Image of God, Free Will, an eternal Soul and the GAE

[AllenWitmerMiller (Semi-Expired Professor & Minister.)]

I am going to be tied up for much of the rest of today but perhaps what I previously posted on another thread would give some small contribution in terms of prologue:

What Scholars Wondered if Nephilim Hint at People Outside the Garden?

I realize that you are asking about scholars of recent generations—but I can’t help but reflect on how this ubiquitous topic of recent centuries has very old roots. This was never my field of academic specialization and my memories are foggy but the earliest example I can recall would be Gregory of Nyssa, who studied under Origen, fourth century. He speculated that Adam’s physical body had descended from prior animals but God gave him a “rational soul” which made him an Imago Dei human. (Gregory also claimed that humans had a “plant soul” and an “animal soul”, so that the addition of the rational soul made humans soul-tripartite, so to speak. I don’t remember if he had a term for it but that was the idea and so I long ago tagged that term to my memory.) Around that same time there was a Roman Emperor who was a well-educated philosopher and prolific writer who claimed that Adam had human contemporaries outside the garden. He was part of the Constantine line of Christian emperors but …

I realize that it doesn’t address your main questions but it’s all I can provide for now. I will hope to jump in later. For now I will just say that over the years I’ve tried to nail down exactly what the Bible means by the Image of God and I still cannot say that I am at all close to resolving the disagreements on this even among evangelical scholars.

I will say that I’m inclined to think that the Image of God always entails having free will and an eternal soul.

As to “If they had a free will, how did they not sin?”, I think that a Divine-aware creature having free will typically has the choice to sin or not sin in a specific situation. Beyond, I will state that my Molinism probably motivates most of my answers to your follow-up questions which will probably arise from these topics.

@cdods, I see that you joined the PS forum many months ago—but I don’t recall our interacting much in the past. So if I haven’t already done so, I extend my welcome to you. I’m delighted to see you introduce this interesting thread. (And being an “unconflicted Christian” sounds like a good thing to me!)