What Does “Created in God’s Image” Mean?

 

I am having a lot of fun with William Lane Craig! I hope that he is having as much fun with me as I am having with him! I noticed the above video in which he tries to explain what it means in the book of Genesis that God made man “in his own image”. The transcript begins as follows:

“In my book, In Quest of the Historical Adam, I talk about what it means to be created in God’s image; and there are different interpretations of Genesis 1:26 and 27, when it says, ‘Let us make man in our image and likeness;’ and the stubborn fact of the matter is that Genesis doesn’t define what this phrase means. So this is a matter again for philosophical theology to speculate; you can’t answer it on the basis of biblical exegesis.”

He is wrong about that—again! The book of Genesis does explain exactly what it means to be created in the image of God:

Genesis 5:

3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth:

The “image and likeness” of Seth to Adam was no different than the “image and likeness” of Adam to God. And in the New Testament we have the following affirmation:

Luke 3:

38 Which [Cainan] was the son of Enos, which [Enos] was the son of Seth, which [Seth] was the son of Adam, which [Adam] was the son of God.

In other words, Adam was “the son of God” no differently than Seth was the son of Adam, or Enos was the son of Seth, or Cainan was the son of Enos etc. All animate beings, including plants and animals, reproduce offspring in their own image and likeness, or “after their own kind,” as the scripture puts it:

Genesis 1:

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

• • •

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

“After its kind” is another way of saying, “in its own image and likeness”. All animate beings, including plants, animals, and mankind, produce their offspring in their own “image and likeness;” and according to Genesis 1:26-27; Luke 3:38; God is no different. Adam was “the son of God” (Luke 3:38) by virtue of having been created in the “image and likeness” of God—as Seth was in the “image” of Adam (Genesis 1:26-27)—no difference. His real problem is that he doesn’t know his Bible properly. He is so enamored by, and infatuated with, and engrossed in his “philosophy,” that he doesn’t take the Bible seriously enough. Then he concludes his remarks as follows:

“And it seems to me that the best understanding of being made in the image and likeness of God is that just as God is personal, so we too are persons, and that differentiates us from all the rest of the animal and plant kingdoms, and enables us to have a personal relationship with God. Now what does it mean to be personal? Well that means to have capacities like self-consciousness, intentionality, moral agency, rationality, and so forth; and so I would see these properties as aspects of the image of God in which we are created.”

He has got that one badly wrong as well. He would be surprised to know that animals have as much “personhood” (as he has described it) as we do. They have all the capacities of “self-consciousness,” “intentionality,” “moral agency,” and “rationality” that we do. They are just not able to communicate with us in the same way that we can communicate with each other; and their intelligence is not as advanced. Apart from that, they have all the attributes of “personhood” that he has described. They have “self-consciousness,” they have “intentionality,” they even have “moral agency” (can tell right from wrong), and they have “rationality”. They can reason within themselves to determine the most correct action to take in a given situation. My advice to him is to ditch his “philosophy,” and take the Bible seriously—followed by the canonized scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.