I. Herman Bavinck’s Trinitarian Anthropology
Bavinck’s theological anthropology begins by emphasizing that “the essence of the human being lies in that he is the image of God” (2:530) rather than having or bearing the imago. He further explains using the traditional Reformed archetype-ectype distinction that the “‘image’ expresses that God is the archetype and the human being is the ectype; ‘likeness’ adds that this image corresponds in all parts to the original” (2:532). An archetype of something means that it is not only the prototype but the original and perfect form of its ectype or copy. In relation to the imago dei, Francis Turretin explains the significance of such a distinction:
Image signifies either the archetype (archetypon) itself (after whose copy something is made) or the things themselves in God (in the likeness of which man was made); or the ectype itself, which is made after the copy of another thing, or the similitude itself (which is in man and the relation to God himself). In the former sense, man is said to have been made in the image of God; in the latter, however, the very image of God.5
What Turretin does here, according to Ximian Xu, is to posit an ontological distinction without separation of the creature from the Creator: “In terms of archetype, the word ‘image’ indicates that the human existence depends upon God. In the sense of ectype, the human being is the imago dei.”6 In short, as Bavinck puts it, “The entire deity” or “the triune being, God, is the archetype of man” (2:554).
This way of thinking is in line with Bavinck’s Trinitarian-participatory account of creation, which he inherited from the classical tradition following Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and many others. In his own words, “Every creature is a revelation of God and participates in God’s being” (2:206). Of course, Bavinck did not understand participation as emanation “as if God’s own being flowed out into his creatures and so unfolded in them, like the genus in its species” (2:419), since only God is “a self-subsistent necessary being (ens per essentiam),” but the creature is existent by participation (ens per participationem)” (2:419). However, participation does not mean that creation has an independent existence apart from God, although every creature is said to have “a being on its own” and “its efficient and exemplary cause in the being of God” (2:419).
What does this amount to? Bavinck writes its theological import as follows: “Just as God is one in essence and distinct in persons, so also the work of creation is one and undivided, while in its unity it is still rich in diversity” (2:419).7 He elaborates:
The Father is the first cause; the initiative for creation proceeds from him. … The Son is not an instrument but the personal wisdom, the Logos, by whom everything is created; everything rests and coheres in him (Col. 1:17) and is created for him (Col. 1:16), not as its final goal but as the head and master of all creatures (Eph. 3:10). And the Holy Spirit is the personal immanent cause by which all things live and move and have their being, receive their own form and configuration, and are led to their destination, in God. (2:423)
Insofar as all the persons of the Trinity are involved in creation, Bavinck rightly stresses further that God the Son “stands in a peculiar relation” to creation, according to the Old Testament references to the Son as the divine Word who created all things (Gen. 1:3; Pss. 33:6; 148:5; Isa. 48:13; John 1:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:15–17; Rev. 3:14), who established the heavens and the earth by Wisdom (Ps. 104:24; Prov. 3:19; 8:22–31; Job 28:21–27; Jer. 10:12; 51:15), and who is the beginning and end of all things (Rev. 1:17; 21:6; 22:6), “for whom all things have been created … in order to be again gathered up into him as the head (Eph. 1:10)” (2:423). In short, while creation bears the marks of the triune Creator, it is the Second Person of the Trinity who, like humanity, should be called the crown of creation first and foremost.8
Does Bavinck’s doctrine of creation imply that everything in existence is “Trinitarian,” thereby diminishing the unique application of this qualifier to God? It is instructive to discuss briefly Bavinck’s position on the idea that creation bears vestigia trinitatis (“marks” or “traces” of the Trinity; 2:322–324).9 James Eglinton is correct, first of all, to mention that Bavinck thinks “the three-in-one nature of the Godhead is an utterly unique concept.”10 In this regard, Bavinck adheres to the general posture of the Reformed tradition, especially Calvin, in not wanting to speak of the vestigia in creation, as it is deemed too speculative (that is, in trying to find “triads” everywhere) and makes too much of the so-called natural theological approach to proving the Trinity from below.11 On the other hand, Bavinck was careful to adopt and develop the Augustinian and the medieval scholastics’ move in invoking the vestigia to confess their belief in the triune Creator, especially in speaking of humanity as reflecting the “imago Trinitatis” more clearly. “For Scripture itself,” says Bavinck, “points to this truth [of the unity of God’s work ad extra] by saying that all created beings will show these imprints and human beings will exhibit the image of the triune God” (2:330).12
The imago Trinitatis unfolds in humanity at two levels—individual and collective. At the individual level, the image of the Trinity is reflected more richly and beautifully in human beings than in other creatures, and for that they can also called as “micro-divine-beings.” So Bavinck says:
All creatures are embodiments of divine thoughts, and all of them display the footsteps or vestiges of God. But all these vestiges, distributed side by side in the spiritual as well as the material world, are recapitulated in man and so organically connected and highly enhanced that they clearly constitute the image and likeness of God. The whole world raises itself upward, culminates and completes itself, and achieves its unity, its goal, and its crown in humanity. (2:563–564)
At the collective level, humanity as a whole shows a somewhat more vivid imago Trinitatis, albeit in a qualified sense.13 In his discussion on the Trinity, Bavinck makes several comparisons between divine nature and human nature while noting their significant differences. As Bavinck writes at length:
Human nature is far too rich to be embodied in a single individual. It is therefore present in many persons and comes to its full development only in humanity as a whole. The divine nature similarly develops its fullness in three persons, but in God these three persons are not three individuals alongside each other and separated from each other but a threefold self-differentiation within the divine being. This self-differentiation results from the self-unfolding of the divine nature into personality, thus making it tri-personal. In the case of human nature there is a dual process of unfolding: in the individual, human nature unfolds itself into personality; in the race as a whole, human nature unfolds itself into many individuals, who in turn together constitute a unity or personality, just as Christ and the church together constitute one full-grown person (1 Cor. 12:12; Eph. 4:13).
(2:303, emphasis added).14
Two points are worth noting. First, Bavinck observes the crucial difference between the divine nature, which is always numerically one and simple and thus exists perfectly in each of the three persons—and the human nature, which can only exist distinctly and separately in each human person.15 Second, because humanity is the image of the Trinity, it cannot be contained, so to speak, by only one or two individuals. Rather, humanity in its final form and collective sum in the eschaton can thus reflect the imago Trinitatis more fully and beautifully:
Only humanity in its entirety—as one complete organism, summed up under a single head, spread out over the whole earth, as prophet proclaiming the truth of God, as priest dedicating itself to God, as ruler controlling the earth and the whole of creation—only it is the fully finished image, the most telling and striking likeness of God. Scripture clearly teaches all this when it says that the church is the bride of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the dwelling of God, the new Jerusalem to which all the glory of the nations will be brought. (2:577)
Here, we can also see how the concept of vestigia Trinitatis plays an important role in Bavinck’s construal of the imago dei. Each human being images God in a partial yet unique way, and one individual could never bear the full imago dei by himself or herself. Just as it takes the whole created world to reflect the completeness of the traces of God in creation, it also takes the whole humanity to reflect the fullness of the image of the triune God. This is why Bavinck highlights the importance of seeing the imago dei in humanity as the image of the triune God in contrast with the more common affirmation that mankind is to be conformed to the image of Christ. While Bavinck acknowledged that many places in Scripture seem to indicate that humanity is created to be like Christ (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:49; 2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 8:3; Rom. 8:29; Phil. 2:7–8; 3:21; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10; Heb. 2:14; 1 John 3:2), he thought it best to interpret those allusions as saying “that we, having been conformed to the image of Christ, are now again becoming like God” (2:554).16 Granted, Bavinck might be a little too hesitant to state that the imago dei is Christological (see 2:554), but I think we can catch the rationale behind Bavinck’s rejection of seeing the imago dei as strictly Christological, namely because of his second level of understanding humanity at the collective level, involving many individuals united as one big organic whole. In short, the Trinitarian affirmation accents the eschatological nature of the imago precisely in its collective level, since the telos of humanity is thus more perfectly realized in the consummation of all things.
And here we can further explore in what sense the imago dei is pneumatological by underscoring the role of the Spirit in sustaining, concurring, and governing all humanity to secure their telos in God: “And the Holy Spirit is the personal immanent cause by which all things live and move and have their being, receive their own form and configuration, and are led to their destination, in God” (2:423). Bavinck elsewhere explains how the imago dei is forged in humanity as they experience a mystical union with God through the Holy Spirit:
Religion is communion with God. Without it humans cannot be truly and completely human. The image of God is not a superadded gift but belongs to human nature. That communion with God is a mystical union. It far exceeds our understanding. It is a most intimate union with God by the Holy Spirit, a union of persons, an unbreakable and eternal covenant between God and ourselves, which cannot be at all adequately described by the word “ethical” and is therefore called “mystical.” It is so close that it transforms humans in the divine image and makes them participants in the divine nature (2 Cor. 3:18; Gal. 2:20; 2 Pet. 1:4).
(3:304)17
We can thus see a better link between the Spirit’s role and Bavinck’s view on humanity’s participation in the triune God as their exemplar cause and their archetype. It is the Spirit who not only gives life and sustains his creation, but he also works in and through human beings to realize and complete their telos as images of the Trinity until the eschaton—from the very beginning, even in prelapsarian humanity.18 This line of thinking, I would add, does not commit what Cortez called the “pneumatological abstraction” and “eschatological addendum” problems in construing the imago dei, where the former simply refers to the tendency to construe the imago as essentially non-pneumatological concept and the latter the tendency to discuss the Spirit’s role exclusively for the restoration of the image in fallen humanity.19
Moreover, this pneumatological-eschatological augmentation to our understanding of the image helps to shield us from a strictly essentialist view of the imago dei. Essentialism in theology and philosophy, as applied to anthropology, asserts that there is a set of properties or attributes that define human beings—that make humans or humanity truly human. Thus, in the classical categorization, there are three common views typically used to explain what humans possess and/or do as the imago dei: the structural view, which teaches that humans reflect God because they possess reason and intellect that set them apart from other created beings; the functional view, which teaches that humans reflect God through fulfilling the cultural mandate—caring for and developing the created world; and the relational view, which teaches that humans reflect God through the relationships and love they display within family and society.20 From an essentialist perspective, these three aspects are typically construed as “fixed” properties that must be identifiable in a human being for him or her to be seen as truly human. However, the problem that an essentialist commonly faces is how to account for those one or more features in an infant, an individual with disabilities, or in other cases where those necessary features are difficult to detect and/or measure (e.g., how smart/useful/friendly one should be to be considered as truly human)?
Bavinck, however, retrieves Hermann Witsius’ view that the imago dei certainly includes the three aspects (ontological and ethical) but places it within a teleological or eschatological perspective, which asserts that the first human (Adam) did not yet fully possess the imago dei, so his existence—which was already very good (being)—still needed to become even better (becoming) (2:550). This eschatological augmentation helps us to understand that a human being, at the individual level, need not necessarily possess a certain level of intelligence, functionality, and/or relationality to be truly human on this side of eternity—even without those, they are already truly human! Also, the eschatological perspective helps us see why it is an ever-futile attempt to find a list of properties that qualifies one as a human being, for people are graced with manifold, diverse gifts of the Holy Spirit (e.g., Rom. 12:3–8; 1 Cor. 12:1–11).21 Furthermore, at the collective level, based on Genesis 1:26; 2:18, 24; Ephesians 5:31–32, Bavinck envisions humanity encompassing all people numbering in the billions as a necessity for reflecting the triune God (see further, 2:576–579). In short, the collective humanity can only be fully understood from an eschatological perspective, which automatically shields us from a strictly essentialist view of the imago dei.
II. Participation in God and Common Grace
We can now consider how Bavinck’s doctrine of common grace sheds further light on the pneumatological accent in one’s account of the imago dei. Common grace is typically defined as God’s abundant goodness and blessings given to all believers and nonbelievers alike. Bavinck describes it in Trinitarian terms: “Every good and perfect gift, also among the nations, comes down from the Father of Lights (James 1:17). The Logos, who created and maintains all things, enlightens each man coming into the world (John 1:9). The Holy Spirit is the author of all life, of every power and every virtue (Gen. 6:17; 7:15; Pss. 33:6; 104:30; 139:2; Job 32:8; Eccl. 3:19).”22
Notice, however, that Bavinck specifically attributes common grace to the role of the Spirit. Charles Hodge similarly writes, “The Bible therefore teaches that the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth, of holiness, and of life in all its forms, is present with every human mind, enforcing truth, restraining from evil, exciting to good, and imparting wisdom or strength, when, where, and in what measure seemeth to Him good. … This is what in theology is called common grace.”23 From this, we see how God’s goodness is demonstrated more specifically through both the restraint of sin and moving people toward the good even when he or she is not yet a believer. And this coheres well with the Reformed emphasis that the imago dei in the state of corruption (i.e., postlapsarian humanity) is not lost but remains in all human beings (cf. Gen. 9:6; James 3:9). As Bavinck explains further with reference to Calvin:
Thus it is that Calvin, in dependence upon and with an appeal to Scripture, comes to distinguish between general and special grace, between the working of the Spirit in all creation and the work of sanctification that belongs only to those who believe. God did not leave sin alone to do its destructive work. He had and, after the fall, continued to have a purpose for his creation; he interposed common grace between sin and the creation—a grace that, while it does not inwardly renew, nevertheless restrains and compels. All that is good and true has its origin in this grace, including the good we see in fallen man. The light still does shine in the darkness. The spirit of God makes its home and works in all the creation. Consequently, traces of the image of God continue in mankind. Understanding and reason remain, and he possesses all sorts of natural gifts. In him dwells a feeling, a notion of the Godhead, a seed of religion.24
The obvious point here is that humanity and the universe continue to manifest God in the state of corruption, albeit in a limited way, so that creation is still able to radiate “some spark of the divine glory” and even “a magnificent display of the divine wisdom”; and human beings in particular still possess “a consciousness of God.”25 More specifically, Bavinck sees the role of the Holy Spirit as continuing to give life and enabling humans to reflect God in a limited way, so that they do not lose their “nature” as the imago dei.26 In other words, therefore, without the Holy Spirit’s constant gifts of common grace to all creatures, and especially in human beings, there will be no trace of the imago dei left in fallen and depraved humanity. The Holy Spirit’s continuous work in the world is what upholds and preserves the remnants of God’s image within us, enabling even those who have not come to faith to exhibit aspects of God’s nature such as love, creativity, and a sense of justice. This underscores the importance of the Holy Spirit’s presence not only in the lives of believers but in the entire creation, making it evident that common grace is an essential aspect of God’s overarching plan for redemption and restoration of all things.
III. The Theological Promise of the Bavinckian Account
As I mentioned in the beginning, the Bavinckian concept of imago Trinitatis can give us the advantage of bringing to the fore the pneumatological, collective, and eschatological features that are largely missing in the past and contemporary discussion. In this final section, I conclude with three brief suggestions for how the Bavinckian account can be helpful to solve some long-standing conundrums related to theological anthropology.27
The first problem concerns the basic definition of whether the imago dei should be understood as structural, functional, or relational. It is well known that the structural view dominated the premodern era and the functional and/or relational the modern and postmodern era. The current trend, regrettably, shows that the three views are typically upheld in opposition to each other, with the majority leaving the structural view in the bygone era while the majority of biblical scholars champion the functional and the majority of systematic theologians the relational.28 While proponents of a more holistic or multifaceted approach that attempts to integrate the three is growing, they still lack a biblical-theological model to weave the threefold aspects together. What I suggest is that the Bavinckian imago Trinitatis can certainly provide the way toward a more coherent and holistic approach.
For example, as Cortez has rightly noted, the main difficulties with the holistic approach are, firstly, the exegetical support for the structural aspect as well as the difficulty of avoiding some of its insurmountable objections.29 While Cortez’s judgment here is in many ways valid, I propose that Bavinck’s use of Genesis 1:26–28 (among many others) as the grounds for saying that the entirety of humanity, individually and collectively, is the imago Trinitatis may be stronger than what many have perceived.30 Moreover, some of the common objections to the structural view can be defused, in my opinion, by putting it through a more eschatological lens in contrast with the strictly essentialist one as discussed above—and this is why the Bavinckian pneumatological-eschatological augmentation can be helpful. Secondly, Cortez mentioned the difficulty of retaining the functional and relational aspects together without negating or eliminating the others. However, I do not see how that should be the case from my Bavinckian view, especially once the imago in humanity is understood as both individual and collective. Presupposing the eschatological once again and the image-vestiges distinction, the relational need not be construed as a “function” or vice versa, for it thus negates the other. We can say that the relational is much clearer in the case of husband-wife, parent-children, even among neighbors, and that the functional serves as a way not just to actualize our own personal gifts but also to complement and complete one another to live as the society of God—both as church and state.
The second issue relates to whether the human body should be included as part of the imago dei. Throughout church history, the soul is primarily regarded as the seat of the imago, and the corporeal body is seen as only a shadow of the imago since God is incorporeal (cf. Jn. 4:24). At the same time, however, our anti-Gnostic intuition often prevents us from devaluing the body even when we do not think of it as part of the imago dei. This is evident in theologians like Irenaeus, perhaps among the first defenders of the body as integrally part of the imago dei against the Gnostics, and Bavinck, who stands with quite a few stellar Reformed thinkers.31 As Bavinck asserts, “The body is not a prison but a marvelous piece of art from the hand of God Almighty, and just as constitutive for the essence of humanity as the soul” (2:559).32
How can we chart a path for the contemporary theological reception of the body as belonging to the imago dei? For starters, as Bavinck describes it, “The human body is part of the image of God in its organization as instrument of the soul, in its formal perfection, not in its material substance as flesh” (2:559–560). Bavinck himself teaches that the soul reflects the imago dei more than the body, and this is based on the image-vestiges distinction, which stipulates that although the imago “extends to the whole person … it comes out more clearly in one part than another” (2:555). Furthermore, we can follow Bavinck, who uses the logic of the Incarnation and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to support his inclusion of the body as an essential component of the imago dei: “Just as God, though he is spirit (pneuma), is nevertheless the Creator of a material world that may be termed his revelation and manifestation, with this revelation coming to its climax in the incarnation, so also the spirit of man is designed for the body as its manifestation” (2:560). Again, the eschatological spin of the Bavinckian account helps us to turn our eyes and imagination not just to the present situation but also toward the coming of the kingdom (cf. 1 Cor. 15:35–55).
The last puzzle to solve is the reception of theosis or deification of glorified human beings among the Reformed and Protestant tradition. As of late, there is a growing amount of scholarship affirming that the Reformed tradition largely teaches salvation as deification through the major figures like Huldrych Zwingli, Johannes Oecolampadius, Martin Bucer, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and many others.33 To cite just one example, Oecolampadius in his commentary on Genesis 1:26 says (to the effect of rehashing my Bavinckian imago Trinitatis while relating it specifically to deification): “The image of the divine nature has been engraved on humankind, when the Holy Spirit was breathed in. For he himself is the Spirit of life, since God is life according to nature. For in no other way than by receiving the gift of the Spirit are we able to bear the divine image.”34 And with the state of glory in view, Oecolampadius continues: “When we are conformed fully to the image of the Son, then the beauty of the entire Trinity is in us. For the sole highest beauty is in them, to which we are also conformed, provided that we are sealed into sonship through the Son in the Spirit.”35 Likewise, in the words of Calvin, to be deified is to be made “partakers of divine immortality and the glory of blessedness” and “made one with God so far as our capacity allows,” resulting in “the image of God … reborn in us.”36 In sum, without the concept of imago Trinitatis, all these references to deification lack a significant theological-anthropological grounding.
To link these lines of thought to my proposal: The Spirit’s work of perfecting the imago dei in us all throughout creation to glorification extends to all elect and adopted people of God in Christ. While this additional emphasis on the pneumatological-eschatological collective humanity is by and large Bavinckian, it is unfortunate that we should part ways with Bavinck himself who rejected deification as a coherent and important category in his theological system.37 It does not mean, of course, that my constructive Bavinckian account of imago Trinitatis fails without Bavinck’s acceptance of deification, but that it is regrettable that Bavinck was not able to incorporate the biblical theme of deification due to his own limitations—since he obviously has resources within his theology to explain the doctrine without violating his Reformed sensibility (i.e., “finitum non est capax infiniti”).
This exercise of philosophical-dogmatic theology, I hope, sheds more light on much-uncharted territories in the field of theological anthropology, particularly on the doctrine of the imago dei. There are indeed many questions left and objections that could be raised.38 For now, it is appropriate to end with Lucy Peppiatt’s advice to Christian theologians across the globe:
The doctrine of the imago dei is multifaceted and constantly evolving. It corresponds both to what we believe to be true of God and to what we believe to be true of humanity; thus each generation and each culture will develop and revise this doctrine, bringing new insights and perspectives to what this claim means for humanity, for God, and for our relations with one another and the world. To my mind, the open-endedness of the conversation is a strength rather than a weakness. It contributes to the sense of mystery associated with this doctrine and reminds us of the need for an element of apophaticism in regard to what we can and cannot articulate.39
