In brief#

Would God bring to nothing the crown of his own creation? The objection says no: human beings are made in God's image, they are the summit of what he made and called very good, and for the Creator to erase one of them would be to concede that sin had defeated his purpose. In the source document this objection is attributed to Hank Hanegraaff.

This page argues that the premise is right and the conclusion does not follow. Human beings really are the crown of creation and really do bear God's image. What is not obvious is that sustaining a broken image-bearer for ever in ruin honours the image more than removing what has been irreparably broken.

The objection, stated properly#

Genesis says God made humanity in his own image and, having made them, called the whole work very good. Everything else in the creation account is made after its kind; only the human creature is made after God. That singles out human beings as bearers of something of God himself, which is why murder is treated in Scripture as an assault on God's own likeness and why human life carries a dignity no other creature has.

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 sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:26-27WEB, World English Bible, which is in the public domain

From there the objection runs: to annihilate an image-bearer is not merely to end a life. It is to destroy something that carries the divine likeness. A God who did that would be undoing his own masterwork, and doing it at the instigation of sin. Preserving the person, even in judgment, at least preserves what God made. On this view eternal conscious torment (ECT) is the position that takes the dignity of the human creature most seriously.

There is something instinctively right in that, and it should be said plainly: mankind is the crowning jewel of God's creation.

How high a view of the image this site actually holds#

It is worth spelling out how much of the objection's premise is affirmed here, because conditionalism is sometimes assumed to hold a low view of the human creature. It does not.

For a man indeed ought not to have his head covered, because he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man.
1 Corinthians 11:7WEB, World English Bible, which is in the public domain

Man was designed to be the image and glory of God. When Adam was made, he was meant to be what the physical world could look at and say, that is what God looks like.

for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God;
Romans 3:23WEB, World English Bible, which is in the public domain

Then sin came, and Adam fell short of being the glory of God. The image was not erased, but the creature no longer showed what he was made to show.

in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them.
2 Corinthians 4:4WEB, World English Bible, which is in the public domain

Jesus came in the flesh as the sinless and perfect image of God, described in Colossians 1:15 as the image of the invisible God. He did what Adam failed to do, and he died for our sins in order to restore us.

But we all, with unveiled face seeing the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:18WEB, World English Bible, which is in the public domain

That restoration is the point of the whole arrangement. Human beings truly are the crowning jewel of God's creation, because they were made in his image, and the gospel is the recovery of what that image was for.

Why the conclusion does not follow#

There is something strange in the shape of the objection. It proposes that God would hesitate to bring a human being to an end, but would not hesitate to sustain that same human being, in the ruined state, for ever. If the concern is for the honour of the image, it is not clear that the second option protects it better than the first. A likeness kept indefinitely in a condition of permanent rebellion and permanent misery is not an obvious tribute to the one it resembles.

The conditionalist claim is narrower than it may sound. It is not that human beings are cheap or disposable. It is that when the image-bearer is broken, and has finally rejected the one possibility of being made whole again, Scripture says the outcome is destruction rather than preservation. There will be no tainted images in the age to come. On this reading it is all or nothing, and the reason is not indifference to the image but seriousness about it.

The second half of that claim is not an inference. It is what the texts say. A long line of passages describes God destroying the wicked, perishing being the alternative to eternal life, and the end of the unrighteous being death. That material is set out in the section on destruction. What Scripture never says, anywhere, is that God is unwilling or unable to bring the wicked to an end because of the image they bear.

What this argument establishes#

  • The premise of the objection is affirmed rather than denied. Human beings bear God's image and are the crown of his creation.
  • No passage of Scripture states that God will not destroy those who finally reject him, and a great many state that he will.
  • Preserving a ruined image-bearer for ever is not self-evidently a higher regard for the image than removing what cannot be repaired.

What it does not establish by itself#

This page does not offer a complete theology of the image of God, and it does not settle what becomes of the image in the final state. It answers one objection. Nothing here is offered as positive evidence for conditional immortality; the argument that Scripture teaches the destruction of the wicked is made in the sections on biblical language, not on this page.

The attribution of the objection to Hank Hanegraaff comes from the source document. No specific published statement of his is quoted or cited here, and readers who want his own wording should consult his own work rather than rely on this summary.

  • Does the image of God make humans immortal, which addresses the related claim that image-bearing entails an immortal soul.
  • The wicked will be destroyed.
  • The biblical case for conditional immortality.

Sources and notes#

Joseph Dear's book-length conditionalist treatment covers the image-of-God objection at greater length.

[Dear]