The “image of God” is tossed around wantonly today as an ethical catchall for human dignity. Paradoxically, though the use of the “image of God” is loose today it is at the same time truncated in meaning. This was not always the case. A deprived understanding of nature and grace, and Adam’s fall from innocence, among Evangelical Protestants is part of the problem. The historic Protestant tradition can help.
Nature and Grace
In speaking of nature and grace, there are many terms which must be defined in order to understand what the image of God is and especially how it relates to salvation. Many fail to distinguish the various senses in which a single term may be used, leading to sloppy reasoning, reading, and faulty conclusions.
First and foremost, we must understand what nature is. Following Aristotle, Franciscus Junius states, “what else is nature than the principle of motion and rest, ordained by God?” Bernard Wuellner clarifies this Aristotelian definition of nature: it is “the essence of a thing considered as the intrinsic and primary principle of activity and of receptivity, of motion and of rest; the root of predetermined activity and passivity in a material substance.”
Nature being the principle of motion and rest simply means that all things have a particular end toward which they are inwardly driven. “Motion” is not simply locomotion (though this is included); qualitative changes (a kitten becoming a cat, a seed growing into a plant, etc.) must be kept in mind. Motion and rest are naturally ordered toward a particular end, the good of the thing. In other words, nature is not defined just by what it is, but by what it is ordered to. There is also a distinction between nature in itself and nature in relation to the fall. Paul notes that all humanity is by nature the children of wrath (Eph. 2:3). This refers to nature as corrupted by sin which is disordered.
Like nature, there are various ways in which grace can be defined. John Davenant defined grace in three ways. The first and most common usage is seen in Ephesians 2:5 and Romans 3:24, where grace is used to denote “the gratuitous act of the Divine will accepting man in Christ, and mercifully pardoning his sins.” This usage of grace is clearly in relation to sin, as it entails pardon for sin and man being accepted due to Christ and despite sin.
The second way grace is defined is in reference to inherent grace, as the apostle Paul uses it in Ephesians 3:7, which Davenant defines as “all those habitual gifts which God infuses for the sanctification of the soul. So faith, love, and all virtues and salutary endowments are called graces.” Finally, Davenant notes that grace can be used to denote the “actual assistance from God, whereby the regenerate, after having received habitual grace, are strengthened to perform good works, and to persevere in faith and godliness.”
When discussing grace as it relates the state of man prior to the fall, the second and third definition will be most pertinent because it can be spoken of without relation to sin and in contrast with nature. Though grace is used in contrast with nature, it does not clash with nature. When God bestows grace on the creature, nature is elevated but not abrogated. Grace may transcend nature, but it is also fitting to nature.
Man in Innocency
After creating man, God initiated a covenant with him which required perfect and perpetual obedience for remaining in his state of innocency. Richard Baxter summarizes the nature of this covenant:
This Law of Nature bound Adam to perfect Devotedness to God as his Owner, and perfect gratitude to God as his Antecedent Benefactor, and to perfect Obedience to God as his Ruler, and to perfect Love to God as his ultimate most amiable End. And this perfect Obedience was to be perpetual.
Being put in this state of innocency with the mandate of perfect and perpetual obedience, God equipped Adam with all that was necessary to fulfill the stipulations of the covenant. This is where the principles of nature and grace begin to click.
God created man as a body endowed with soul, a spiritual, invisible, indivisible, immortal, and rational “personal entity which is capable and inclined to think.” Man wasn’t just any creature, but a rational animal possessing an intellect and will. By the intellect man is able to comprehend and judge matters, possessing a conscience and perception of things. Through the will man exercises a free faculty by which he can love or hate. These faculties belong to man naturally in a constitutive sense; they are the composition of his being and set him apart from the rest of creation. But this is not all that set man apart.
The Scriptures testify that man was created upright (Eccl. 7:29), endowed with original righteousness. This gift is called natural in a perfective sense because it entails perfections due to man as a debt of nature, for had God not endowed this rational creature with this gift he could not be called good. This original righteousness possessed by Adam was sufficient for continuance in his state of innocency, allowing Adam to expect perpetual blessing from God. Yet by his nature and the perfections created with it he could not expect eternal life in communion with God. Something more was required.
Not only did God create Adam as a rational creature with perfective natural gifts, but out of love for Adam he gave him gifts above nature. God looked on man and, to quote Junius,
He contemplated nature, on which He would bestow grace; the natural man, on whom He would bestow, by His own decree, supernatural gifts. Was it not, indeed, a special act of the will, to create man, and another special act of the will to endow Him with supernatural gifts?
God created Adam not only with natural gifts, but he superadded onto him gifts of grace which, though beyond his natural capacities, were fitting to Adam’s nature. With these supernatural gifts Adam had the ability to not only remain in the state of innocency, but to reach his eternal calling in attaining unconditional immortality and heavenly life by perfect obedience to the covenant of works. These supernatural gifts given to Adam were faith, hope, and love: faith in God his Father through trusting in the covenant promise made to him of eternal bliss, hope springing forth from his elicited desire for that which God had obligated himself to give Adam upon his meeting of the conditions of the covenant, and love for God grounded in the very being of God and out of gratitude for his creation and all the gifts given to him. The divine law which Adam was to obey possesses a supernatural principle and thus Adam in pure nature and by his own strength could not attain this without “a divine communication and operation of grace.”
Image of God
Man was not only made good, but made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26-27). The distinction between man’s nature and the natural and supernatural gifts added to him yields two ways we can think of the image of God. The essential image of God refers to man’s rational soul. The gifts that adorn and perfect man’s nature can be understood as the relative image of God. Junius employs an astronomical illustration to explain this:
That you may more easily understand the subject, let us use the illustration of the sun and moon, to explain the divine image. The moon has an essential image, and one which is relative and accidental. As its image is essential, it has its own light in some degree; yet it would be darkened, unless it should look towards the sun; as its image is relative, it has light borrowed from the sun, while it is looked upon by it, and looks to it. So, there was, in man, a two-fold relation of the image of God, even from the creation. For man had his own essential light fixed in the soul, which shines as the image of God among created things; he had also a relative light, as he was looked upon by God, and looked back to God. The essential image is natural; the relative image was, so to speak, supernatural, for it looked to God, through nature joined to grace, by a peculiar and free motion of the will; God looked upon it, of grace, (for, what action of God towards us is natural?)
The distinction between the essential and relative image is clear: the former is of the essence of man while the latter is this image in consideration of gifts which perfect and elevate this nature. John Owen also speaks of the need for “supernatural endowments of grace” to be superadded to the natural faculties of the soul which “was the image of God in Adam, and was wrought in Christ by the Holy Spirit.” That which constituted this relative image was the indwelling Spirit, who superadded these gifts onto the nature of Adam to raise his image above nature and toward God. While possession of the essential image alone sufficiently distinguishes man from the other animals, it is the relative image full of grace which truly distinguishes man as the crowning jewel of creation.
Man’s Fall
Adam’s immortality was conditional on his perfect and perpetual obedience to God’s published law in the covenant of works. Being endowed with concreated natural gifts and possessing superadded supernatural gifts, Adam had all that he needed for compliance. Yet being mutable and possessing a free will, Adam was able to err. Upon the transgression of God’s law via the breaking of the covenant, those gifts which Adam possessed were either corrupted or stripped from him entirely and his guilt imputed to his natural progeny. Post-fall, man no longer was a friend of God, but an enemy.
Considering man’s post-fall nature, Calvin commends the formula of the fathers and scholastics well when he states that by the fall “the natural gifts were corrupted in man through sin, but that his supernatural gifts were stripped from him.” This follows, for it is the case that fallen man may perform the cardinal virtues concreated in man but is unable to perform the perfection of these virtues while the supernatural gifts are absent. Thus, what was concreated in Adam was corrupted and original righteousness extinguished.
Due to the corruption of these concreated gifts, man no longer possesses earthly blessing. His natural knowledge of God, though still able to discern that there is a God who demands obedience, cannot know God in a way sufficient for continual earthly blessing. Though fallen man may receive temporal blessing from God for rightly ordered outward discipline, this blessing is insufficient to guarantee that sort of earthly blessing granted to Adam. The supernatural gifts are also lost, Adam being “deprived of grace by God as the singular principle of grace.”
After the fall the essential image of God, being constitutive of man and perfected by concreated gifts, remained in man but corrupted by sin. If man had been deprived of the essential (natural) image he would no longer be man. Yet fallen, corrupted man is unable to exercise his distinctive, essential faculties as intended. The relative (supernatural) image of God, original righteousness, is lost. Put another way, the perfection of the image is lost while the natural virtues remain in corrupted form. Man is still man, above other creatures in natural capacity, but he has lost his true dignity.
Restoration
The fall of man into sin was only the beginning. Though man lost the supernatural virtue of hope, God gave a glimmer of hope in his curse of the serpent who caused the fall by the promise of the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15). Fundamental principles of God’s saving work is not only contained in the forensic act of justification where man by faith receives pardon of sin and Christ’s imputed righteousness, but also in the restoration of the image of God. By grace, that which has been lost is restored through the operations of the Spirit on the soul of man. Petrus Van Mastricht outlines man’s fourfold state,
And as man is subject to a fourfold state, so also the image of God, considered in each of these states, renders man conspicuous in a fourfold way. First, if you should consider it in the state of integrity, the whole image, you will have man most excellent. Second, if you should consider it in the state of the fall, the corrupt image, you will have man most miserable. Third, if you should consider it in the state of grace, the restored image, you will have man most richly adorned.Finally, fourth, if you should consider it in the state of glory, the image perfect in every part, you will have man most glorious.
We’ve already covered the first two states; it is the last two states of grace and glory that remain.
In the state of grace, God through the operation of the Holy Spirit begins his healing of man through an infusion of a new principle of life, reviving his dead nature and restoring that which was corrupted and lost. Through the grace of regeneration, what is corrupted is healed and what is lost is restored, with grace not only perfecting but elevating man’s nature. That which is infused into man are the virtues of faith, hope, and love, those superadded gifts given to Adam which he had lost by his sin. In salvation, man not only undergoes internal renovation but, in being given faith, he is able to savingly believe on Christ. With the restoration of the relative image of God man receives again those supernatural adorning qualities and is able to live a life of holiness before the Lord.
Man with his restored image being empowered unto holy living still must live in a fallen world. Though he is richly adorned by his restoration, he is also greatly assaulted by the presence of sin and thus is continuously called to be conformed to the image of Christ his God and mediator (Rom. 8:29, 2 Cor. 3:18, Eph. 4:13). The covenant of works knew of no substitute or mediator, yet the blessing of the covenant of grace lies in Christ the substitute who in his mercy deigns to make intercession for his saints and plead their case before his Father (Heb. 7:25). While man may rejoice that Christ pleads his case, he groans in pain at the presence of indwelling sin and his duty to mortify through the Spirit (Rom. 7:15-17, 8:13). This is where the supernatural virtue of hope looks toward the state of glory.
In the state of glory, man’s eschatological hope is granted and he is finally able to enter a state of eternal bliss through the immediate vision of God. In the state of grace the image of God was most richly adorned but under the assault of sin, yet in the state of glory man receives full rest and the image is made perfect in every part. Man will no longer struggle against the flesh, for his resurrected body shall be glorious and arrayed in all splendor (1 Cor. 15:42-44). This is the supernatural end of man finally achieved and initially promised to Adam, as Á Brakel remarks,
Had he not sinned, man would not have died, but would rather have ascended into heaven with body and soul… God thus created Adam—and in him human nature in all its dimensions, as well as all men as created in him—in such a glorious and immortal manner. He skillfully prepared his body for him and promised him eternal life.
It was not in the covenant of works that man was made to partake of this, but through the covenant of grace by the power of the mediator that God pardoned sin and granted life. This is the image of God fully renewed. The image of God is not just a slogan to denote human dignity, but the reality of man’s destiny.
Image: The Garden of Eden (1828), Thomas Cole. Wikimedia Commons.
