Creation and the image of God

This week's questions

What is the work of creation? The work of creation is, God's making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good.

Question 9

How did God create man? God created man male and female, after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.

Question 10

Question 8 said that God executes his decrees in creation and providence (last week). This week is the first: Question 9 speaks of all things, Question 10 of man among them.

Of nothing, by his word, all very good

The first proof text of Question 9 is the whole first chapter of Genesis, where God speaks and again and again "it was so" (Genesis 1:7); as the psalm sings, "He spoke, and it came to be" (Psalm 33:9). The next receives it as a confession of faith: "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible" (Hebrews 11:3). No material lay ready beside God; he made all things to be where nothing was. The church has called this creation out of nothing.

Creation is the work of the triune God. The Westminster Confession says that it pleased God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost to make the world "for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness" WCF 4.1. Through the Son, the Word, all things were made (John 1:3), and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:2). And all that God made was very good (Genesis 1:31). So Paul, answering those who forbade marriage and foods, writes, "For every creation of God is good, and nothing that is received with thanksgiving should be rejected" (1 Timothy 4:4). Matter and the body are not evil. The Belgic Confession of the continental Reformed churches says that God gave every creature "its being, shape, form, and several offices to serve its Creator" Belgic Confession, Art. 12.

After his own image

The first proof text of Question 10 is Genesis 1:26-28:

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Genesis 1:27

Male and female alike bear the image of God. What the image is, the other two proof texts show. Paul tells the Colossians that they "have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator" (Colossians 3:10), and the Ephesians that they were taught:

to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Ephesians 4:24

Question 10's three words, knowledge, righteousness and holiness, come from these two verses. What is renewed in Christ shows what was first given and then lost. The English minister Matthew Henry says of the first man, "His understanding saw Divine things clearly and truly; there were no errors or mistakes in his knowledge" Matthew Henry, and then mourns that image defaced. The Confession says man was "endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after his own image" WCF 4.2, and the continental churches' Heidelberg Catechism teaches that God made man "in righteousness and true holiness; that he might rightly know God his Creator, heartily love him, and live with him in eternal blessedness" Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 6.

Dominion is not a licence to plunder but a charge held under God. He put the man in Eden "to cultivate and keep it" (Genesis 2:15), and Psalm 8, which sings of our rule over the works of God's hands, begins and ends, "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!" (Psalm 8:1)

‘In the space of six days’ is read differently even within the Reformed churches. Many Reformed Christians read ordinary days, and many think the Westminster divines did. Others in the same churches hold the day-age, framework or analogical-day readings: the days as long ages, as a literary frame, or as God's work pictured in a human week. Augustine of Hippo did not read the days only as ordinary days Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, and some Presbyterian churches have studied the question and allowed more than one view. The Reformed Baptists' Second London Confession kept ‘in the space of six days’ 1689 Confession 4.1. Creation (Christian Doctrine) and Science and faith (Apologetics) set out these views and the questions science raises; see also Is Genesis history? and Do science and faith conflict?

The image itself is understood differently. The Reformed see it in knowledge, righteousness and holiness, lost in its fulness at the fall yet still present in some sense. So even after the flood the reason God gives for guarding human life is that "in His own image God has made mankind" (Genesis 9:6), and James warns that the tongue which blesses God curses those "made in God’s likeness" (James 3:9). Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, distinguished the image of God, in man as he was formed, from the likeness that comes by the Spirit, and taught that the Word, becoming flesh, restored the likeness so easily lost in Adam Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.6.1, 5.16.2. The Orthodox follow that distinction, speaking of a growth from image to likeness; the Catholic Church stresses the reason and freedom of the human person as God's image. The image of God and What is a human being? go further.

To ponder this week

How would it change the way you treat each person you meet this week to see God's image in them? Family, colleagues, strangers and the person you find hardest all bear that likeness. Pray this week for one person you find difficult, and prepare one good word for them.

Practice