Lewis-Sperry-Chafer: Image of God in Genesis 1:26-27
Short answer: The Lewis-Sperry-Chafer connection is a historical and theological thread, not a single Bible verse. The primary passage is Genesis 1:26-27, where God says, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion...” This grounds human dignity in God's own act of creation, not in ability, status, or usefulness. The research of Warren Lewis, Roger Sperry, and Lewis Chafer engages that truth from different angles, but the text itself controls the doctrine. Every person bears God's image; that image is not erased by sin, though it is distorted. The call of the gospel is renewal toward that image, described in Colossians 3:9-10 and Ephesians 4:22-24. The practical payoff is how we treat one another.
What the Lewis-Sperry-Chafer discussion is actually about
The phrase Lewis-Sperry-Chafer gathers three names that belong to different fields and eras. Warren Lewis was a historian and close associate of C.S. Lewis who wrote about the human person and the image of God in Christian thought. Roger Sperry was a Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist known for split-brain research, work that raised questions about human consciousness, unity, and agency. Lewis Chafer was a Presbyterian-turned-Dallas Theological Seminary founder and dispensational theologian who wrote extensively on humanity, sin, and redemption. When these names appear together, the topic is usually human nature, the image of God, and how Scripture speaks to modern claims about the mind and personhood.
This is not a Bible study method that treats the three as authorities equal to Scripture. Their work can inform questions, but the text of Genesis 1:26-27 rules the discussion. The image of God is not a scientific finding, nor is it a philosophical deduction; it is God's own declaration about what he made. That means the starting point is not brain anatomy or theological systems but the sentence God speaks before he makes humanity. The three names are useful only as conversation partners around that sentence, and Scripture remains the standard by which every claim is measured.
Because the names come from different worlds, students often use them to ask whether the mind is one thing or many, whether consciousness can be reduced to neurons, and whether the fall damaged the image of God beyond recognition. Genesis does not answer those questions in modern terms, but it does establish that human beings are made for relationship with God and with one another. That reality is prior to any laboratory or library. A faithful study keeps the order straight: Scripture first, then whatever insights reason and observation can contribute, and always with the humility that says our knowledge is partial.
So the Lewis-Sperry-Chafer thread is best treated as a prompt, not a doctrine. It prompts us to ask what the Bible actually says about human beings. It prompts us to be honest about what we do not know. It prompts us to resist both the reduction of people to biological machines and the inflation of people to gods. The passage before us speaks with more authority than any of the three names, and the task of a Scripture-centered study is to let that passage set the terms.
The divine council wording in Genesis 1:26
Genesis 1:26 opens with a plural speech: God said, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness.” Faithful Christians have differed on what the plural means. Some see a royal plural, a way of speaking used by kings. Some see God addressing the heavenly court. Others see an early hint of the triune life of God, which the rest of Scripture later clarifies. The text itself does not explain the plural, and honest teaching should say so rather than pretending the question is closed. What matters for the doctrine of humanity is not the puzzle of the plural but the content of the declaration.
The content is that human beings are made in God's image and after his likeness. Those two phrases are not two separate gifts; they overlap and reinforce each other. To be made in God's image is to be a creature who represents God in the world, who is capable of relationship with him, and who is accountable to him. The likeness language adds the idea of resemblance, not physical resemblance, since God is spirit, but a resemblance in moral and relational capacity. Every human being, male and female, shares this status. It is not earned and it cannot be forfeited by weakness, age, illness, or failure.
Notice also that the speech is immediately followed by a commission. God gives humanity dominion over the fish, the birds, the livestock, the earth, and every creeping thing. Dominion is not permission to exploit; it is a delegated responsibility under the Creator's authority. The image-bearer rules as a steward, not as an owner. That distinction matters whenever the passage is applied to environmental questions, to work, or to power. The one who gave the commission remains the owner of all things, and the steward will give an account. Reading verse 26 without verse 27 and the rest of the chapter turns dominion into a license it was never meant to be.
So the opening verse gives us both dignity and duty. Dignity comes from the Creator's word; duty flows from his commission. Any account of human nature that keeps the dignity but denies the duty distorts the text. Any account that keeps the duty but denies the dignity of the weak, the unborn, the disabled, or the elderly contradicts the text just as surely. The plural speech may remain a mystery, but the call to represent God faithfully is plain enough to shape a life.
Male and female in the image of God
Genesis 1:27 states the climax plainly: God created man in his own image; in God's image he created him; male and female he created them. The pronouns shift in a way that has invited careful reflection across the centuries. The singular declares the shared status of humanity; the plural declares that this status is embodied in two sexes. Neither sex is an afterthought, and neither is a lesser bearer of the image. The text does not rank male above female or female above male; it names both as image-bearers together. That is the foundation for the biblical command to honour one another.
This verse has been used rightly to defend the equal worth of women and men, and it has been misused when cultural assumptions have been read back into it. The text does not describe roles, hierarchy, or social arrangements; it describes creation. Whatever else Scripture says about order in the home or the church, it must be read in light of Genesis 1:27 rather than against it. Any teaching that treats women as less fully human, less fully rational, or less fully called to know God contradicts the creation account at its foundation.
The verse also speaks to embodiment. Human beings are not souls temporarily housed in bodies; they are embodied image-bearers, male and female. This has implications for how we treat the body, for how we think about sexuality, and for how we care for those whose bodies are weak or suffering. The image of God is not confined to the mind or the will. It is expressed in a body that God formed and called good. A disembodied spirituality that despises the physical creation is out of step with Genesis.
For the Lewis-Sperry-Chafer discussion, this verse matters because it anchors personhood in creation rather than in function. A person does not become an image-bearer by thinking, speaking, or achieving. A person is an image-bearer because God made them so. That includes the unborn, the newborn, the unconscious, the cognitively disabled, and the dying. Neuroscience can describe the brain, but it cannot confer or remove the image of God. The text confers it, and no laboratory finding can revoke what God has declared.
Dominion as stewardship, not domination
The commission in Genesis 1:26 gives humanity rule over the creatures and the earth. In the ancient world, kings set up images of themselves in territories they ruled, so that their presence would be represented. Genesis takes that practice and applies it to all humanity: the image-bearers represent God's rule over the world. That background helps explain why dominion is a serious calling rather than a casual privilege. To represent God is to act as he acts, and God's rule in Scripture is characterised by justice, care, and provision. Dominion that destroys or exploits misrepresents the God it claims to serve.
The very next chapter describes the garden as a place to work and keep. Work is not a result of the fall; it is part of the original calling. Adam is placed in the garden to cultivate it and guard it. That means dominion is a form of service. It involves naming, tending, cultivating, and protecting. When human beings use their power to plunder creation or to treat other people as tools, they invert the commission. The language of image and likeness is inseparable from the language of responsibility. To bear God's image is to be accountable for how we exercise the authority he delegates.
This has obvious application to how we treat other people. If every human being bears God's image, then every human being deserves the protection and honour that the image implies. Murder is condemned in Genesis 9 on precisely this basis. James rebukes the tongue that curses people because they are made in God's likeness. The doctrine is not abstract; it shapes speech, commerce, law, and mercy. A society that forgets the image of God will eventually find reasons to treat some people as disposable, and it will call those reasons practical or scientific.
It also has application to creation itself. The earth is not our possession to use up; it is the Lord's, and we are stewards. That does not mean creation is worshipped, but it does mean it is treated with care. The dominion mandate is fulfilled when human beings bring order, fruitfulness, and flourishing rather than ruin. The one who made the world and called it good has not surrendered his ownership. Every act of stewardship is an act of obedience, and every act of domination is a failure to represent the God whose image we bear.
How the image is distorted and renewed
Genesis 1 gives us the original dignity of humanity, but the rest of Scripture tells us that the image has been marred by sin. The fall does not erase the image, but it damages it. Human beings still bear God's likeness, which is why Genesis 9 and James 3 can appeal to it after the fall. Yet the likeness is defaced: our relationships are broken, our minds are darkened, and our wills are bent away from God. The New Testament speaks of the old man and the new man to describe this change. The image is not lost, but it needs restoring.
Colossians 3:9-10 speaks of having put off the old man with his doings and having put on the new man, who is being renewed after the image of his Creator. That language reaches back to Genesis and forward to sanctification. Renewal is not a self-improvement project; it is God's work in those who are in Christ. The image is being restored, and the process is progressive. Ephesians 4:22-24 uses similar language, calling believers to put away the old man and put on the new, created in righteousness and holiness of truth. The ethical commands flow from the indicative: because you have been renewed, live as the renewed.
This is where the doctrine becomes intensely practical. If the image is being renewed in us, then our daily conduct matters. Lying, which appears in the immediate context of Colossians 3:9, contradicts the new humanity because it contradicts the God of truth. So does every other sin that treats people as things. The renewal of the image is worked out in ordinary relationships: in families, in churches, in workplaces, in how we speak about those who are not present. The doctrine is not a slogan; it is a call to a changed life.
It also gives us patience with one another. None of us has arrived. The renewal is real but incomplete, and it will be completed only when we see Christ and are made like him. That means we should not despair over our own slow growth or over the slow growth of others. At the same time, we should not excuse patterns that contradict the new man. The already and the not yet hold together. We are image-bearers being restored, and we are called to live as what we are becoming.
Why this matters for how we treat other people
The doctrine of the image of God is the Bible's foundation for human dignity. It is why murder is treated with such seriousness in Genesis 9, why the vulnerable are to be defended throughout the Law and the Prophets, and why James insists that cursing people is inconsistent with blessing God. If dignity rests on usefulness, then the useless have no claim on us. If dignity rests on ability, then the unable have no claim on us. But if dignity rests on creation, then every human being has a claim that no one can cancel. That is a radically different way to organise a life or a society.
This matters in debates about the beginning and end of life, about disability, about race, about poverty, and about how we speak to and about one another. It does not answer every policy question, and faithful Christians may differ on prudential matters. But it sets limits. It forbids contempt. It forbids treating people as mere means. It forbids the casual cruelty that reduces a person to a category, a vote, a cost, or an inconvenience. The image of God is not a sentimental idea; it is a moral boundary that protects the weak from the strong.
It also shapes how we evangelise and disciple. Because every person bears God's image, every person is worth speaking to with honesty and love. We do not manipulate, and we do not despise those who reject the message. We appeal to consciences that still bear the marks of their Maker. And in the church, we remember that the person beside us is being renewed after the image of Christ. That calls for patience, truthfulness, and forgiveness. The doctrine of the image is not only about outsiders; it governs the household of faith first.
Finally, it shapes how we see ourselves. If you are in Christ, you are not merely a sinner saved by grace; you are a child being conformed to the image of the Son. Your failures are real, but they are not the whole story. Your worth is not measured by your productivity or your reputation. It is grounded in the God who made you and is remaking you. That is a steadying truth for anyone tempted to despair, and a humbling truth for anyone tempted to pride. It sends us back to Genesis 1:26-27 with gratitude and to Colossians 3 with hope.
Biblical fidelity check
Genesis 1:26-27 establishes that God made human beings in his image and likeness, that this status is shared by male and female, and that it is tied to a commission to exercise dominion as stewards. It does not establish that the image is a physical resemblance, since God is spirit, nor does it give us a full anatomy of the human constitution. It does not answer modern questions about consciousness, the brain, or the relationship between mind and body in scientific terms. It also does not say that the image was destroyed by the fall. Other passages, including Genesis 9 and James 3, appeal to the image after the fall, and the New Testament speaks of renewal rather than replacement.
A common misreading treats the image of God as something we possess by our own capacities, such as reason, creativity, or moral awareness. That reading sounds noble, but it makes dignity conditional on function and undermines the very people Scripture protects. Another misreading treats dominion as unlimited licence to exploit creation or other people. The text places dominion under the Creator's authority and pairs it with stewardship. A third misreading treats the image as lost at the fall so that fallen people are no longer image-bearers, which would undercut the Bible's own appeals to the image in later texts. Faithful teaching holds the tension: the image is universal, marred by sin, and being renewed in Christ.
Other passages that speak to Genesis 1:26-27
Several passages develop the themes of this creation account. Psalm 8:4-8 marvels that God cares for humanity and gives them rule over the works of his hands, echoing the dominion commission. Colossians 3:9-10 describes the new man being renewed after the image of his Creator, connecting creation to sanctification. Ephesians 4:22-24 speaks of putting off the old man and putting on the new, created in righteousness and holiness. Genesis 5:1-2 restates the creation of humanity in God's likeness and names them male and female. For further study, see What Does Colossians 1:23 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application, Colossians 1: Paul's Prayer and Christ's Supremacy, Colossians 2: Fullness and Freedom in Christ, and What Does Colossians 3:1 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application.
Frequently asked questions
Does Genesis 1:26-27 teach that the image of God is physical?
No. God is spirit, and the passage does not describe a bodily likeness. The image is a resemblance in capacity, relationship, and moral accountability. Human beings represent God in the world and are answerable to him. That is why the doctrine applies equally to men and women and to those whose bodies or minds are weak. The image is conferred by creation, not by physique or function. Reading it as physical resemblance leads to confusion and often to ranking people by appearance or ability, which contradicts the text.
Was the image of God destroyed by the fall?
Scripture does not say it was destroyed. After the fall, Genesis 9 grounds the prohibition of murder in the fact that humanity is made in God's likeness, and James 3 rebukes cursing people on the same basis. What the fall did was mar and distort the image, breaking fellowship and bending human nature away from God. The New Testament speaks of renewal after the image of the Creator, which assumes the image remains and is being restored. So the image is universal, damaged, and being renewed in Christ.
How does the Lewis-Sperry-Chafer discussion relate to this passage?
It relates as a conversation partner, not as an authority. Lewis, Sperry, and Chafer raise questions about the human person, consciousness, and redemption from history, neuroscience, and theology. Genesis 1:26-27 answers the foundational question: who are we, and why do we matter? The Bible's answer is that we are made in God's image for relationship with him and stewardship of his world. Insights from other fields may be useful, but they must be tested by Scripture, and where they contradict it, Scripture stands.
