image: a concrete, fashioned thing that stands in for and makes present whatever it represents
At its core this is the word for something made to represent something else: a carved or cast figure, a model, a statue. It does not mean a vague resemblance or an idea in the mind. It points to a tangible object you could see and touch, set up to stand in for a god, a king, or a thing, so that the represented one is felt to be present through it.
Almost everywhere the word names a physical idol or replica, and that is why its most famous use is so startling. When Genesis says God made humanity in his image, it uses the same earthy, statue shaped word the rest of the Bible uses for manufactured idols. The point is not that people merely think like God or have a soul like his, but that the human being is God's living representative on earth, the visible stand in for the unseen God, the way an ancient king set up a statue of himself in a distant province to mark that the land was his.
The range runs from that high theological use, through the ordinary idols and votive models the prophets condemn, to a faded sense at the edges, where a person's whole life is called a mere image: real enough to see, yet insubstantial and passing, like a shadow or a dream.
The senses hold together because each is some form of standing in for an original.
- A cult statue stands in for a god.
- A votive model stands in for the thing it copies.
- A human being stands in for God.
- And a fleeting life is only the thin outline of a person, an image without lasting substance.
Nuances
Disputed
What it means for humanity to be God's image in Genesis 1:26-27. The debate is over the substance of the claim, not over which word is used.
- majorityA royal and representative reading: a human is God's living statue, his visible stand in on earth, charged to exercise his rule over creation, drawing on the ancient practice of kings and gods being represented by statues. This is now the dominant view in critical scholarship.; J. R. Middleton, The Liberating Image (Brazos, 2005); D. J. A. Clines, "The Image of God in Man," Tyndale Bulletin 19 (1968): 53-103
- minorityA cultic and kinship reading that builds on the royal one: a human manifests God's presence the way an activated temple statue was held to make a god present, and is also God's son or daughter.; S. L. Herring, Divine Substitution, FRLANT 247 (V&R, 2013); C. L. McDowell, The Image of God in the Garden of Eden (Eisenbrauns, 2015)
- minorityA relational reading: the image is found in the I and Thou structure of human relationship, supported by the following clause male and female he created them.; K. Barth, Church Dogmatics III/1, 184-206; C. Westermann, Genesis 1-11 (Fortress, 1984), 142-161
- minorityThe older substantive reading: the image is an inner faculty such as reason, soul, or moral will. Once dominant in Christian tradition, it has largely receded in critical scholarship on the grounds that the word names something concrete and visible.; A. Hoekema, Created in God's Image (Eerdmans, 1986)