_2_What Constituted the Image of God

The image of God in man consisted in much more than in his possession of intellect and will, in his personality; it consisted in the right disposition of his intellect and will, in his knowledge of God and the will to do only God’s will. And his sensuous desires (appetitus sensitivus), in his eating, etc. — if we wish to distinguish this from the intellect and will — were free from all ungodly propensity. This is clear not only from Gen. 1:31 (“very good”) and from Gen. 2:25: “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed,” 3 but also from two additional facts mentioned in the record of the original condition of man. 1) God gave man commandments to keep (Gen. 2:16-17: “Of every tree of the Garden thou may est freely eat; but of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, thou shalt not eat of it”). 2) Man is presented as living in intimate intercourse and peaceful communion with God (Gen. 2:19ff.; 3:2-3). All these facts show that man knew God and was endowed with a holy disposition. This truth is corroborated in the New Testament. Col. 3:10 describes the new man as “renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him,” and Eph. 4:24 as “created after God in righteousness and true holiness.” 4

We must therefore reject as anti-Scriptural the notion that man originally was a brute, without language, or that he was a being “morally indifferent,” neither good nor bad, or that he was even then infected with an ungodly inclination towards gratification of his desires (“Sinnlichkeit”). According to Scripture, man was not created a brute, but the lord of the animal kingdom. And he was not merely capable of culture, but was truly cultured, endowed not only with the gift of speech, but with an intelligence that, besides knowing God, had such a grasp of the natural sciences as is unattainable today even by the most diligent study. Luther is right in saying that only Adam, as he was before the Fall, really deserves the title of philosopher.5 But, above all things, man was not originally in a state of moral indifference or endowed with a mere aptitude for what is good,6 but he was positively good (sanctae Dei voluntati conformis, amore et fiducia Dei praeditus), without any trace of sensuality or propensity toward evil. Frequently a false conception of what moral goodness means lies at the bottom of the opposition to the Scriptural doctrine of the concreated divine image or the iustitia originalis concreata. Men imagine that only that is morally good which man himself produces by way of evolution (self-activity, self-decision, self-determination), not that which God has concreated in men, given to man.

Luther occasionally calls the original state of man status medius. He is then not speaking of man as being morally indifferent, but as not yet so confirmed in welldoing that he could not fall. He distinguishes (St. L. I:135 ff.) between “childlike” and “manly” innocence (innocentia puerilis and virilis). “Childlike innocence” is the state in which men could still be deceived by Satan, “manly innocence” the state which the angels, confirmed in holiness, enjoy and which the blessed in heaven will enjoy (inamissibilis innocentia et immortalitas). But Luther was far from conceiving this state of “childlike” innocence as a state of “indifference.” He castigates the idle talk of the Scholastics, who described the original state as a mere capability (qualitas) of doing good. And he describes the original righteousness thus (St. L. I:138): “If we wish to follow Moses, we can say that the original righteousness consisted in this, that man was righteous, true, and upright, not only in his body and externally, but, above all, inwardly in his soul, and that he knew God, was obedient to Him with the utmost pleasure, understood the works of God without any instruction concerning them… . The original righteousness also consisted in Adam’s loving God and God’s work with all his heart, in a pure spirit.”