Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Man, Part 2.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

Last week we began a new locus or topic in our survey of Christian doctrine, namely the

doctrine of man.

And we differentiated empirical, philosophical, and theological approaches to anthropology.

And today we want to turn to our first topic in theological anthropology,

which is man as created in the image of God. Let's look first at the biblical data

concerning man as the image of God.

The classical theological term for this in Latin is the Imago Dei, the image of God.

Man is created in God's image, the Imago Dei. Let's look at the biblical data that's pertinent to

the doctrine of man as the image of God. The classical biblical text on this subject is

Genesis chapter 1, verse 26 to 27. Genesis 1, 26 to 27. There we read,

Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds

of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that

creeps upon the earth.

So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

Now notice here that there are two words used to express the resemblance of man to his creator. The first word is the

Hebrew word, Selim, or image, which connotes a resemblance or a literal image of something.

The second word is demut, which is translated likeness.

Selim and demut, image and likeness.

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