God’s essential existence, knowledge, character, and such simply are. That is, to move no further than the etymological sense of the phrase “I AM,” all that God is, he is as the only genuine, essential, fundamental one. In the classical construction, God is the Archetype. God, and God alone, is the original. He is the “I AM.” Because this is such a central and nonnegotiable aspect of God’s character, we can say that God, and God alone, is Eimi [from the Greek word for “to be”].

The reason it is important to designate God as Eimi is, in the first place, that it is how he reveals himself. Because we come to our knowledge of God, at least substantially and initially, by way of his names, we need to keep before us the name of Yahweh. The “I AM” is utterly transcendent, beyond all categories of creation. He alone can be named “I AM.”

The “I AM” is utterly transcendent, beyond all categories of creation.

Even as God revealed himself to Moses using the “I AM” designation, we also will use that designation to highlight and emphasize this fundamental attribute, or collection of attributes. While we in no way want to undermine, forget, or ignore God’s personal names as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we nevertheless need to place in the forefront the independent character of the triune God; Father, Son, and Spirit are all a se. The one God—as three persons—is “I AM.”

Relying on the Original

We, on the other hand, are completely and exhaustively God’s image, we (and we could add here, though with qualifications, everything else except God) are eikonic [from the Greek word for “image”]. All that we are, think, do, become, and so on is derivative, coming from or out of something else; we depend on, as well as mirror, the real, the Original, the Eimi. In classical terminology, we are ectypal. The kinds or types of people that we are, of knowledge that we have, of thoughts that we think, and of things that we do are always and everywhere copies, patterns, impression, images, taking their metaphysical and epistemological cues from the only One who truly is, that is God himself.

A person is, in the deepest sense of the word, an image, an eikon, made according to the pattern of the Original, the triune God. This means that whatever we are, think, and do, we are, think and do as image. As image, we will never become, at any time and in any way original.

It may be helpful to think of a photograph as an illustration of this. Just what is the image in the photograph? It is a picture looking much like the original, but without the context, the dimensions, the “substance” of the original. No matter how accurately a photograph reflects the original, it will never be, nor should it ever be confused with, the original itself. It has, embedded within it as image, necessary and essential limitations. The photography would be nothing, literally, except for the original it copies. It is entirely dependent for its mean and its interpretation on that from which it came.

The meaning of what we are as image can be understood only in the light of who he is as the Original.

So it is with people. We would be literally nothing without God, the Original, and all that we are depends on him each and every second (Heb. 1:3). The meaning of what we are as image can be understood only in the light of who he is as the Original.

Not only so, but the world, though not created in God’s image in the way that people are, is itself an eikon. It declares God’s glory; it displays his attributes. In that way, the universe, too, shows forth the characteristics of God. It “images” God in that it is created after original pattern that always exists in the mind of God, and in that it reveals, as creation, something of its Creator.

Thinking God’s Thoughts 

We must begin, then, it seems to me, with this basic and fundamental distinction—the Eimi/eikon distinction—the distinction of the “I Am” and his image. If we begin in this way, then all of our discussion about who God is and his relationship to his creation has that distinction as its context and as its defining character.

So, to repeat what I said above, while the Christian is to image God in his thoughts or to think God’s thoughts after him, the actual thoughts of God cannot be thought by us. God’s thoughts are always thoughts of the One who is Eimi. As such they are eternal, infinite, exhaustive thoughts; archetypal and original with him; always and only true; exhaustively and eternally independent; not cleaned over time; and so on.

The thoughts that we think, even when in conformity with God’s, are still  at root eikonic. They are patterned after his thoughts; they are formulated in the context of his image; they depend on and necessarily relate to him as the Original but they are never identical to his thoughts, nor could they be. That would necessitate Eimic thoughts, of which creatures by definition, as eikions, are incapable. So, we think God’s thoughts, but only after him.

This piece is adapted from K. Scott Oliphint, God with Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 89–92. Used with permission of the publisher.

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