The text of Genesis 1, quite specifically connects existing as God’s image-bearers with the dominion humans possess in creation. After affirming his intention to make humans in his image, God addresses both the man and woman saying: “. . . have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28). Because God created humans in his image they share in God’s dominion over the primal creation and in his complete freedom. This freedom exists in two horizons: coram Deo (before the face of God) and coram mundo (before the face of the world).
Coram Deo, although primal humans are free from the law in the manner that Christians would later be free from the law in Christ, such freedom does not mean arbitrary or destructive lawlessness. As the Formula of Concord correctly asserts, the law is God’s eternal will for his creation (lex aeterna) both before and after the Fall. Nevertheless, in the state of integrity, God made human beings in the divine image. Therefore, human creatures wholly desired to perform the law. The law was not contrary to their desires and therefore they did not need to place their desires in subordination to the law since their wills exactly mirrored God’s law. Rules are only positive demands when they are not followed or if we do not desire to follow them. If my expectation is for my children to clean their room, and they do it habitually on their own, then there is no reason to make it a family rule that children must clean their rooms each week. Moreover, when children spontaneously clean their rooms, they are simply doing what they desire and are not subjecting their will to any higher authority than what they naturally desire. In this scenario, they would clean their rooms out of perfect freedom, because in cleaning they would simply be doing what they wanted to do without any external authority telling them they must or coercing them to do so.
Because humans share in God’s dominion and are free from the condemnation of the law in the primal state, they also possess a share in God’s rest as exemplified by the primal Sabbath. Freedom from the law and its condemnation means rest from its demands relentlessly pressing down on humanity and demanding a response. In the primal week, much as in the work of Christ, work led to rest and rest enabled work. Regarding the primal week, God’s work in creation actualized the seventh day of rest. Because God completed his works he could rest and bid his people enter into that rest. Although a literal day in the primal week, the Sabbath as described by Genesis also has a typological meaning as the text itself indicates. Genesis 2 gives the Sabbath has no boundaries since the language of evening and morning is intentionally missing, unlike with the other days. Hence, the Sabbath becomes emblematic of the rest that the people of God enter into. Christians enter this rest when they receive by grace all that God has given them (Heb. 4), namely, the whole of creation along with God’s own self-donating presence with them. This is true in the old creation within the narrative of the seven days. However, it is also true in the new creation when Christ’s work gives rest to the conscience of Christians suffering under sin and the condemnation of the law: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).
This divine rest coram Deo also allows for the work of vocation coram mundo. It should not go unnoticed that the days are counted in Genesis 1 as starting not in the morning, but in the evening. The rest of the night therefore comes before the work of the day. Similarly, Jesus’s day of rest in the tomb completes his week (Holy Saturday), but he rises on the first day of the week (Easter Sunday), thereby inaugurating a new creational week. Jesus’s rest therefore enables the works of the people of God in the new creational week. Therefore, God made human in his image, rest followed by work describes the pattern God designed humans to follow. Rest granted by God’s grace enables human works. Freedom from the condemnation of the law enables one’s ability to use the law to its proper end in the kingdom of the world (coram mundo) in the service of vocation.
Coram mundo, divinely granted freedom is the ability to have dominion on the earth. This dominion consists in the ability to make decisions within one’s God-assigned vocation. Through these vocations, God wills his human creatures to subdue the earth and govern in accordance with his law and mandate. In the horizon of coram Deo, the imago Dei has been obliterated after the Fall, we are now under sin and incorrigibly desire to violate God’s law in our unbelief and enthusiasm. Nevertheless, as Luther notes in his Disputation Concerning Man, coram mundo, the Fall confirmed, not destroyed, the mandate to wisely reign in creation. Hence, the image does not appear to be wholly obliterated regarding the faculties necessary for earthly vocation, as Genesis 9:6 seems to indirectly indicate. Not only does God still bid us to reign wisely as his image-bearers, but he will hold us accountable for our decisions. In connection with the continued validity of human vocation in the kingdom of the world, Luther describes human reason as “something divine.” He is not suggesting in the mode of Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson that there is a divine spark in humans. Rather, Luther correctly holds that when used properly human reason coram mundo mirrors the divine when it governs creation in accordance with the divine plan.
By contrast, when human reason attempts to designate what God’s Word can promise and not promise, Luther describes it as “the Devil’s whore.” This is not because he rejects applying human reason to theological problems (otherwise, the Reformer’s late scholastic disputations on the hypostatic union and the Trinity would make little sense). Rather, the possibilities of the present age and the present creation should never hem in God’s Word. We properly employ human reason when it functions as a means of fulfilling the law, thereby anticipating the possibilities of the present world and managing it accordingly. We wrongly use reason when it seeks to limit God’s possibilities, which transcend the possibilities of the present age and call new things into existence (Rom. 4:17).
Hence, in summary, regarding what Luther calls those things that are “above us,” we are not creatures of free will and reason, but creatures of desire and will. Unbelief or belief motivate and shape humans. These emerge in us out of either sin or the pre-lapsarian original righteousness given in creation or the alien righteousness given in redemption. Regarding that which is “below us,” we possess limited freedom and rationality to weigh the good and the bad and make wiser, or more foolish, decisions regarding our life in the kingdom of the world. This also defines how humans acquire knowledge. Coram Deo, we are bound to God’s written and auditory words that we must believe on the basis of God’s own self-demonstration, which he has opened our hearts and minds to see. Coram mundo, we believe on the basis of reasonable, testable evidence, or self-evident truth in order to make judgments that will both best serve our well-being and that of our neighbors.
From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).
Image from “Images of God,” Grace Lutheran Church, Denison, Texas, June 7, 2020, accessed May 18, 2023, https://www.glcdenison.org/images-of-god-2.