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Articles
In the image of God created He him
“God created man in his
own
image”
“God created man in his
own
image”
(Gen 1:27).
26
And God said,
Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Gen 5:1.
Wisdom 2:23.
Sir 17:3.
27
So
God created man in his
own
image, in the image of God created he him;
male and female created he them.
Gen 5:1-2.
Matt 19:4.
Mark 10:6.
1 Cor 11:7.
Col 3:10.
And “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”
(Gen 2:7).
7
And the LORD God formed man
of
the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and man became a living soul.
1 Cor 15:45.
The Son is the image of the hypostasis of the Father
Jesus Christ, the Son of God and God, is the “image of the hypostasis” of the Father
(Heb 1:3).
1
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
Num 12:6.
1 Peter 1:10.
2
Hath in these last days spoken unto us by
his
Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;
Psa 2:8.
Isa 9:6.
John 1:3.
John 8:26.
John 15:15.
Gal 4:4.
Eph 1:10.
3
Who being the brightness of
his
glory, and
the express image of his person,
and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;
Psa 110:1.
Wsd 7:26.
2 Cor 4:4.
Eph 1:7.
Col 1:15.
This divine knowledge of God in self-revelation, in contrast to the creaturely knowledge of God, is absolutely
adequate.
…
…
The Son has and knows nothing that the Father does not have;
and the Father does not possess anything that is not manifested in the Son.
This Life of the Father and of the Son has as its source, naturally, the Initial hypostasis of the Father, Who reveals Himself in the Son.
This life exists for the Father hypostatically as the Holy Spirit,
Who is not generated but “proceeds” from the Father. …
… In reality, this relation is a triadic one, because
the Holy Spirit is the Life of the Father
and
of the Son,
of the Father in the Son and of the Son in the Father;
while for Himself the Holy Spirit is this
And
(or
Is,
the copula of the subject and the predicate).
Christ is the “truly Man”
No wonder the fathers of the Council of Chalcedon called for Christ to be considered a “truly Man”.
… we all unanimously teach that our Lord Jesus Christ is to us One and the same Son, the Self-same Perfect in Godhead, the Self-same Perfect in Manhood;
truly God and truly Man;
…
Christ calls us “His brethren” and calls His Father “our Father”
(John 20:17).
17
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not;
for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to
my brethren,
and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and
your Father;
and
to
my God, and your God.
Psa 22:23.
Matt 28:10.
Rom 8:29.
Heb 2:11.
In full accordance with
Genesis 2:7,
the apostle Paul says that “we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God”
(1 Cor 2:12).
10
But God hath revealed
them
unto us by his Spirit: for
the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
Matt 13:11.
Mark 4:11.
John 14:26.
11
For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?
even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
Rom 11:33.
12
Now
we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God;
that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
Rom 8:15.
“Ye
are
gods;
and all of you
are
children of the most High”
It turns out that “I said, Ye are gods, … and the scripture cannot be broken”
(John 10:34-35).
6
I have said, Ye
are
gods;
and all of you
are
children of the most High.
John 10:34.
33
The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not;
but for blasphemy;
and because that
thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
34
Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said,
Ye are gods?
Psa 82:6.
35
If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
36
Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest;
because I said,
I am the Son of God?
John 6:27.
This is the task and goal of creation. God creates future “gods by grace” for inclusion in
the multihypostatic multiunity
of the Holy Trinity and in the unity of Divine life.
This division is
not
insuperable. Its overcoming in the Divine plane includes the overcoming of the duality of the forms of the Divine Sophia, eternal and creaturely. In this way, creation is deified: divine life is communicated to it;
and it is raised from the creaturely Sophia into the creaturely-Divine Sophia. So great is God's love for creation that, in calling the latter to being, He gives it
His Own,
the Divine Sophia, as the foundation of its being, in order, further, to give it Himself as well, uniting it with His own Divine life. This is precisely the foundation of the Divine-human process. Humanity, the center and cryptogram of the world, is the image of the Divine Humanity. It is thus called to approach the Proto-image, and this convergence can go so far as to become a living identification with the Proto-image. This is the task and goal of creation. God creates future “gods by grace” for inclusion in
the multihypostatic multiunity
of the Holy Trinity and in the unity of Divine life. This is the final foundation of the creative act. The creaturely Sophia must be united in one life with the Divine Sophia on the basis of the unity of hypostasis living in the two natures: The idea of the Chalcedonian dogma, of the unihypostatic bi-unity of the two natures, Divine and human, of the Divine and the creaturely Sophia, must receive not only a christological but also an anthropological and cosmological significance.
At the end of time, when all creation reaches the fullness of its existence, when man reaches its fullness,
all mankind, in union with the Only Begotten Son of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, will become the only begotten son of God
(Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh).
We know from the Epistle of the Apostle Peter that our human calling (as it is reflected on the rest of the creature – we will think further)
is not only to know God, not only to worship Him, not only to serve Him, not only to tremble before Him, not only to love Him, but ultimately to become partakers of the Divine nature
(2 Pet. 1:4),
that is, to partake of God in such a way that the Divine nature is instilled in us, we become like Christ in this respect. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons in one of his writings used a remarkable and perhaps even terrible, in any case majestic, expression. He says that at the end of time, when all creation reaches the fullness of its existence, when man reaches its fullness,
all mankind, in union with the Only Begotten Son of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, will become the only begotten son of God.
This is our ultimate calling.
Finally, “I in them, and thou in me, … thou … hast loved them, as thou hast loved me”
(John 17:23).
21
That they all may be one;
as thou, Father,
art
in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
John 17:11.
22
And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them;
that they may be one, even as we are one:
23
I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one;
and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
“Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you,”
(2 Cor 13:5).
Published:
December 1, 2022
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