Image Of God In The Bible

The very first book of the bible starts by describing that human being is an image of God. It says “Then God said, ‘Let Us make mankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth” (Gen. 1:26 NASB). Knowing this one can note that this event does not align the theory of evolution. Evolution claim that, every organism evolve gradually as the times pass by with in the period of million year. In this modern era, human being are view as different things like machine, or animals. Nonetheless, scripture believers see all the creature including people are creation from God and not evolve by chance over the period of time. Furthermore, people are granted with “eternal dimension” (Erickson, p. 65). Human being are created by God, the one who is a creator, so why there is a need of evolved required? Questions like this may be helpful to dig more about God. God has live infinity. This means one who does not have beginning or end. Though we have our starting point in life, when God created first human, we are meant to exist for eternal with God.

Unity of God

There are three basic traditional view of Christians about what human beings are made up of. The debate on the air is what we are rather where we are coming from. These questions has been around the century to come and discuss. Thus, different era Christian view what we human being are consist of. The three traditional views are trichotomism, dicotomism and monism. All these views are discussed below.

Trichotomism

Early centenary people used to view Trichotomism epically ‘conservative protestant’ (Erickson, P. 180). This views bring out the discussion that human being’s physical body, soul and spirit are different. These people who believe in this view, point out that we have physical body just as plants and animals. Nevertheless we are not plant and animal and the things that distinguish us from plants and animals is that only the complex “physical structure” (Eriksson, p. 180). The second elements is soul – human being are compose of emotions. They believe that plants do not have emotion so they do not have soul but animals does. To these people, things that vary from animal to people are just the fact that people have complex soul. Moving to the third element which is the sprit. According to people who believe this view claim that, the third element is what drag people to practice of religious practice.

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Dicotomsim

This is another popular view of Christian in the past time. As time passed gradually, people started to bring up the idea (which already exist but was not as popular until council of Constantinople, we are not compose or consist of three elements rather we are made up of two element. These group began to view body as a material element and soul or spirit as an immaterial. This thought eventually change to among some people as unitary. Talking about the unitary, it was began to view as a Dualism. This means that human body- which does not live forever and soul – which last for forever.

Monism

As the name of this perspective sounds, it means one. The people have this view believe that human body and soul are not separable in any cost. Thus it is one. Some people out there even believe that it is not as soul, body and spirit rather, it is a self. Moreover they confess that the soul does not exist without body. Therefore when we resurrect, we will resurrect with the body otherwise without body, it is hard to imagine resurrection of a life. This idea or thought became famous in the no orthodoxy and biblical theology movement.

Let’s see what bible has to say about Monism. There are account in the bible like Jesus claiming that the thief will be with Jesus in heaven or Lazarus and rich guys. These event does point out the or at least seems like the intermediate state of Human being. On the other hand, it is very hard to find difference between body and soul. Thus, it is not just to make conclude which belief is true, rather wait for what happen to us in the future. Bible is not clear about it does not mean that it does not know the truth. We have seen that Bible is a word of God. After all, everything about God and future is not open to us. Thus, it is hard to comprehend many things because of we are in sinful world. However, closer study of unitary belief that “human being is a unitary compound and immaterial elements. In this views, people belief that the spiritual and physical element cannot be differentiate because they are one. People have developed how to see human being in a conditional unitary. People claim that they should view one another’s another should be appreciated and respects because gospel is for every people out there. Furthermore, Erickson (2001) claim that “Jesus in the incarnation became a fully human, for he came to redeem the whole of what we are” (p 184). Moreover, human being are ‘complex being’ with a ‘complex nature’. Thus we are same, not a separate unit as what tri Trichotomism or Dicotomsim view human being as a separate unit of soul, body and spirit. Having said that, human beings are also sinners and sins did not affects some part only but it affects other part.