Genesis 1:26

If, therefore, Scripture tells us that man was made last, after every animate thing, the lawgiver is doing nothing else than declaring to us the doctrine of the soul, considering that what is perfect comes last, according to a certain necessary sequence in the order of things: for in the rational are included the others also, while in the sensitive there also surely exists the vegetative form, and that again is conceived only in connection with what is material: thus we may suppose that nature makes an ascent as it were by steps-I mean the various properties of life-from the lower to the perfect form.

"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." We possess the one by creation; we acquire the other by free will. In the first structure it is given us to be born in the image of God; by free will there is formed in us the being in the likeness of God.… "Let us make man in our image": Let him possess by creation what is in the image, but let him also become according to the likeness. God has given the power for this. If he had created you also in the likeness, where would your privilege be? Why have you been crowned? And if the Creator had given you everything, how would the kingdom of heaven have opened for you? But it is proper that one part is given you, while the other has been left incomplete: this is so that you might complete it yourself and might be worthy of the reward which comes from God.

God is in His own nature all that which our mind can conceive of good;-rather, transcending all good that we can conceive or comprehend. He creates man for no other reason than that He is good; and being such, and having this as His reason for entering upon the creation of our nature, He would not exhibit the power of His goodness in an imperfect form, giving our nature some one of the things at His disposal, and grudging it a share in another: but the perfect form of goodness is here to be seen by His both bringing man into being from nothing, and fully supplying him with all good gifts: but since the list of individual good gifts is a long one, it is out of the question to apprehend it numerically. The language of Scripture therefore expresses it concisely by a comprehensive phrase, in saying that man was made "in the image of God": for this is the same as to say that He made human nature participant in all good; for if the Deity is the fulness of good, and this is His image, then the image finds its resemblance to the Archetype in being filled with all good.

For the soul immediately shows its royal and exalted character, far removed as it is from the lowliness of private station, in that it owns no lord, and is self-governed, swayed autocratically by its own will; for to whom else does this belong than to a king? And further, besides these facts, the fact that it is the image of that Nature which rules over all means nothing else than this, that our nature was created to be royal from the first. For as, in men's ordinary use, those who make images of princes both mould the figure of their form, and represent along with this the royal rank by the vesture of purple, and even the likeness is commonly spoken of as "a king," so the human nature also, as it was made to rule the rest, was, by its likeness to the King of all, made as it were a living image, partaking with the archetype both in rank and in name, not vested in purple, nor giving indication of its rank by sceptre and diadem (for the archetype itself is not arrayed with these), but instead of the purple robe, clothed in virtue, which is in truth the most royal of all raiment, and in place of the sceptre, leaning on the bliss of immortality, and instead of the royal diadem, decked with the crown of righteousness; so that it is shown to be perfectly like to the beauty of its archetype in all that belongs to the dignity of royalty.

After Moses spoke about the reptiles, the cattle and the beasts that were created on the sixth day, he turned to write about the creation of that man who was fashioned on the sixth day, saying, "And God said [Let us create man. . .]"

the Old Testament says: Let us make man in our image and after our likeness. Here in both the words it expresses plurality, but the phrases in our image and after our likeness do not mean the same thing, but the former of them means …

Placing him in the midst of all the brothers, he inquired as to how the Catholic churches throughout the East interpreted what is said in Genesis: "Let us make man according to our image and likeness." Then he explained that the image and likeness of God was treated by all the heads of the churches not according to the lowly sound of the letter but in a spiritual way, and he proved this with a long discourse and many examples from Scripture, showing that nothing of this sort could be the case with that immeasurable and incomprehensible and invisible majesty—that it could be circumscribed in a human form and likeness, that indeed a nature that was incorporeal and uncomposed and simple could be apprehended by the eye or seized by the mind.

Therefore let us hold that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are by nature one God; neither is the Father the one who is the Son, nor the Son the one who is the Father, nor the Holy Spirit the one who …

All men are made in God's image; but to be in his likeness is granted only to those who through great love have brought their own freedom into subjection to God.

To begin, it is worthwhile to ask why God did not say, when the heavens were created, "Let us make the heavens" but instead, "Let there be a heaven.… Let there be light," and similarly for each other aspect of creation. "Let us make" suggests deliberation, collaboration and conference with another person. So what is it whose pending creation is granted so great an honor? It is humanity, the greatest and most marvelous of living beings, and the creation most worthy of honor before God.… There is here this deliberation, collaboration and communion not because God needs advice—God forbid saying such a thing!—but so that the very impact of the language of our creation would show us honor.

Some others base themselves on our arguments by asserting that God possesses an image in common with us, but they do not understand correctly what has been said. We did not speak about an image of being but about an image of command, as we will explain below. In fact, as a proof that divinity has no human form, listen to Paul's words: "But for a man it is not right to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man." This is why—he says—"she must wear a veil on her head." And in truth, in this passage he has called "image" this absence of difference of form with regard to God, and man is called image of God because God also possesses this figure: in their opinion, therefore, it should not be said that man only is the image of God but the woman as well. For man and woman have in common a single figure, character and resemblance. Why then is man called image of God, while the woman is not? Because Paul does not mean the image appearing in the form but the image concerning the command, which was given to man, not woman. Man in fact is subject to no creature, while woman is subject to man, according to God's words: "Your movement will be toward your husband, and he will rule you." This is why man is the image of God. He has no creature over him, and there is nobody over God: he rules on everything. Woman, on the other hand, is the glory of man, because she is subject to man.

But let us define more accurately the meaning of the phrase "to the image of God." Is it true that the flesh is made "to the image of God"? In that case, is there earth in God, since flesh is of earth? Is God corporeal, that is to say, weak and subject like the flesh to the passions? Perhaps the head may seem to you to be made in the likeness of God because it stands aloft, or the eyes because they observe or the ears because they hear? As to the question of height, are we to consider ourselves to be tall just because we tower a little over the earth? Are we not ashamed to be thought of as like to God merely because we are taller than serpents or other creeping creatures or even than deer, sheep or wolves? In that respect, how much taller are elephants and camels in comparison with us! Sight is important to us in order to enable us to behold the things of the world and to have knowledge of what is not reported by any person but is grasped by our sense of sight. How significant, in fact, is this power of sight! Because of it we may be said to have the likeness of God, who sees all, observes all, comprehends our hidden emotions and searches into the secrets of our hearts! Am I not ashamed to admit that it is not in my power to see parts of my body? What is in front of me I can see, but I am unable to see what is behind me. I have no view of my neck or of the back of my head, and I cannot see my loins. In like manner, what avail is our sense of hearing if we cannot either see or hear what is only a short distance away? If walls should intervene, both sight and hearing are impeded. Furthermore, our bodies are fixed and enclosed in a narrow space, whereas all wild animals have a wider range and are also swifter than men. The flesh, therefore, cannot be made to the image of God.

Scripture informs us that the Deity proceeded by a sort of graduated and ordered advance to the creation of man. After the foundations of the universe were laid, as the history records, man did not appear on the earth at once; but the creation of the brutes preceded his, and the plants preceded them. Thereby Scripture shows that the vital forces blended with the world of matter according to a gradation; first, it infused itself into insensate nature; and in continuation of this advanced into the sentient world; and then ascended to intelligent and rational beings. Accordingly, while all existing things must be either corporeal or spiritual, the former are divided into the animate and inanimate. By animate, I mean possessed of life: and of the things possessed of life, some have it with sensation, the rest have no sensation. Again, of these sentient things, some have reason, the rest have not. Seeing, then, that this life of sensation could not possibly exist apart from the matter which is the subject of it, and the intellectual life could not be embodied, either, without growing in the sentient, on this account the creation of man is related as coming last, as of one who took up into himself every single form of life, both that of plants and that which is seen in brutes. His nourishment and growth he derives from vegetable life; for even in vegetables such processes are to be seen when aliment is being drawn in by their roots and given off in fruit and leaves. His sentient organization he derives from the brute creation.

The inspired historian makes it very clear That at earth's dawn the Father not alone Nor without Christ his new creation formed. "God fashioned man," he says, "and gave to him The face of God."

If the number of the Trinity also offends you, as if it were not connected in the simple Unity, I ask you how it is possible for a Being who is merely and absolutely One and Singular, to speak in plural phrase, saying, "Let us make man in our own image, and after our own likeness;" Genesis 1:26 whereas He ought to have said, "Let me make man in my own image, and after my own likeness," as being a unique and singular Being? In the following passage, however, "Behold the man is become as one of us," Genesis 3:22 He is either deceiving or amusing us in speaking plurally, if He is One only and singular. Or was it to the angels that He spoke, as the Jews interpret the passage, because these also acknowledge not the Son? Or was it because He was at once the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, that He spoke to Himself in plural terms, making Himself plural on that very account? Nay, it was because He had already His Son close at His side, as a second Person, His own Word, and a third Person also, the Spirit in the Word, that He purposely adopted the plural phrase, "Let us make;" and, "in our image;" and, "become as one of us." For with whom did He make man? and to whom did He make him like? (The answer must be), the Son on the one hand, who was one day to put on human nature; and the Spirit on the other, who was to sanctify man. With these did He then speak, in the Unity of the Trinity, as with His ministers and witnesses. [Against Praxeas 12] Since then he is the image of the Creator (for He, when looking on Christ His Word, who was to become man, said, "Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness" Genesis 1:26 ), how can I possibly have another head but Him whose image I am? For if I am the image of the Creator there is no room in me for another head.

Moses says what was said by God: "Let us make man according to our image and likeness." God says that. He says "let us make" to a co-operator, necessarily to Christ. And he says "according to the image."

In order that the unity itself of the threefold majesty and imprint should encounter our understanding, the invisible majesty itself states so: "Let us make man in our image and according to our likeness." Look! He has demonstrated what we believe.

Does not the light of theology shine, in these words, as through windows; and does not the second Person show Himself in a mystical way, without yet manifesting Himself until the great day? Where is the Jew who resisted the truth and pretended that God was speaking to Himself? It is He who spoke, it is said, and it is He who made. Let there be light and there was light. But then their words contain a manifest absurdity. Where is the smith, the carpenter, the shoemaker, who, without help and alone before the instruments of his trade, would say to himself; let us make the sword, let us put together the plough, let us make the boot? Does he not perform the work of his craft in silence? Strange folly, to say that any one has seated himself to command himself, to watch over himself, to constrain himself, to hurry himself, with the tones of a master! But the unhappy creatures are not afraid to calumniate the Lord Himself. What will they not say with a tongue so well practised in lying? Here, however, words stop their mouth; And God said let us make man. Tell me; is there then only one Person? It is not written Let man be made, but, Let us make man. The preaching of theology remains enveloped in shadow before the appearance of him who was to be instructed, but, now, the creation of man is expected, that faith unveils herself and the dogma of truth appears in all its light. Let us make man. O enemy of Christ, hear God speaking to His Co-operator, to Him by Whom also He made the worlds, Who upholds all things by the word of His power. But He does not leave the voice of true religion without answer. Thus the Jews, race hostile to truth, when they find themselves pressed, act like beasts enraged against man, who roar at the bars of their cage and show the cruelty and the ferocity of their nature, without being able to assuage their fury.

This was to show that he could call into being not only a nature akin to himself but also one altogether alien to him. For akin to Deity are those natures which are intellectual and only to be comprehended by mind; but all of which sense can take cognizance are utterly alien to it, and of these the furthest removed from it are all those which are entirely destitute of soul and power of motion.Mind, then, and sense—thus distinguished from each other—had remained within their own boundaries and bore in themselves the magnificence of the Creator-Word, silent praisers and thrilling heralds of his mighty work. Not yet was there any mingling of both, nor any mixture of these opposites, tokens of a greater wisdom and generosity in the creation of natures; nor as yet were the whole riches of goodness made known. Now the Creator-Word, determining to exhibit this and to produce a single living being out of both (the invisible and the visible creation, I mean) fashions man; and taking a body from already existing matter, and placing in it a breath taken from himself (which the Word knew to be an intelligent soul and the image of God), as a sort of second world great in littleness, he placed him on the earth—a new angel, a mingled worshiper initiated fully into the visible creation but only partially into the intellectual; king of all on earth but subject to the King above; earthly and heavenly; temporal and yet immortal; visible and yet intellectual; halfway between greatness and lowliness; in one person combining spirit and flesh.

For the image of God is His Word, the genuine Son of Mind, the Divine Word, the archetypal light of light; and the image of the Word is the true man, the mind which is in man, who is therefore said to have been made "in the image and likeness of God," assimilated to the Divine Word in the affections of the soul, and therefore rational.

Sometimes the meaning is altogether latent, as in Genesis: "Let us make man after our image and likeness." Both let us make and our is said in the plural, and ought not to be received except as of relatives. For it was not that gods might make, or make after the image and likeness of gods; but that the Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit might make after the image of the Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, that man might subsist as the image of God. And God is the Trinity. But because that image of God was not made altogether equal to Him, as being not born of Him, but created by Him; in order to signify this, he is in such way the image as that he is "after the image," that is, he is not made equal by parity, but approaches to Him by a sort of likeness. For approach to God is not by intervals of place, but by likeness, and withdrawal from Him is by unlikeness. ... For how our, when the Son is the image of the Father alone? But man is said to be "after the image," on account, as we have said, of the inequality of the likeness; and therefore after our image, that man might be the image of the Trinity; not equal to the Trinity as the Son is equal to the Father, but approaching to it, as has been said, by a certain likeness; just as nearness may in a sense be signified in things distant from each other, not in respect of place, but of a sort of imitation.

No doubt every thing in the creatures which is in any way like God, is not also to be called His image; but that alone than which He Himself alone is higher. For that only is in all points copied from Him, between which and Himself no nature is interposed.

For God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness;" and a little after it is said, "So God created man in the image of God." Certainly, in that it is of the plural number, the word "our" would not be rightly used if man were made in the image of one person, whether of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit; but because he was made in the image of the Trinity, on that account it is said, "After our image." But again, lest we should think that three Gods were to be believed in the Trinity, whereas the same Trinity is one God, it is said, "So God created man in the image of God," instead of saying, "In His own image."

These are the virtues that man acquires by considering and controlling his own senses. He "takes off the old man, who was corrupted in the convolutions of his error," "and wears the new one, who is renewed in knowing the image of his Creator," and …

It is therefore fitting that his body matches his rational soul, not according to the outlines and shapes of the limbs, but rather according to that which is raised up to heaven to observe the things in the upper parts of the world, just as …

And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the beasts, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; because doubtless in this primarily man was made …

Since this is so, God created man out of visible and invisible nature with his own hands according to the image and likeness, forming the body from the earth and through his own breathing upon it giving it a rational and intellectual soul, which we call the divine image. That which is "according to the image" is manifest in the intellect and free will. That which is "according to the likeness" is manifest in such likeness in virtue as is possible.

And He said: Let us make man in our image and likeness. Now it appears more clearly why it is said of the created herbs and trees, fishes and birds, also terrestrial animals, that each was made according to its kind and species.

In the New Testament, after the universal scripture and the course of time, Christ was formed, as was man on the sixth day, that He may "have dominion over the fish of the sea," and "the birds of the air."

Let us make man to our image and likeness: Man is said to be after the image of God, not as regards his body, but as regards that whereby he excels other animals.

To this vision of rapture corresponds the work of the sixth day: "God said, 'Let us make mankind in Our image and likeness,'" for it is of such great worth that it must "have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the …

Genesis 1: Let us make man in our image and likeness, and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, etc.; on which words Augustine says in the nineteenth book of the City of God: "God did not will that rational man, made …

And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness,....

And God said, Let us make man - It is evident that God intends to impress the mind of man with a sense of something extraordinary in the formation of his body and soul, when he introduces the account of his creation thus; Let Us make man. The word אדם Adam, which we translate man, is intended to designate the species of animal, as חיתו chaitho, marks the wild beasts that live in general a solitary life; בהמה behemah, domestic or gregarious animals; and רמש remes, all kinds of reptiles, from the largest snake to the microscopic eel.

The last stage in the progress of creation being now reached--God said, Let us make man--words which show the peculiar importance of the work to be done, the formation of a creature, who was to be God's representative, clothed with authority and rule as visible head and monarch of the world.

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In our image, after our likeness--This was a peculiar distinction, the value attached to which appears in the words being twice mentioned. And in what did this image of God consist?

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In "academese" the wording of Genesis 1:26 is called the "plural of exhortation"-a fancy way of saying one person is announcing something to a group.

Adam and Eve were commissioned to govern or manage Earth, their home, for themselves and Creator God.

For wheels are the mark of a man quite as much as wings are the mark of an angel. Wheels are the things that are as old as mankind and yet are strictly peculiar to man, that are prehistoric but not pre-human.

But when the background of man's life is a grey background, then, in the name of man's sacred supremacy, I desire to paint on it in fire and gore.

Civilisation in the best sense merely means the full authority of the human spirit over all externals. Barbarism means the worship of those externals in their crude and unconquered state.

Generally, the moral substance of liberty is this: that man is not meant merely to receive good laws, good food or good conditions, like a tree in a garden, but is meant to take a certain princely pleasure in selecting and shaping like the gardener.