One religious organization states souls are implanted at conception. Secular ethicist Peter Singer questioned that doctrine because identical twins occur when a single egg is fertilized by a single sperm and divides into two embryos. This split can occur at any stage up to nine days after fertilization. Singer’s criticism was, a soul can’t be divided.
Other church denominations state it was the breath of God into Adam. And He’s made us in His image; that image is corporate. We could talk about how each one of us is the image of God, but the important part is that it’s 'adam (“humanity”) that is in the image of God; the image of God is corporate. And the image of God is functional because we are to subdue and rule, working alongside God to continue the order-bringing process, to be partners in creation, partners in carrying out what God’s plans and purposes are for the cosmos and for us, His people.
Theologians have sometimes argued that we lost that image of God in the Fall. This is clearly wrong, as Genesis 9:6 shows. After the Flood, God commanded humanity to enforce capital punishment against murderers, and gave as His rationale that “in the image of God has God made man.” In other words, long after the Fall, man is still described as the image of God by God Himself.
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man” (Genesis 9:6).
At the same time, humanity clearly lost something at the Fall. In some sense, we stopped imaging God in that we no longer imaged His holiness and righteousness.
Some theologians refer to Genesis 1:26, where God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” Since the image has not changed, they argue, it must be the likeness that has changed. We continue to be the image of God, but we have lost, to some degree, the likeness of God.
We need an awareness of the backdrop of biblical usage to give perspective to the several references to the image of God in Colossians. The concept emerges first in Gen. 1:27, where it says that humans are made in the image of God, and thus they have a distinct dignity separate from the animals
Other theologians argue that image and likeness are really synonyms in this verse, so we cannot make a neat distinction between the two. They—including most traditional Protestant theologians—explain the situation this way: There is a wider sense in which man is the image of God, and also a narrow or particular sense.
In the wider sense, the human being simply is the image of God, and since that is what man is by definition, it cannot be changed or lost. As long as man is man, he is the image of God.
In the narrow sense, however, man images God’s holiness and righteousness. Man, therefore, stopped imaging God at the Fall. He lost his conformity to God’s image. We are still the image of God, but we are distorting that image.
If other people look at us to see what God is like, they will get the wrong idea, because we image Him imperfectly. Only in Jesus Christ do we see a man who is the perfect image of God in both senses.
In the NT, the primary emphasis falls on Christ as the image of God rather than on the thought of humankind is in the image of God (echoed in 1 Cor. 11:7–12; James 3:9).
Christ is the presence of God. In the person of Christ, the invisible God becomes visible (John 1:18). Jesus Christ, as the incarnate Son of God, reveals God’s intentions for being made in the image of God. In 2 Cor. 4:4 and Heb. 1:3, we find statements parallel to Col. 1:15, regarding Christ as the image of God.
Believers are being made into the image of Christ, who is the image of God. Rom. 8:29 calls us “to be conformed to the image of his Son,” and in 2 Cor. 3:18 believers are “being transformed into the same image” (referring to the glory of the Lord).
Verses such as Col. 3:10 and Eph. 4:24, on the new self-being renewed according to the image of its creator (God), allow for the meaning that the creating (or recreating) is in the pattern of Christ (Col. 2:9–10; Eph. 4:13, 15).
Christ is set forth as the prototype, the demonstration of God’s intent. Salvation is more than a matter of restoring standing with God; it is a transformation in which God is at work in believers as well as for them. This all stems from Adam.