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 heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:26-27
This text is very often talked about, but for the sake of having a hyperlink to it so I need not repeat myself in the future, I will cover it here. Usually this verse is regarded as either proof that the prehuman divine son/logos was active in creation, or, as an argument that there’s some kind of plurality in God. On the surface, both of these are blatant anachronisms. If we are applying the historical grammatical hermeneutic method, we need to ask what this text meant to the original audience. It isn’t clear that the original audience had any view of some plurality in God, or knowledge of a specially divine second person of the Trinity. How did the original audience understand the text? A secondary interpretation may be possible, but this would not be the primary meaning.
The Hebrew text does not have plural pronouns here, that’s not how Hebrew works. The verb associated with the pronouns is plural, and so when we read the plural verb, we know that the pronouns associated with the verb are to be translated as plural. However, we must also keep in mind verse 27, in which the verbs corresponding are singular, and thus the pronouns associated are also singular. However we understand verse 26, we cannot contradict verse 27. “Let us make man in our image… in his image he created them.”
A few arguments are usually presented for this verse:
1. Pluralis majestatis. This is “plural of majesty.” Or the English royal “we.” This is when royalty is referred to in the plural. This view has been argued against as being not common usage in the time this was written, and therefore not plausible. It has also been argued to not be used with verbs, and this interpretation is not preferable.
2. Pluralis Excellentiae. Plural of excellence. Very similar to the plurality of majesty and is often refuted on the same grounds.
3. God and his Spirit. While the Holy Spirit is active in verse 2, creating in some sense with God, it is possible that this plural verb refers to the action of the Father and the Spirit. However, if the Hebrew word for Spirit, ruach, is instead translated as God’s breath or the wind of God, this argument has less plausibility. Compare with Psalm 33:6.
4. God and his Word. This argument is based on the assumption that God’s word which is spoken is another person other than God. There is nothing in Genesis which leads us to believe that when God spoke in verse 3, there was some other person involved. It would be more plausible to believe that God’s spirit would be more personified in this passage than his word.
5. A plurality in God. This is a very late assumption from Trinitarian interpreters. The plural verb indicates the plurality of action, which would not square with trinitarian ideas of perichoresis and synergy. On orthodox Trinitarian models, you would not have multiple acts of creation, but simply one act performed by the three persons equally. This does not give us an account of why the verb would be plural unless we dispense with these elements of the doctrine. Further, nothing in the passage requires that the plurality be “in” God himself but rather in the exhorted act. This is also disproven by the very next verse.
6. The divine council. This is by far the most attested explanation, and that for which I argue. Michael Heiser, a Trinitarian scholar himself, advocates for this view and is often pointed to as a source for a detailed explanation in this book. Put very simply, the grammatical mood is assumed to be cohortative. If someone “exhorts” you to do something, they are commanding you to do something imperatively. A cohortation would be a cooperative exhortation. This cohortation is directed to the divine council of God, which would be his angels, archangels, seraphim, cherubim, etc. The “sons of God” (Job 38:4, 7, see also Luke 2:13-14). God is calling attention to his heavenly community in his greatest act of all creation, that is, the creation of man. Let “us” make man is in reference to God and his angels.
The most common objection to this view is that we are not created in the image and likeness of angels, so this plurality cannot refer to the divine council (see NIV study Bible footnote on this passage). However, while God is calling attention to an assisted act of creation, verse 27 tells us that he actually created alone. Even this text denies that we are actually created in the image and likeness of angels. While we know the angels had a hand in helping with creation, we are not told that the angels created us. The point of the passage is a call to attention, not to tell us about the act of creating. Verse 27 tells us that God, a singular person, did the act of creating man alone.
However the objection still fails. The “image and likeness” in this passage is plainly “to rule.” While there are certainly more layers to this passage (as Thomas Aquinas points out, we also have “being and existence in the likeness of God”), the main act of being made in his image and likeness is to rule and have in subjection creation. In this sense, we are in the image and likeness of the angels. Further, the Bible, both OT and NT, is not shy in even equating the image of angels to being men (see the resurrection accounts of Jesus in the gospels, and Genesis 18 for examples).
Another objection to this view is that the angels are not in the context of the passage and it seems implausible to assert that they are in the mind of the original writer and audience here. I find this objection to be outright hypocritical from those who inject Trinitarian theology into this passage, or even the supposed NT attributions of Jesus being involved in original creation. However, Genesis begins with the assumption that the heavens and the divine community have already been made. When Genesis 1:1 says “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” this is not about the metaphysical heavens, but rather the heavenly bodies that the text is about to describe. The sun, the moon, the stars. This verse is an introduction to the creation event the writer is about to describe. In this case, the angels would already be assumed to have their role in this act. Dating of the text, editorializing, as well as the background of near eastern texts that the writer is playing from in this creation text should also be considered in detail, but is beyond the scope of this simple post. Israel was very well aware of angelic involvement in creation even by the time this passage was written. Israel had seen the angel of the lord, and the angelic activity in their midst, the mediators of their covenant.
God is speaking of the creation of man as a joint activity with his present audience, the divine council. While God, the Father, proceeds to create man alone, according to “his” image (Genesis 5:1, James 3:9, 1 Corinthians11:7), the angels are certainly present. We do not have mysterious plurality in God, an appearance of the Son, or a reference to the trinity. This construction is used 4 times in Scripture (Genesis 3:22, 11:7, and Isaiah 6:8), yet, this verse is singled out. Why? This is a clear example of bias, as most of the same Bible commentaries and study notes which declare a trinitarian reading in this verse will deny it in those passages. There is no hinting at a plurality in God, this is God the Father creating man in his own image.