# Berkouwer: Man, Image of God



## RamistThomist (Sep 28, 2017)

This is my favorite book on Christian anthropology, hands down. Berkouwer's thesis is simple and he doggedly sticks to it: man is a pscyho-somatic unity who operates from a "Heart-mindset." 

Berkouwer begins with the standard Reformed division of man. On the broader/narrower distinction: man, despite his fall, was not beastialized (38). By narrower man lost his communion with God. the broader sense reminds us of what was not lost in the fall. Perhaps better to speak of a duality between Old and New.

Historical survey:

Schilder sees man’s creation as the pre-condition for the image, but not the image itself (Berkouwer 54). The actual image lies in the officium created man receives (I don’t think this is the full picture, but there is some truth to this, especially if we connect the imago dei with man’s dominion, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism hints at). Thus, the image is dynamic and is rooted in the Covenantal God’s Relation with man. the word “image” implies “making visible.” Schilder resists any abstracting the image. The glory of the image shines forth in service to God (56). 

What is the relationship between man’s humanness and God’s Image? Berkouwer wants to deny that fallen man images God (57). He says he can do this without rejecting what it means for man to be man. Passages like Genesis 9:6 are not proof-texts for some abstract view of the image analogia entis. They deal with a humanness in the context of God’s plan of salvation. The truth of the matter is Scripture doesn’t focus that much on the distinction between wider and narrow, important though it is. traditional discussions have always focused on image as defined by person, will, reason, and freedom. Scripture, on the other hand, is concerned with man-in-relation-to-God. A synthesis between the ontic and active aspects of the image is impossible when using concepts like “nature” and “essence” (61).

Biblical usage: The NT speaks of humanity as whether it is the “New man in Christ” or not. To the degree it speaks of conformitas, it speaks of the new conformitas in Christ.

While the analogia entis is Roman Catholic, and we understand Barth's reticence there, we need to be careful of speaking of an analogia relationis, pace Barth and Dooyeweerd. Berkouwer wisely notes that Scripture doesn’t speak of a “relation” in the abstract, but of a “relation as it becomes visible in the salvation of Christ” (101). 

Even if one were to speak of an analogia entis, the biblical presentation of “being like God” has nothing to do with the natural state of affairs but rather shows forth the wonder of the new birth (1 John 3:9). The “imitation of God” forms the pendant of our witness to the world, in which word and deed are joined in an unbreakable unity (102). 

_The Whole Man_

Scripture doesn’t talk about man in the abstract, but man in his relation to God (195).

_Biblical use of the word “soul.”_

Sometimes it is “nefesh,” meaning life and can refer to man himself. Berkouwer rejects that “soul” is a “localized religious part of man” (201). The Bible’s interchangeable usage between soul and life should draw attention to the fact that the “heart” is of primary importance: “The heart shows forth the deeper aspect of the whole humanness of man, not some functional localization in a part of man which would be the most important part” (202-203).

Concerning anthropological dualisms

Such a view sees the soul as the “higher” part, closer to God. Leads to ascetism. However, evil in the bible is never localized in a part of man.

Bavinck attacks trichotomy because Scripture knows of no original dualism between spirit and matter (209). The trichotomist sees the soul as mediating between body and spirit (find Damascene’s comment that the soul is higher point, cf Bruce McCormack, Engaging the Doctrine of God).

Dualism and duality are not identical (211). We can speak of a duality in God’s creation man and woman, without positing an ontological dualism between them (this is where Maximus and Jakob Boehme err). “Duality within created reality does not exclude harmony and unity, but is exactly oriented towards it” (211). 

_The Dooyeweerdians_

It opposes the idea that all the rich variation of humanness can be forced into two substantial categories. Stoker defines substance as the “systatic core of man, that which functions in all spheres” (H.G. Stoker, Die nuwere Wijsbegeerte aan die Vrije Universiteit, 1933, 40ff.). 

For the Dooyeweerdian critique, matter can never be an independent counter-pole to form. The main contention of Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd whether there was a natural immortality based on an essence abstracted from its relation to God, from which we can draw further conclusions, such as the soul’s “indestructibility” (249). 

Criticisms:

He doesn’t give the best discussion of EO, either in what they believe or in how to critique it. Though he does hint that EO thinkers aren’t always able to clearly state the connection between inheriting Adam’s curse of death and why we always do sinful things, but yet refusing to call it Original Sin.


----------

