), as the out- ward dissolution of the forces (death) is but the result of an inward dissolution of the principle of life. With regard to the world, however, man obtained by it a pow- er, in consequence of which the world becomes subject to him by love, and not by force ; and by his knowledge of its nature (Gen. ii, 19, 20), he is enabled to carry out God's wLU in it.