_5_Immediate Consequences of the Possession of the Divine Image

1. Man was immortal (able not to die). According to Scripture, death and its forerunners (illness, debility) entered into the world by sin. Gen. 2:17: “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die”; Rom. 5:12: “And death by sin”; Rom. 6:23: “The wages of sin is death.” It is a pagan opinion that death is bound up with the material substance of the body; some modern theologians share that opinion. (See the chapter “Temporal Death” in Vol. III.)

2. Man exercised dominion over the creatures. That was an immediate consequence of possessing the divine image, for we read: “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion,” etc. (Gen. 1:26-28.) It was a real dominion; willingly all creatures rendered man service. After the Fall, man retained only a caricature of his original dominion; he must now employ cunning and force to assert some kind of mastery over the animals. With man’s innocence also the dominion over the creatures, as described Gen. 1:28, was lost. All that is left of this dominion, Luther calls a “mock sovereignty” (speciem dominii and nudum titulum dominii). It is true that man succeeds by cunning and coercion in subduing the creatures partially. But in spite of all the creature remains in revolt against its sinful master. The beasts harass, harm, kill, and eat their former lord; in the air he breaks his neck; the water drowns him; the earth becomes his tomb, etc. Such considerations, says Luther, serve a useful purpose. They teach us what an abomination before God sin must be, since it has so thoroughly deranged the relationship between man and the rest of the creatures.10