Genesis 1:24-31

Day Six: Land Animals, Man, Naming of the Animal Tribes, Woman (Genesis 1:24-31)

And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind: and it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the ground after its kind: and God saw that it was good.

1. Here we have the account of the creation of the land animals, whose bodies are part of the earth's substance (elements): this could not be said of fishes which are related in a special sense to the water. Some hold that the classification here includes insects for the first time. E.g., Skinner (JCCG, 29): The classification of animals is threefold: wild animals, roughly, carnivora; domesticated animals, roughly, herbivora; reptiles, including perhaps creeping insects and very small quadrupeds.

2. The River of Life.(1) The stretch of time involved in the Divine activity of the first four days of the Creation allows, of course, for the developments claimed by the astronomical and geological sciences. (A word of caution here: Recent attempts to apply the evolution yardstick, which was at first simply and only a hypothesis of the origin of species, to the origin of the celestial and terrestrial non-living worlds, are, to say the least, based on the questionable a priori supposition that such a norm is valid in these areas.) Nevertheless, it can now be maintained legitimately that no conflict need arise between Genesis and geology, in the light of present-day knowledge in these realms. (2) We have now reached the stage in which the Creative Activity, as set forth in the Genesis narrative, is represented as advancing from non-living to living forms. Here, of course, the tremendous mysteries of the Life Processmany of them apparently impenetrable by human intelligencepress upon us for solution, from the points of view of both Scripture and science, The life that any person enjoys was not created in him; rather, it flowed into him from his parents, and their life flowed into them from their parents, and so on and on and on, back, obviously, to a Source of all life, which in the nature of the case had to be a Living Source. First Life could not have been a human creation, for, if we are to accept the views of the evolutionists, both plant and animal life existed prior to man's appearance on the scene. How fitting, then, such metaphors as the Stream of Life, the River of Life, etc.! How irrefutable the truth set forth in Scripture that all life is a Divine giftthe very Breath of the living and true God (Genesis 2:7)! Revelation 22:1the river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. However life may have originated on earthor on any other planet, for that matterit is essentially the Breath of God. And the Breath of God is Scripturally a metaphor of the power of the Spirit of God. (3) What is life? What is it in the structure of the living cell that sets it apart from the non-living molecule or atom? All that can be said now, in answer to this question, is simply that no one knows.Living things are differentiated from the non-living by such powers as metabolism, growth (not by accretion from without, but by processes operating from within), reproduction, waste and repair, sensitivity, adaptability, movement, dynamic equilibrium (ability to maintain a balance in the flow of matter and energy within the organism's system), etc.

3. The Mystery of the Life Movement.(1) What is there in the living cell to vitalize it, to differentiate it from mere quanta of energy? No one knows. The secret resides in the cell protoplasm, a semifluid, jellylike substance, which, up to the present time, has resisted all human efforts to analyze it. The most that has been learned thus far is that life requires a large number of highly specific proteins with different shapes, sizes, and patterns. These protein molecules and sub-moleculeseach containing a large number of atomsare invariably present in protoplasm (so we are told). I take the position that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that man may some day, once he has succeeded in breaking down protoplasm, synthesize a living cell in the laboratory. This event, however, should it occur, would leave unsolved the problem as to how the first living cell came into existence, because this was a development which necessarily occurred before man was created. Moreover, such a synthesis would only push the fundamental problem a notch farther back. The basic problem would need to be re-stated as follows: How did the ingredients thus synthesized by man, come to be endowed with the potencies essential to the production of the spark of life? One thing is sureman himself did not endow these ingredients with vital force: this force must have been present potentially in the ingredients themselves or in their inter-relationships. Thus it becomes clear that the eventual synthesis of a living cell in the scientific laboratory would leave the problem of Creation, or of the Source and nature of Creative Force still unsolved. (2) Every human individual starts life as a single cell, the ovum which was produced by the ovary of the mother and fertilized by the spermatozoon of the father. Immediately following this fertilization (conception), the basic cellular processes set in, namely, those of cell segmentation (continuous division and multiplication), cell differentiation (change of structure), and cell specialization (the assumption of function which accompanies differentiation), so that by the time the child is ready to be born it has its full complement of different tissues. At the end of thirty hours after conception, we are told, the one cell has pulled apart to make two cells; at fifty hours, the two split to make four; at sixty hours, the four become eight, etc., until, by the process of geometrical progression, at the end of the third day of life there are thirty-two cells. This is the start toward the vast number of cells which go to make up the body of the newborn babe. Dr. George W. Corner, embryologist at the Rockefeller Institute, has written (as quoted by Dr. Shettles, Today's Health, March, 1957, published by the A.M.A.): The fertilization of an egg by a sperm cell is one of the greatest wonders of nature. If it were a rare event, or if it occurred only in some distant land, our museums and universities would organize expeditions to witness it, and newcomers would record its outcome with enthusiasm. But as it is, like the shining of the sun, we simply take it for granted, without giving a thought to the mystery of it. Call it protoplasmic irritability, or what not, there is a vital force which is inherent in the life processes of the living cellsand this is why we call them living cells,

(3) Manifold are the mysteries of the life processes. For instance, can anyone explain how it is that, by means of a specific number of submicroscopic blobs of living matter called chromosomes, 23 in the human male and 23 in the female (through the activity of the hypothetical genes inherent in these chromosomes, though the genes are not apprehensible to the naked eye, nor even to the naked eye implemented by the most powerful microscope), the two parentaland several ancestralnatures are fused in the offspring; or how it comes about that through these quasi-material chromosomes and genes, not only are physique and physiology, but even temperament (emotional tone and intensity) and intelligence potential, handed down to the child? (There is no amount of learning that can transform a moron into a genius.) Or, can anyone explain the upward surge of the life movement into the more and more complex forms of living being? Can anyone explain the venerable Will to Live, the determination to resist extinction, that seems to characterize all living creatures (or, as put in the form of the oft-heard cliche, Self-preservation is the first law of nature)? What is this tremendous life force that can drive the roots of a tree through a sewer or through the foundation of a house? To my way of thinking the mysteries of the life processes are far more inscrutable than the powers that are wrapped up in the atom.
4. The Problem of the Origin of Life has not yet been solved by any naturalistic hypothesis. (1) As a matter of fact, only two hypotheses of a strictly naturalistic character have ever been suggested, namely, the view that life was brought to this earth, possibly by a falling meteorite, from some other planet, and the view that is generally known as the theory of spontaneous generation. Obviously, the former view explains absolutely nothing; nothing, that is, with respect to the origin of life: it simply transfers the problem to another planet or star, The latter view, however, the theory of spontaneous generation (abio-genesis), deserves some attention at this point. (2) In ancient and medieval times the theory of abiogenesis was held generally, and without question, by scientists (such as they were in those early ages), philosophers, and theologians alike, including even several of the Church Fathers. Nor was this view held to be antiscriptural: as Aquinas put it (ST, I, q. 91, art. 2): What can be done by created power, need not be produced immediately by God. Men frequently noted that worms, insects, flies, mice, frogs, etc., seemed to come out of the earth, out of dung, out of putrid meat and water exposed to the air; hence the consensus was that under proper conditions of moisture and warmth, the earth could generate living forms. It was even believed that the mud of the Nile River begat swarms of mice. The English naturalist, Ross, announced pompously: To question that beetles and wasps were generated in cow dung is to question reason, sense, and experience (quoted by De Kruif, MH, 26). It remained for the restless Italian experimenter Spallanzani (1729-1799), building on first foundations already laid by the Dutch lens grinder, Leeuwenhoek, and another Italian iconoclast, Redi, finally to come to the conclusion, and to proudly announce, that microbes must have parents. All the thanks he got for his epoch-making discovery was the prejudice, leading to ostracism, of his colleagues. We all know, however, that Spallanzani's view was fully confirmed by the great Pasteur (1822-1895) in the next century. No concrete evidence has yet been found that would disprove this view that all life comes from antecedent life, that only living things can reproduce living things. (3) Twentieth-century biologists are content to stop with the claim that such an event as the generation of the spark of life by non-living matter might have occurred under certain conditions. For example, G. G. Simpson (ME, 13): How did life arise? Again, the honest answer is that we do not know but that we have some good clues. Current studies suggest that it would be no miracle, nor even a great statistical improbability, if living molecules appeared spontaneously under special conditions of surface waters rich in the carbon compounds that are the food and substance of life. And the occurrence of such waters at early stages of the planet's evolution is more probable than not. This is not to say that the origin of life was by chance or by supernatural intervention, but that it was in accordance with the grand, eternal physical laws of the universe. It need not have been miraculous, except as the existence of the physical universe may be considered a miracle. Also Julian Huxley (EA, 19-21): The work of Pasteur and his successors has made it clear that life is not now being spontaneously generated. There are only three possible alternatives as regards the origin of living substance on this earth. Either it was super-naturally created; or it was brought to the earth from some other place in the universe, in the interior of a meteorite; or it was produced naturally out of less complicated substances. The third alternative, that living substance evolved out of nonliving, is the only hypothesis consistent with scientific continuity. The fact that spontaneous generation does not occur now is not evidence that it did not do so at some earlier stage in the development of this planet, when conditions in the cosmic test tube were extremely different. Above all, bacteria were not then present, ready to break down any complex substances as soon as formed. It must be confessed, however, that the actual process is still conjectural; all we know is that living substance must have developed soon after the first rocks of the geological series were laid down, and that this was somewhere about two thousand million years ago. We can be reasonably sure that a relatively simply nucleoprotein marked a crucial stage in the process, and that the earliest truly living things were nothing so elaborate as cells, but more in the nature of naked genes. All this, of course, is still guesswork; indeed a hypothesis has been correctly defined as a fairly good guess. (4) It is interesting to note here that the well-known Church Father, Augustine, who lived from A.D. 354 to 430, points up the fact (GL, V, 4, 143) that Genesis 1:11-12 teaches that the earth itself, not seeds in the earth, was given the power to produce plants (the first form of life). He writes: For he does not say, -Let the seeds in the earth germinate the pasture grass and the fruitful tree,-' but he says, -Let the earth germinate the pasture grass sowing its seed.-' Augustine also theorized that living things which inhabit the earth were created potentially in the form of hidden seeds (seminal reasons); that in due time, and in the proper sequence, these hidden seeds were actualized pursuant to the proclamations of the successive Divine decrees. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) held that this actualization (in his thinking, apparently, something of the character of an evolution), was the modus operandi by which the Creator effectuated the origins of the first forms of life. As stated above, with respect to the spontaneous generation theory one fact is obvious, namely, that if the spark of life was actually generated by the sudden orientation of certain forces within a protein molecule, the potencies had to be inherent in that molecule before they could be actualized. This means simply that the problem of the origin of life is pushed back another step: it becomes the problem of how non-living matter acquired these potencies in the first place, and of the Efficient Causality by which they were actualized: in short, the necessary Creative Power, in whatever form localized, had to operate to bring about Creation.

5. Aristotle's Hierarchy of Being. This is a doctrine, stated in his De Anima (On the Soul) which becomes very helpful at this point in our study. According to Aristotle, the totality of being is a hierarchy (i.e., organized on different levels, in an ascending order of complexity); that is to say, our world is a terraced world, so to speak, and not a continuum (without a single break from the lowest to the highest of forms). Aristotle based this hierarchical arrangement of all organisms on what he called the differentiating powers of the soul (psyche) possessed by those individual existents at each level, those of each higher order, subsuming in themselves the powers of those below them in the scale, and possessing an additional differentiating or specifying power of their own. At the lowest level, of course, are the processes of the inanimate creation (according to Aristotle, of matter-in-motion), what today we call the physiochemical basis of all created things. At the next level, according to Aristotle, is the plant creation (what he designates the vegetative psyche), which has the same physiochemical basis, plus the vegetative or nutritive powers (what are known today as the cellular processes). At the third level is the animal order (animal psyche), which has both the physiochemical and vegetative powers, plus the powers of sensitivity and locomotion. At the highest level stands man, the rational creation (rational psyche), who has the same physiochemical basis insofar as his body is concerned, who also shares the vegetative powers with the plant and animal orders, and the powers of sensitivity and locomotion with the animal creation alone, but who has in addition the power of reason (the thought processes and their ramifications). Over all, said Aristotle, is the Prime Mover, the First Cause, God, whom he defines as Pure Self-Thinking Thought (cf. Exodus 3:14, John 4:24).

God-Pure Thought Thinking Itself

Rational psyche

p-c processes

nutritive processes

(cellular)

sensitivity locomotion

reason

Animal psyche

p-c processes

Nutritive processes

(cellular)

sensitivity locomotion

Vegetative psyche

p-c processes

Nutritive processes

(cellular)

The inanimate level: in Aristotelian terms, matter-in-motion; in modern scientific terms, the physiochemical processes.

If should be noted that this diagram points up the major problems posed by the evolution hypothesis, namely, the bridging of the gaps from the non-living to the living, from the plant to the animal, and especially from the animal to man.

It is interesting to contrast with Aristotle's hierarchy of being, the notion of the totality of being as a continuum, as embodied in the famous doctrine (developed in early modern times) of the Great Chain of Being. According to this view, because our world is the handiwork of a perfect Being, it must be the best of all possible worlds; hence, again reasoning a priori, all possible beings must be actualized, all possible places filled, therein: that is, there must be an unbroken continuitya progressive gradationof organisms from the very lowest living being up to the very highest, God Himself. (See A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, Harvard University Press.) As stated clearly by Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man:

Of systems possible if -tis confest
That wisdom infinite must form the best,

then it follows that

... all must full or not coherent be,
And all that rises, rise in due degree.

The resultant picture is as follows:

Vast chain of being! which from God began,
Natures aethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from Infinite to thee,
From thee to nothing.On superior pow-'rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours;
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy-'d;
For Nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

It is evident that the Great Chain of Being theory, although originally arrived at through a priori reasoning, is the one that is most in harmony with the evolution hypothesis, provided the former could be established by empirical evidence. I am reminded here of Haeckel's Tree of Life, a book in which the author supplied all the missing links he considered necessary to the evolution of species, and supplied them out of his imagination. The book is looked upon today as a kind of freak product of overzealousness, in an age when the favorite academic indulgence was that of singing paeans to Darwin.

Biblical teaching completes the Aristotelian picture with its doctrine of angels (from the Greek angelos, messenger) who are represented as occupying an intermediate position between God and man (Psalms 8). Angels are pictured in the Bible as celestial (ethereal) beings, higher than man in intelligence and power, whose function is to serve as emissaries of God in the execution of His Plans for His Creation (Hebrews 1:14, 2 Peter 2:11).

Perhaps it should be mentioned here that the French scientist, Cuvier (1769-1832), held the view that the first pair, male and female, of each kind was a direct Divine creation. The modern philosopher, Lotze, and others, have advanced the view that special increments of power were thrust into the Creative Process, at intervals, by direct Divine action, thus marking off the transitions from inanimate energy to life, from life to consciousness, and from consciousness to self-consciousness (as in man). As stated above, these are the unbridged gaps in all naturalistic theories of the origin of species.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them.

1. Note the change of formula in Genesis 1:26.It is no longer, Let there be a firmament, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered in one place, Let the earth put forth grass, Let there be lights in the firmament, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, Let the earth bring forth living creatures, etc, It is now, at the beginning of this final epoch, Let us make man in our image, etc. Obviously something of transcendent importance is about to occur: the climactic terminus of the whole Creative week is about to be attained, the noblest product of the Divine handiwork is about to be unveiled.

2. What, then, does the us signify? (1) Does it mean that God is taking counsel with the angels (Philo)? Hardly, for the simple reason that man is not the image of an angel, that is, possessing an ethereal body: man's body is of the earth, earthy (1 Corinthians 15:47); to become spiritual (ethereal) the bodies of the saints must await the putting on of immortality (2 Corinthians 5:1-10; 1 Corinthians 15:35-57; Philippians 3:20-21; Romans 2:5-7; Romans 8:11; Romans 8:22-23). Moreover, God's angels always appear in Scripture as servants, never as counselors (Hebrews 1:14). (2) Does it mean that God was taking counsel with the earth (Maimonides)? Hardly. It is difficult to see how the earth could enter into a Divine consilium that involved the deliberation and decision that is indicated in the phrase, Let us, etc. (3) Is this an occurrence, then, of what is commonly designated the plural of majestythat is, the use of we by an Oriental potentate, in his royal edicts, to connote his power, majesty, glory, and all the attributes which may be inherent in him, in the eyes of his subjects? Skinner (ICCG, 30) objects that this usage is absent from Hebrew theology. (4) Is this a remnant, a hang-over, of polytheism? Evidently not.Such a view is completely out of accord with the strict Hebrew monotheism. (5) The us evidently connotes the involvement of all the powers of the Godhead in the creation of man. By correlating this verse (Genesis 1:26) with Genesis 3:22; Genesis 11:7, and Isaiah 6:8 (note the three-fold holy, holy, holy in Genesis 1:3 of this chapter), it becomes evident that all these Scriptures designate a consilium among persons; in short, in the light of Scripture teaching as a whole, they are intimations of the triune personality of God. In the Old Testament we have God, the Word of God, and the Spirit of God. In the full light of the New Testament revelation, these become Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). (This is in accord, too, with the use of the plural form Elohim as the Name used for God in this chapter: see Part V this text, supra.)(The credo of Deuteronomy 6:4 evidently has no numerical significance: it means simply, and positively, that the Yahweh of the Bible is one Yahweh in the sense of being the only Yahweh: cf. Isaiah 45:18; Isaiah 46:8-11; 1 Timothy 2:5, Acts 17:23-31).

3. Genesis 1:27And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.Note the verb, created, from the Hebrew bara, the third and last time it is used in the Genesis Cosmogony. In the process of the physical creation the brooding of the Spirit did not cease with the bringing into existence of such first physical phenomena as energy, motion, light, atmosphere, lands and seas: in short, the factors that constitute the physiochemical world. This brooding or actualizing was continuous throughout the whole Creative Week (indeed it is continuous throughout the entire Time Process). Moreover, as a result of the Word's executive agency, and of the Spirit's realizing agency, new increments of power came into the Creative process, at successive stages of development. As emphasized heretofore, this is clearly indicated by the three successive appearances of the verb bara in the Genesis Narrative. In the Hebrew, yatsar means to form or to fashion, and asah means to make. Both of these verbs designate a forming, fashioning, or arranging out of, or with the use of, pre-existing materials. The verb bara, however, in the some forty-eight instances in which it occurs in the Hebrew Scriptures, invariably conveys the idea of a creation absolute, that is, without the use of preexisting materials; and in every instance in which it appears, whatever its object may be, it has God for its subject. Bara is used first in Genesis 1:1now, granting that this affirmation is simply a general introductory statement, which it appears to be, it clearly points to the fact that the first step in the Creative Processperhaps the engendering of the first form of physical energywas a creation absolute.Again, bara is used in Genesis 1:21, obviously to indicate the step upward (or forward) from the unconscious to the conscious order of being: in this passage the beginning of animal lifein the language of the ancients, animal psyche or animal soul,is described. Finally, bara occurs a third and last time in Genesis 1:27: here it designates the step upward from the conscious to the self-conscious (personal) order of being; in the language of the ancients, from animal soul to rational soul. Thus it is clear that the inspired writer intends for us to understand that a creation absolute took place at (at least) three successive steps upward in the actualization of the natural creation, producing for human science the seemingly impenetrable mysteries of physical energy, conscious life, and self-conscious life. It seems evident, moreover, that a creation absolute must have taken place also in the step forward from the nonliving order to the first living being; this, from the point of view of biological science, would have been the first form of plant life, although the author of the Genesis Cosmogony does not explicitly so indicate. (It is a commonplace in present-day biology that the line between plant and animal is so thinly drawnas in certain algae, fungi, etc.as to be indiscernible.) Certainly unless spontaneous generation can be established as a fact of nature, the conclusion would seem to be unavoidable that the plant cell was the first living form to be created. The mystery of lifethe mystery that resides in the protoplasm of the cellhas not yet been penetrated by human science, and unless it can be determined that inanimate matter can per se produce life, we must continue to think that life force (elan vital) is something added to, or superposed upon, the basic physiochemical processes. We must conclude, therefore, that as a result of the brooding of the Divine Spirit, new increments of power came into the Creative Process, at successive stages, to produce the first forms, respectively, of physical energy, the unconscious life of the plant, the conscious life of the animal, and the self-conscious life of man. These are phenomena which mark off the various levels in the total Hierarchy of Being. These levels, moreover, are characterized by differences, not just of degree, but of rank. And the use of the verb bara in the Genesis Cosmogony indicates clearly, with the single exception noted (and the exception would, of course, be eliminated, should it be proved that plant cell and animal cell were cotemporaneous in origin) the beginning of each of these successively higher orders. It is also most significant that the words bara and asah (created and made) are used in Genesis 2:3, by way of recapitulation, evidently to mark the distinction between absolute beginnings and subsequent natural developments or arrangements of that which had previously been originated.

4. The Breath of Life.According to Scripture, the brooding of the Spirit (metaphorically described as the Breath of Life, the Breath of God, etc.) is responsible for every form of life in the universenatural, spiritual, and eternal. And so at the Creation this brooding of the Spirit actualized every form of natural life there isthe unconscious life of the plant, the conscious life of the animal and the self-conscious life of man. (Acts 17:24-25; Genesis 1:21; Genesis 7:21-23; Ecclesiastes 3:21; Job 34:14-15; Psalms 104:27-30.) Commenting on Psalms 104:27, George Matheson writes (VS, 50, 51): Who are the -all-' here spoken of? They are the living creatures of the whole earth. What! you say, the creatures of the animal world! Can these be said to be in possession of God's Spirit? I can understand very well how man should be thus privileged. I can understand why a being of such nobleness as the human soul should lay claim to a distinctive pre-eminence. But is it not a bold thing to say that the human soul is in contact with the beast of the field? Is it not a degradation of my nature to affirm that the same Spirit which created me created also the tenants of the deep? No, my brother; if you shall find in God's Spirit the missing link between yourself and the animal world you will reach a Darwinism where there is nothing to degrade. You are not come from them, but you and they together are the offspring of God. Would you have preferred to have had no such link between you? It is your forgetfulness of that link that has made you cruel to the creatures below. You do not oppress your brother man, because you know him to be your brother; but you think the beast of the field has no contact with the sympathy of your soul. It has a contact, an irrefragable, indestructible contact. You are bound together by one Spirit of creation; you sit at one communion table of nature; you are members of one body of natural life. The glory of being united to thy Father is that in Him thou shalt be united to everything. Thou shalt be allied not only to the highest but to the lowest; thou shalt be able not only to go up but to go down. Thou shalt have the power that the Lord hadthe power to empty thyself to the lowermost to the uttermost. Thou shalt feel that thou owest all things thy sympathy when thou hast recognized this relationship through the same divine Spirit. Perhaps the feeling of a natural kinship between man and the lower orders, so widespread among primitive peoples, was, after all, but a universal intuition of an eternal truth. (See a further elaboration of this concept in our study of Genesis 2:7 infra.)

5. Man as the Image of God.(1) Genesis 1:26Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Up to this time God has simply uttered the creative edict, and what He commanded was done; now it seems that He stays His hand, so to speak, for a Divine consilium before He goes on with the final phase of His creative work. The reason is obvious: He is now to bring into existence man, the highest (in inherent powers and faculties) and the noblest (in moral potential) product of His handiwork; man, for whose use and benefit everything else has already been brought into being. Elliott (MG, 36): Man was initiated by a solemn announcement rather than by a command. The lower animals were made each after their kind, but man was made after the image of God.Appointed as head of all other creation (Genesis 1:26), man was the pearl, the crown of creation. As for everything below man, God pronounced it all good .(Genesis 1:25); following man's creation, however, and his appointment as lord tenant of the earth, Elohim looked out upon His total handiwork and pronounced it very good (v. 41); that is, every created species was fulfilling its nature by doing that which it was designed to do in the over-all plan of God. The cosmology of the Bible is geocosmic in its practical point of view. (2.) It should be noted here that the image of God in man persisted: that is, neither Fall nor Flood destroyed it (Genesis 5:1; Genesis 5:3; Genesis 9:6). Elliott (MG, 37): This is a basic trait which God has stamped upon all mankind. Man may ignore this character, act on the animal level, and, thus in a sense, be -inhuman-' in the nature of failing to evaluate and use the possibilities which God has graciously given; but he does not lose these possibilities. As long as there is life, there is the opportunity through forgiveness of having dominion and fellowship with God.

(2) A great deal of unprofitable speculation has been engendered about the use of the two terms here, image and likeness. Tayler Lewis, for example (Lange, CDHC, 173), following the Maimonidean tradition, that the us of Genesis 1:26 probably indicates communication between the Creator and the already created earth (or subhuman nature as a whole), suggests that the phrases, in our image, after our likeness, could mean that man should be like unto both the divine and the earthy, that is, in the composition of his body a likeness of the earth (or nature) from which he was taken, and in his spirit like to the higher order of being in that it is incorporeal and immortal. He adds: If we depart at all from the patristic view of an allusion to a plurality of Idea in the Deity, the next best is that of Maimonides. In fact, if we regard nature as the expression of the divine Word from which it derives its power and life, the opinion of the Jewish Doctor approaches the patristic, or the Christian, as near as it could from the Jewish standpoint. (Cf. Genesis 2:7, 1 Corinthians 15:47, John 3:31.) (I have stated, in a foregoing paragraph, the common objections to this Maimonidean interpretation of Genesis 1:26.) The general tendency today is against making any significant distinctions between the two words, image and likeness.

(3) That image or likeness here is not to be interpreted as any form of corporeal likeness of man to God, is evident from the tenor of Biblical teaching as a whole. In Scripture, for example, God is unequivocally described as Spirit (John 4:24, the words of Jesus; cf. Acts 17:27-28); that is, as one of the earlier creeds puts it, without body or parts, but having understanding and free will. Again, the Second Commandment of the Decalogue expressly forbids, the making or use of any graven image, or likeness of anything, as an object or means of worship (Exodus 20:4-6); in view of this explicit prohibition in the Mosaic Code, it is most unlikely that the terms image or likeness of Genesis 1:26 were intended to convey any notion of corporeality in God. As a matter of fact, the Bible is replete with polemics against any form of image-worship (idolatry). Cf. Deuteronomy 5:8, Psalms 106:20; Isaiah 40:18-23; Isaiah 44:9-20; Acts 17:29, Romans 1:22-23; Isaiah 6:1 (Isaiah 6:1note Isaiah's silence here as to God's appearance). Of course God is, often spoken of, especially in the Old Testament, in anthropomorphic or metaphorical language; hence, passages, in which He is pictured as thinking, feeling, or willing, as men are wont to think and feel and act (Genesis 6:6; Genesis 3:8; Exodus 32:10-11; Exodus 32:14), and passages in which bodily organs are ascribed to Him, such as hands, arms, eyes, fingers, ears, mouth, lips, etc. (Genesis 3:8; Genesis 11:5; Exodus 8:19; Exodus 15:16; Exodus 31:18; Numbers 11:18; Numbers 11:23; Numbers 12:8; Deuteronomy 8:3; Exodus 33:20-23; Psalms 94:9; Psalms 17:4; Psalms 17:15; Psalms 33:6; Psalms 119:73; Isaiah 1:15; Isaiah 50:2; Isaiah 60:13; Proverbs 2:6; Job 40:9; Zechariah 14:4). All such passages exemplify only the inadequacy of human language to communicate Divine revelation, and the use of the Law of Accommodation to overcomenot too effectively, of coursethis linguistic barrier.

(4) The consensus among Bible students is that the image of God attributed to man in the Creation Narrative consists in the latter's essential spirituality as an intelligent and free agent, in his moral integrity, and in the dominion over all subhuman orders divinely entrusted to him. That this image of God is still that which specifies man as man and constitutes him to be wondrously superior to all lower orders, even after the Fall and the Flood, is clearly indicated by such passages as Genesis 5:1-3 and Genesis 9:6. In Genesis 9:6, the fact of this image of God in man makes murder (the killing of a human being of one's own individual authority and with malice aforethought) punishable by taking the life of the murderer: in Biblical teaching, rational life (personality) is man's greatest good, primarily because he has been created in God's image. Even Aristotle remarks that the power of reason is the spark of the Divine in man. Chesterton has commented pointedly that man is either the image of God or a disease of the dust. (Cf. Genesis 2:7; Job 27:3; Job 32:8; Psalms 139:14; Psalms 8:3-6; Ecclesiastes 12:7, Hebrews 12:9, etc.) In a word, this image of God in man is the basis of the emphasis on the dignity and worth of the person which runs throughout all Biblical teaching. This conviction of the dignity and worth of the person is the basis of all moral action and of the science of moral action which goes under the name of ethics.Although from the earth, that is, the physiochemical elements, comes man's physical tabernacle, from God comes that essential spiritthe core, so to speak, of the person and personalitywhich is incorporeal and hence timeless (2 Corinthians 4:18; 2 Corinthians 5:1-10; 1 Corinthians 15:35-58).

(5) Perhaps the meaning of the image of God in man is best summarized in the word personal.That is to say, as God is a Person (Exodus 3:14), so man is a person, though unquestionably in a vastly inferior sense. Some Bible students have tried to clarify this difference by asserting that God is super-personal. To my way of thinking, however, the super in this connection is meaningless, because no one knows or can know in this present life all that is connoted by the prefix. In saying that man is personal in some sense as God is personal, we are surely on Scriptural ground. It is significant that although the Old Testament forbids our thinking of God in the likeness of material things, it does not forbid our thinking of Him in the likeness of our inner selves.My conviction is that the term personal expresses the core of the meaning of the phrase, the image of God, even more precisely than the term moral. True it is that man, by virtue of his possession of understanding and power of choice, is a moral being potentially, and hence responsible for his deeds. However, our Lord alone is the very image of God in human flesh (Hebrews 1:3, John 1:14), that is, God's image both personally and morallymorally in the sense of actualized potentiality: though in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). His devotion to the Father's Will was complete devotion; hence, He was holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners (Hebrews 7:26, Matthew 3:15, Luke 2:49; John 4:34; John 5:30; John 5:36; John 6:38; John 17:4).

(6) Some Commentators have held that the image of God indicated here is that of dominion; that is, man's Divine endowment with dominion over the whole creation is a reflection, so to speak, of God'S; absolute sovereignty. But, is it not more reasonable to conclude that man's stewardship, his lord tenancy of the universe, follows from his endowments, rather than vice versa? Skinner (ICCG, 32): This view cannot be held without an almost inconceivable weakening of the figure, and is inconsistent with the sequel, where the rule over creatures is, by a separate benediction, conferred on man, already made in the image of God. The truth is that the image marks the distinction between man and the animals, and so qualifies him for dominion: the latter is the consequence, not the essence, of the divine image. (Cf. Psalms 8:3-9.)

(7) Again, neither, image nor likeness should be taken to signify that man is divine. He is human, separated from God, not by degree, but by rank: he belongs to the natural world, whereas God transcends the natural, as Creator transcends His Creation. Only through redemption and sanctification (growth in holiness or wholeness) does man become a partaker of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4, Hebrews 12:14, Matthew 5:8). Elliott (MG, 36): Thus, the words do not imply that man is divine. He is copied after a divine one, patterned after a divine one with some of his attributes: he has functions which are like God'S. Thus, God showed Himself to be the prototype and the original of man. This implies, not that man is just like God, but that man is something on the order of God.

(8) It may be accepted, I think, that image here signifies not only personality, hence possible fellowship with God, but representation as well. Again Elliott (MG, 37): Images in the Orient were to represent someone. Thus, man is the -representative-' of God over creation. Actually the image idea has something to say about man's stewardship. Dependence is also involved: man is dependent upon the one for whom he is representative. Since dependent man has been delegated a task of responsibility with a share of authority over creation, he is in turn a responsible being.

(9) However, we repeat the conviction here, for the sake of emphasis, that man is God's image primarily in the personal sense of the term. Cf. Exodus 3:14Only a person can say meaningfully, I am, that is, only a person uses personal pronouns. Moreover, let us never forget that the fundamental property of the person is individuality, that is, otherness: every person, God included, is unique, every person is an other to every other person. Hence the saint's ultimate Union with God is not absorption into the Cosmos, into Brahma, Tao, Unity, the One, or what has been designated the ocean of undifferentiated energy (that is, the loss of individuality); it is, on the contrary, according to Scripture teaching, a state of unhindered access to, and fellowship with, the personal living (theistic) God (1 John 1:3-4, 1 Corinthians 13:9-12, Revelation 21:1-8). Again, we take note of the supreme excellence of the Christian faith as compared with Oriental, and indeed all other, systems or cults that may be abroad in the world under the name of religion.

(10) A final constructive word from T. Lewis (Lange, CDHCG, 174) is in order here: The image of God the distinguishing type of man: Hold fast to this in all its spirituality as the mirror of the eternal ideas, and we need not fear naturalism. Many in the church are shivering with alarm at the theories, which are constantly coming from the scientific world, about the origin of species, and the production of man, or rather the physical that may have become man, through the lower types. The quieting remedy is a higher psychology, such as the fair interpretation of the Bible warrants, when it tells is that the primus homo became such through the inspiration (the inbreathing) and the image of God lifting him out of nature, and making him and all his descendants a peculiar species, by the possession of the image of the supernatural.

(11) Male and female created he them.(1) Note the threefold parallelism here of the parts of this verse (27), built around the verb created. This surely indicates a crescendo of jubilation as the writer contemplates the crowning work of Elohim's creative Word and Spiritthe creatures, both male and female, created in His own image. (2) Note that male and female as used here are generic, that is, designating the two great divisions, according to sex, of the entire human race. As yet they are not proper names, as, for example, in Genesis 3:20 and Genesis 5:3. Note that God called their name Adam, that is, Man, in the day when they were created (Genesis 5:1-2): that is, the generic name was originally ascribed in common to both man and woman. (3) The content of this Genesis 1:27 surely indicates that we have here a kind of panoramic view of the climactic events of this great day, and thus we have confirmation of the essentially panoramic (pictorial-summary, cinemascopic) character of the entire Hebrew Cosmogony. On the view (which will be presented later) that in chapter 2 we have in greater detail, and with special reference to man, the account of the happenings on this sixth day, we may summarize these happenings as follows: the creation of man, the naming of the animal tribes, and the creation of woman. The Garden of Eden narrative seems also to be associated with the events of this day. We are justified in reaching these conclusions, I think, in spite of the chronological indefiniteness of the sequence of the Divine works throughout the entire Creative Epoch. Time seems never to have been a matter of any great concern to the Spirit of God in His revelation of God's Eternal Purpose as embodied in the Bible.

And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food: and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food; and it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

1. Note the twofold Divine blessing, not to him, but to them (that is, all mankind): the blessing of the power to reproduce their kind, which they were to have in common with the lower orders (Genesis 1:22); also the blessingand responsibilityof dominion over all subhuman orders of being. Are we justified in assuming that man and woman in their original innocence had the power of reproducing their kind by the power of thought alone? It is a point worth considering, although, of course, we have no certain answer.

2.Note also the twofold Divine ordination: to multiply and replenish (populate) the earth, and to subdue it. (I) God ordered them to disperse and to occupy the whole earth. But what did they actually do? They disobeyed God: they concentrated in the land of Shinar and undertook to build a tower to heaven (Genesis 11:1-9). There is no evidence anywhere that God looks with favor on concentration of population, for the obvious reason that it invariably issues in vice, crime, sin, divorce, mental illness, disease, strife, and every kind of evil. (2) God also vested them with dominion over the whole earth, with lord tenancy over the whole of nature. This dominion includes the authority to control and utilize nature, nonliving as well as living, for his own good and the good of his fellows. (If man has the right to life, he has the right to the means of sustaining it, and the means are provided only by the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms.) After all, what is science but the story of man's fulfilment, whether wittingly or unwittingly on his part, of this Divine injunction to take possession of the earth and subdue it? (3) There are three categories of truth: (a) that which is concealed from man, largely because it lies beyond the power of the human intelligence to apprehend it (the mysteries of nature, such as energy, life, consciousness, perception, self-consciousness, etc., are as inscrutable as the mysteries of grace, such as the triune God, the union of the divine and human in the person of Christ, the incarnation, the atonement, resurrection, immortality, etc.); (b) that which has been embodied in the structure of the cosmos for man to spell out slowly, through the centuries, in the form of his science; and (c) that which has been revealed in Scripture for man's redemption, sanctification, and immortalization: 2 Peter 1:13all things that pertain unto life and godliness (cf. Deuteronomy 29:29). (John 8:31-32; John 14:6; John 18:37-38; John 17:17).

3. The Glory and Dignity of Man is clearly indicated by many affirmations of the Genesis Cosmogony. Milligan (SR, 36): God's favor to man is further manifested in the fact, that for his special benefit the whole earth, with all its rich treasures of mineral, vegetable, and animal wealth, was provided. For him, all the matter of the Earth was created in the beginning. For him, all the gold, and silver, and copper, and iron, and granite, and marble, and coal, and salt, and other precious minerals and fossils, were treasured up, during the many ages that intervened between the epoch of Creation and the beginning of the Historic Period. For him, the light and the atmosphere were produced. For him, the world was clothed with grass, and fruits, and flowers. For him, the Sun rose and set in the firmament, and the stars performed their apparent daily and yearly revolutions. For him, the sea and the land were filled with living creatures, and the air was made vocal with the sweet voices of birds. All these things were provided for the good and happiness of man; and then he himself was created to enjoy them. And thus it happened that what was first in design was really last in execution.

The fact of the Glory and Dignity of Man is the crowning revelation of the first chapter of Genesis. Man's nobility, in the Plan of God, is evidenced as follows: 1. By the time of his appearance in the Creation.He came into existence after all inferior kinds had been created: he was the last and fairest of the Divine works. 2. By the solemn circumstances of his making.With respect to other phases of the creative activity, there was a simple expression of the Divine Will, such as, Let there be light, Let the waters bring forth, etc. But the creation of man necessitated a Divine consilium in which the three Persons of the Godhead were heard to decree among themselves, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. The creation of man was a subject of special consideration and was attended with Divine solicitude and delight. 3. By the dignity of his nature.Created in the image of God, endowed with the essential elements of personality, he is the highest and noblest of all creatures of earth. (Genesis 1:27; Genesis 2:7; Job 32:8; Job 33:4; Psalms 8:3-8; Psalms 139:14). 4. By the circumstances of his early environment.Eden, with its delights, was especially fitted up for his occupancy, signifying his early state of innocence, happiness, exemption from physical death, and unhindered access to God (Genesis 2:8-17). It seems that God, foreseeing his fall into sin, prepared the earth at large, with all its vast resources, for his habitation in his fallen state. 5. By the extent of his dominion (Genesis 1:28-31), which is universal. Everything on earth was placed under his lord tenancy, and the Divine command was unequivocal, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it. The Scripture makes it crystal clear that man was crown of the Creation for whose sake all else was called into being. Man, in his. primitive state was natural; through rebellion against God, he fell from a natural into an unnatural state (sin is unnatural); by grace, through faith, he may attain to a preternatural state. Man, at present, is fallen, in spiritual ruin, in danger of perishing, and without hope in thisworld or in the world to come, unless he accepts the Lord Jesus Christ as His Redeemer and prepares for ultimate Union with God by growing in the Spiritual Life in this present world. (Romans 3:23-25, John 3:16-18, Ephesians 2:8, 1 John 5:11-12). Let us seek the restoration of the Divine image in our souls, for without holiness no one can hope to see (experience) the Lord (Hebrews 12:14).

Marcus Dods (EB-G): Man is dear to God because he is like Him. Vast and glorious as it is, the sun cannot think God's thoughts, can fulfil but cannot intelligently sympathize with God's purpose. Man, alone among God's works, can enter into and approve of God's purpose in the world, and can intelligently fulfil it. Without man the whole material universe would have been dark and unintelligent, mechanical and apparently without any sufficient purpose. Matter, however fearfully and wonderfully wrought, is but the platform and the material in which spirit, intelligence, and will may fulfil themselves and find development. Man is incommensurable with the rest of the universe. He is of a different kind and by his moral nature is more akin to God than to His works.

4. The doctrine pointedly emphasized in Scripture that the cosmos with its myriad forms of life was brought into existence for man's use and benefit (Genesis 1:28-30; Genesis 9:1-3) is looked upon as absurd by self-appointed positivists, naturalists, humanists, pessimists, and all their kind: the very idea, they say, is consummate egotism on man's part, In one breath they tell us that man is utterly insignificant, just a speck on a speck of the totality of being; in the next breath, they will contend that man's capacity for knowledge is infinite, thus vesting him potentially with omniscience. (Man's capacity for knowledge is indefinite, but not infinite.) Among these skeptics and agnostics, consistency is never regarded as a jewel. If the lower orders, nonliving and living, were not brought into existence for man's benefit, (a) for what conceivable end could they have been created?the only alternative view would be that of the utter purposelessness of all being; (b) how does it happen that man is the only created being capable of inquiring into the meaning of the cosmos-' and of his own life in it? and (c) how does it happen that man is vested with a well-nigh insatiable spirit of wonder (curiosity?) which drives him into an unabating quest for the understanding and control of his environment?

5. One might well ask at this point, Why a Creation at all? Or, for those who would deny Creation, why the existence of the totality of being that obviously does exist? Of course, man has no certain answer to this question, nor is the certain answer to be found anywhere that I know of (cf. Job 11:7, Isaiah 55:8-9, Hebrews 11:6). I firmly believe, however, that God's activity in whatever realm, whether that of the physical Creation or that of the spiritual Creation, the Regeneration (Matthew 19:28; John 1:3; John 3:3-6; Titus 3:5), is the outpouring of His love. And, we might ask, even though human intelligence cannot fathom the mystery, How could God's love be as fully revealed in any area of being as in a world of lost sinners? (Cf. John 3:16-17, Acts 3:21; Ephesians 3:8-12; Romans 8:21; Romans 8:38-39; 1 John 4:7-21). It strikes me that man's weakness is his utter incapacity to fathom the super-abundance of the Divine Love which is lavished unstintedly upon the creatures which He created in His own image. May we not be justified in believing also that it is this unfathomable, ineffable Divine Love which caused the Creator to shower upon mankind the glories of the physical as well as those of the spiritual Creation. Intrinsically, God's end in Creation is the well-being (happiness) of His moral creatures; extrinsically, His primary end is His own glory. Nor is this doctrine of the love of God incompatible with that of the final punishment of the neglectful, disobedient and wicked (Matthew 25:46, John 5:28-29, Romans 2:4-11, 2 Thessalonians 2:7-10, Revelation 20:11-15). We must remember that God did not prepare Hell for mankind, but for the devil and his angels(Matthew 25:41); the lost who go there will do so because their individual consciences will send them to their proper place (Acts 1:25, Revelation 6:16-17).

6. Genesis 1:29-30. There is a difference of opinion as to whether these verses indicate that only vegetable diet was permitted for man's sustenance. One view is that we cannot dogmatically affirm that man's dominion over the animals did not involve his using them for food; indeed the fact of animal sacrifice (first noted in ch. 4) probably indicates that the worshipers ate the flesh of the victim: this seems to have been an aspect of sacrifice wherever practiced. On the other hand, it is contended by many that Genesis 9:3 clearly teaches that the use of animals for food was not authorized prior to Noah's time. We do have indicated here, however, a fundamental scientific fact, namely, that plants with their chlorophyll, because of the mysterious work of photosynthesis which they perform, are absolutely necessary food for all animal life (including human beings).

7. Genesis 1:31Everything was very good.(Cf. Psalms 104:24; Psalms 119:68.) The meaning of good as used in these first few Chapter s of Genesis is uniformly the same: the good is that which is suitable to a nature, that which adds a perfection or removes an imperfection. The nature of any class of things is determined by their function.Note Genesis 2:18it is not good that the man should be alone. That is to say, alone the man could never have actualized the functions for which he had been created, namely the reproduction of his kind and their stewardship over the whole of the Creation; without a helper meet for his needs, his appearance on the scene would have been utterly purposeless and useless. Hence, anything to be good must be good for something; that is, for the function it was created to perform. Therefore, when Elohim looked out over His Creation and pronounced it all good, this meant that all created species were actualizing the functions for which they had been created, in relation to the totality of being: the consequence was, of course, harmony, order, peace. Note also that heretofore God simply pronounced His handiwork good (Genesis 1:10; Genesis 1:12; Genesis 1:18; Genesis 1:21; Genesis 1:25), but now, in contemplation of the finished Creation, God pronounces it all very good.The reason for the special emphasis is obvious: man, the crown of Creation, has now made his appearance on the scene and been appointed lord tenant of the universe. (The various existents of the subhuman world (both the nonliving and the living) are incapable of dysfunctions that would distort their natures; man alone, endowed as he is with the power of choice to endow him with the power to love, has succeeded in messing up practically everything that God has created; without this power of choice, however, man simply would not be man-he would be only a robot or an automaton.) God never makes anything but good.Nature was perfect (complete) as it came from His hand. There was nothing to mar this perfection until sin (moral evil) entered Eden, bringing in its wake disease, suffering, and death (physical evil).