On the Image and Likeness of God in Man (Part 1)
“Let us make man according to Our image and according to Our likeness” (Gen. 1:26), the God-Trinity mysteriously deliberated within Himself and with Himself before the creation of man.
Man is the image and likeness of God. God, inaccessible in His majesty, God who transcends all image, was imaged forth in man, imaged forth with clarity and glory. Thus the sun is imaged forth in a humble drop of water. The essence of man, his highest power by which he is distinguished from all earthly creatures, by which he is equal to the angels, his spirit, is the image of the essence of God; the properties of the human spirit serve, in their state of innocence, as a likeness to the properties of God, who, having inscribed His likeness with His almighty hand upon man, abides beyond all likeness and comparison.
What an excellent, full of diverse dignity and diverse beauty, being—man is!
For him was created by the Creator all visible nature; all of it is appointed to his service, all of it is his wonderful adornment.
When the Creator brought forth into being from nothingness all other creatures, He was satisfied with pronouncing His almighty command. But when He desired to complete the work of creation with the fashioning of the most exquisite, most perfect creature, He precedes the creation with deliberation.
The vast substance in its boundless and incalculable diversity, created before man, was—we say this affirmatively because we say it truly—a preparatory creation.
Thus an earthly king arranges and adorns a magnificent palace so that he might place within it his image.
The King of kings and God of gods prepares all visible nature with all its adornment, with all its wondrous magnificence that we behold. Then into this palace He places, as the ultimate purpose of all, His image.
At the completion of creation, before the creation of man, God surveys all that He had made and finds it satisfactory: “and God saw that it was good” (Gen. 1:25).
After the creation of man, God again surveys all that He had made and now finds His creation refined, complete, perfect: “and God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good” (Gen. 1:31).
O man! Understand your dignity.
Behold the meadows and fields, the vast rivers, the boundless seas, the lofty mountains, the luxuriant trees, all the beasts and cattle of the earth, all the beasts and fish wandering in the expanse of the waters, behold the stars, the moon, the sun, the sky: all of this is for you, all is appointed to you for service.
Besides the visible world that we see, there is another world invisible to bodily eyes, incomparably superior to the visible. And the invisible world too is for man.
How greatly has the Lord honored His image! What a lofty destiny has He prescribed for it! The visible world is only a preparatory antechamber of a dwelling incomparably more magnificent and spacious. Here, as in an antechamber, the image of God must be adorned with final features and colors, to attain a most perfect resemblance to its most holy, most perfect Original, so that in the beauty and grace of this resemblance it may enter into that palace in which the Original resides incomprehensibly, as if restraining His unrestrainedness to reveal Himself to His beloved, rational creatures.
The image of God the Trinity—the trinity of man.
Three persons in the trinity of man—three powers of his spirit, by which the existence of the spirit is manifested. Our thoughts and spiritual sensations manifest the existence of the mind, which, manifesting itself with complete clarity, at the same time remains entirely invisible and incomprehensible.
In Holy Scripture and in the writings of the holy Fathers, sometimes the soul in general is called spirit, sometimes a particular power of the soul is called spirit. The Fathers call this power of the soul rationality or the power of rationality. They divide it into three particular powers: mind, thought or word, and spirit. By mind they mean the source itself, the beginning of both thoughts and spiritual sensations. By spirit, in a particular sense, is meant the faculty of spiritual sensation. Often in the Paternal writings the rational power or spirit are called mind; often the created spirits are called minds. The whole receives its name from its principal part.
The very essence of our soul is the image of God. And even after falling into sin, the soul remains an image! And cast into the flame of hell, the sinful soul, even in the very flame of hell, remains the image of God! Thus teach the holy Fathers.[1]
The holy Church sings in her hymns: “I am an image of Your inexpressible glory, though I bear the wounds of transgression.”[2]
Our mind is the image of the Father; our word (we usually call unspoken word ‘thought’) is the image of the Son; spirit is the image of the Holy Spirit.
As in God the Trinity three Persons indivisibly and inseparably constitute one Divine Essence, so in the trinity of man three persons constitute one essence, not mingling with one another, not merging into one person, not dividing into three essences.
Our mind begets and does not cease to beget thought; thought, having been begotten, does not cease to be begotten again and at the same time remains begotten, hidden within the mind.
Mind cannot exist without thought, and thought cannot exist without mind. The source of one is necessarily the source of the other; the existence of mind is necessarily also the existence of thought.
Similarly, our spirit proceeds from the mind and works with thought. Thus every thought has its own spirit, every manner of thinking has its own separate spirit, every book has its own proper spirit.
Thought cannot exist without spirit; the existence of one is necessarily accompanied by the existence of the other. In the existence of both, the existence of the mind appears.
What is the spirit of man? The totality of heartfelt feelings belonging to the rational and immortal soul, foreign to the souls of beasts and animals.
The heart of man is distinguished from the heart of animals by its spirit. The hearts of animals have sensations dependent on blood and nerves; they do not have spiritual sensation—this mark of the Divine image, the exclusive possession of man.
The moral strength of man is his spirit.
Our mind, word, and spirit, by the simultaneity of their source and by their mutual relations, serve as an image of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, coeternal, cooriginate, equally honored, and consubstantial.
“He that has seen me has seen the Father”, declared the Son,—“I am in the Father, and the Father in me” (Jn. 14:9-10). The same can be said of the human mind and its thought: the mind, invisible in itself, appears in thought; whoever has become acquainted with the thought has become acquainted with the mind that produced it.
The Lord called the Holy Spirit “power from on high” (Lk. 24:49), “the Spirit of truth” (Jn. 14:17); truth is the Son. The human spirit too has the property of power; it is the spirit of a man’s thoughts, whether they are true or false. It manifests itself in the secret movements of the heart, in the character of thoughts, and in all the actions of man. By man’s spirit his mind is revealed, and the character of his thoughts; the spirit of each deed reveals the thought that guided the man in that deed.
The merciful Lord adorned His image with His likeness. The image of God is the very essence of the soul; the likeness is the properties of the soul.
The newly created image of God—man—was like God: infinite, wise, good, pure, incorruptible, holy, free from every sinful passion, every sinful thought and sensation.
A skilled artist first depicts the form, the features of the face from which he is making a portrait. Having accurately rendered these features, he gives the face and the very clothing the color and hues of the original, thereby perfecting the resemblance. God, having created His image, adorned it with His likeness: it is fitting for the Divine image to have complete resemblance to God in all things. Otherwise the image would be insufficient, unworthy of God, not fulfilling its purpose, not corresponding to it.
Alas! Alas! Weep, you heavens! Weep, O sun, weep, all you luminaries, weep, O earth, weep, all the heavenly and earthly creatures! Weep, all nature! Weep, you holy Angels! Groan bitterly, inconsolably! Clothe yourselves, as in a garment, in deep sorrow! The calamity has happened, a calamity fully worthy of being called a calamity: the image of God has fallen.
Honored by God with free will, as one of the bright, living marks of Godlikeness, deceived by an angel already fallen, he communed with the dark thought and spirit of the father of lies and all malice. He accomplished this communion by action: by severing himself from the will of God. By this he drove away from himself the Spirit of God, distorted the Divine likeness, made the very image debased.
The Preacher vividly and accurately depicted the calamities of the fall: “that which is crooked”, he said, “cannot be made straight, and deficiency cannot be numbered” (Eccl 1:15).
The derangement of the image and likeness can be readily seen by each one in himself. The beauty of the likeness, consisting of the totality of all virtues, has been defiled by dark and foul passions. The features of the image have lost their regularity, their mutual harmony: thought and spirit war against one another, go out of obedience to the mind, rise up against it. He himself is in unceasing perplexity, in a terrible obscuration that closes off God and the path to God from him, the holy and infallible One.
Terrible torment accompanies the derangement of God’s image and likeness. If a man attentively, in solitude, over a considerable period of time, continually looks into himself, he will be convinced that this torment acts continuously—it opens and closes, depending on how much or how little distraction stifles it.
O man! Your distractions, your entertainments—these are the accusers of the torment dwelling within you. You seek to silence it with the cup of noisy diversions and endless distraction. Wretched one! Scarcely does a moment of sobriety befall you when you are again convinced that the torment which you sought to eliminate through distraction lives within you. Distraction serves as its nourishment, a means of its strengthening: resting in the shade of distraction, the torment awakens with new strength. It is the witness dwelling in man himself, witnessing to him of his fall.
Sealed with the seal and testimony of the fall is the human body. From the very moment of its birth it is in enmity, in struggle with all that surrounds it and with the very soul dwelling within it. All the elements wage war against it; finally, wearied by internal and external conflicts, struck by diseases, oppressed by old age, it falls to the scythe of death, though it was created immortal, and crumbles to dust.
And again the magnificence of the Divine image appears! It appears in its very fall, in the manner by which man has been drawn forth from that fall.
God, by one of His Persons, assumed His image upon Himself: became incarnate; by Himself drew it forth from its fall, restored it to its former glory, raised it to glory incomparably higher than that which had been bestowed upon it at creation.
In His mercy the Lord is righteous. In redemption He glorified His image more than in creation: man did not himself devise his fall, as the fallen angel devised his—he was drawn into the fall by envy, deceived by evil, which covered itself with the mask of good.
All Persons of God the Trinity participate in the work of incarnation, each according to the property of His Person. The Father abides as begetter and begetting, the Son is begotten, the Holy Spirit acts.