The Protestant Reformed tradition lacks consensus on whether the body is part the imago Dei. Traditionally, the body has been rejected from the image based on the biblical understanding that God is Spirit. Its inclusion would necessarily imply that God has a body. This leaves the image of God to consist either solely in the mind or in the mind and original righteousness, that is, in knowledge, holiness, and righteousness. However, Reformed anthropology almost universally affirms that the image of God is part of the essence of man and that we are hylomorphic beings, made of soul and body. How, then, can the image be reduced to one part of our natures?
This paper challenges the traditional conclusion by contrasting two Reformed Scholastic theologians who take opposing views on this subject: Stephen Charnock and Petrus Van Mastricht. Charnock argues for the classical rejection of the body. Mastricht argues for its inclusion, not on the basis of the body’s material substance but on what he calls the body’s “formal perfections,” or those virtues or aspects of likeness to God that are performed eminently in Him but imperfectly in us through our bodies.
This paper develops Mastricht’s principle further by interpreting the imago Dei analogically, through what this paper calls“similitude-in-dissimilarity.” That is, every analogy consists of a similarity followed by a more significant dissimilarity. God is spirit and acts perfectly, without a body. We, who are made in God’s image, must act through our bodies. Therefore, this paper argues that the body participates in the image of God not by its materiality but in its analogical nature, showing forth at the same time, and in the same action, both how we are like God and yet remain different. This model advances contemporary Reformed Protestant anthropology while remaining consistent with its classical commitments of God’s spirituality, the image of God as the essence of man, and hylomorphic anthropology.