Imago Dei: Rediscovering Human Worth in a Confused Age (Part 3)
How reductionist views distort human worth (and how theology corrects them)
Every great truth invites imitation and distortion, and the doctrine of the imago Dei is no exception. Throughout church history, attempts to explain what it means for humanity to be made in God’s image have sometimes narrowed or overextended the idea until its meaning is lost. When that happens, the results are not just theological errors, but moral ones as well. How we define the image of God inevitably shapes how we treat the people who bear it.
The biblical picture, as we’ve seen, insists that the image is ontologically rooted in being, not performance. Yet, four common misunderstandings continue to challenge that view. Each captures a sliver of truth but misses the whole.
1. The Lost Image Myth
“Humanity lost the image of God completely in the fall.”
Some have argued that when Adam sinned, the image of God was entirely erased from humanity. At first glance, this seems to preserve the seriousness of sin, but it overreaches. Zacharias Ursinus, commenting on the Heidelberg Catechism, wrote that “after the fall, man lost this glorious image of God.”1 Read in isolation, that might sound final, but Ursinus quickly adds that there remain “sparks of the image of God still left in man, even after his fall.”
These “sparks,” as he calls them, are not remnants of righteousness but reflections of God’s sustaining grace. The fall shattered humanity’s moral likeness to God, yet it did not annihilate the divine imprint itself. Even the unregenerate bear this mark, though it is distorted.
Michael Horton clarifies the point when he writes that what humanity lost were the gifts belonging to the image. The gifts of true knowledge of God, delight in His law, and genuine stewardship over creation.2 What remains is the structure of the image itself. The narrower sense of the image (righteousness, holiness) was lost, but the broader sense (human nature, reason, capacity for relationship) was not. To deny this is to deny that fallen people are still moral agents accountable to their Creator.
2. The Dominion-Only Myth
“The image of God is just humanity’s rule over creation.”
Another reduction comes from identifying the image exclusively with dominion. This view reads Genesis 1:26-28 as though “image” and “rule” were synonyms, or because humans were given dominion, they must therefore be the image. However, dominion is not the definition of the image; it is the result of it. Humanity rules because it bears God’s likeness, not the other way around.
Angus Stewart notes that Augustine rejected this dominion-only approach, arguing that attributes shared even with the wicked, like reason, authority, or strength, cannot serve as the foundation for the divine image.3 To be human is to be God’s image-bearer first; exercising dominion is one way that image is expressed in the world.
3. The Relational-Only Myth
“The image of God is just our capacity for relationship with God or others.”
This view, popularized by Karl Barth and others, sees the image of God as essentially relational; that we are made in God’s image because we exist in relationships, just as the triune God exists in eternal relationship. While this captures something beautiful about the human community, it cannot be the whole picture.
Anthony Hoekema points out that if the image were purely relational, then sin, which alienates us from God and one another, would have erased it.4 The Scriptures, however, affirm the image’s persistence after the fall. John Kilner adds that a purely relational view collapses one aspect of human life into the whole.5 Relationship is indeed a fruit of the image, but not its foundation.
The imago Dei explains why we relate; it is not defined by those relationships.
4. The Naturalistic Myth
“There is no divine image, only evolved intelligence.”
Perhaps the most modern and dangerous distortion is the denial that humanity bears any divine image at all. In naturalistic or evolutionary models, personhood is nothing more than a product of biology and social development. Human dignity becomes a useful illusion, a story we tell to justify moral behavior.
However, this reduction leaves no room for inherent worth. If we are merely the sum of our parts, then value is determined by function. The unborn, the impaired, and the forgotten have no claim to dignity beyond what others grant them. Ethics becomes subjective, and justice becomes arbitrary.
John Calvin warned that when people forget they are made in God’s image, they lose the very reason to treat one another with restraint and respect.6 We cannot miss that the doctrine of the imago Dei is not only theological, but it is profoundly ethical. It is what stands between a culture of life and a culture of convenience.
Holding the Line
As mentioned previously, each of these views does contain a kernel of truth. Humanity did lose moral likeness to God in the fall, we do exercise dominion, we do exist in relationship, and we are biological creatures, but none of these truths define the image of God; they describe what the image produces.
To defend the imago Dei as ontological is to defend the foundation of human worth itself. It preserves both realism and hope; realism about sin’s corruption, and hope in the Creator’s design. To be made in the image of God means that every human being, fallen yet still bearing the divine imprint, is a person of irreducible value.
In Part 4, we will look at what this doctrine demands of us. If we are truly made in God’s image, then our ethics, our view of justice, and our treatment of others must reflect that reality.
Zacharias Ursinus, The Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. G. W. Williard (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, n.d.; repr. from 2nd American ed., 1852), 32.
Michael S. Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 435.
Angus Stewart, “The Image of God in Man: A Reformed Reassessment,” British Reformed Journal, no. 2 (2002).
Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 226.
John F. Kilner, Dignity and Destiny: Humanity in the Image of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 193.
John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, trans. John King (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1847), 1:96.