2.1 The Old Testament

The imago Dei is only explicitly mentioned three times in the entire Old Testament (Gen 1:26–27; 5:1–3; 9:6). The latter two references clearly echo the first, which is the primary text. It comprises four declarations: (a) God’s statement: ‘Let us make humans betzalmenu kidmutenu’ (in our image, after our likeness, v. 26a); (b) God’s statement that humans shall rule over the animals (v. 26b); (c) God’s creation of humans betzalmo (in his image, v. 27a); (d) God’s creation of humans zakhar unqevah (as male and female, v. 27b), followed by divine blessing and the commandment to be fruitful, multiply, fill and subdue the earth, and have dominion over the animals (v. 28).

Interpreting the imago Dei in this context involves determining the nature of the human resemblance of God and, specifically, whether the human role and function vis-à-vis the rest of creation is the very essence of being created in God’s image or a consequence of it. A key question in this regard concerns the preposition ב in the phrase בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ (betzalmenu, in our image). It can be taken either as bet essentiae, implying that humans are created as the image of God, or as bet normae, indicating that humans are created according to the image of God (cf. Septuagint [LXX]: kat eikóna hēméteran; Jervell 1980: 492). This question cannot be resolved solely on grammatical grounds. Essentially, it revolves around whether ‘the image’ denotes something inherent to humans, suggesting that humans are themselves the image (whether due to human constitution or their function or role in the cosmos), or whether it denotes something about God and his manner of relating to creation, thereby defining the anthropological significance of betzalmenu as a certain ‘in-the-divine-image-ness’.

The account of human creation in 1:26–27 must be viewed within the broader context of Genesis 1. This highly stylized narrative depicts the construction of the cosmos over the six days of creation. For at least two generations, Old Testament scholarship has inclined towards interpreting Genesis 1, including ’the image’, in light of ancient Near Eastern parallels (Herring 2013: 192–195). This favours a functional interpretation, taking the image to mean the human task to represent God by exercising his royal dominion in and over creation. Hence, the directive in verse 28f. to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over the animals, etc. is understood as the very content of the imago Dei. Humans are the image of God insofar as they exercise this function. (For an in-depth discussion on biblical creation narratives, see Creation in the Old Testament.)

In recent scholarship, many have pointed out that Genesis depicts the creation of the world as the construction of a cosmic temple, culminating in the seventh day of Sabbath rest when God indwells his cosmos (Middleton 2005; Brown 2010). At the innermost part of the temple there was always a physical representation of the deity, typically in the form of an anthropomorphic image or statue. If the interpretation of Genesis 1 as a depiction of the world’s creation as God’s cosmic temple is valid, the implied reader of the text would have expected to find this image in it. The Hebrew word tzelem can mean both image and statue (Janowski 2002). Its usage referring to a deity statue in 2 Kgs 11:18 and other texts indicates that we should interpret the word similarly in Gen 1:26. This understanding is widely accepted among Old Testament scholars and should be preferred over interpreting tzelem based on tzel (shadow; Idel 2014: 103), which is supported neither by the context nor by any solid etymological arguments.

The text, then, portrays the created world as a cosmic temple for the Lord, where ‘the image’ serves as his representative, exercising his dominion, akin to how the king in ancient Near Eastern mythology acts as the deity’s representative and wields divine power.

Along these lines, Bernd Janowski has interpreted the human being as ‘the living statue of God’ (Janowski 2004), suggesting a kind of identity between the God, who speaks in first person plural, and the human being created in his image. This aligns with ancient Near Eastern royal ideology, where the king, as the image of the deity, does not just represent a (absent) god but rather embodies the god in the world, serving as ‘a body giving physical form to the deity’ (Janowski 2004: 190).

However, such an identification or quasi-identification of God and his human creature through the concept of imago Dei appears to be strongly contradicted by the prevalent ‘aniconism’ that characterizes the entire Old Testament (cf. Hendel 1997, terming this ‘transcendent anthropomorphism’). Not only is any form of cultic worship of created entities forbidden but even the mere depiction of any created being in a cultic setting is prohibited (Exod 20:4), as it embodies the essence of the idolatry opposed by the creation account of Genesis 1 (and the entire Old Testament). Therefore, it is noteworthy that there is no suggestion of any religious worship of the human being, as one might expect if the text supported the kind of divine–human identity that Janowski seems to propose.

Further, the term tzelem (image) is part of the double expression betzalmenu kidmutenu (in our image, after our likeness). Genesis uses the two terms (as well as the prepositions ‎ב and כ) interchangeably (Gen 5:1–3). This seems to contradict the interpretation that humans are portrayed as divine statues present within creation, since demut (likeness) is never used elsewhere in the Old Testament in reference to cultic images or statues, and since the term here is most likely an explanatory gloss that specifies the exact meaning of betzalmenu (Wenham 1987: 29).

One must therefore question whether an interpretation of Genesis 1 based on ancient Near Eastern parallel texts, which identifies human beings as the image (bet essentiae) and then identifies the image with the deity or the divine body, is able to capture how the biblical text makes use of the shared ancient Near Eastern temple symbolism. If, on the other hand, one understands the text as an attempt to articulate how the God of Israel relates to his creation in contrast to the beliefs held by the surrounding nations about their gods, the difference becomes clear. The point of the image is then not that human beings are embodiments of the deity, or other identity-interpretations which blur the boundary between Creator and creature or which make humans replace God in relation to the created order. Such interpretations run counter to the entire Old Testament and in particular to Genesis 1. Rather, the point is that God himself is present in his creation, and that this presence and divine proximity is mediated to the created order through human participation in his image. The human ‘in-the-divine-image-ness’, then, simply is this participation, which in Gen 9:6 is the basis of the special status or dignity expressed in the prohibition against shedding human blood.

If this is the case, the creation of humans betzalmenu does not imply that God through creation acquired an image he did not already possess. Rather, it suggests that God already had an image, according to which the human being was created, and in which humans in some way participate. This participation is the unique way in which humans relate to God. Consequently, humanity’s special status and task within the created order (dominion over the animals and the rest of creation, Gen 1:28) are not the content but a consequence of ‘the image’. Humans are installed as priests in the cosmic temple of creation, with the task of mediating God’s presence and rule to the entire created order. This task is to be carried out in accordance with ‘the image’ (bet normae), which is why the ethical–functional aspect is the prominent feature of Genesis’ unfolding of the implications of ‘the image’.

This understanding of the image appears to be the trend in the explicit references to the imago Dei in Second Temple Jewish literature (Kugler 2022 lists twenty-two explicit references to ‘the image’ outside of Philo, and 118 occurrences in Philo). Of particular interest for the later New Testament use of the concept of ‘the image’ is the ‘sapientialization’ evident in many of these texts. The clearest example is Wis 7:26, describing wisdom as an ‘image of God’s goodness’ (eikòn tēs agathótētos autou). Here, Wisdom is portrayed as an entity within God, serving as the mediator of creation and as a means of God’s presence in the created order (Collins 1998: 199–200). In Philo, this plays a crucial role in his ‘intermediary logos doctrine’, and he identifies logos with God’s eikōn in several instances. This identification functions in Philo as the exegetical argument to understand Logos as the pattern of the creation of both the human being and the cosmos (Cox 2009: 116–126; Dillon 1977: 158–161). Further, this identification is Philo’s basis for associating the intermediary figures mediating the God–human relations – of which he finds numerous examples in the Old Testament – with the divine logos (Segal 1990: 41–45, 54–55).

2.2 The New Testament

The concept of imago Dei is not very frequent in the New Testament either. It is explicitly mentioned only in 1 Cor 11:7; 15:49; 2 Cor 4:4; Rom 8:29; Col 1:15–16; Jas 3:9; and assumed in the allusions to Gen 1:26 by Eph 4:24, Heb 1:2, and possibly Phil 2:6.

At first glance, the most striking fact is that none of these texts are about the human creature, but are instead about Christology, soteriology, and ethics. They do not address anthropology (with the possible exception of 1 Cor 11:7) or human dignity, except for Jas 3:9, where creation in the image of God, possibly alluding to Gen 9:6, is the basis for the admonition against cursing a fellow human being.

3.1 The imago Dei and human constitution: mimetic understandings of human resemblance of God

3.2 Relational understandings of human resemblance of God: the imago Dei in Bonhoeffer and Barth

The point of speaking of the imago Dei as lost, both in Luther and Calvin and among those who think like them, is to deny that anything in human nature contributes to salvation or cooperates with God in justification. Moreover, it underscores the Pauline understanding of the image as Christ-conformity, brought forth by the Spirit.

However, it is fair to ask if there is any textual basis in Genesis for the assertion that ‘the image’ was lost due to sin, whether one interprets imago Dei as a direct anthropological term or as indicating human participation in God. Both Gen 5:1–3 and Gen 9:6 seem to exclude any talk of the loss of the image. Further, one can argue that the very idea of a universal human dignity encompassing all humans, including those in fallen state, as in Gen 9:6 and Jas 3:9 contradicts the idea of a lost image. It is also at least debatable whether the Reformers adequately addressed the restoration or renewal of the image of God in Christ as a true renewal of creation. If the created imago Dei solely refers to a completely lost original state, and if humanity in its present state is merely ‘material for God with regard to the coming form of life’ (WA 39/1.177.3–4), then the connection between God’s work as Creator and as Saviour seems to be blurred.

The last of these objections played a key role in what came to be known as the Flacian controversy (Ilić 2014), which can be seen as the clearest example of an apparent ambiguity within Lutheranism regarding human nature, imago Dei, and sin. It emerged from the so-called synergistic controversy and lasted from the Weimar Disputation (1560) until it was formally resolved with the Formula of Concord (1577). Flacius’ starting point was Luther’s teaching on the lost image and his understanding of sin as ‘the corruption of nature’ (corruptio naturae), a phrase found both in early writings such as Against Latomus (from 1521, WA 8.103–104), and in the The Smalcald Articles (from 1537, Dingel 2014: 746–749). Based on this, Flacius argued that original sin had simply replaced the imago Dei after the fall and constitutes the human nature of the sinner. Flacius had good reason to think so: while the Augsburg Confession does not directly use the term ‘nature’ to describe original sin, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession emphasizes that human nature itself is evil and can neither believe in God nor do his will (Dingel 2014: 250–265), a terminology also prominent elsewhere in Melanchthon.

The Formula of Concord attempts to untangle these threads by distinguishing between nature itself, which is good, and the corruption of nature, which is sinful (Dingel 2014: 1218–1227), arguing that otherwise one cannot maintain either the goodness of creation or the identity of humans under sin and humans under salvation. Nor can one confess that Christ assumed human nature if this were simply another term for original sin. However, the Formula of Concord explicitly upholds Luther’s understanding of the imago Dei as another term for the original righteousness that was completely lost in the fall (Dingel 2014: 1324–1325), and one might object that this understanding is difficult to reconcile both with the biblical text and with any notion of universal human dignity based on creation.

This objection is part of the background for the renewed interest in the imago Dei in the first half of the twentieth century, which led Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth to propose a relational understanding. According to Bonhoeffer, humans resemble God by being free. This freedom does not lie in human nature, but in the dependence on the fellow human that constitutes created humanity. It is a ‘being-free-for-the-other’, in which God as a free gift lets the God-Christ relationality be depicted in human relationality. Bonhoeffer terms this analogia relationis (Bonhoeffer 2007: 58–62.74).

Barth develops this original idea significantly in the third section of Church Dogmatics from 1945 onwards. Human ‘I-Thou existence’, that is, human relationality, reflects the trinitarian relationality in God. According to Barth, the created relation between man and woman is the original form of human relationality, and he understands the second part of the statement in Gen 1:26 (‘male and female he created them’) as a grammatical apposition to the statement of creation in the image and likeness of God (Barth 1945: 220).

The crucial point is that human relationality anticipates the covenant relation with God, for which human life is eternally determined. In this sense, says Barth, humans are ‘capable of covenant’ (Barth 1945: 267–268). One can ask whether Barth thereby introduces a created ‘point of contact’ for divine grace or a form of natural theology, as he had previously rejected it in Emil Brunner’s case. Brunner understood Barth that way (Brunner 1951: 123–131), but Barth himself did not. On the contrary, he held God’s revelation to be logically and ontologically prior to creation and insisted that the analogy between God and humans exists only in the revelatory use that God’s Word makes of human relationality. Hence, it is recognizable only through faith (Søes 2019: 108–113).

3.3 The imago Dei and (trans)formation: dynamic understandings of human resemblance of God

As seen above, the doctrine of imago Dei largely concerns how human beings can attain knowledge of God and participate in his saving grace. This is the most prominent theme throughout the history of theology, whether in the early church, in medieval scholasticism, in the Reformation, or in twentieth-century relational understandings.

The same applies to the various dynamic models that have gained influence in modernity, where ‘the image’ is understood as the goal or destiny of human life. A significant figure in the development of this understanding is the Renaissance humanist Pico della Mirandola, whose Oration on the Dignity of Man (written 1486) plays a crucial role. According to Pico, the human is a ‘creature of indeterminate image’ (indiscretae opus imaginis, section 18; Pico della Mirandola 2012: 116), that is, without fixed identity. Precisely by reflecting the imageless God, humans have the freedom to shape and form themselves. Thus, the image of God is the goal of this dynamic process of formation rather than the starting point.

Some 300 years later, this thought was further developed by the philosopher and theologian J. G. Herder, who understands the creation in the image of God as the guiding principle in a kind of ‘formation process towards humanity’. The underlying idea is that, unlike animals, humans are created in an unfinished state, which enables them to transcend their instincts and be spiritually guided by the divine image (Herder 1965a IV.6, 159–162; IX.5, 377–378). Therefore, the imago Dei guides and directs human life, though it will be fully reached only in a future existence of immortality. Thus, Gen 1:26 should be understood as a calling to become the image of God. Herder believes this process of formation – both in the history of the human race and in individual humans – to be driven by divine providence expressed in God’s ‘sacred laws of nature’, through which humans are summoned to bring forth all that is noble and excellent (Herder 1965b XV.1). Consequently, the imago Dei in Herder is closely tied to a high degree of developmental optimism concerning humanity and culture.

This approach is also adopted in liberal theology, as seen in the works of Friedrich Schleiermacher, for whom the image of God does not concern humanity’s original state but rather the goal of the ‘predisposition for God-consciousness’ inherent in every human being (Schleiermacher 1884: section 60.1, 309–311; section 61.1, 314–315). The christological affirmation that Jesus is the true image of God thus refers to his profound God-consciousness.

In the twentieth century, Wolfhart Pannenberg developed a comprehensive theological anthropology that, in crucial respects, builds upon and reworks important elements from Herder. Pannenberg agrees with Herder that the imago Dei is the goal and destiny of human life (Pannenberg 1979), yet still in the process of becoming, as it is ultimately an eschatological reality. Pannenberg also incorporates the fundamental Herderian idea that humans are created incomplete, characterized by instinctual reduction, and that human freedom and the uniquely human ‘openness to the world’ derive from this condition. This thought is elaborated in Pannenberg using the works of A. Gehlen and others. The distinct human object-awareness implies a religious dimension, because human existence is structured in such a way that the centre of human life lies outside itself (Pannenberg 1983: 57–71; see also Kelsey 2009, who develops this idea in a different way). It is an eccentric existence.

The similarity with God, implicit in the concept of imago Dei, is not a question of morality. Rather, it lies in human participation in God’s life, achieved by relinquishing one’s own centrality. Thus, it entails obedient submission to and self-distinction from God. However (and on this point Pannenberg differs from Herder; Søes 2019: 192–195), human formation does not occur by divine providence but solely through the eschatological in-break in history, which took place in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In him, the eschatological image of God is definitively anticipated (Pannenberg 1991: 250–266). Thus, conformity to this christological imago and human resemblance of God through participation in God’s life occur precisely when humans actively renounce the desire to be like God (Gen 3:5). Though Pannenberg emphasizes that humans are responsible subjects, it is not up to human striving to produce or actualize the Christ-conformity of the image-life. In fact, it consists precisely in renouncing the significance of one’s own striving.

4.1 Human nature and human dignity

As we have seen, the tradition from Irenaeus and Augustine understood human nature as a set of attributes inherent in the structure of created human existence. Following ancient philosophy, this natural endowment was seen as what distinguishes humans from animals and as the basis for unique human value and dignity. By referring to this as imago Dei, the tradition emphasized that it is precisely this human nature that enables humans to enter into relation with God. However, whether focusing on intellect, language, will, or morality, this raises the obvious question of whether human individuals with limited possession of these attributes, such as small children, the disabled, or the severely ill, are included in universal human dignity. This question also applies to modern proponents of this understanding. In response, some argue that not all of these human capacities need to be present in a single individual for them to be considered part of human nature. It is sufficient to possess some of them (Stenmark 2012). However, answers of this kind inevitably raise the question of when an individual is ‘human enough’ (i.e. possesses enough specifically human properties) to be worthy of dignity.

Relational interpretations of the imago Dei view the specifically human as something that comes to humans from outside, from God (Welz 2016: 33). Regarding human dignity, it means that human dignity must be understood as creatively posited by God with the fact of human existence. It is not dependent on the existence of a quality which humans possess. Rather, it is the presupposition for all qualities humans possess and the criterion of their exercise (Schwöbel 2006: 51).

This avoids the problem of whether individuals lacking certain human-defining attributes possess human dignity. However, relational interpretations and their claim that all humans have dignity by virtue of their relation to the Creator can be accused of being no more than theological postulates or an ‘unwarranted claim’ (Henriksen 2020) without empirical basis.

Dynamic understandings of the imago Dei as something that comes into being through a (trans)formational process do not claim that human dignity simply is an empirical reality. Rather, it consists in the notion that ‘God calls forth a distinctive awareness of ourselves as being more and other than what we actually are and do’ (Henriksen 2023: 110). Nonetheless, attributing dignity to fellow humans is a universal practice that can be examined phenomenologically. Ingolf U. Dalferth has pointed out that this ‘common practice with other human persons’ is itself a part of what is uniquely human, and that ‘this dignity is said to be inviolable just because its bearers can be, and often are, violated’ (Dalferth 2018: 82, 92, 98–100). Thus, it is a complex phenomenon where the human insistence on universal dignity is upheld precisely in the face of its denial. Dalferth is quite critical of how the concept of dignity has historically been used in a particularistic and elitist manner. Nevertheless, he maintains that the theological concept of imago Dei serves as a symbol in this context, sustaining this duality and interpreting it in light of both creation and Christology.

4.2 Theological anthropology and the ecological crisis

In a now classic essay, Lynn White argues that the Judaeo-Christian doctrine of creation is the historical basis for the conception of nature that has led the world into ecological crisis: ‘Especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen’ (White 1967: 1205). This is primarily due to the doctrine of imago Dei, which has separated humans from the rest of nature. For White, this was about environmental issues, but his argument is often applied to contemporary human-induced climate changes. Since the turn of the millennium, the concept of ‘the Anthropocene’ has gained traction as a term to describe the significant impact humans have on Earth, including on universal ecosystems, global warming and its many destructive consequences for life on the planet, the loss of biodiversity, and the rapid decline in the number of biological species. By using the term Anthropocene, critics not only address specific behaviours and the economic and political structures leading to the climate crisis, but also question the underlying philosophical assumptions.

Since White’s essay, many have sought to articulate a non-anthropocentric theological view of nature by pointing to an ambiguity both in scripture and in the theological tradition. While the predominant tendency in Christian theology undoubtedly has been to emphasize the distinction between humanity and the rest of creation, and to understand both creation and salvation in terms of God’s relation to humans, the Bible also contains passages that stress the interconnectedness between humanity and nature far more strongly. These texts have never been forgotten within the tradition and serve as a valuable resource for a contemporary, ecologically-responsible theology (Santmire 1985).

One of the interpretations of the imago Dei that has had significant influence in theological discussions about humanity’s role in nature in relation to the climate crisis is Philip Hefner’s concept of the created co-creator (Hefner 1993: 213–275). Hefner maintains the unique status of humans but reinterprets it by emphasizing that nature is not merely material for human freedom but even more the source of human life. Humans are themselves nature, and their freedom and agency are fundamentally instruments for God’s ‘enabling the creation […] to participate in the intentional fulfillment of God’s purposes’ Hefner 1993: 32. Both Hefner and others, particularly those associated with the Zygon Center for Religion and Science (e.g. Case-Winters 2004), have since then fruitfully applied Hefner’s proposal interdisciplinarily in relation to the ecological crisis. They have sought to develop a theology of imago Dei that critiques traditional notions of stewardship and seeks alternatives to a theology that opposes nature and culture.

In this context, Jan-Olav Henriksen has argued that the very symbol of ‘the image of God’ itself expresses a specific human ‘capacity for relating to the world that has emerged in the course of human evolution’ (Henriksen 2023: 69; see Theology and Evolution). Henriksen interprets it as human representation of God in desire and vulnerability, normatively pointing towards a practice in which humanity, as part of the created nature, lives in faith, hope, and love.