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Imago Dei Revealed Through Genesis by Dr. Andrew Corbett, 5th January 2026, from Melbourne, Australia  

Part 1, Introduction

This is the first sub-series in the grander Imago Dei series. It is the first series because the Book of Genesis is the first book of the bible, and appropriately so because Genesis means “beginning”. Yet as I will show throughout the grander series it is not the very beginning – that will be referred to in the New Testament documents (Jn. 1:1, 17:5; 1Cor. 2:7; Titus 1:2; 2Tim. 1:9; Jude 25). In the meantime, I will commence this series “in the beginning” described in Genesis 1:1 from which we will see that God is the introduced as the Creator and humankind is introduced as the created.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Genesis 1:1-2

Genesis 1 introduces several biblical motifs that will contribute to how we understand their use throughout the remainder of canon of Scripture including: day, night, heavens, light, darkness, good, waters, “God said”, and “be fruitful”. In addition to this motifs which become the basis for many biblical symbols and metaphors, the account of the creation of humankind as male and female “in the image of God” (Gen. 1:27) becomes one of the most important biblical verses about: the uniqueness of humankind, the foundation for the rule of law, homo religiosus, human rights, and anthropological teleology.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image (Heb. tselem), after our likeness (Heb. demuth). And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis. 1:26-27

Theologians tend to use the Latin term for “the image of God” – imago Dei. Remarkably for such a profound biblical concept (either as tselem or demuth), only occurs four times directly in the first nine chapters of Genesis:

(2) Gen. 5.1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, He made him in the likeness (demuth) of God.

(3) Gen. 5:3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness (demuth), after his image (tselem), and named him Seth.

(4) Gen. 9.6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image (tselem).

Jewish theologian, Michael Wyschogrod, wrote chapter in Die Hebräische Bibel und ihr zweifache Nachgeschichte: Festschrift für Rolf Rendtorff zum, 65 Geburstag, “The Impact of Dialogue with Christianity on My Self-Understanding as a Jew,” regards Genesis 1:26 as “the single most powerful [verse] in the Bible.”

As we proceed in our study through Genesis I am going to argue that its introduction in the opening chapter marks one of the predominant themes of this book. As such I will demonstrate that the book has been ordered in a way that we are able to see why certain people did not live up to this created purpose and how Genesis concludes by giving an example of someone who did. The reason that this is an important way to regard Genesis is that establishes a literary sophistication one might reasonably expect from a book claiming to have divine inspiration and authority. Secondly, it will be shown that this positive example exhibits Christological qualities that will contribute to the Hebrew expectation of what the Messiah would be like.

The immediate explication for us is to recognise that all human beings are created as imago Dei. This should consequently lead us to treat all people with inherent dignity and respect. It should also remind us that as imagines of God we have a responsibility to exhibit character qualities deserving of the God we image. For the Christian, this gives us a recognition of our need for the infilling with the Holy Spirit to help us to be the light to the world that Christ spoke of and the bear the good fruit of the Spirit that the Apostle Paul wrote of in Galatians 5. At the very least it should also cause us to be more prayerful for our souls to honour Christ.

Dr. Andrew Corbett.

Next article: Part 2, Philosophically