Theological Term of the Week: Ectype

ectype
“A copy of the archetype. In theology, the creature is the ectype and God is the archetype.”1 Human knowledge, for instance, is ectypal. It is an imitation of God’s knowledge—derived from his knowledge and only a finite likeness of it.

• From scripture:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… .

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them. 

(Genesis 1:26-27 ESV)

• From Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof on human ectypal personality: 

We should be careful … not to set up man’s personality as a standard by which the personality of God must be measured. The original form of personality is not in man but in God; His is archetypal, while man’s is ectypal. The latter is not identical with the former, but does contain faint traces of similarity with it… . What appears as imperfect in man exists in infinite perfection in God.

Learn more:

1. Herman Bavinck: The Archetypal/Ectypal Distinction

Related terms:

• accomodation
• archetype
• image of God

1 From None Greater by Matthew Barrett.

Filed under Anthropology

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