Historical Developments

The doctrine of human creation in the image of God is a central theme of

theological reflection beginning in the patristic period. In patristic theology, the Biblical notion of creation in the image of God was linked with Greek philosophical ideas about the ontological nature of humanity that understood soul or mind and body as separate aspects of being human.17 And, while Greek philosophers “disagreed about the relation of body and soul, they located reason in the soul as the primary difference between humans and animals.”18 As early Christian theologians tried to puzzle out the ways that this underlying Greek ontology could be understood alongside of the Biblical witness that humans are created in the image of God, they took up a Greek dualism of mind or soul and body. They

reasoned that because God does not have a body, whatever likeness exists between humans and the divine cannot be located in the body. Therefore, they turned to concepts of the soul to tease out the meaning of the imago Dei. Following Plato and Aristotle, early Christians identified reason and virtue with the soul. God as “all-wise” and “all-good” was imaged in the rationality and virtue of humans.19

Feminist theologian Michelle Gonzalez summarizes their thinking this way:

For many of the church fathers, the imago Dei was intimately linked to their understanding of the soul and spirituality. The image was most fully realized in the act of contemplation of God. Human beings do not truly realize themselves unless they go beyond their selves and return to the being in whose image we are                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

actions to act responsibly toward other creaturely kinds, in accordance with a religious vocation” (75). For the argument for expanding the imago Dei to include animals, see Ruth Page, “The Human Genome and the Image of God,” in Brave New World: Theology, Ethics and the Human Genome, ed. Celia Deane- Drummond (London: SCM Press, 2003).

17 _{For a helpful review of Greek philosophical categories, see John V. Luce, An Introduction to Greek}

Philosophy (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992). For examinations of how Greek philosophy was taken up by the patristic theologians, see Hubertus R. Drobner, “Christian Philosophy,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). For a good discussion of how Greek philosophy influenced early Christian thought about the imago Dei symbol, see Megan K. DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2015).

18 _{DeFranza, Sex Difference in Christian Theology, 108.}

created. This is the most profound sense of the patristic theology of the imago

Dei. The church fathers contend that the imago Dei is a dimension of the human

soul and mind.20

Thus, because of the influence of Greek philosophy, the church fathers made a distinction between soul or mind and body. They then associated the rational soul more closely with men and the body with women. This meant that in considering the imago Dei in women, they tended to affirm that women are created in the image of God but then had to explain how this happened in spite of women’s bodiliness.21

While many of these early patristic theologians struggled to make sense of the

imago Dei symbol,22 Augustine is a particularly important representative since his theology so strongly influenced the development of theology in Western Christianity. For Augustine, humans image God in our minds, in particular in our rationality; he argues, “the mind is God’s image par excellence in virtue of its capacity for knowing God… The perfection of the divine image in the mind is the divine gift of wisdom, by

20 _{Gonzalez, Created in God’s Image, 27.}

21 _{Gonzalez, Created in God’s Image, 27.}

22 _{See Gonzalez, Created in God’s Image, 28-36, for a survey of how the imago Dei is taken up by patristic}

theologians, particularly Irenaeus of Lyons and Gregory of Nyssa. While this chapter traces the theological lineage of the imago Dei symbol through Augustine and Aquinas, it is important to note that patristic theology was quite diverse in its explorations of this symbol. Ireneaus, for example, understands creation in the image of God in light of the incarnation and sets forth an understanding of image and likeness that is dynamic. “When [the Son of God] was made incarnate and made a human being, he recapitulated in himself the long history of humankind, procuring salvation for us in the compendium, that what we lost in Adam, that is to be according to the image and likeness of God, this we would recover in Jesus Christ” (Ireneaus of Lyons, Against Heresies, trans. Dominic J. Unger (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), III, 18, 1). Because of this connection to the incarnation, Ireneaus connects the image of God with our bodies; drawing on the Greek philosophical category of forms, he argues that “the image of God in the person is in the flesh. This sense of image corresponds to form, and form inheres only in matter… Consequently the image of God in the human being must exist in matter, that is, in our very flesh” (Mary Ann Donovan, “Alive to the Glory of the Lord: A Key Insight in St. Irenaeus,” Theological Studies 49, no. 2 (1988), 294). Gregory of Nyssa, on the other hand, locates the image of God in the soul and suggests that key to being in the image of God is our imitation of God. “The image is not something static that is merely implanted within humanity. Instead, it is something that exists dynamically within us and is intimately tied to our spiritual life” (Gonzalez, Created in God’s Image, 33-34).

which the mind becomes aware of God, and is not only ‘in’ God, but ‘with’ God.”23 Further, for Augustine, we image God most completely in contemplation:

As we said of the nature of the human mind that if as a whole it contemplates the truth, it is in the image of God; and when its functions are divided and something of it is diverted to the handling of temporal things, nevertheless that part which consults the truth is in the image of God, but the other part, which is directed to the handling of inferior things, is not the image of God.24

For Augustine, men and women do not image God in the same way. In this life, only men can fully image God. Because they are embodied as women, women on their own are incapable of reflecting the image of God until they reach the afterlife. Women can only reflect the image of God in this life when they are united with a husband.25

Like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas locates the image of God in the rational mind as the highest power of our soul and he suggests that we most fully image God when we turn our mind towards higher things. His is a threefold understanding of the imaging of God:

First, inasmuch as man possesses a natural aptitude for understanding and loving God; and this aptitude consists in the very nature of the mind, which is common to all men. Secondly, inasmuch as man actually or habitually knows and loves God, though imperfectly; and this image consists in the conformity of grace. Thirdly, inasmuch as man knows God actually and loves Him perfectly; and this image consists in the likeness of glory.26

In other words, it is only when we achieve perfect knowledge and love of God that we can reflect the image of God perfectly. But, for Aquinas, men and women do not reflect                                                                                                                

23 _{Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, trans. John Hammond Taylor, SJ (New York: Paulist Press,}

1982), book 3, ch. 19.

24 _{Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, book 12, ch. 7.}

25 _{Gonzalez, Created in God’s Image, 38-41. See also Kari Elisabeth Borresen, “God’s Image, Man’s}

Image? Patristic Interpretation of Gen. 1,27 and I Cor. 11,7,” in The Image of God: Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition, ed. Kari Elisabeth Borresen (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991), 200. “Human female beings are theomorphic in spite of their bodily sex, whereas men’s spiritual God-likeness, imago Dei, corresponds to their exemplary maleness. Exclusion of femaleness at the divine level remains basic in Augustine’s God-language.”

26 _{Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, question 92, article 4. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.}

the image of God equally: “the image of God, in its principal signification, namely the intellectual nature, is found both in man and woman… But in a secondary sense the image of God is found in man, and not in woman, for man is the beginning and end of woman, just as God is the beginning and end of every creature.”27 So, women have the first level of imaging – being created to know and love God – but they cannot grow in that imaging of God because of their inferior bodies. A weak body represents a weak soul and mind and, ultimately and following Aristotle, Aquinas excludes women from fully imaging God:

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness according to the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect in the active power, or from some material indisposition… On the other hand, as regards universal human nature, woman is not misbegotten, but is included in nature’s intention as directed to the work of generation.28

As Gonzalez reminds us, this statement reflects an un-biblical understanding of creation in the image of God; rather, it reflects Aristotelian biology (an incorrect biology as we now know). This reflects a moment in the history of Christian theology when a non- Christian philosophy rather than the biblical witness is driving theological conclusions.29

Thomas Aquinas’ work grounded the vast majority of theological reflection for the next seven hundred years. In fact, it is not until the twentieth century that Roman Catholic theological anthropology reconsidered, in any sustained way, Aquinas’ understanding of the human person.30 However, with the profusion of theological                                                                                                                

27 _{Aquinas, Summa Theologica, question 93, article 4.}

28 _{Aquinas, Summa Theologica, question 92, article 1.}

29 _{Gonzalez, Created in God’s Image, 45.}

30 _{See Gonzalez, Created in God’s Image, 51-84, for a survey of some of the major thinkers between the}

thirteenth and twentieth centuries. Gonzalez highlights Hildegard of Bingen, Martin Luther, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Karl Rahner, and Hans Urs von Balthasar as the key theologians whose work takes up theological anthropology and the relationship between men and women in the imago Dei. Hildegard of Bingen, in particular, is interesting as woman whose theological reflections were preserved and who points

approaches that take the voices of the marginalized seriously, reflection on theological anthropology expanded greatly. Black theologians, feminist theologians, liberation theologians, and Hispanic theologians, for example, began taking seriously the

experiences of historically marginalized persons and claiming the imago Dei for them. For feminist theologians, this meant taking seriously women’s experiences and finding ways to understand women, not as deficient or partial in their imaging of God, but as fully imaging God in all of their particularity.31