Dignity and Destiny by John F. Kilner

Author:John F. Kilner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Published: 2014-11-19T14:35:07+00:00

A Better Understanding of Human Attributes

If actual human attributes such as reason, righteousness, rulership, and relationship are not what constitute being in God’s image, what is a better way to understand such attributes and their association with God’s image? As explained in Chapter 3, an approach more in line with biblical teaching is to recognize that being in God’s image is about humanity’s special connection with God, which God intends to result in people’s reflection of God in many ways. Those intended likenesses include reason, righteousness, rulership, relationship, and many other human attributes that are praiseworthy. But creation in God’s image has to do with God’s intention for who people should be. In contrast, human attributes as we now experience them are not what constitutes being in God’s image — nor are they perversions of what creation in God’s image once was.

Humanity in God’s image is about connection and reflection — a special connection with God intended to reflect attributes of God, to God’s glory and for the flourishing of people as God has always meant them to be. In other words, such attributes are intended consequences of being in God’s image.243 They are among the purposes for which God has created humanity. There are so many such attributes, and they vary considerably (at least in degree) from person to person. Accordingly, it is not surprising that the biblical texts referring to God’s image do not attempt to describe all of them. In fact, as many commentators have noted, the biblical passages on God’s image do not say all that much about what God’s image entails.244 Instead the rest of the Bible is left to explain and illustrate what God intends people to be and do.

Consider first, then, the place of reason in God’s purposes. By creating humanity in God’s image, God has created an unbreakable connection with humanity, with the intention that humanity would live with rational and spiritual attributes that in some small but wonderful measure reflect God’s own. Reason, then, is one of the human attributes that ought to flow from being in the image of God — it is not, in itself, what constitutes being in God’s image.245 It is a particularly strategic capacity since it is a prerequisite for other human attributes that flow from being in God’s image, such as rulership246 and relationship.247 Because of sin, reason has not developed in people as God intended. That does not mean people are devoid of reason. Rather, it indicates that people’s reason is distorted until Christ breaks the power of sin to allow reason to develop and function as God intends.

Having righteousness is similarly not the definition of what it means to be in God’s image; rather, righteousness ought to flow from being in God’s image.248 That is God’s intention. Righteousness is also an attribute foundational to other attributes that God intends to characterize human beings. For reason or rulership to operate properly, for instance, righteousness must accompany them.249 While there was a “very goodness” to all of creation in the beginning (Gen.

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