Reason and Communication

Dominion over the earth to rule creation for the sake of God’s glory and the original capacity to reflect the Lord’s holiness and righteousness are aspects of humanity’s bearing His image (Gen. 1:27–28; Eph. 4:24). At least one more aspect of what it means to bear the image of God is worth discussing—namely, our ability to reason and communicate.

References to our Creator’s engaging in reason and communication fill the Scriptures. In Genesis 1 and 2, for example, the Lord reasons within Himself when He decides to create mankind and communicates when He gives our first parents the mandate to have dominion over the world. John 1 presents these truths about God with special clarity in the teaching on God’s Word, or logos as it is in the original Greek. Ancient philosophers referred to the rational principle that explained the world’s existence as the logos, and the basic meaning of the term as “word” points to communication. In referring to the Word as God, John tells us that the source of reason and communication is the personal Creator, who has never been without His Word—His eternally begotten Son (vv. 1–18).

From the beginning, human beings have reasoned in ways similar to but not identical to how the Lord reasons. We see this, for example, when Adam names the animals and reflects on the fact that Eve is the right companion for him, of his same kind (Gen. 2:18–23). Adam had to examine the creatures and reason to a conclusion about them and especially about Eve. This, as Dr. R.C. Sproul often said, was the birth of science, for Adam was the first to classify the different creatures that God has made, using both inductive and deductive reasoning as is done in the sciences. Other animals, especially certain mammals, may engage in a kind of thought process, but our capacity for reason goes far beyond theirs, particularly in our ability to think about abstract concepts. We are uniquely like God in these respects. Dr. Sproul writes that “God has knowledge and does complex reasoning, and we have minds and a power of contemplation that is unique in the animal world.”

Having a deep, personal relationship with others requires both thinking and communication. Men and women originally had such a relationship with the Lord as He came to walk with them in the cool of the day (Gen. 3:8). Sadly, this did not last long, and the fall would affect every aspect of the image of God in humanity.