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The Imago Dei Revealed Through Genesis, Part 4 – Effects of the Fall

by Dr. Andrew Corbett, 22 February 2026, from Melbourne, Australia

The imago Dei is much more than an ancient Hebrew concept of what constitutes the essence of a human being. It has been embraced by many, if not most, western governments to become the grounding for how western civilisation regards human rights. Examples of this include the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights – “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world” and, the The 1776 United States Declaration of Independence – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (sic) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The imago Dei concept has been described by Prof. Ellen Davis (Duke University Divinity School) as “potent yet cryptic” (Davis 2019, 9). This is part of the reason why systematic theology is insufficient in adequately understanding this literary figure. Much of the scholarship about the Genesis 1:26-27 introduction of the imago Dei has primarily focused on the man (A’dam). Yet, this introduction describes God creating the imago Dei as male (Heb. zakhar) and female (Heb. neqevah) — that is, not just as an individual, but in the plural. Rather than regarding Genesis 2 as an alternative account of creation, it should be seen as providing the detail of Genesis 1:26-27 introduces. Before we can consider the effects, if any, of the Fall of humankind from innocence, we must reflect on how this detailed account influences our understanding of the effect of the Fall.

The Genesis 2 Creation Account of the Imagines

18) ¶ Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” (19) Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. (20) The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. (21) So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. (22) And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. (23) Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”

(24) ¶ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (25) And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Genesis 2:18-25

Because the imago Dei is introduced in Genesis 1 and then detailed in Genesis 2 in the plural, I am adopting Brent Strawn’s terminology of imagines to refer to the plurality of the imago Dei; and, from this point I will use the imago for imago Dei. As we consider the possible impact of the Fall on humankind’s standing as imago as plural will be seen as critically important. I have already alluded to the reasons for this in the previous chapter on fallacies. It is important to appreciate that the account of the creation of the first man and the first woman is not an alternate creation story — it is the detail of what is introduced in summary in Genesis 1. And this point is profoundly important because it reinforces something essential to our proper understanding of the imago. 

I generally do not refer to the created woman in Genesis 2 as ‘Eve’. Rather I refer to her with the designation that Genesis 2 assigns to her: ’Ishah. (In Genesis 3:20, which is after the Fall, Adam renames her as ‘Eve’.) I feel this is an important point – especially in our quest to understand the imago. When God took something out of Adam, which the text refers to as a rib, GOD used that substance to create ’Ishah. That is, the woman was created of the same substance, that had been God-breathed, as Adam was. This divine breath is unique to humankind. The Hebrew expression (Hebrew, neshmat chayim) occurs nowhere else in the Bible. Many commentators have recognised that this surely is an indication and a marked of humankind’s unique status among God’s creatures. David Clines states, “There is perhaps in the concept of the ‘image’ a slight hint of the limitation of the status of humankind, in that the image is not itself the thing it represents and that the copy must in some respects be unlike its original” (Clines 1998,  447-97). John Swann similarly states, “The image of God, on the other hand, is clearly given as a unique status and suggests a separation from and superiority to the animal kingdom” (Swann 2017, 21). This means that there is a link between how the first man and the first woman were substantively created that gives them a unique status. Their fall from innocence had no bearing on their substance and therefore also had no bearing on their unique status.

The creation of the woman described in Genesis 2 was the completion of the man and the means by which he could fulfil his consequences of being an imagine. Naturally, the preceding creation of the man also meant that the woman could fulfil her consequences of being an imagine. As we have noted in the third part of this series, it is a fallacy to claim that because the woman was created subsequent to the man, or that because she was first to yield to the serpentine temptation, that she was either never really created as an imagine or that her imagine status was lost or diminished when she sinned.

What is also overlooked about the creation of the woman is that her creation was the trigger for a heavenly creature’s pride and rebellion who then orchestrated to manipulate a nachash (serpent) to be able to speak and carry out the the temptation of the ’Ishah (Gen. 3:1). Perhaps there was a recognition that Yahweh had now created a being who was uniquely powerful. While other creatures could create after their own kind, Yahweh had now created a being who could also create imagines. This is something that no heavenly creature could do, and it seems that one of these heavenly creatures was filled with envy and desired to sabotage what Yahweh had created to image Him. 

The Nascent Creation of the Imagines

When the first man and the first woman were created as imagines there were not yet what they were created to be. They were created as nascent. Nascent refers to something that is, but is not all that it is meant to be. John Kilner writes that there are two categories of persons who are referred to as “image of God.” The first category are the imagines, that is, humankind. The second category is Jesus Christ Himself. 

“[A]ll that is true about humanity is not necessarily true about God’s image. For instance, just because sin has damaged humanity does not logically require that it has damaged God’s image. Everything that is true of one is not necessarily true of the other” (Kilner 2015, 45).

References

Clines, David J. A. ‘Humanity as the Image of God’, On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays, 1967–1998, vol. 2, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series, 293; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998

Davis, Ellen F.  Opening Israel’s Scriptures. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Kilner, John F. Dignity and Destiny: Humanity in the Image of God. Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2015.

Swann,.John Thomas. The Imago Dei: A Priestly Calling for Humankind. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2017.