26Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”

27So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

28Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”  Genesis 1:26-28

The Christian view of humanity before the Great Catastrophe is glorious. God created people. He created people with capacity for relationships, love, and authority.  And God blessed them; He set before them the abundance of earth and set before them the opportunity to delight in Him and in each other and the diversity of creation.

Humanity carries within a fundamental and qualitative difference from the rest of Creation. They have been made “in the image of God.” They have been bestowed with a character representative and related to the Creator separate from the rest of Creation. Yet they are distinctly connected to the Creation for they have been endowed by God with capacity to rule and to choose.

But perhaps more importantly, humanity was created with a capacity for knowing God and living in communion with Him through loving responsive to Him.