Found a quote from The Orthodox Faith by John of Damascus on The Fire and the Rose:
The Son is image of the Father, and image of the Son is the Spirit, through whom the Christ dwelling in man gives it to him to be to the image of God.
So, we can’t become the image of God without the Holy Spirit? But I thought we were created in the image of God. There’s no becoming involved.
Genesis 1:27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 9:6: Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.
In Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist, D.T. Suzuki writes:
Indeed, we are all apt to forget that every one of us is Buddha himself. In the Christian way of saying, this means that we are all made in the likeness of God, or in Eckhart’s words, that “God’s is-ness is my is-ness and neither more nor less.”
We already are the image of God so what does the Holy Spirit have to do? The Holy Spirit is the reminder of things we’ve forgotten because (again from Mysticism)
… the sense of opposites is dominating your consciousness. The idea of participation or empathy is an intellectual interpretation of the primary experience, while as far as the experience itself is concerned, there is no room for any sort of dichotomy. The intellect, however, obtrudes itself and breaks up the experience in order to make it amenable to intellectual treatment, which means a discrimination or bifurcation. The original feeling of identity is then lost and intellect is allowed to have its characteristic way of creaking up reality into pieces. Participation or empathy is the result of inellectualization.
. . .
It is our eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge which has resulted in our constant habit of intellectualizing. But we have never forgotten, mythologically speaking, the original abode of innocence: that is to say, even when we are given over to intellection and to the abstract way of thinking, we are always conscious, however dimly, of something left behind and not appearing on the chart of well-schematized analysis. This “something” is no other than the primary experience of reality in its suchness or is-ness …
The Holy Spirit does not enable us to become the image of God but, rather, is the constant reminder that we already are the image of God. If we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives, then we can realize this a-rational identity. A-rational because it does not come from our intellect. We cannot think our way into the image of God. We must experience it in a raw, unprocessed manner.
Sphere: Related Content
While the view that we are simply created in the image of God and thus bear this image in ourselves is rather common, it is also misguided. We have to remember that the image of God belongs naturally only to Jesus Christ. The NT speaks of Jesus as God’s image in a few different places, and it is also a theological axiom on the basis of the incarnation. Our own identity is marred by the fact of our sinfulness. The image of God is thus properly a christological category, not an anthropological one. We become the image only insofar as we are conformed into the image of Christ. Our identity as the “image of God” is never something we possess, even as believers. Instead, it is always a reality that is outside of us in Christ himself. We bear the image of God only by participating in the reality of Jesus Christ as the true image of God.
The image of God is not something we “already are”; it is something, rather, that we “will become” eschatologically, as we are perfected by the Spirit. The image of God is a christological-eschatological doctrine, not an anthropological-creational doctrine. I realize this goes against the grain of most popular thinking, but it is essential.
“While the view that we are simply created in the image of God and thus bear this image in ourselves is rather common, it is also misguided.”
Then what do the two verses from Genesis that I quoted in the post mean? Do they not say that we were created in the image of God? And the second one does not specify that spirit-filled men should not be killed. It refers to the general “man.”
“The NT speaks of Jesus as God’s image in a few different places, and it is also a theological axiom on the basis of the incarnation.”
To what verses are you referring? I’ve never heard it put that Jesus was God’s image. I’ve only heard that Jesus was God.
“Our own identity is marred by the fact of our sinfulness. The image of God is thus properly a christological category, not an anthropological one.”
Exactly! Our own identity as the image of God is marred by our sinfulness and Jesus and the Holy Spirit is what brings us back to our pristine, pre-fall identity. Of course, this body “I” am in possession of at the moment is not the image of God if this is the “anthropological one” you mention. Of course it’s not. But I am not my body. The body dies so it can’t be the image of God. And this is one of the problems — we think of our body as our “I” and it’s not.
“Our identity as the ‘image of God’ is never something we possess, even as believers. Instead, it is always a reality that is outside of us in Christ himself. We bear the image of God only by participating in the reality of Jesus Christ as the true image of God.”
Agreed. It’s not something we can possess. But I don’t agree that it is “outside of us.” “In Christ himself” I agree with but Christ is in us; is part of us (as believers). Plus, I still submit that our original, true, unmarred nature is the image of God.
“The image of God is not something we ‘already are’; it is something, rather, that we ‘will become’ eschatologically, as we are perfected by the Spirit.”
This may be semantics but can you be partly the image of God? Isn’t being the image of God kind of like being unique or perfect — either you are unique or you’re not; either you are perfect or you’re not. “Almost perfect” is not perfect. “Somewhat unique” is not unique. A distorted image of something is still an image of that thing. The distortions do not detract from that. A fun-house mirror still shows you your image. It may have a huge head and a tiny torso and corrugated feet but it’s still an image of you. If you deconvolve that image, you will get a true image of youself. The fun-house mirror does not display an image with four heads, sixteen arms, and fourteen feet. You may not be able to even recognize it but it is still your image. Isn’t that really what sin has done to us? Made us unrecognizable as the image of God? The work of the Holy Spirit is to flatten out the fun house mirror so that we can see what we really are.