Genesis 1:26-27 speaks of humans as made in the image and likeness of God. The meaning of this phrase has been hotly contested in the history of Christian thought. However, we can immediately reject is the interpretation first proposed by St. Irenaeus that “likeness” and “image” are distinct realities.
Early Interpretations of the Image of God
According to Irenaeus, the former refers to natural human faculties, whereas the latter refers to a special grace God gave to pre-lapsarian humans. This grace allowed humans to eventually participate in the divine life (i.e., a precursor of the later concept of theosis). As a result of the Fall, humans retain the image, but have lost the likeness.1 Modern biblical scholarship has shown that the use of the terms “image” and “likeness” in tandem with each other is simply an example of the literary poetical parallelism common to the Old Testament and much of ANE western Semitic literature. Therefore, “image” and “likeness” possess an identical meaning.2
We can also easily reject St. Augustine’s3 and St. Thomas Aquinas’s4 claim that the mental faculties of memory, intellect, and will reflect the Trinity. Not only is there no exegetical basis for this claim, but the Bible knows nothing of Greek faculty psychology.5
The Divine Image as Divine Righteousness
Contrary to Augustine and Aquinas, the Book of Concord correctly interprets the divine image as the divine righteousness lost in the fall.6 Exegesis of Colossians 3:10 and Ephesians 4:24 supports the confessional Lutheran position. In both these passages, St. Paul writes that the image of God can be renewed by sanctification. This, then, strongly implies that the image consists of divine righteousness communicated by sanctification in Christ. Biblical “righteousness” (tzedek, dikiosune) is not a static quality that inheres in humans like a color. Rather, tzedek means adherence to a standard, which is also reflected the LXX and New Testament’s use of dikiosune.
In the Bible, God reveals his righteous adherence to the standard of his law and promise in a dynamic and relational manner. Biblical righteousness in human life entails keeping God’s law and receiving grace through the various dimensions of created existence in faith. Being a righteous person means to be in correct relationship with God and other creatures.7 Hence, the capacity to become righteous lies in being a communicative agent that mirrors God’s righteous communicative agency. The image of God and its relationship to communicative agency expresses itself in three dimensions that we will observe below: dominion, glory, and relationality….
Righteousness and Relationality
The third expression of the divine righteousness in humans that constitutes the imago Dei is right relationality. The Triune God of the Bible subsists as an eternal event of relationality in the begetting of the Son/Word and the spiration of the Spirit. As a result, God is best described analogically as a relational-linguistic agent who created his image-bearers to be relationally linguistic agents. Martin Luther suggests that human linguistic agency reflects the divine image when he writes: “There is no mightier or noblier work of man than speech.”8 Language is the basis of moral agency and is inherently relational in its nature.
Additionally, language is the basis of morality because only through language can humans enter into covenants with one another. In these covenants, humans either affirm or deny past states of affairs Additionally, relational righteousness allows humans to make promises or demands on others that bind future actions. Reformed theologian Kevin Vanhoozer calls this “the covenant of discourse.”9
Within this discursive covenant, humans are moral agents responsible for their words and our actions based on those words. As George Steiner notes, ultimately God faithfulness underwrites the truthfulness of our language.10 Indeed, we are made in God’s image through his promise. This image allows us to trust our perceptions of reality and linguistic constructions.
- Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, 3.18, 5.6,10; ANF, 1:445-446, 531-532, 536-537. Also see: Eric Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 212. ↩︎
- William Schniedewind, A Social History of Hebrew: Its Origins Through the Rabbinic Period (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 43. ↩︎
- Augustine, On the Trinity, 10.12; NPNFa, 3:143. ↩︎
- ST, I, q. 93, art. 1-9; FDP, 1:469-477. ↩︎
- See discussion in: Thomas Hardy Leahey, A History of Psychology: From Antiquity to Modernity (London: Routledge, 2017), 31-118. ↩︎
- See Ap 2; CT, 109. Lectures on Genesis (1535-1545); LW 1:62-63, 1:162. ↩︎
- Charles Lee Irons, The Righteousness of God: A Lexical Examination of the Covenant-faithfulness Interpretation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). ↩︎
- Preface to the Psalter (1528); LW 35:254. See similar comments in: Elert, The Christian Ethos, 25. ↩︎
- Vanhoozer, Is There Meaning in the Text?, 204, 434. ↩︎
- See argument in: George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). ↩︎
From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).
Cover Image from John Morrison “Imago Dei and the Redefining of Humanity,” Reflections from John, October 22, 2019, accessed March 20, 2025, https://reflectionsfromjohn.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/imago-dei-and-the-redefining-of-humanity/. Other images from Cheryl Magnus, “Adam and Eve,” Lutheran Reporter, May 24, 2021, accessed March 20, 2025, https://reporter.lcms.org/2021/finnish-bishop-charged-over-biblical-teaching-on-human-sexuality/adam-and-eve/; The 60th Convention of the North Dakota District,” 2025, accessed March 20, 2025, http://nodaklcms.org/blog/the-60th-convention-of-the-north-Lakota-district/; Pastor Reeder’s Blog, accessed March 20, 2025, https://pastorreeder.wordpress.com/.