The state of the dead and the destiny of the wickedSmith, Uriah
Religion
The state of the dead and the destiny of the wicked
Smith, Uriah
Annihilationism; Death -- Biblical teaching; Intermediate state; Seventh-Day Adventists -- Doctrinal and controversial works
The second time the word image is used, it is used to show the relation
existing between son and father, and is a good comment on the relation
which Gen. 1:26, 27, asserts to exist between man and God. Gen. 5:3:
“And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years and begat a son in his own
likeness, after his image.” No one would think of referring this to
anything but physical resemblance. Now put the two passages together.
Moses first asserts that God made man in his own image, after his
likeness, and a few chapters farther on asserts that this same man begat
a son in his own likeness, after his image. And, while all must admit
that this latter refers to bodily form or physical shape, the
theological schools tell us that the former, from the same writer, and
with no intimation that it is used in any other sense, must refer solely
to the attribute of immortality. Is not this taking unwarrantable
liberty with the inspired testimony? There is no room for any other
conclusion than that just as a son is, in outward appearance, the image
of his father, so man possesses, not the nature and attributes of God in
all their perfection, but a likeness or image of him in his physical
form.
It may be said that the word image is used in a different sense in the
New Testament, as, for example, in Col. 3:9, 10: “Lie not one to
another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and
have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image
of him that created him.” Let it ever be borne in mind that the point
which popular theology has to prove is that man is immortal because in
the image of God. This text is against that view; for that which is here
said to be in the image of Him that created him, is not the natural man
himself, but the new man which is put on, implying that the image had
been destroyed, and could be restored only in Christ. If, therefore, it
meant immortality as used by Moses, this text would show that that
immortality was not absolute, but contingent, and, having been lost by
the race, can be regained only through Christ.
Eph. 4:24, shows how this new man is created: “And that ye put on the
new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
Nothing is said about immortality even in connection with the new man.
Again: The word here translated image (ἐικων) is defined by Greenfield,
as meaning by metonymy, “an exemplar, model, pattern, standard, Col.
3:10.” No such definition as this is given by Gesenius to the word in
Genesis. So, though this Greek word may here have this sense, it affords
no evidence that the Hebrew word in Gen. 1:26, 27, can refer to anything
else but the outward form.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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