Karl Barth and the image of God (Emil Brunner)

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I was having a quick look at a book comprising of both Emil Brunner's critique of Karl Barth and the latter's Nien to natural theology in response to Brunner's critique. Bruner offers the following analysis of Barth's doctrine of the image of God. While it is true that some Reformed orthodox theologians, such as John Owen, held to the same position, I wonder if contemporary proponents of this view have been influence more by Barthianism on this point than they would care to admit.

KarlBarthimageofGod.jpg
 
I was having a quick look at a book comprising of both Emil Brunner's critique of Karl Barth and the latter's Nien to natural theology in response to Brunner's critique. Bruner offers the following analysis of Barth's doctrine of the image of God. While it is true that some Reformed orthodox theologians, such as John Owen, held to the same position, I wonder if contemporary proponents of this view have been influence more by Barthianism on this point than they would care to admit.

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For Barth, grace destroys nature (or rather, grace stands upon an already destroyed nature). In any case, if Brunner's reading of Barth is correct, Barth's conclusion doesn't follow. It is not clear why being a sinner saved by grace necessitates that the image of God be entirely lost.
 
I was having a quick look at a book comprising of both Emil Brunner's critique of Karl Barth and the latter's Nien to natural theology in response to Brunner's critique. Bruner offers the following analysis of Barth's doctrine of the image of God. While it is true that some Reformed orthodox theologians, such as John Owen, held to the same position, I wonder if contemporary proponents of this view have been influence more by Barthianism on this point than they would care to admit.

View attachment 10121
Hey Daniel, I'm curious where you're thinking of in noting that Owen maintained this. Maybe there's another place in his corpus where he has stronger language on there being no remnant of the image of God in fallen man? Alas, he seems to admit in his Pneumatologia that fallen man, in retaining the spiritual faculties of mind and will, retains something of the image of God;

"We may consider the moral state and condition of man, with the furniture of his mind and soul, in reference unto his obedience to God and his enjoyment of him. This was the principal part of that image wherein he was created... These things belonged unto the integrity of his nature, with the uprightness of the state and condition wherein he was made. And all these things were the peculiar effects of the immediate operation of the Holy Ghost; for although this rectitude of his nature be distinguishable and separable from the faculties of the soulf of man, yet in his first creation they were not actually distinguished from them, nor superadded, or infused into them when created, but were concreated with them,--that is, his soul was made meet and able to live to God, as his sovereign lord, chiefest good, and last end." (p. 101-102)
This right after noting the essential principles of the nature of man as consisting in body and soul.
 
Hey Daniel, I'm curious where you're thinking of in noting that Owen maintained this. Maybe there's another place in his corpus where he has stronger language on there being no remnant of the image of God in fallen man? Alas, he seems to admit in his Pneumatologia that fallen man, in retaining the spiritual faculties of mind and will, retains something of the image of God;

"We may consider the moral state and condition of man, with the furniture of his mind and soul, in reference unto his obedience to God and his enjoyment of him. This was the principal part of that image wherein he was created... These things belonged unto the integrity of his nature, with the uprightness of the state and condition wherein he was made. And all these things were the peculiar effects of the immediate operation of the Holy Ghost; for although this rectitude of his nature be distinguishable and separable from the faculties of the soulf of man, yet in his first creation they were not actually distinguished from them, nor superadded, or infused into them when created, but were concreated with them,--that is, his soul was made meet and able to live to God, as his sovereign lord, chiefest good, and last end." (p. 101-102)
This right after noting the essential principles of the nature of man as consisting in body and soul.

I am alluding to a section in his work against Socinianism, which I believe that I quoted on the PB at least once before now. Conversely, I have seen the above quote before (and possibly others) which affirms that all men are divine image bearers.
 
@Shanny01 here is what I had in mind:

Q. But how doth this agree with those places of Scripture wherein it is written that man was created in the image of God, and created unto immortality, and that death entered into the world by sin, Gen. i. 26; Wisd. ii. 23; Rom. v. 12?

A. As to the testimony which declareth that man was created in the image of God, it is to be known that the image of God doth not signify immortality (which is evident from hence, because at that time when man was subject to eternal death the Scripture acknowledgeth in him that image, Gen. ix. 6, James iii. 9), but it denoteth the power and dominion over all things made of God on the earth, as the same place where this image is treated of clearly showeth, Gen. i. 26.

The argument for that state and condition wherein we affirm man to have been created from the consideration of the image of God wherein he was made, and whereunto in part we are renewed, was formerly insisted on. Let the reader look back unto it, and he will quickly discern how little is here offered to enervate it in the least; for, —

1. They cannot prove that man, in the condition and state of sin, doth retain any thing of the image of God. The places mentioned, as Gen. ix. 6, and James iii. 9, testify only that he was made in the image of God at first, but that he doth still retain the image they intimate not; nor is the inference used in the places taken from what man is, but what he was created.

2. That the image of God did not consist in any one excellency hath been above declared; so that the argument to prove that it did not consist in immortality, because it did consist in the dominion over the creatures, is no better than that would be which should conclude that the sun did not give light because it gives heat, So that, —

3. Though the image of God, as to the main of it, in reference to the end of everlasting communion with God whereunto we were created, was utterly lost by sin (or else we could not be renewed unto it again by Jesus Christ), yet as to some footsteps of it, in reference to our fellow-creatures, so much might be and was retained as to be a reason one towards another for our preservation from wrong and violence.

4. That place of Gen. i. 26, “Let us make man in our image, and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea,” etc., is so far from proving that the image of God wherein man was created did consist only in the dominion mentioned, that it doth not prove that dominion to have been any part of or to belong unto that image. It is rather a grant made to them who were made in the image of God than a description of that image wherein they were made.

It is evident, then, notwithstanding any thing here excepted to the contrary, that the immortality pleaded for belonged to the image of God, and from man’s being created therein is rightly inferred; as above was made more evident.

Works, 12: 161-62 (emphases added).

P.S. On the face of it, points 1 and 3 appear to contradict one another.
 
@Shanny01 here is what I had in mind:

Q. But how doth this agree with those places of Scripture wherein it is written that man was created in the image of God, and created unto immortality, and that death entered into the world by sin, Gen. i. 26; Wisd. ii. 23; Rom. v. 12?

A. As to the testimony which declareth that man was created in the image of God, it is to be known that the image of God doth not signify immortality (which is evident from hence, because at that time when man was subject to eternal death the Scripture acknowledgeth in him that image, Gen. ix. 6, James iii. 9), but it denoteth the power and dominion over all things made of God on the earth, as the same place where this image is treated of clearly showeth, Gen. i. 26.

The argument for that state and condition wherein we affirm man to have been created from the consideration of the image of God wherein he was made, and whereunto in part we are renewed, was formerly insisted on. Let the reader look back unto it, and he will quickly discern how little is here offered to enervate it in the least; for, —

1. They cannot prove that man, in the condition and state of sin, doth retain any thing of the image of God. The places mentioned, as Gen. ix. 6, and James iii. 9, testify only that he was made in the image of God at first, but that he doth still retain the image they intimate not; nor is the inference used in the places taken from what man is, but what he was created.

2. That the image of God did not consist in any one excellency hath been above declared; so that the argument to prove that it did not consist in immortality, because it did consist in the dominion over the creatures, is no better than that would be which should conclude that the sun did not give light because it gives heat, So that, —

3. Though the image of God, as to the main of it, in reference to the end of everlasting communion with God whereunto we were created, was utterly lost by sin (or else we could not be renewed unto it again by Jesus Christ), yet as to some footsteps of it, in reference to our fellow-creatures, so much might be and was retained as to be a reason one towards another for our preservation from wrong and violence.

4. That place of Gen. i. 26, “Let us make man in our image, and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea,” etc., is so far from proving that the image of God wherein man was created did consist only in the dominion mentioned, that it doth not prove that dominion to have been any part of or to belong unto that image. It is rather a grant made to them who were made in the image of God than a description of that image wherein they were made.

It is evident, then, notwithstanding any thing here excepted to the contrary, that the immortality pleaded for belonged to the image of God, and from man’s being created therein is rightly inferred; as above was made more evident.

Works, 12: 161-62 (emphases added).

P.S. On the face of it, points 1 and 3 appear to contradict one another.
Hmm, intriguing. On one level, this is an earlier writing of his, and so could represent the judgment of a younger Owen who is engaging with the genuinely corrosive Socinian doctrine which asserts that the image of God is only covered with acquired habits of sin, and so he emphasizes the perfect and specific definition of the image of God and man's whole loss of that. Whereas older Owen is fine with admitting the image of God essentially consists in the soul with its faculties. At the end of the day, his admitting "footsteps" or remnants of the image of God (together with others who make the same move) seems to practically amount to an admission that the image of God involves the faculties the soul which are not lost by sin.
 
Hmm, intriguing. On one level, this is an earlier writing of his, and so could represent the judgment of a younger Owen who is engaging with the genuinely corrosive Socinian doctrine which asserts that the image of God is only covered with acquired habits of sin, and so he emphasizes the perfect and specific definition of the image of God and man's whole loss of that. Whereas older Owen is fine with admitting the image of God essentially consists in the soul with its faculties. At the end of the day, his admitting "footsteps" or remnants of the image of God (together with others who make the same move) seems to practically amount to an admission that the image of God involves the faculties the soul which are not lost by sin.

I would concur with that interpretation. I think that John Owen's sentiments regarding the image of God in the context of refuting Socinianism also represent a polemical overstatement.
 
I was having a quick look at a book comprising of both Emil Brunner's critique of Karl Barth and the latter's Nien to natural theology in response to Brunner's critique. Bruner offers the following analysis of Barth's doctrine of the image of God. While it is true that some Reformed orthodox theologians, such as John Owen, held to the same position, I wonder if contemporary proponents of this view have been influence more by Barthianism on this point than they would care to admit.

View attachment 10121
Suffice it to say that even when the earlier Reformed say that man has lost the image of God, their notions of "footsteps" and "remnants" are doing necessary and powerful work in their anthropologies which are often forgotten by Barthian proponents.
 
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