Earthy Religion

The Human Body Reflects God's Image

The Scriptures declare in Genesis that man is made in the image of God. This is the definitive biblical distinction between man and all other creatures.  No other creature is so denoted by God.

There has been a good deal of reflection on what, in turn, being in God's image denotes precisely.  A common view is that man alone of all creatures has a soul, a personal identity or subsistence which enables him to commune and fellowship with God--whether in the body or out of the body.  This is something which dogs, for instance, do not have--although metaphorically the poets in the Psalms speak of animals crying out to God for their food.   Others have zeroed in on man's rational faculty: the fact that man can reason is why he is said to be in God's image.  Others still have pointed to language and the ability to communicate.  

The idea underlying all these possibilities is that man can lay aside his physical body at will, and retain his identity as being in God's image.  A second implication is that man is not unique in bearing the image of God--for all of these characteristics are shared with angels--who, along with man--commune with God, reason, think, argue, debate, and communicate.

This view of the "image of God", however, is a view which traditional and classical Jewish exposition has rejected.
  David Klinghoffer provides a summary of the argument:

The relevant Hebrew words, tzelem (image) and demut (likeness), mean respectively "appearance" and "similarity in form or deed."  These are the definitions given by the classical Spanish medieval commentator and mystic Nachmanides, based on an analysis of how the words are used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.  Our being created in God's image, he writes, is meant to "stress the remarkable phenomenon that distinguished [man] from [all] the rest of  the creations."  This includes "[man's] facial expression, [which is an expression of] wisdom and knowledge and perfection of deed."  This is God's image sealed in our own faces.
David Klinghoffer, "God's Image, Our Mission", God and Evolution (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2010), p. 293. Emphasis, ours.

And, again, this from Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, a contemporary of Darwin: he argued that the image of God referred to man's outer "covering", the bodily form.

"The bodily form of man proclaims him as the representative of God, as the divine on earth, . . . such as complies with, is adequate to, a being having the calling of being 'godlike'."

Klinghoffer adds: "Clearly, not just any bodily form would serve the purpose.  (Ibid., p.294)  Some Jewish commentators have argued that "image of God" is reflected in part in our standing and walking erect--definite bodily and physical attributes.

Hirsch goes on to argue in his commentary upon Genesis that the image of God indicates:

. . . the godlike dignity of the human body.  Indeed the whole Torah rests primarily on making the body holy.  The entire morality of human beings rests on the fact that the human body, with all its urges, forces and organs, was formed commensurately with the godly calling of man, and is to be kept holy and dedicated exclusively to that godly calling.

Nothing digs the grave of the moral calling of man more effectively than the erroneous conception which cleaves asunder the nature of man.  Only recognizing godlike dignity in the spirit, it directs the spirit to elevate itself to the heights, and in mind and thought to soar upwards to a higher sphere, but leaves the body to unbridled license, animal-like, nay lower than animal. 

And, Klinghoffer adds:

When you hear someone say that our spirit comes from God, but our bodies reflect his will in only the vaguest possible way, that is, in other words, a prescription for moral disaster.  Animalism, I mean, of the kind which we see around us today.
Ibid., p. 296.

What are we to make of this?  We believe these Jewish expositions accurately represent the teaching of the Bible as a whole, not just the Old Testament.  The image of God in man is inseparable from the physical constitution of man.  The "image" denotes the body--but not just the body--it denotes man in his totality: body, mind, heart, soul, emotions, speech, rationality, imagination, etc.  But all of these intangible, non-material aspects were created by God to be manifested bodily, in a particular bodily form, that reflected the image of God.  Thus, man in his totality is made in God's image--in a way that the angels are not. 

This is why our Lord, in redeeming a new human race, has redeemed its members in bodily form.  The resurrected Christ is the first-fruits, the first-born of His people.  That is why, when God judges the wicked, He judges them in bodily form.  The wicked, we are told, are resurrected unto judgment.  Without our bodies we are incomplete, not fully human, not totally bearing the image of God.