![]() The image of God in man is known through charity which subordinates man’s freedom to the creative will of God (λόγος), which is the reasonable principle whereby man’s life ought to be oriented. Maximus, and thus fallen man has, through turning from the “leadership of reason,” replaced the image of God with that of irrational animals, while the renewed man in Christ is characterized by a γνῶσις attained through the νοῦς. 13:12), when we mingle our god-formed mind and divine reason to what is properly its own and the image returns to the archetype for which it now longs.” However, as Thunberg demonstrates, it is the νοῦς which is most closely related to the image of God for St. Gregory the Theologian, he writes: “’Then we shall know as we are known’ (1 Cor. Maximus, the image of God in man is connected to the mind and reason (λόγος). For others it is found in the lordship of man over creation his spiritual nature his mind (νοῦς) his immortality or his ability to know God and share in His divine life, etc. Gregory Palamas both body and soul make up the image of God in man. Considering the cohesion of the double-nature of man, for St. Īs Vladimir Lossky demonstrates, there is no singular Patristic definition of what precisely in man is defined as the image of God. The Confessor explains that the nature of the body and the nature of the soul form, according to the will of God, the composite nature of man, manifested in one human hypostasis. John of Damascus, and is in harmony with the general Patristic dictum that the creative act of each day was manifested instantaneously. In a series of digressions in his Ambiguum 42, he explains that man is a complete species, with a necessary relation of body and soul which continues even after death (1321D-1324B) that the soul does not preexist the body (1325D-1336B) and that the body does not preexist the soul (1336C-1345C). Maximus, the material creation itself is an intended good creation of God, and the body and soul of man came into existence simultaneously as a cohesive unit. In the Origenist system the material world exists as a result of the fall of pre-existent souls or intellects which grew satiated in their contemplation of God, and thus fell into the created order. Maximus’ cosmology was developed in opposition to the cosmology of the third century theologian Origen, which remained popular in certain monastic circles, especially through the influence of the fourth century monastic and avid student of Origen, Evagrius Ponticus. The Son of God was to be incarnate whether man had sinned or not, precisely to call man, and through his priestly lordship over the cosmos, all of creation into a deific union in the life of the Trinity. Maximus, salvation is much broader than a rescue from sin and death, a Divine undoing of man’s mistake, but points to God’s eternal plan for mankind, regardless of the Fall. As Lars Thunberg states, “His system of theology was in fact a spiritual vision of the cosmos, of human life within that cosmos, and therefore of the economy of salvation, the salvific interplay between the human and the divine. Enabled by the Incarnation of the Divine Logos, the reciprocity of love between God and man is set forth as the path to this union in the spiritual universe of St. Maximus also masterfully harmonized the works of his philosophical and theological predecessors, correcting where need be, into a complex web in which cosmology, anthropology, Christology, soteriology, and eschatology are presented in one harmonious vision in which creation reflects the glory of God, and man is charged with the task of raising all of creation to union with the Godhead. In his two troparia he is hailed as an “enlightener of the universe” and a “herald of the faith.”Īlthough best remembered for his stance against the Monothelite heresy, St. ![]() 580-662) is recognized as a theological and spiritual giant by the Orthodox Church. A common characteristic of all creation is corruption and death, and yet we are told that God is not the author of death (Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-14), and that all of creation awaits its redemption through the revealing of the saints (Romans 8:19-22), when all of heaven and earth will be united to God (Ephesians 1:9-10). ![]() The theology of creation and salvation in Orthodox Christianity upholds the centrality and kingship of mankind while simultaneously embracing a cosmological vision that is largely absent in western Christendom.
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