The Human Being
What it means that God made human beings in his image and likeness.
For the Scripture speaks about us when he says to the Son: “Let us make the human according to our image and according to our likeness, and let them rule the beasts of the earth and the birds of the heaven and the fish of the sea.”
ἀνακαινίσας ἡμᾶς ἐν τῇ ἀφέσει τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν, ἐποίησεν ἡμᾶς ἄλλον τύπον, ὡς παιδίων ἔχειν τὴν ψυχήν, ὡς ἂν δὴ ἀναπλάσσοντος αὐτοῦ ἡμᾶς.
For the heavenly Word, who became Spirit from the Father and Word from the rational power, made the human being an image of immortality after the pattern of the Father who begot him, so that, just as incorruption is with God, a human who shares in a portion of God may also have immortality.
Λόγος γὰρ ὁ ἐπουράνιος, πνεῦμα γεγονὼς ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ λόγος ἐκ τῆς λογικῆς δυνάμεως, κατὰ τὴν τοῦ γεννήσαντος αὐτὸν πατρὸς μίμησιν εἰκόνα τῆς ἀθανασίας τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐποίησεν, ἵνα, ὥσπερ ἡ ἀφθαρσία παρὰ τῷ θεῷ, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον θεοῦ μοῖραν ἄνθρωπος μεταλαβὼν ἔχῃ καὶ τὸ…
If you too come to desire this faith, you will first receive knowledge of the Father. For God loved human beings. For them he made the world.
Ταύτην καὶ σὺ τὴν πίστιν ἐὰν ποθήσῃς, καὶ λάβῃς πρῶτον μὲν ἐπίγνωσιν πατρός...
This is the one who bears the image and likeness of God, the one who truly knows, the one who imitates God as far as it is possible, omitting nothing that belongs to that attainable likeness: he is self-controlled, he endures, he lives righteously.
Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ κατ’ εἰκόνα καὶ ὁμοίωσιν, ὁ γνωστικός, ὁ μιμούμενος τὸν θεὸν καθ’ ὅσον οἷόν τε, μηδὲν παραλιπὼν τῶν εἰς τὴν ἐνδεχομένην ὁμοίωσιν, ἐγκρατευόμενος, ὑπομένων, δικαίως βιούς. βασιλεύων τῶν παθῶν, μεταδιδοὺς ὧν ἔχει, ὡς οἷός τέ ἐστιν, εὐεργετῶν καὶ λόγῳ καὶ ἔργῳ.
You say: however it be, the Creator’s substance is found capable of offense, since God’s breath—that is the soul—sinned in man, and corruption of a portion cannot fail to be referred to the original sum. For this the quality of the soul must be interpreted.
Clearly the one Paul adds next: the man must not cover his head, because he is the image of God. If he is the image of the Creator — who, looking at his own Word, Christ, the man who was to come, said, 'Let us make man in our image and likeness' (Genesis 1:26) — how can I have any other head than the one whose image I…
I. [1] Having joined battle with Hermogenes on the soul’s census alone — insofar as he presumed even this to have stood from matter’s stock rather than from God’s breath — now turned to the remaining questions I shall seem to fight with the philosophers most of all.
I hope he is not guilty who obeys Caesar’s spoken orders; but the proud opposite destroys his own life. Sometimes what is mine — I who erred before — I show: the right road to you who still wander empty. You, however, choose, pleasing your own judgment: who wants poison, or the sweet cups of life!
For he is the image of the invisible God, so that the mediocrity and frailty of the human condition might already then begin to grow used to seeing God the Father someday in the image of God, that is in the Son of God. So also Christ, that is the image of God and Son of God, is looked upon by men as he could be seen.
This sixth day is called parasceve — preparation of the kingdom. He completed Adam after his image and likeness. For that reason he finished his works before he created the angels and fashioned the human, lest they falsely claim they had been his helpers.
15.1. Therefore there is nothing that should deceive us, nothing that should promise us empty hopes—that which is said by certain new men and ones lifted up by an immoderate opinion of themselves—that souls are immortal, nearest to the Lord and Prince of things in grade of dignity, brought forth from that Begetter and…
When the world was finished, He commanded animals of various kinds, unlike forms, both great and small, to be made. And they were made in pairs—that is, single creatures of different sex—from whose offspring air and earth and seas were filled, and God gave to all these by kinds foods from the earth, so they could be of…
The image is wounded and darkened, not simply erased — yet without grace the will does not use it aright for God.