More on the Image of God
A listener to our podcast from a few weeks ago had an astute comment that compels me to make a brief answer.
He wanted to delve further into the idea that the image of God refers finally God’s physical, tangible image in the Person of Christ incarnate., which is essentially my view. That is, when God made man in His image, He made what might be called a prototype of Himself. Thus God’s image certainly includes righteousness, as our Lutheran Confessions emphasize, but it cannot be limited to it, as some insist. The image of God as being inclusive also of the visible manifestation of Himself in Christ is something I believe to have been embedded in the creation of Adam, as I discussed on the podcast and in my article referenced there. This listener says he’s “confounded when thinking of the Nicene Creed's mention that [Christ] for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man,” and wonders if that has not only to do with the fact that “God became man for us men and our salvation” but also that “God incarnate was the full manifestation of his image as well.”
To which I’d reply simply, yes, but add this by way of reminder: to say that Christ was incarnate is not quite the same thing as to say that he was made man. Those two statements are not redundant, because “man” here has to do especially with His humiliation, inasmuch as that term “man” is preeminently a reference to fallen man as he finds himself now. That is, since man fell, he no longer shares the glory of God, but is as a result of his sin mutable and mortal, in the sense that St. Paul indicates when he declares “this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (I Cor. 15:53). So it is when we confess this in the Creed with the words “and was made man” that we are genuflecting. So therefore the Creed, emphasizing that aspect of our humanity, namely our mortality etc., also declares that Christ did this “for our salvation.” On the matter of His joining himself to the substance of our flesh, however, we might well say, or opine, that He would have done this irrespective of whether we had fallen into sin or not (though admittedly that’s all in the realm of conjecture).
Our listener writes, that “it seems odd to speak of God taking on flesh that is not an aspect of who He is but at the same time that man in the flesh is made in the physical likeness of God.” What’s odd about that, it seems to me, is that God did not have a physical likeness at all until the incarnation. But He did have, for lack of a better term, a blueprint. He had, as it were, a destination in mind. And so He made man. Man’s subsequent fall into sin, far from thwarting God’s plan, wondrously occasioned His even fuller manifestation of Himself, inasmuch as now His image could —and must — take the form of His divine selflessness and love that is manifest in the cross. The full display and manifestation of His glory is now seen there, as Pilate providentially and unwittingly declared, “Behold the Man!”
I appreciate having been given the opportunity to get into this subject some more.