Chapter V: Whether the Image of God Should be Sought Also in the Human Body, § 104
CHAPTER V: WHETHER THE IMAGE OF GOD SHOULD BE SOUGHT ALSO IN THE HUMAN BODY
§ 104. From this source one can know [the answer to]: Should one seek or think of the image of God as being in the human body? We respond. Augustine writes (De Gen. ad lit., bk. 6, ch. 12): “It says that man was made after the image of God. This must be understood not according to the body but according to the understanding of the mind, though even in the body there may be a property which would indicate this, namely, that he was made to stand upright to warn him not to pursue earthly things as beasts do, whose every pleasure is of the earth, which is why all beasts are bent over and hunched around their stomachs.” Bernard (on Song of Songs, sermon 24, col. 464):
God created man upright according to his mind and not according to foul earthly matter, for He created him after His own image and likeness, etc. Therefore you should have known that the likeness of God would be preserved, or restored, in the spiritual portion of yourself and not in a crude and muddy substance. You see, God is spirit, and those who wish to become like Him and stay like Him must enter the heart and occupy themselves with this activity in the Spirit. However, God did give man an erect stature of body, perhaps so that the physical uprightness of his outer, baser image might warn his inner man, made after the image of God, to preserve his spiritual uprightness, and so that the elegance of the mud might censure the deformity of his mind. After all, what would be more disgraceful than to have a bent mind in an erect body? It is a perverse and nasty thing for the vessel of mud, which is the body made of earth, to have eyes which look upward, freely gazing upon the heavens and delighting at the sight of the heavenly lights, but meanwhile the spiritual and heavenly creature drags his eyes, that is, his internal senses and affections, down onto the ground.
So much wrote Bernard. From this the Scholastics conclude that the image of God is not properly in the body of man, since God is noncorporeal, but that it is in it as in a sign, or demonstratively and significatively. But because immortality is part of the divine image, it is correct to add that not only a sign of the divine image is in man’s body, namely, upright stature, but also a part of it: immortality. Bucanus (Inst. theol., bk. 9, p. 86) claimed that the image of God shines in the human body in three ways:
(1) According as the body, joined to the rational soul, bears part of the image of God and to some extent contains within itself the entire world, whence man is called a “microcosm,” in which the Creator and Archetype of the world shines forth. (2) Because the many members of the body—the eyes, ears, mouth, tongue—repeat the spiritual members of God, that is, His spiritual perfections, wisdom, power, and the other attributes of God, just as the tabernacle, the ark of the covenant, the table, the vessels, and the sacrifices were images of heavenly and spiritual realities (Hebrews 8–10). (3) Because the properties of the soul illumined the body as the light of a candle illumines the covering of a lantern; also, righteousness itself and holiness abounded to the body and to its members. So also did man exercise his dignity and eminence over against all inferior things through his body and bore on his face an imperial majesty whereby the beasts acknowledged him as their lord.