Man
The doctrine of man in the UPDV runs along a single arc: a creature formed from dust, made in the image of the God who speaks, given dominion, broken by the fall, bound by mortality, redeemed by precious blood, and remade after the image of Christ. Genesis frames the question; Job and the Psalms press its weight; the Wisdom literature and Sirach insist on the dust; the prophets promise a new heart; the apostles announce a new creation. The Pauline antithesis of flesh and Spirit, and the closing vision of a spiritual body, gather the whole picture into one.
Made in the Divine Image
Man is the only creature spoken into being by deliberation. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," and "let them have dominion" (Gen 1:26). The image is given to the species in male and female together: "in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Gen 1:27). The opening genealogy restates it: "In the day that God created Adam, in the likeness of God he made him" (Gen 5:1). The image is durable enough to ground the post-flood prohibition of murder — "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man will his blood be shed: For in the image of God he made man" (Gen 9:6) — and the apostolic prohibition of cursing — "we curse men, who are made after the likeness of God" (Jas 3:9). Paul preserves the same vocabulary in arguing for ordered worship: a man "is the image and glory of God" (1 Cor 11:7).
The Epistle to the Greeks names the divine purpose tied to that image: "For God loved men, for whom he made the world, to whom he subjected all things in the earth, to whom he gave reason, to whom mind, whom alone he permitted to look upward to himself, whom he formed in his own image" (Gr 10:2).
The Pattern of the Image: Christ
The image-language of Genesis is taken up Christologically. Christ "is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation" (Col 1:15); the unbelieving cannot see "the light of the good news of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God" (2 Cor 4:4); he is "the radiance of his glory, and the very image of his substance" (Heb 1:3); he existed "in the form of God" (Php 2:6). The doctrine of man and the doctrine of Christ converge here: humanity is image-bearing because it is patterned on the One who is, without qualification, the image.
Formed of the Dust
The second creation account spells out the material: "And Yahweh God formed the man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living soul" (Gen 2:7). Sirach reads the same theology back: "And all men are from the ground, And Adam was created of earth" (Sir 33:10). The fall makes the dust audible: "for dust you are, and to dust you will return" (Gen 3:19). Ecclesiastes returns to it at the end: "the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it" (Ec 12:7).
Dominion and Pre-eminence
Image is paired with rule. "Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Gen 1:28). After the flood the dominion is reaffirmed in altered key: "the fear of you⁺ and the dread of you⁺ will be on every beast of the earth" (Gen 9:2). Psalm 8 turns it into liturgy: "You make him to have dominion over the works of your hands; You have put all things under his feet" (Ps 8:6). James notices the lived fact: "every kind of beasts and birds, of creeping things and things in the sea, is tamed, and has been tamed by mankind" (Jas 3:7). Hebrews reads Psalm 8 eschatologically: God "left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we do not see yet all things subjected to him" (Heb 2:8). The pre-eminence is real and not yet complete.
A separate Psalm pushes the dignity further still — "I said, You⁺ are gods, And all of you⁺ are sons of the Most High" (Ps 82:6) — a claim Jesus will later cite about humanity's status before God.
A Little Lower
Set against the heavens man looks small. "What is common man, that you are mindful of him? And the son of man, that you visit him?" (Ps 8:4). Yet the same psalm answers: "you have made him but a little lower than God, And crown him with glory and majesty" (Ps 8:5); Hebrews reads it as "a little lower than the angels; You crowned him with glory and honor" (Heb 2:7). The dignity and the smallness are held together, not against each other.
Apparent Insignificance
Job and Isaiah press the smallness without erasing the dignity. "How much more those who stay in houses of clay, Whose foundation is in the dust, Who are crushed before the moth!" (Job 4:19). "What is common man, that you should magnify him?" (Job 7:17). "How much less is common man, who is a maggot! And the son of man, who is a worm!" (Job 25:6). Isaiah's vision of the enthroned Yahweh sees the earth's "inhabitants are as grasshoppers" (Isa 40:22), and yet Yahweh addresses the same dust: "Don't be afraid, you worm Jacob" (Isa 41:14). Sirach gathers the note: "What is brighter than the sun? Yet this fails; And how much more man who [has] the inclination of flesh and blood" (Sir 17:31); man "looks upon the host of the height of heaven, And [on] all men [who] are earth and ashes" (Sir 17:32); "What is man, and what profit is there in him?" (Sir 18:8); a hundred years are "As a drop of water from the sea, or [as] a grain of sand" (Sir 18:10).
Equality
Despite the variety of station, the human race is one before its maker. "The rich and the poor meet together: Yahweh is the maker of them all" (Pr 22:2). Paul argues the same for Jew and Greek: "there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the same [Lord] is Lord of all" (Rom 10:12); "There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither slave nor free, there can be no male and female; for you⁺ are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28). James extends the equality to the poor: "did not God choose those who are poor as to the world [to be] rich in faith" (Jas 2:5).
A Spiritual Being
Man is body and spirit, and the spirit is the part that knows. "But there is a spirit in common man, And the breath of the Almighty gives them understanding" (Job 32:8). "The breath of man is the lamp of Yahweh, Searching all his innermost parts" (Pr 20:27). "Who knows the spirit of man, whether it goes upward, and the spirit of the beast, whether it goes downward to the earth?" (Ec 3:21). Paul puts the same claim in epistemological terms: "who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man, which is in him?" (1 Cor 2:11). The threefold prayer of 1 Thessalonians keeps body and spirit and soul together: "may your⁺ spirit and soul and body be preserved entire" (1 Th 5:23). James anchors the unity from the other side: "as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead" (Jas 2:26). Paul names the inner-outer distinction: "though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day" (2 Cor 4:16).
The Body
The body is not incidental. Paul argues against fornication on the ground that "your⁺ bodies are members of Christ" (1 Cor 6:15). The price he names elevates the body still further: "you⁺ were bought with a price: glorify God therefore in your⁺ body" (1 Cor 6:20). The Epistle to the Greeks makes the body-soul relation a model for Christian life in the world: "what the soul is in the body, Christians are in the world" (Gr 6:1).
The Flesh
The post-fall body is more than dust; it has become "the flesh," a structural opposition to the Spirit of God. Ecclesiastes had already noted "God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions" (Ec 7:29). Paul puts it as bluntly as the Bible can: "in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing" (Rom 7:18); "I of myself with the mind, indeed, serve as a slave to the law of God; but with the flesh, to the law of sin" (Rom 7:25); "those who are in the flesh can't please God" (Rom 8:8). The remedy is Spirit-wrought: "if by the Spirit you⁺ put to death the activities of the body, you⁺ will live" (Rom 8:13). The antithesis is constant: "the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh" (Gal 5:17); "he who sows to his own flesh will of the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap eternal life" (Gal 6:8). John's letter names what fills the flesh: "the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the vainglory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world" (1 Jn 2:16). Sirach speaks the same way: "He being flesh nourishes wrath, Who will make atonement for his sins?" (Sir 28:5); "The works of all flesh are before him, And there is nothing hid from before his eyes" (Sir 39:19).
The Epistle to the Greeks states the Christian's relation to the flesh in characteristically pointed form: "They are in the flesh, but do not live after the flesh" (Gr 5:8). And it preserves the cosmic dimension of the conflict: "The flesh hates the soul, and without having been wronged wars against it, because the flesh is prevented from enjoying pleasures. And the world, without having been wronged, hates Christians, because they resist its pleasures" (Gr 6:5).
Mortality and Limitation
The body wears out. "All flesh becomes old like a garment; And the everlasting statute is, You will surely die" (Sir 14:17). "The number of man's days Is great [if it reaches] a hundred years" (Sir 18:9). "The days of our years are seventy years, Or even by reason of strength eighty years; Yet is their pride but labor and sorrow; For it is soon gone, and we fly away" (Ps 90:10). Ecclesiastes is plain: "Man does not have power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither does he have power over the day of death" (Ec 8:8). Job feels the bounds set against him: "To a [noble] man whose way is hid, And whom God has hedged in" (Job 3:23); "You set a bound to the soles of my feet" (Job 13:27); "He has walled up my way that I can't pass" (Job 19:8). Lamentations echoes him: "He has walled me about, that I can't go forth" (La 3:7). The psalmist speaks of the same boundedness in the language of intimacy rather than imprisonment: "You have beset me behind and before, And laid your hand on me" (Ps 139:5).
Earthly Life as Probation
The boundedness of life has a purpose: it is a tested time. The first command was already a probation: "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will not eat of it: for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die" (Gen 2:17). The wait for Canaan is shaped by the same logic: "the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full" (Gen 15:16). The wilderness is openly named: "Yahweh your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, to prove you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not" (Deut 8:2). The conquest is partial for the same reason: "these are the nations which Yahweh left, to prove Israel by them" (Jdg 3:1). Jesus tells parables of patient probation — the fig tree that gets one more year (Lu 13:8), the slaves entrusted with minas to "Trade⁺ until I come" (Lu 19:13). The standard for ministry stays the same: "let these also first be proved; then let them serve, if they are blameless" (1 Tim 3:10).
Infinite Value
Against the dust and the worm, the cross sets a price. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes on him should not perish, but have eternal life" (Jn 3:16). Peter spells out the cost: "you⁺ were redeemed from your⁺ useless manner of life handed down from your⁺ fathers, not with corruptible things, silver or gold; but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, [even the blood] of Christ" (1 Pet 1:18-19). Revelation opens with the same accounting: "to him who loves us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood" (Rev 1:5). The transaction is the church's deepest comment on the dignity of man.
The New Man
Redemption is described as a new making. The Spirit-prophecy of Ezekiel runs first: "I will give them another heart, and I will put a new spirit inside you⁺; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh" (Eze 11:19); the dry bones live: "the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up on their feet" (Eze 37:10). David had already prayed for it: "Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a right spirit inside me" (Ps 51:10). Jesus tells the parable of it: "this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found" (Lu 15:24). Isaiah promises strength for the waiting: "those who wait for Yahweh will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings as eagles" (Isa 40:31).
The apostles use the explicit phrase. "If any man is in Christ, [he is] a new creation: the old things are passed away; look, they have become new" (2 Cor 5:17). "Neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation" (Gal 6:15). The believer is to "put on the new man, that after God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth" (Eph 4:24); to be "renewed in the spirit of your⁺ mind" (Eph 4:23); the new man is one "who is being renewed to knowledge after the image of him who created him" (Col 3:10). The old division is overcome: God has created in Christ "the two into one new man, [so] making peace" (Eph 2:15). The corresponding life-vocabulary is paired: "we also might walk in newness of life" (Rom 6:4); "we serve as slaves in newness of the spirit" (Rom 7:6); resurrection is anticipated: "he who raised up Christ from the dead will give life also to your⁺ mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you⁺" (Rom 8:11). The norm is interior: "be transformed by the renewing of the mind" (Rom 12:2). Titus calls the source by name: "the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit" (Tit 3:5). Even those once dead are "made alive together with him" (Col 2:13); "raised together with Christ" (Col 3:1); "raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly [places]" (Eph 2:6). Diognetus makes the appeal directly: "become as it were a new man from the beginning" (Gr 2:1).
The Spiritual Body
The arc closes in the resurrection of the body. Sirach had remembered the glory of the first man — "above every living thing was the glory of Adam" (Sir 49:16) — and Paul argues the second Adam restores the body in a higher key: "it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual [body]" (1 Cor 15:44). "And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we will also bear the image of the heavenly" (1 Cor 15:49). The present groan is anticipatory: "in this we groan, longing to be clothed on with our habitation which is from heaven" (2 Cor 5:2). The pattern is again Christ: "[Christ] will fashion anew the body of our humiliation, [that it may be] conformed to the body of his glory" (Php 3:21). And the consummation is open: "When Christ will be manifested, [who is] your⁺ life, then you⁺ will also be manifested with him in glory" (Col 3:4). The dust formed by Yahweh in Genesis 2 becomes, by the work of the second Adam, a body that bears the image of the heavenly.