God's Many-Splendored Image

Theological Anthropology for Christian Formation

Harrison, Nonna Verna

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781441212405
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología cristiana

What does it mean to be a human being made in the image of God? This book makes the case that the divine image can be seen in not just one or two aspects of human identity but in all of them. The author, a specialist in early Christianity, reveals the light that leading theologians of the early church shed on contemporary discussions of what it means to be human. Each chapter explores a different facet of the divine image and likeness and maps out a path that can lead toward wholeness and holiness. This fresh approach to theological anthropology brings Greek patristic theology to students in a readable fashion.

1
Freedom

In the world today, we all value our freedom, and we declare to the world that we are free. Yet we also find we need to struggle for our freedom. Beneath our declarations, we may have anxious questions that we hesitate to reveal: Am I really free? What real choices do I have? Are there limits to my freedom? Freedom seems to be an end in itself, but, even if I have a million choices, what is the purpose of being free?

Basil of Caesarea, a fourth-century bishop in Cappadocia, or in what is now central Turkey, asked himself questions like these. He wondered about how much freedom people really have and how best to use that freedom. He came from a wealthy, aristocratic family in a world where many people were slaves and slavery was taken for granted as part of the social and economic system. Slavery was part of the only world people in Basil’s time knew. In light of this, he tells the following story: Suppose there is an upright man who lives a good and disciplined life but is a slave. This man sees that his master is enslaved to the pleasures of a prostitute, though he himself dismisses her from his mind. Basil tells us he would say to that good man, “Know that you are a slave in name only. He,” that is, the owner, “has the name of master, but he has established his slavery by deed.”¹

My house in Kansas City is more than one hundred years old. There is a small room that opens into my bedroom with no door in between. I keep bookshelves and an exercise bike in it, but I am told that in the old days a servant would have lived there. From there he or she could see everything that went on in the master bedroom. In the ancient Mediterranean world, most people were poor, and a whole family would live in one room; but the rich lived in large houses surrounded by their servants. It is no wonder, then, that people went out into the desert to became monks or nuns; there they found the privacy they needed to live a life of prayer. The master in Basil’s story would probably have slept on a bed, while his slave slept on the floor beside him. The slave could very easily have seen what Basil describes.

So Basil asks, which one is more free? The master’s mind is filled with obsessive thoughts and fantasies about the prostitute. These thoughts, and the feelings that accompany them, drive his actions. He does not consider his wife and family, nor does he consider his reputation, which would have been very important to an aristocrat in the ancient world. He may be locked into the routine of a long-standing habit. So he is not free to use his reason to weigh the alternatives and make a sensible choice. He is addicted, or, in Basil’s language, enslaved.

By contrast, the slave who witnesses his master’s situation is free in mind and heart. He can dismiss from his mind the thought of the prostitute and any fantasies of pleasure that come with it. He has work to do, and since he cannot change his situation, he strives to do it out of love for his master and without resentment. In the ancient world, people did not know about different societies with different social structures, as they do today, so they did not envision the possibility of abolishing slavery, as Christian abolitionists did in the nineteenth century. Fourth-century Christians made use of the circumstances in which they found themselves to discover ways to love and serve God and their neighbors. While the slave’s life was hard, it was simple; he had no alternative. He probably worked with his hands, leaving his mind free to pray.

Basil’s brother, the mystic and theologian Gregory of Nyssa, uses the concept of the divine image found in Genesis 1:26–27 to critique the whole idea of slavery. We will see what he says when we discuss the issue further in chapter 5. Social justice is important but so is inner freedom, the concern of this chapter. Inner freedom is the freedom of mind and heart. It is the ability to reason and make choices without constraint, including choices about the thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and drives that fill the inner landscape of oneself. Regardless of outward circumstances, everyone can work on developing this inner freedom. It is an important aspect of being human, and no oppressor can take it away. So the slave in Basil’s story could cultivate it, while his undisciplined master chose not to do so.

The Importance of Freedom

Like people today, those in ancient times wondered whether they had real freedom of choice. Some believed that what people do is determined not by themselves but by chance, by fate, or by the stars. Some believed that things happen through the random collisions of atoms. Some held that fate, or the will of God, determines what will happen before people have an opportunity to choose. And, as happens today, some believed in astrology, which says that the movements of the stars govern how people will act and what will become of them. Yet for centuries many Greek philosophers affirmed human freedom. This is because philosophers greatly valued human reason and virtue, and they understood that without freedom, human reason would be powerless and ethical judgments would be senseless. After all, how could we praise good actions and blame evil ones if people were robots or puppets or if what they did happened simply by chance? The same question arises in today’s American judicial system. Defendants who are considered insane, that is, incapable of making a free choice about their actions, are not considered guilty. But these are exceptional cases; everyone else is considered to be responsible for what he or she does.

Like the philosophers, ancient Christians found it very important to affirm human freedom of choice. Origen, a third-century student of Platonic philosophy who was also a great biblical scholar, affirms free choice as follows: “The teaching of the church includes the doctrine of the righteous judgment of God, a doctrine which, if believed to be true, summons its hearers to live a good life and by every means to avoid sin—for it assumes that they acknowledge that deeds worthy of praise or of blame lie within our own power.”²

As Origen acknowledges, from the beginning the church taught that people are free. He suggests two important reasons for this teaching. First, God is just. If people were not free and God created them, God would be responsible for their sins and for all the evils of the fallen world. So Christians have to believe in human freedom in order to affirm God’s goodness and justice.Second, God will judge people for their good or evil conduct, granting them eternal life in heaven or eternal punishment in hell based on how they have chosen to live on earth. If people were not inherently responsible for their actions, such a judgment would be unjust and make no sense. And in this world, the church could not make ethical judgments. If people could not make choices, pastors could not exhort them to do good or counsel them not to do evil. Thus the whole present life of the church presupposes human freedom, as does Christian hope for the age to come.

Indeed, the whole biblical story of the relationship of God with God’s people presupposes human freedom. Through Moses and the prophets and in Jesus himself, God exhorts people to do good and warns them not to do evil. Origen quotes the following texts, among others, in support of human freedom:³

And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Mic. 6:8)

See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil.... Therefore choose life. (Deut. 30:15, 19)

Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock. (Matt. 7:24)

Such words can only benefit people because they are free to choose how to live. When people today hear Scriptures like these and take them to heart, the concrete choices they make about how to treat their neighbors or how to spend their time will be different from what they would otherwise have been.

Freedom and the Image of God

Freedom is so important to living a Christian life, and so central to who we are as human beings, that the fourth-century Cappadocian Gregory of Nyssa considered it an important facet of the divine image that defines us as human. Gregory spent most of his life in the little town of Nyssa, where he had been sent as bishop. He served as pastor there but also wrote. His profound writings, which are of great interest today, reveal that he was an original theologian interested in philosophy. He was also a contemplative, that is, a teacher of the spiritual life, so he had a lifelong interest in what it is to be human. We will return to him again and again in this book.

Theologically, Gregory agrees with his older brother Basil but goes beyond what he had taught. Basil makes a distinction between the divine image and the divine likeness and says our freedom makes it possible to acquire the likeness of God. In creating us, Basil says, God gives us the image, so we are born with it. The likeness is something greater than the image, and God gives us the responsibility of acquiring it. As Basil explains:

“Let us make the human being according to our image and according to our likeness” [Gen. 1:26]. By our creation we have the first, and by our free choice we build the second. In our initial structure co-originates and exists our coming into being according to the image of God. By free choice we are conformed to that which is according to the likeness of God. ... Now he has made us with the power to become like God. And in giving us the power to become like God, he let us be artisans of the likeness of God, so that the reward for the work would be ours. ... For I have that which is according to the image in being a rational being, but I become according to the likeness in becoming Christian.⁴

When Basil speaks of “becoming Christian,” he means truly living a Christian lifestyle, avoiding sin, practicing spiritual disciplines and all the virtues, and becoming like Christ, that is, like God. Basil says that human freedom can become the artisan, the fashioner, of God’s likeness. In his love, God gives us this extraordinary power—to make ourselves like God—in order to give us credit for doing so and reward us for it. Basil compares this process of self-fashioning to the work of a painter. If the artist paints a beautiful canvas, the work receives the attention and admiration; but if an artist adorns himself with beauty, he is the one who is admired.

In this text, Basil does not say freedom is God’s likeness, although it makes the likeness possible. He does, however, identify the divine image with reason. As we have seen, in Greek thought reason and freedom go together; without freedom, reason cannot do what it sees is right, and without reason, freedom acts blindly, impulsively, and erratically. So if reason is in God’s image, freedom must be in God’s image too, as Gregory emphasizes. Gregory says a great deal about the role of freedom in human existence.⁵

Gregory states that God, who is good and indeed transcends all good, created the human being in order to manifest his goodness. God would not give humankind certain parts of his goodness while jealously withholding others; that would not be in line with God’s character. So God has given humans the fullness of divine excellence. This gift includes all the virtues, which are, in the first place, divine attributes, such as wisdom, compassion, and love. And this divine excellence is what constitutes the image of God in the human person. It follows, then, that since freedom is included in God’s excellence, humans are free too. Following the Greek philosophical tradition, Gregory adds that if humans were not free, neither could they practice any of the virtues, all of which are included in the divine image.⁶

Gregory even says that human “self-determination is equal to God.”⁷ He means that like the freedom of God, human freedom is self-initiated; its actions are not determined by any external force, not even by God’s will. For example, if I choose to smell a rose, it is because I have decided to do so. I have not been made to do it against my will by some force outside myself. In fact, Gregory says that people are able to give birth to themselves, to create themselves as the kind of people they choose to become:

What is subject to change is in a sense always coming to birth. In mutable nature nothing can be observed which is always the same. Being born, in the sense of constantly experiencing change, does not come about as a result of external initiative, as is the case with the birth of the body. ... Such a birth occurs by free choice in accordance with whatever form we wish to have, ... molding ourselves to the principle of either virtue or vice.⁸

For example, a medical student chooses, step by step, to become a doctor. He or she not only studies the physiology of the human body and learns medical skills but also learns a doctor’s character, demeanor, and professional ethics. Through many choices over time, the mature medical practitioner comes to birth and grows within that person.

Interestingly, the reason our freedom has such power, according to Gregory, is that we are extremely malleable as human beings. We continually undergo change; we are constantly moving, so we can choose which direction we take. God, however, always remains the same, so clearly not everything about us is like God. Yet our changeableness allows us to choose to become more and more like the divine. The possibilities are wide open, though ultimately, Gregory says, we have two alternatives: virtue or vice, good or evil, the image of God or the image of the devil. We make a lot of complicated decisions in life, and sometimes the moral issues are unclear to us, but in the end our choices make us the kind of people who would be at home in God’s Kingdom or in the outer darkness.

God creates everything out of nothing, and Gregory does not believe that human freedom can do that. He says that when we fashion ourselves, w...