Tractates on the Books of Holy Scripture (Tractatus Origenis) 1.1–1.6

"And God formed man from the mud of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul." There are many unlearned people, without knowledge of the heavenly writings, who, when they hear that God said, "Let us make man in our image and likeness," think that God must be understood as bodily and built by a joining of limbs. They believe this because the prophets name the Lord's head and hair, and eyes and ears and nostrils and mouth and lips and tongue and feet, as when it is said: "His head and his hair were like white wool, like snow"; and "The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears toward their prayers"; and "The Lord smelled a pleasing odor"; and "The mouth of the Lord has spoken these things"; and "What proceeds from my lips I will not make void"; and "My tongue is a sharp pen"; and "Your sabbaths my soul hates"; and "Turn your face, O Lord, and we shall be saved"; and "The right hand of the Lord has done mighty deeds"; and "Has not my hand made all these things?"; and the stone tablets of the law, written by the finger of God, are handed to Moses; and "Heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet"; and the people is set free by a strong hand and the uplifted arm of the Lord; and "He has measured heaven with his palm and holds the whole earth in his fist." So when they read or hear of these members of a body, they believe, as I have said, that God is as it were bodily and composed of distinct members. Indeed the people of this heresy are called by a Greek word Anthropomorphites, because they assert that God is put together and shaped after the manner of a man. Your charity therefore had to be warned, so that none of you is caught by the subtlety of these words. For they say: "If these members which the divine Scriptures mention in God are not to be believed in this way, then the prophets deceived us, who named the head and hair and eyes and ears and nostrils and mouth and lips and tongue and hands and feet and the other members of the Lord, though they knew that God is incorporeal and in no way needs any of these; and so did Moses himself, who reports in this place that God said, 'Let us make man in our image and in our likeness.'" But what are we to do here, dearest brothers? We are hemmed in on both sides. For if man was not made in the image and likeness of God, as the law and the prophets hand down, then we convict of falsehood both the law and the prophets, who say that God said, "Let us make man in our image and likeness," and "God made man in the image of God." But those who say these things ought to remember that the constitution of man is far different from the nature of God.

But [rather than] discuss now the invisible and indescribable majesty of the divine nature, we must treat the human image and likeness. Deformed by age and by the most fragile lot of nature, with feeble strength and withered freshness, it is often spoiled and harmed; but if it is kept in modesty inviolate and whole, it is made immortal by the kindness of God and the generosity of the resurrection, and it can be re-formed for the better. For it is plain that man, half-mortal, consists when perfect of three things, namely body, soul, and spirit. Let no one be surprised that I said "half-mortal man": for although the flesh dies, his soul and spirit remain immortal, as the apostle too says: "that your spirit, soul and body may be kept whole at the coming of the Lord." But when he asks that the spirit be kept whole, he means not the Spirit that is from God but the man's, because if it is injured by its man, it will not be whole for that man when it has departed from him. For the Spirit is not born with a man, but is given afterwards by God through merit, through the grace of faith, as the Savior says in the Gospel: "The Spirit blows where it wills, and you hear its voice, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes." But the natural man, who has not yet received the Spirit of God, consists, as I said, of two things, namely body and soul. This soul, although it moves and is moved and has a changeable state, as toward good and toward evil, is nevertheless, as I have said, immortal either way, because it lives forever either to God or to punishment: to God, I say, if it remains holy, to punishment if it has sinned. But the body, which is tied together and joined of parts, is easily dissolved, and once weakened it wastes away. There is therefore in us something else that is like wind, airy, simple, breathing and mobile: the mind and the senses, breathing out and in by turns in alternate change; and there is also the solid body, which thrives when tempered by the elements, that is, by hot, cold, and moist. But this body has an earthly thinking, while the soul has a spiritual nature. Since, then, man consists, as I said, of two natures, one of which we have called spiritual and the other earthly, how do you suppose that God, incorporeal, simple, pure Spirit, has the image and likeness of man? Whoever wants to believe in such a way as to understand God as bodily, since there is no one bodily who was not made in the image and likeness of God, will lay it down that God is composed of a higher and a lower nature, because it is plain that man consists of such. But whatever is composite cannot have been everlasting, because composition has a beginning at which it is put together so as to last. God, however, abiding always and in all things, is everywhere the same and nowhere not whole, as it is written: "I fill heaven and earth"; for there is no place where God is absent, nor is any place greater than God. And since he is called Spirit, as it is written, "God," it says, "is Spirit," then he who is Spirit is simple and uniform. Otherwise, if he is built of a diversity of members, he is no longer immeasurable and infinite, because he could be measured and bounded by reckoning up his members. And what of the fact that we read of seven eyes of the Lord? A man has two eyes. Where, then, is this image and likeness of God in man? For he who has two eyes and he who is said to have seven do not share one likeness. Moreover, a man has a body and bones and leaves a footprint on the ground, but God, who is Spirit, "has no bones," it says: the Lord himself testifies in the Gospel that a spirit has no bones, nor does it leave a footprint. Where, then, will the image and likeness of God be, in a man who has bones and flesh?

But since the shortness of the hours does not allow us to gather more examples, the question must now be settled, so that we may prove both that man was truly formed in the image of God according to the Scriptures, and nevertheless that the image of God is far different from man. For God, when he made man in his image, composed him of a twofold nature, namely soul and body. The soul he established by that divine work of his power, incomprehensible to us; the body he formed from the mud of the earth. And because man (homo) is named from the soil (humus), the soul joined to the body took the name of man, so that it too should be called man. Notice, then, what the Scripture declares: "And God said," it says, "'Let us make man in our image and likeness'; and God made man, in the image of God he made him." And afterwards it repeats, saying: "God had not yet rained on the earth, and there was no man to work the earth." Where then is what it had said above, "God made man in the image of God," since afterwards it adds: "And God formed man from the mud of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul"? You see, then, dearest brothers, how it suggests that this nature of the inner and the outer man is coupled by a kind of covenant of in-breathing. Indeed the blessed apostle Paul too, knowing this, asserts that in himself the outer man is at odds with the inner man: "For I delight," he says, "in the law of God according to the inner man." But he had said before: "I see another law in my members fighting against me and leading me captive": that is, the inner man is forced against his will by the outer man to do what he does not want. Hence the same apostle says: "We have this treasure in earthen vessels." He calls this body an earthen vessel because he knows that man was formed from the soil; he speaks of a treasure because Christ dwells in it, since the same apostle says that Christ dwells in the inner man. Recall too the Gospel, and there you will find that, through the parting of body and soul, the rich man is tormented in the flame and poor Lazarus is refreshed in Abraham's bosom, and that the rich man asks father Abraham to send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool his tongue, because he was tormented in the flame. Whence, I ask, did a dead man buried in the earth have a mouth and tongue, to beg in the underworld for the refreshment of dew from the finger of a happier soul? This, then, is the inner man, whom the apostle asserts to have been created according to God. You see, then, that one man is the one made from the mud of the earth, another the one created according to God, so that in every service of the inner man, according to the image of the creator, we may be perfect in goodness, love, and holiness. Indeed the same apostle says again: "And though our outer man is being corrupted, the inner is being renewed." See: you have the inner man created according to God; you have the outer man formed from the mud of the earth. See: you have the inner man in whom Christ dwells; you have the outer man who is corrupted and dissolved. See: you have the inner man delighting in the law of God; you have the outer man who desires the works of the flesh. See: you have the inner man, refreshed with Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, and the rich man who was tormented in the flame ...; you have the one who, dead and buried, is sunk in the earth. For the one who dies and is dissolved in the earth is not the same as the one who is refreshed in Abraham's bosom. That one lives and speaks, and feels and suffers torments or refreshment; this one lies dead and motionless, indeed rotting.

You see, then, that one man is he who desires the works of the spirit, another he who craves the things of the flesh; one who lives forever, another who dies. That one is invisible, who was made in the image of God, whom the apostle says was created according to God; this one is visible, who was formed from the mud of the earth. That one moves; this one does not move and cannot have motion of itself. That one is immortal, this one mortal. That one is rational, incorporeal, subtle, eternal. And so the image of God is in all these things, in invisibility, in immortality, in rationality, in motion, in which the human soul is formed, since the everlasting motion of the soul imitates the nature of God, having nothing bodily in itself, nothing heavy, nothing perishable. It was for this inner man, then, that God said, "Let us make man in our image and likeness," because the inner man is invisible and immortal. And this is the image of God in him. And because image is one thing and likeness another, the account must also be divided accordingly: since we have now shown the man who was made in the image of God, let us now discuss the likeness. For we have said that the image is in the person, but the likeness in deeds, as the apostle says: "Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ." And elsewhere, in the voice of God: "Be holy, as I also am." You see, then, that likeness is reckoned in holiness and goodness. Indeed, when God had said, "Let us make man in our image and likeness," afterwards, repeating it, he says: "And God made man in the image of God." He did not say "in the likeness." For the image he had made in the natural Adam, from the invisibility and immortality of the soul. But the likeness he reserved in Christ, so that through him the one who had been made in the image of God might be re-formed again to the likeness in him. For so the apostle says: "The first Adam into a living soul, the second Adam into a life-giving spirit." So the one who had been made into a living soul had not yet received the likeness; but in him who was made into a life-giving spirit the likeness of God has been re-formed. For the image is the countenance, as we said above; but the likeness refers to deeds. In this likeness, which is better and nearest to God, what is like in it readily appears: what is divine, beautiful, pure, not shifting, not weak, not changeable. For it is the splendor of the inner light of Christ, whom the apostle says dwells within, a mirror of truth. But what is this likeness he names, if not the heavenly, spiritual life, which is corrupted by no foul lust, no vice, no luxury, no dark artifices of paint, no avarice, which is never satisfied but hungers more when it is thought to be filled?

This likeness, then, is not puffed up with desire for the world, does not burn with the vice of the flesh, does not gnash with monstrous cruelty, which is itself tortured before it tortures. But this likeness has a devout face, merciful eyes, a tongue that defends, a kindly will. This, then, is the likeness we should long for, which has such happiness and grace that, what is almost incredible, it is no longer called man but, its law and condition changed, an immortal god. It is, as I said, a god not born but made, that is, by favor, not by nature. Such a one, joined to heaven and the stars, will possess the eternity of the heavenly life. But do not doubt what I said, that man is a god. For the God of gods himself permits this, has granted this. Strive to conquer, that you may deserve to be called a god, because "I said," he says, "you are gods, and all sons of the Most High." What is like, then, is such as the whole is. Yet the like cannot be recognized unless it has its marks expressed through the personal image. As for the saying, "Let us make man in our image and likeness": the image of the made and of the maker is this, in the inner man: invisibility, immortality, motion. What belongs to the likeness is that we should live according to the goodness of God in all holiness, righteousness, faith, and piety. But the one who consists of mud, earthly, corruptible, heavy, perishable, will return again to the earth from which he was taken, according to the Lord's sentence: "You are earth, and to earth you shall go," although resurrection has been promised to him too. Hence you must observe that one man is he who is from the earth and turns back into earth, another he who lives forever either to God or to punishment. As for the members that are ascribed to God as though human, it is not the properties of members but the workings of divine acts that are indicated, so that people who could not see and understand the true and living God spiritually might at least perceive something of the living God according to their own nature. For the law and the prophets did not speak of God as God was, but as man could grasp, so that each might be able to know the living God according to his own understanding: that he had eyes with which to see, and a mouth with which to speak, and a soul with which to hate the new moons and sabbaths of the Jews, and hands with which to work. But since you are still waiting for the spiritual sense: when the head of God is spoken of, it indicates that he is the beginning of all things. When his hair is called like white wool, like snow, it says that he is always the Ancient. When eyes are spoken of, that he sees all things. When nostrils, it indicates that he will receive the prayers of the saints as a sweet odor, since in the Apocalypse the prayers of the saints are compared to incense, which are offered to the Lord by the hand of an angel as a fragrance of sweet scent, as it is written. When the mouth of the Lord is spoken of, it explains that he is wholly word. When his tongue is described as a sharp pen, it indicates that the twofold precepts of the old law and of the Gospels were prescribed through the Spirit, whom he called a pen. When

the hands are named, that he has made all things; the arm, that he holds all things together; the fingers of God, because through him every expression of the divine will is disclosed. For he is wholly eye, because he wholly sees; wholly ear, because he wholly hears; wholly mouth, because he is wholly word; wholly tongue, because he wholly speaks; wholly foot, because he is wholly everywhere; wholly hand, because he wholly works everywhere; wholly arm, because he wholly holds all things and governs the universe. And whatever you say of him, you will be naming the efficacy of his works and the dispensations of his mysteries; yet you will not be able to explain what and how great he himself is. For God is rightly reckoned when he is called beyond reckoning. For the Spirit, beyond reckoning, incomprehensible and indescribable, is everywhere whole and one, beyond what the human mind is able to reckon, comprehend, and define. And therefore he is to be feared, heeded, and adored, because God willed rather to be believed than to be judged.