What did God meant in Genesis 1:26?

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Timi_Celcer

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26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Surely God isn’t a human for us to be made in his likeness, in his image. What did he meant?
 
:hmmm:

Isn’t Jesus human?

And Jesus was in the beginning was it not?

“Let US” >>> Plural!
Seems to point to the fact that God is indeed made of the 3 persons. Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Peace 👍
 
JerryZ said:
:hmmm:

Isn’t Jesus human?

And Jesus was in the beginning was it not?

“Let US” >>> Plural!
Seems to point to the fact that God is indeed made of the 3 persons. Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Peace 👍
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But, Jesus WAS NOT human until the incarnation. until he was made man, he was the Logos, since he was made man he will be man forever, since he has received a glorified eternal body as we hope to receive at the resurrection of the dead.

Peace and all good!
 
Timi_Celcer said:
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Surely God isn’t a human for us to be made in his likeness, in his image. What did he meant?
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Being made in the Lord’s image and likeness is being made with an intellect and free will. Of course, the Lord is infinitely perfect, and we are finite and have fallen, so we need Jesus the Second Person of the Trinity who came to be the means of grace and salvation for us.
 
God’s peace. God did not speak or consult with angels about our creation, much less need them to assist him in his work in any way. He created* them out of nothing; they did not in turn help to create us.* Blessings, ~Br. Carlo~
 
Another view of “image and likeness” is that we can love and forgive, though not perfectly as God does.
 
“Us” does not refer to the Trinity. Genesis was written and edited by humans before humans had any perception of the Trinity. The quotes in the Bible are not literally what anybody said word-for-word, so the quotes cannot possibly refer to the Trinity (which the writers did not even know about).

And I don’t think “us” refers to the angels because the angels didn’t create anything.

It’s probably something like the “royal we”.

As for “in our image”… I think it’s just referring to the fact that humans have immortal souls and freewill.
 
Timi_Celcer said:
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Surely God isn’t a human for us to be made in his likeness, in his image. What did he meant?
Click to expand...
A very simple description of the Creator is that God is a super-natural Pure Spirit without restrictions. We humans are similar to the livestock and wild animals because our anatomy eventually dies and decomposes. However, we are extremely different from all other animals because our own human nature unites both the material world of earth and the spiritual world of God.

Genesis 1: 20-25
After creating the world, God created all kinds of wonderful creatures that would live on earth. God saw all the good that He created.

Genesis 1: 26
Seeing how good His creation is, God makes an unique creature which is the human person, you and me. We humans are far better than any other creature because we are able to know God and know the eternal love, goodness, joy, peace of God. We start life on earth, but after our body dies, we have the capability to continue living eternally with our Creator. Because we are an unification of both the spiritual and the material, we can rule over animals which are simply material beings. Ruling over animals means that we take responsibility for their welfare because they are created by God for our use.

Genesis 1: 27
Here God explains why our human nature is so unique. God makes it clear that we are not additional gods. There is only one God, our Creator Who loves each one of us. We look at our hands and feet and feel our breathing and we know absolutely we are not a Pure Spirit. God tells us that we are in His image which certainly is not the same as being a god and is certainly different from all other creatures.

Being in God’s image allows us to share in God’s spiritual life. This can happen because our own nature includes our spiritual soul especially created for each one of us. God continually calls each one of us to share in His life through knowledge and love. John 3: 16

You are right that the Creator is not human. And humans are not the Creator. The word “image” explains how, at the same time, our single nature is both material and spiritual so that we can seek God, know God, live according to God’s rightful commandments, and eventually live in eternal love with Him in heaven.
 
Br.Carlo said:
God’s peace. God did not speak or consult with angels about our creation, much less need them to assist him in his work in any way. He created* them out of nothing; they did not in turn help to create us.* Blessings, ~Br. Carlo~
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How do you know that God did not speak to the angels? Were you there? Saying that God spoke with the angels does not infer that God consulted with them or needed their assistance. Let’s not read more into a statement then what is actually there. Did the angels help to create us? We have not been given this information. To say yes or no would be presumptuous. Do not seperate God from his will. God can easily create every human person from nothing, but he does not. Our parents have a hand, so to speak, in our creation, because this is God’s will. What part the angels had in creation, no matter how small or nonexistent, would be by the will of God and not by our prejudices.

CCC 343 Man is the summit of the Creator’s work, as the inspired account expresses by clearly distinguishing the creation of man from that of the other creatures.211

211 Cf. ⇒ Gen 1-26.
 
Timi_Celcer said:
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Surely God isn’t a human for us to be made in his likeness, in his image. What did he meant?
Click to expand...
It means that we are given free will and the capacity to love.
 
vlf7973 said:
“Us” does not refer to the Trinity. ** Genesis was written and edited by humans before humans had any perception of the Trinity.** The quotes in the Bible are not literally what anybody said word-for-word, so the quotes cannot possibly refer to the Trinity (which the writers did not even know about).
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Are you saying that the human authors had human knowledge of Heaven? The order of Creation? The 1st murder? The great flood?
 
Timi_Celcer said:
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Surely God isn’t a human for us to be made in his likeness, in his image. What did he meant?
Click to expand...
I agree with what Dorothy said, in that it is man’s intellect and will (our human soul) that is in the image of God, since obviously God (before Jesus anyway) is pure spirit and does not have a body per se.

Also I think the prologue of John’s gospel makes reference to this: “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God… All that came to be had life in Him and that life was the light of men, a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower.”
 
in_servitude said:
Are you saying that the human authors had human knowledge of Heaven? The order of Creation? The 1st murder? The great flood?
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Naturally, the human author of the first three chapters of Genesis had basic human knowledge of God and heaven because the human author was a direct descendant, as we all are, from Adam who naturally passed the information to his descendants who passed the information to their descendants who passed the information…👍😃
 
grannymh said:
Naturally, the human author of the first three chapters of Genesis had basic human knowledge of God and heaven because the human author was a direct descendant, as we all are, from Adam who naturally passed the information to his descendants who passed the information to their descendants who passed the information…👍😃
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How did Adam get information about events that occurred prior to his existence?

It seems more likely to me that the human author was divinely inspired to write what they did. Of course, we know this happens because Jesus said directly to Simon that what he confessed about the Christ did NOT come from man but from the Holy Spirit.

It seems less likely that people carried this information all the way to the time of Moses (through the great flood, etc.)
 
:twocents:

The human author(s) had human knowledge but also knowledge revealed to him (them) by the Holy Spirit. God said ““Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness . . .”; that is how God spoke, and that is what he (they) wrote. The Jews may interpret it as God speaking to the angels; we would understand it as God speaking within the three persons of the Trinity. It is interesting to note that he made us as a pair, one from the other, in loving relation to each other and that this is also in the image of God as the Trinity.
 
The answer is, it was the Alm1ghty Himself who dictated it to Moses back in the day :curtsey:
 
Aloysium said:
It is interesting to note that he made us as a pair, one from the other, in loving relation to each other and that this is also in the image of God as the Trinity.
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Love that! God creates by, in, and of His nature - so it makes sense that His creation would reflect all of that.
 
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