Mankind is Created in God's Image

In Genesis 9:6, murder is forgiven because man is created in the image of God. In James 3:9, men are made after the likeness of God. 1 Corinthians 11:7 contains a reference to the image and glory of God. Even though we are sinners, we still contain the image of God.

2. Compare briefly the Image of God in the Pelagian, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed views.

A. Roman Catholic- Man was created of two distinct and diverse elements, soul and body. The soul was engaged in exercises of reason, conscious, and will. The body was engaged in corporeal impulses and desires. Those elements constitute the natural elements of God. The lower nature being physical, asserted itself against the higher nature, which was spiritual. The results of sin are too superficial and too frivolous to account for the data of scripture.

B. Lutheran- Man is created in the image of God, possessing wisdom, holiness, and righteousness. Since this was lost in the fall, so was the image of God lost.

C. Pelagian- Adam was created in a state of undetermined character, a rational free agent, and subject to mortality, that is death. The image of God consisted of man's rational free agency and there was a denial of any original righteousness. Since the fall only happened to one man, has no continuing effect on individuals born from Adam. There is no loss of the image of God, in view of the fact that we are all born in the same state Adam was. Since there is no such thing as a sinful nature, there is no loss of the image of God.

D. Reformed Views-

1. Older Approach- The image of God can be sub-divided into moral agency, moral excellence, and dominion. There is the intellectual nature, which has reason, conscious, and will. There is the moral nature, in which original righteousness was invested, and this has perfect harmony for all that constituted man, moral perfection, knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. Then, there is dominion.

2. Newer Approach- The image of God is something in itself, derived from God, and bestowed on man. All other views have attempted to find something in man that constitutes the image of God, however, the current reformed view says that man is the image of God. Since man is the image of God, the fall did not change this image.

3. Discuss the biblical teaching on the body and soul.

The body is involved in the whole corruption of man in sin. For, the body is an instrument unto sin. The death of the body, is the dissolution of the person as respect to the body. Man is body, but he is also spirit. This is the other aspect of his being. The body is dead without the spirit, for it is only when God breathed into man the breath of life that he became a living being. At death, the spirit returns to God, who made it. When that occurs, the spirit is incomplete without the body. The spirit longs to be clothed with the body. The spirit is the seed of the personality. There are two aspects of man, the physical and the pneumatical. These two aspects form one organic unit without disharmony or conflict.