Studies in Dogmatics

Man: The Image of God

by

G. C. BERKOUWER

professor of systematic theology

free university of amsterdam

William. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan

©Copyright Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1962

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Catalog Card No., 60-12643

ISBN 0-8028-4818-4

Translated by Dirk W. Jellema

from the Dutch edition, De Mens het Beeld Gods,

published by J. H. Kok N.V., Kampen, The Netherlands

Contents

1. The Mystery of Man

2. A Preliminary Orientation

3. The Meaning of the Image

4. The Corruption of the Image

5. Corruption and Humanness

6. The Whole Man

7. Immortality

8. Creationism and Traducianism

9. Human Freedom

10. The Man of God

Index

ABBREVIATIONS

BC —Belgic Confession

CD —Canons of Dort

ET —English Translation

HC —Heidelberg Catechism

Inst. —Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin

K.D. —Kirchliche Dogmatik by Karl Barth

TWZNT —Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament ed. by G. Kittel

chapter one

the mystery of man

TODAY, more than at any time, the question “What is man?” is at the center of theological and philosophical concern. The number of studies that have taken this problem as their theme is almost innumerable. And yet, the fact that this problem has forced itself to the attention of contemporary thought does not take away a rather puzzling aspect of the problem itself; namely, Why should this be a problem? It would seem that there is nothing so widely and generally “known” in everyday experience as is man. Is not the problem of the “nature” of man an abstract problem, a strange, reflexive, obvious problem? Is not this “nature” experienced by all of us, in ourselves and in others, in countless relationships, in the heights of human happiness and the depths of grief? Who does not “know” man, whom we daily encounter, and the man that we ourselves are?

There can be only one answer to such questions; namely, that this almost irresistible problem appears to many a mind not to have found a clear and obviously irrefutable answer, and that this apparently general “knowledge” of the nature of man is not so obvious after all. Its obviousness is indeed drastically relativized as soon as we discover that man’s reflection on the nature of man has produced an astonishing variety of views. Hence it does not appear, on second thought, to be at all clear and obvious who and what man really is, and there is thus every reason to pose the problem.

Indeed, there is scarcely another theme dealt with by human consciousness which has aroused so much controversy as this theme—the nature of man, which is the subject of this book. There is, nevertheless, a generally dominant feeling or intuition that man, in one way or another, occupies a central position in the whole of reality; although there are great differences of opinion as to the nature of this central position, and although there are some views of man which tend to play down the uniqueness of his nature. Nor, generally, does this feeling ...