Made in God's Image and Likeness
Made in God's Image and Likeness The human soul was created in God's image and likeness. At the Fall it lost its likeness to its Creator; but the image remains, deformed but inseparable from the very essence of the soul.
This image consists in three things: man's natural simplicity, his natural immortality and his freedom of the will, i.e. free choice.
Even after the Fall the soul retains its capacity, helped by God's grace, to attain to the things of God and to God himself. Here lies its greatness. This capacity, this potential for union with God, is, according to Bernard, the most wonderful part of our human nature.
The image can be renewed and the likeness restored so that there can be oneness of spirit and union with God.
The Image and Likeness What have the Word and the soul in common? Much, on all counts. In the first place, there is a natural kinship, in that one is the Image of God, and the other is made in that image.
Next, the resemblance argues some affinity. For the soul is made not only in the image of God but in his likeness.
Take first the Image. The Word is truth, it is wisdom and righteousness; these constitute the Image. The soul is none of these things, since it is not the Image. Yet it is capable of them and yearns for them; that perhaps is why it is said to be made in the image. It is a lofty creature, in its capacity for greatness, and in its longing we see a token of its uprightness. We read that God made man upright and great; his capacity proves that as we have said. For what is made in the image should conform to the image, and not merely share the empty name of image.
The Word is the image of this upright and great God; therefore the soul which is in his image is also like him.
The Capacity for God Is there no difference between the Image of God and the soul which is made in its image? Indeed there is. For the soul receives according to its capacity, but the Image receives in equal measure with God. Man received his gifts from God's hands, the Image received them from God's being, that is from his very substance.
For the Image greatness is not merely the same as uprightness, but existence itself is greatness and uprightness. It is not so with the soul; its greatness and uprightness are distinct from it and from each other.
The soul is great in proportion to its capacity for the eternal, and upright in proportion to its desire for heavenly things, and the soul which does not desire or have a taste for heavenly things, but clings to earthly things, is clearly not upright but bent. But it does not for all that cease to be great, and it always retains its capacity for eternity. For even if it never attains to it, it never ceases to be capable of doing so.
And so by the greatness which it retains even when he has lost his uprightness, 'man passes as an image', but he limps as it were on one foot, and has become an estranged son.
Lord, Who is like You?
When the soul perceives this great disparity within itself, it is torn between hope and despair and can only cry, 'Lord, who is like you?' Thus the more it is offended by the evil it sees in itself, the more ardently it is drawn to the good which it likewise sees in itself, and the more it desires to become its true self, simple and righteous, fearing God and turning from evil.
But I must insist that we can only dare to undertake these things by grace, not by nature, nor even by effort. It is wisdom which overcomes malice, not effort or nature. The soul must turn to the Word. The great dignity of the soul's relationship with the Word, which I have been talking of for the past three days - is not without effect and its enduring likeness bears witness to this relationship.
The Spirit courteously admits into its fellowship one who is like him by nature. Certainly in the natural order like seeks like. He would not see the soul when she was unlike him, but when she is like him he will look upon her, and he will allow her to look upon him. 'When he will appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.' Difficult but not impossible.
The Likeness and the Vision That likeness which accompanies the vision of God is a thing most marvellous and astonishing, and is itself the vision. I can only describe it as subsisting in charity. This vision is charity, and the likeness is charity. Who would not be amazed at the charity of God in recalling someone who has spurned him? How deserving of censure is the unrighteous man who was mentioned earlier as appropriating to himself the likeness of God, but who by choosing unrighteousness becomes incapable of loving either himself or God.
When the iniquity which is partly the cause of unrighteousness is taken away, there will be a oneness of spirit, a reciprocal vision, and reciprocal love. When what is perfect comes, what is partial will be done away with; and the love between them will be chaste and consummated, full recognition, open vision and perfect likeness. Then the soul will know as it is known and love as it is loved, and the Bridegroom will rejoice over the Bride, knowing and known, loving and loved, Jesus Christ Our Lord, who is God above all, blessed for ever. Amen. oY
Made in God's Image and Likeness I believe that in these three freedoms there is contained the image and likeness of the Creator in which we were made.
That in freedom of choice lies the image, and in the other two (freedom of counsel and of pleasure) is contained a certain twofold likeness. Maybe the reason why free choice alone suffers no lessening is that in it, more than in the other two, there seems to be imprinted some substantial image of the unchanging Deity.
For although free choice had a beginning, it knows no end, nor does it experience increase through righteousness, nor decrease through sin. What could be more like eternity without actually being eternity? Now in the other two freedoms, liable to diminution or even total loss, one sees a certain accidental likeness of the divine power and wisdom. By a fault we lost them; by grace we recovered them; and we can daily advance in them or fall away. They may be irreparably lost; but also securely possessed beyond the bounds of diminution. Of the likeness contained in the freedoms of counsel and pleasure nothing remains or can remain in hell. But the image remains, even there, in free choice, permanent and unchanged.
Free Choice One point has occurred to me which I cannot neglect, and which in no way detracts from the soul's greatness and its similarity to the Word, but enhances them. This is free choice, something clearly divine which shines forth in the soul like a jewel set in gold. From it the soul derives its power of judgment, and its option of choosing between good and evil, between life and death, in fact between light and darkness.
It is the eye of the soul which as censor and arbiter exercises discrimination and discernment between these things, and arbiter in discerning and free in choosing. It is called free choice because it is exercised in these matters in accordance with the freedom of the will.
By it a person can acquire merit; everything you do, whether good or ill, which you had the choice of doing or not doing, is duly imputed to you for merit or censure. And as a person is rightly praised for refraining from doing wrong when he might have done wrong, so also someone who could have done right but did not do so, is not free from censure. But when there is no freedom there is no censure or blame.
Simplicity Let the soul realise that by virtue of her resemblance to God, there is in her very substance a natural simplicity. This simplicity consists in the fact that for the soul it is the same thing to be as to live. But it is not the same thing to live as to live well, or to live happily. For the soul is only like to God, not equal to him. This is a degree of nearness to him, but it is only a degree.
Let us say that only for God is it the same to be as to be happy: and this is the highest and most pure simplicity. But the second is like unto this, namely that being and life should be identical. And this dignity belongs to the soul. And even though the soul belongs to this inferior degree, it can nevertheless ascend to the perfection of living well, or indeed of living in perfect happiness.
Thus the rational soul may ever glory in her resemblance to the Divinity, but still there will also ever remain between them a gulf of disparity. Still that perfection which the soul possesses is great indeed: from it, and from it alone can the ascent to the blessed life be made.
Our Unlikeness to God The fact that Scripture speaks of our unlikeness to God does not mean that Holy Writ maintains the likeness has been destroyed, but that something different has been drawn over it, concealing it. Obviously the soul has not cast off her original form, but has put on a new one foreign to her. The latter has been added, but the former is not lost, and although that which has been superimposed has managed to obscure the natural form, it has not been able to destroy it.
'How is the gold become obscured and the finest colour changed?' cried the Prophet. He laments that the gold has lost its brightness, and that the finest colour has been obscured: but the gold is still gold, and the original base of the colour has not been wiped out. And so the simplicity of the soul remains unimpaired in its essence but it is no longer able to be seen now that it is covered over by the duplicity of man's deceit, simulation and hypocrisy.
Is it possible to find a single son of Adam who can endure to be known for what he really is? Yet, in every soul there remains the natural simplicity of man together with the duplicity that came with original sin.
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