The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 259

IMAGE AND LIKENESS

219

Accepting the account of Creation as the Holy Spirit's direct we acknowledge its absolute credibility in every part.

revelation,

They who do not deny the

gians,

cussion.

If

so accept

it,

or who, like

many

Ethical theolo-

can have no voice in the disin the exposition of the account we are in earnest, and literal interpretation,

we must be thoroughly convinced that God Let Us make men after Our image and after Our likeness." But denying this and holding that these words merely represent the form in which somebody, animated by the Holy Spirit, presented man's creation to himself, we can deduce nothing from them. Then we have no security that they are divine we know do not

trifle

actually said

with words, "

:

;

man attributed these thoughts to God and laid them upon His lips while they were but his own account of man's creation. only that a pious

Hence the

Sacred Scripture is our starting-point. a direct testimony of the Holy Spirit and with fullest assurance we believe that these are the words of the Almighty spoken before He created man. With this conviction, they have decisive authority and bowing before it, we confess that man was created after God's likeness and after His image. This statement, in connection with the whole account, shows that the Holy Spirit sharply distinguishes man's creation and that of all other creatures. They were all manifestations of God's glory, for He saw that they were good an effect of His counsel, for they embodied a divine thought. But man's creation was special, more exalted, more glorious; for God said: " Let Us make men after Our image and after Our likeness." Hence the general sense of these words is that man is totally different from all other beings; that his kind is nobler, richer, more glorious and especially that this higher glory consists in the more intimate bond and closer relation to his Creator. This appears from the words image and likeness. In all His other creative acts the Lord speaks, and it is done He commanded, and it stood fast. There is a thought in His counsel, a will to execute it, and an omnipotent act to realize it, but no more beings are created wholly outside and apart from Him. But man's creation is totally different. Of course, there is a divine thought proceeding from the eternal counsel, and by omnipotent power this thought is realized but that new creature is connected with the image of God.

We

infallibility of

see in Gen.

i.

27

;

;

;

;

;

;

;

According to the universal son's

image

is

sig^nificance of

the word, a per-

such a concentration of his essential features as to

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