What is the image of God? As I thought and read about this I came through very interesting concepts that are worth sharing.
Let’s start with Paul’s statement of the image of God. Colossians 1:15 states that Jesus is the image of God. Now, Jesus was not simply human, he was fully God and fully human. Then, if He is the image of God, then we, who are only human must be something else. If so, what are we? Most importantly there seems to be a contradiction with Gen 1:27.
Genesis 1:27 says that we have been created in the image of God. The word “in” in the original Hebrew can also be translated to “after” or “according to.” This understanding gives us the concept that we are the image of the image of God. Or in another words, we are created after the image of the second person of the Trinity. This takes care of the apparent contradiction and what we are. But what is this “image of the image of God?” Given the dominant naturalist worldview, one can think that it could be related to our bodies. But, it can’t be anything related to our bodies, for we know that God is spirit. Moreover, if it were related to our bodies, then we would be able to defile the image of the image since we are able to defile our bodies. It can’t be the fact that we are a combination of spirit and matter, some could make this argument if they start with the incarnation and not before creation, but saying so would be saying that animals also have the image of the image in the same way we do.
For Gregory of Nyssa, the image of God was in the human soul, and the image of the image of God was the human body. This is not the same as a naturalistic worldview mentioned above. The difference here is that Nyssa believes in the immaterial soul, a naturalistic worldview denies any existence of anything that is not physical. Nyssa, like many theologians such as Augustine, and Aquinas, believed that the soul was the form of the body, or as Nyssa puts it: the body is the reflection of the soul. This seems to oppose the concept of the image of the image of God. But if we combine these concepts and think of the “image of the image of God” whenever they refer to the “image of God” then we get a lot of information about what exactly is this “image” we are referring too.
For Hans Urs von Balthazar this “image” concept is not a simple thing to explain, thus he uses several analogies to attempt to grasp something that is, according to him, unfathomable. This image of God is three-fold. 1. It is an impression on the soul of the unutterable and incommunicable power of the Creator. This impression on the soul inspires the soul to be on aww of her creator and consequently, makes her capable of rejoicing in God. This is the glory of the Lord—the consideration of beauty. 2. It is a certain measure of knowledge of God. This is so, because since the beginning, God, has made a part of our very nature from the good. God has imbued our constitution with semblances of His own connatural goods. 3. It is the objective truth and the love of God. It is the Christian life in its entirety, the truth of the faith. Von Balthasar sees Christ as the Truth of the world, a truth in which we are called to participate. The shape of this truth is love, which is ascending and descending. The ascending truth/love shows us features in the world which points towards the transcendent. The descending truth/love shows us that through His Incarnation God brings a new quality of being, a new ontology, into the world.
Thus, the image of the image of God not only makes us capable of worship, shows us what is good, but also gives us the ability to know what is true. The content of this truth is infinite love and we are called to respond not so much by grasping this as by embracing the beautiful, good and true offered to us. This is in a sense man’s relationship with God. On the other hand, It is mind-blowing the fact that the Son is the image of God, supreme over all creation. If this was not so, then us, who are His creation could never know God. Jesus is truly the bridge and the only way for us to know God. This is God’s relationship with man.
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