What Does the Image of God Mean?

Summary and Link

Intro:

There is much talk and wondering about what it means for one to be in the image of God. Fr. Stephen De Young expresses a view that I see truth in and believe to be correct. Below I summarize the article in my own words, give a few of my comments, and the link the article.

Summary:

Seeing the image of God as being any sort of advanced faculty doesn’t work because animals have many of these and people (especially towards the beginning and end of life) lose them. Pagans had an idol, the “image of god,” which was placed in their temples after their creation and the spirit of that god was thought to breathe into it. Genesis is the reversal of this and humans are supposed to act like God in his temple (the garden). Image is the capacity to do God’s works and likeness is the doing of those works. Christ is the fullness of the image and likeness of God in humanity because he is both God and human. Because of Christ, human beings can receive God through the holy spirit in themselves and can now do the works of God, being conformed to the likeness of Christ.

Comments:

Given this view, even though humans have fallen, we are still in the image of God. That image has been tainted, but it is there. The degree to which we are like God, that likeness category, is off. This maintains human dignity in all ways. Given this view, every human is made in the image of God—there are none who are more so made that way and none who are less. Animals cannot be in the image of God, neither can robots, because they don’t do the things that humans do by virtue of their creation and telos.

Article:

https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/wholecounsel/2018/06/19/man-as-the-image-of-god-in-reverse/