The image of God in the early church

What it means that humankind was made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26–27). Part of Humanity.

1 Clement 33.4Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · God formed humanity in his image.
1 Clement 33.5Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · God made man male and female in his image.
On the Resurrection 7Justin Martyr · 2nd century (disputed) · Against those who despise the flesh: man formed in God's image was fleshly, so the flesh is precious to God; it does not sin alone, and Christ came to call sinners.
Sentence 190 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Revere a wise man as a living image of God.
Oration to the Greeks 15Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The image of God in humans is the indwelling divine Spirit, making the person God's temple; the demons cannot repent, but humans can conquer death through faith and repentance.
To Autolycus 2.11Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The whole account of the six days of creation (Gen 1:3–2:3) is quoted from the Septuagint.
To Autolycus 2.18Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Humanity alone was made by God's own hands, in his image; God's “Let us make” was spoken to his Word and his Wisdom; the first humans and animals ate only plants.
Fragment 38 (On Providence; Maximus Confessor (the four kinds of substance))Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century · Four grades of being are distinguished, ending with the human being, whose mind is God's image.
The Instructor 1.3.9Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · We must love the Word in return and imitate him, the sighted guide in our darkness, so that God's image and likeness may be fulfilled in us.
The Instructor 1.12.98Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Jesus, who formed, regenerated, and instructs the human being, shows us the true life; imitating him, we are transformed toward God's image and likeness and learn a simple, self-sufficient life.
The Instructor 3.3.20Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Every hair is numbered by God and Christ dwells in us; public depilation is indecent and unnatural; those predestined to be conformed to Christ's image should not disfigure the body.
Exhortation to the Greeks 10.98Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · No sculptor can make a living being; God alone formed the human being as his living image, since the Word is God's image and the human mind the image of the Word.
Against Heresies 5.16.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The incarnate Word showed the true image of God and restored the lost likeness by making man like the invisible Father.
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 11Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 22Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Excerpts from Theodotus 54.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Seth; the three correspond to image, likeness, and spirit, and “the book of the generation of men” refers to them.
Miscellanies 2.19.97Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows is the true image and likeness of God, imitating him in self-control, justice, and generosity; he who does and teaches is greatest; pride provokes God, and repentance must reach mouth, heart, and hands.
Miscellanies 2.19.102Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Friendship is of gods, men, or animals; the one who does good is God's image and receives good in giving; we should help friends and enemies alike; the image of God lies in mind and reason, not the body.
Miscellanies 2.22.131Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato makes the goal twofold, the Good itself and likeness to it in virtuous men; happiness is likeness to God, being just and holy with prudence; so some Christians say the image is given at creation and the likeness at perfection.
Miscellanies 5.14.94Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Scripture's account of an invisible and a visible creation is the source of Plato's intelligible and sensible worlds; man's body is from the earth and his soul from God's breath, and the image of God is the Word, of whom the human mind is an image.
Miscellanies 6.16.136Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The bodily spirit is the seat of perception and desire; “You shall not covet” means ruling that spirit, and man is God's image not in bodily shape but because, as God creates by the Word, the knower acts well by reason.
Miscellanies 7.3.16Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows cares for himself and then for others, rules for their good like Moses, and becomes a living image of God, stamped by the Son, who is the image of the Father.
On Baptism 5Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Pagan washings and demonic haunting of waters are imitations of God's work; the angel stirring the pool of Bethesda foreshadowed the angel of baptism, which restores man to God's likeness and Spirit.
Against Marcion 2.5Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · To the Marcionite charge that a good, all-knowing, all-powerful God would have prevented the fall, Tertullian answers that God's works prove all three attributes, and that the fall came from the free will God gave man as the very mark of his image.
Against Marcion 2.6Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God rightly made man free: only a free being could truly be God's image, possess goodness as its own, resist evil, and deserve reward or punishment; so the fall is man's fault, not God's.
Against Marcion 4.38Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's questions about John's baptism, his answer about Caesar's coin, his reply to the Sadducees on marriage and the resurrection, and his words on David's son and Lord all belong to the Creator's Christ.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 6Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The flesh is honoured by the hands of God who shaped it with Christ, the Word to become flesh, in view; its lowly origin in clay no more disgraces it than earth disgraces gold.
On First Principles 3.6.1Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The end of all things is likeness to God: the image given at creation is to be completed as likeness through our own efforts, and Christ prays that the saints may be one with the Father and the Son.
On First Principles 4.4.10Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · To deny the immortality of what is made in God's image insults Christ, the Image; the image lies in the virtues, acquired by imitating God, and the mind advances by a 'divine sense' from visible to intellectual things.
Fragments on Genesis, column 93Origen · ca. 220-254 · Against those, including Melito, who place the image of God in the body, Origen shows that a literal reading of God's members contradicts itself.
Fragments on Genesis, column 95Origen · ca. 220-254 · The image of God lies in the rational soul and is shown in actions; man was given rule over some animals, but not over sea monsters and wild beasts.
Fragments on Genesis, column 103Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Gen 5–6: Adam's form and image; Enoch's repentance; man made in God's image is not wiped out altogether; years before pleasing God are not counted.
Fragments on Genesis, column 107Origen · ca. 220-254 · The wild beasts that fear the righteous are evil powers; the image of God is the Saviour, who is therefore God; a Hebrew tradition that Canaan first saw Noah's nakedness.
Fragments on Luke, column 369Origen · ca. 220-254 · The coin bearing Caesar's image is the earthy image taken on through sin, which we must give back so as to bear again the image of God.
PG 12:1139 (Ps 4 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · “Son of man” in the prophets is a title of honor (Daniel, Ezekiel) recalling the image of God, but “man” can also be blame; the “heavy-hearted” sons of men are those who bear the man of dust and carry lawlessness like lead.
PG 12:1185 (Ps 8–9 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · On Ps 8:4–8: God visits man to do him good; man, made in God’s image, is a little lower than the angels and rules the creatures; Hebrews applies the psalm to Christ, and through the incarnation man is crowned with glory; Psalm 9 begins with its title, “for the hidden things.”
PG 12:1385 (Ps 38 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Ps 38 LXX (39):5–14: the knowledge of the Trinity as the end of rational nature, walking in God’s image or a beast’s, and life on earth as sojourning.
PG 12:1673 (Ps 148–149 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 148:4–14 and Psalm 149:1–5: the waters above the heavens as rational natures, the new song of the new man, "made" according to the image and "formed" from dust, and the meek exalted to the land of the Jerusalem above.
Fragment 4 on John 1:6Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 1:6: John is called ‘a man’ as one made in God's image; ‘came to be’ need not mean coming into existence.
Commentary on John 1.104Origen · ca. 230–248 · As the pattern, the Father is the beginning of Christ, and Christ of those made in God's image.
Commentary on John 1.105Origen · ca. 230–248 · Human beings are made after the image, Christ, who is the image of the Father.
Commentary on John 20.182Origen · ca. 230–248 · The devil was the first “earthy” one; our primary being is in God's image, our secondary in the body formed from dust.
Commentary on John 20.183Origen · ca. 230–248 · If we serve the dust we take the earthy image; if we turn to the Creator we become like God.
Commentary on John 20.229Origen · ca. 230–248 · The living bear God's image; those slain by the devil bear the image of the earthy and dead.
On Prayer 22.4Origen · ca. 233–234 · The saints are an image of Christ, who is the image of God, and so bear the likeness of sonship; the Son came to destroy the devil's seed in sinners so they may become God's children.
Homily on Luke 8Origen · ca. 233–250 · Mary magnifies the Lord by making her soul, the image of Christ who is God’s image, great; the “lowliness” God regarded is the virtue of humility.
Homily on Luke 39Origen · ca. 233–250 · Against the Sadducees, the risen do not marry but are like the angels, and the blessings of children promised in Scripture are spiritual; “render to Caesar” means casting off the earthly image and restoring God’s image, which God asks of us in order to give back more.
Homilies on Ezekiel 13.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · God laments even the fallen prince of Tyre; believers are called to rise to the place from which such powers fell, receiving Christ’s seal and the soul’s true beauty, and must beware of falling through pride.
Homilies on Leviticus 4.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The deposit entrusted to each believer is soul and body, above all God's image and likeness, and also Christ, the Holy Spirit, and our rational powers, all to be returned whole.
Homilies on Leviticus 12.7Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The harlot soul is one that receives the devil and his spirits; teachers must sow the word of God only in pure souls, in whom Christ is then formed.
Homilies on Numbers 24.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The doubled “a man, a man” in the law of vows signifies the renewed inner man together with the outer; God first asks of us our fear, love, righteousness, and chastity, and the highest vow, the Nazirite’s, is to offer oneself to God in imitation of Christ, who gave himself.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 9.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Since Scripture does not say whose image man walks in, each must examine whether he bears the image of the heavenly, by mercy and perfection like the Father’s, or the image of the earthly, which God will bring to nothing in his city.
Homilies on Jeremiah 1.10Origen · ca. 240 · Scripture distinguishes “making” (the soul after God's image) from “forming” (the body from dust); God “knows” only those worthy of his knowledge, and knew Jeremiah even before he was formed.
Homilies on Jeremiah 2.1Origen · ca. 240 · God did not make death or evil; he planted every soul as a good vine in his image, and it is our own sin that turned it bitter and foreign.
On the Trinity 17Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Moses agrees with John: the Word through whom God created all things, and who made man in God's image and came down at Babel, is the Son, Christ, who is therefore God.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 0.63Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Greek writers on love were misused by carnal readers; Origen prays for a chaste understanding and turns to Genesis, which speaks of two men created.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 2.141Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The 'veiled' are the philosophical schools whose truth is covered; verse 8 is Solomon's earlier and better form of the maxim 'Know yourself': the soul must recognize its beauty as God's image or be sent to pasture kids.
Against Celsus 4.30Origen · ca. 248 · Humanity was made in God's image but not yet in his likeness, so Christians do not claim to be wholly like God; and Origen refuses to mock the philosophers as Celsus mocks Christians, while noting that they knew God yet fell into idolatry.
Against Celsus 4.83Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus's praise of ants that share burdens would undermine human compassion and imply that human and animal souls are alike, but Christians hold that the human soul is made in God's image.
Against Celsus 4.85Origen · ca. 248 · One looking down from heaven would see not bodies but minds, and would see how far rational humans, made in God's image, surpass ants and even elephants.
Against Celsus 6.63Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus denies man is God's image, but Origen explains that Christ alone is God's image, and man is made “according to” that image in the inner self, renewed by becoming holy and like God.
Against Celsus 7.66Origen · ca. 248 · Even pretending to worship images, as some philosophers do, misleads the crowd; Christians do not picture the invisible God, and man is “according to God's image” in the virtuous rational soul, not in bodily form.
Commentary on Romans 1.20Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The three groups in Romans 1 are pagans, philosophers and heretics; believers who commit the same sins are no better; the 'image of man' passage also refutes the Anthropomorphites, for God's image is the inner man.
Commentary on Romans 7.7Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains that all things work for good for those who love God, distinguishes the two forms of Christ to which believers are conformed, reads “foreknew” as God’s knowing the good with love, and calls the soul of Jesus the proper image of the Son.
Symposium 1.4Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Virginity was reserved for Christ to teach: taking our form, he became the model by which humanity, made in God's image, may attain his likeness.
Res. 1.35Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The narrator argues that man, made in the image of the only-begotten Image, was meant to be immortal, and takes up the objection about where death and the devil's envy come from.
Res. 2.23Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · A plant flourishing unburned beside a natural fire on Mount Olympus in Lycia prefigures the righteous passing unharmed through the final fire; and since even humble images of a king are honoured, God will not let his images perish but raised them up through the incarnate Word.
Homilies 10.3Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter begins his public address: man, made in God's image, was appointed to rule over all creatures.
Homilies 11.4Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Man, not the idol, is God's image, so godliness toward God means feeding, clothing, sheltering and visiting people in need.
Homilies 16.10Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter says the Scriptures test each reader's intent, and argues that the God in whose image and shape man was made is the only God.
Homilies 16.19Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter teaches that the human body bears God's form, which is why the greater creation willingly serves humanity.
Homilies 17.7Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter teaches that God has a most beautiful form, after which man was molded, so that whatever is done to a human being is done to God.
Recognitions 4.9Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · In the beginning humanity, made in God's image and taught by the true Prophet, worshiped God with a pure mind, and creation kept covenant with them so that they lived a thousand years without decay.
Recognitions 5.2Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Man, made in God's image with dominion over creation, became subject to suffering through sin, but through piety and faith can be freed and heal others.
Recognitions 5.13Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter calls his hearers to serve the one God, imitate his mercy, and so recover the image and likeness in which they were made.
Recognitions 5.23Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The true image of God is man, honored by works of mercy and violated by murder, adultery, and every injury, not by images of stone or wood.
Divine Institutes 2.2.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The true image of the living God is man, not a statue.
Divine Institutes 2.10.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God formed man from the earth in his own image.
Divine Institutes 2.10.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Plato and the Sibyl also say man is made in God's likeness.
Divine Institutes 2.10.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Hermes taught that God made man in his image and designed each limb for use and beauty.
Divine Institutes 2.12.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God made man in his likeness and woman after man, so they might fill the earth.
Divine Institutes 6.10.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · What is given to man is given to God, whose image he is.
Divine Institutes 7.4.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Hermes knew man was made in God's likeness.
On the Anger of God 13.13Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · The true answer: God made man in his image and gave him wisdom, which needs both good and evil to discern between them.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.10.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Only the rational soul bears God's image and likeness.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.4.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · They valued only the soul's rational part, which bears God's likeness.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.10.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses next teaches about human nature: the soul in God's image, the earthy body, and the breath of life joining them.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.10.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Word is God's true image; the human mind is an image of that image.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.13.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: man was made in the image of the second God, the Word.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.13.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: the rational soul bears the Word's imprint, since God is beyond all likeness.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.17.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Hebrews teach that the soul is divine, made in God's image by God's will, so that earth too might praise him.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.17.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Genesis on man's creation in God's image and from dust, with Philo's interpretation to follow.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.18.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: man is made in God's image, and his upright body looks to heaven.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.18.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Man alone, made in God's image, is rational and royal among earthly creatures.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.18.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Made in God's image, man can know God, virtue, and the heavens.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.23.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Scripture calls man an image; Philo is introduced.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.24.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo grounds this in Gen 1:27.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.25.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Clement: the Word is God’s image; the human mind is the image of the image.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.27.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses taught the soul is immortal, made in God’s image.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.27.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Man was made in God’s image to rule the earth.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.27.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato’s Alcibiades follows Moses on the divine image.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.13.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Clement: the Word is God’s image, the human mind the image of the image; likeness means following God.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.6.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The Word made rational beings in his image and gave man rule over creation and freedom of choice.
Against the Heathen 2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Evil did not exist at first: God made humanity in his image through the Word, to contemplate him in purity, as Adam did in paradise.
Against the Heathen 34Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The soul made in God’s image can return to God by cleansing itself of desire and beholding the Word, the Father’s image, as in a mirror; creation also proclaims its Maker.
On the Incarnation 3.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · God, who is good, made humans in his image with a share in the Word's power so that they might live in blessedness.
On the Incarnation 7.4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Since humanity had lost the grace of the image and fallen into corruption, only the creating Word could restore it.
On the Incarnation 11.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · God made humans in his image, the Word, so that through the Word they might know the Father and live in blessedness.
On the Incarnation 13.7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Only the Word, himself the image of the Father, could renew humanity made according to that image.
On the Incarnation 14.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The Son, the Father's image, came to renew and find lost humanity, and spoke of rebirth of the soul.
Theophany 1.42Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.47Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.48Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.61Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 4.2Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · The Word of God is the source of all human reason, virtue and kingship; he made humans in God's image and came among them to call all to the heavenly kingdom.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 6.7Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · God made the earth fruitful and created man in his image, giving him rule over creatures, knowledge, and the knowledge of God.
Against Marcellus 1.4.35Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 336–337 · A son can be his father's living image, as Seth was Adam's.
Against Marcellus 1.4.37Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 336–337 · Col 3:10 shows that God's image is not the flesh.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 2.23.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Marcellus makes the flesh, not the Son, the image of God.
Oration II Against the Arians 78Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · A second reading of Prov 8:22: the Wisdom that is “created” is the image of divine Wisdom stamped on creation and on us, which the true Wisdom speaks of as its own.
Oration II Against the Arians 79Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Scripture speaks of a wisdom poured out on creation and on human beings; the true Wisdom calls this impress of itself “created,” as a prince might say his name was built into his father's city.
Oration III Against the Arians 10Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · If the Son were one with the Father only by agreement of will and teaching, angels, stars, and saints would be sons and images too; only the Son is the Father's true and natural image.
Historical Fragments 2.6.1.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 343–367 · Germinius argues from Gen 1:26, John 1:14, and Paul that the Son is like the Father in all things.
Catechetical Lecture 10.5Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Christ adapts himself to each person's need while remaining unchanged, and is Lord by nature as Maker of all; Genesis shows him at work with the Father in creation and at Sodom.
On the Trinity 4.18Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Genesis says God made man “in the image of God,” distinguishing God and God while showing one shared image and nature.
On the Trinity 4.19Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · God's words to Noah, “I made man in the image of God,” again distinguish God from God while showing one nature.
On the Trinity 5.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · “Let us make man” implies a partner in creation who is of one mind with God and able to do the work, not a false god.
On the Trinity 5.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Man was made in an image common to the Father and the Son; a true God and a false one could not share one image.
On the Trinity 5.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Since all things are made through the Son, man made “in the image of God” is made in the image shared by the Father and the Son.
On the Trinity 11.49Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · God being all in all is the advance of the humanity Christ took up, and through it we are renewed as the image of our Creator (Col 3:9–10).
Against Arius 1.19Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus explains in what sense Christ is the image of God: not a shadow but the living, self-subsisting form and action of the Father's being, homoousios with him.
Against Arius 1.20Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus reads Genesis 1:26 to show that Christ is the image of God and one image with the Father, while man's rational soul is made according to the image and is to reach the likeness through faith.
Against Arius 1.61Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus describes the soul as an image of the Son, who is life, able to turn upward to intellect and become divine or downward toward matter and become embodied.
Against Arius 1.63Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus explains that the soul is made in the image of the Trinity, its being, living and understanding being three in one, as an image of the Son, who is the image of the Father.
Against Arius 1.64Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus ends Book 1 by suggesting that man was made in the image of God even in the body, since the Word was to take flesh, rise and ascend, and our bodies will become spiritual.
Homilies on the Psalms 48.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 49:12–13 Basil sets out man's dignity: made in God's image, ruling the creatures, above sun and stars, which are soulless and bound by necessity; yet man, enslaved to the flesh, has become like the beasts (lustful horse, wolf, fox), forgetting both his creation and the price of his redemption, the blood of Christ; God sets stumbling blocks in the way of sinners, as with Paul, so that they may turn and confess.
Against Constantius 20Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–361 · Scripture calls man like God (Gen 1:26), but "our image" shows equality between Father and Son, not mere likeness.
Against Constantius 21Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–361 · Scripture calls the Son God's image and equal but never "like"; likeness is used of man and of Christ's sinless flesh.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.10.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Man is great when he knows he is made in God's image; when he falls into vice Scripture calls him viper, horse, mule, or fox.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.10.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Unlike other creatures, man, made of inner and outer natures, had a twofold beginning: made in God's image, then formed from dust.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.10.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Man's soul, made after (not as) God's image, which is the firstborn of creation, is incorporeal; his body was taken from earth and formed.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.20.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The beginning of God's words about man, "Let us make man in our image", is truth, fulfilled when the one reborn in Christ bears the image of the heavenly Adam.
Tractates on the Psalms 129.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Being made in God's image does not make God bodily; a God composed of soul and body would be composite and therefore not eternal.
Tractates on the Psalms 129.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The image of God is the inner man, the soul, whose swift incorporeal mobility imitates God; renewal in that image is putting on knowledge, faith, and goodness.
Oration 8.5Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gorgonia's true homeland is the heavenly Jerusalem and her true nobility the image of God kept in her.
Oration 33.8Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory answers mockery of his appearance, rusticity, and foreign origin: all share a common creation and redemption, God’s great servants came from humble places, the apostles were strangers where they preached, and true nobility is the image of God kept by virtue.
Tractates 1.2.7Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno explains that love's first duty is toward God, then toward the neighbour, who bears God's image, so that wrong done to him is done to God.
Tractates 2.1.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno answers those who deny the Son's equality with the Father from 'Let us make man in our image', which shows one work and one image of both.
Tractates 2.19.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno teaches that the image of God in man is not the changeable body but the invisible spiritual image of the heavenly man, given in rebirth.
Tractates 2.20.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · In a second form of the same sermon Zeno teaches that the image of God is the heavenly man's spiritual image, citing 1 Corinthians 15:49 and 3:16.
Hexaemeron 9.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Faith overcomes wild beasts; turning to man, Basil argues from "Let us make man in our image" that God spoke to his Son, the one image of the Father, against Jewish and Anomoean interpretations.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 11:5–7Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Man and woman share one substance, but man, as woman's source and the image of the one God, should be unveiled, and woman, as man's glory, veiled.
Commentary on Colossians 3:8–11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers must put off lesser sins too and put on the new man, renewed in the image of the Creator by good conduct, in which all races are one in Christ; Ambrosiaster distinguishes this image, shared by women, from the image of God in the first man, and digresses on the Scythians.
Question 21, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Man is God’s image because all humanity comes from one man as all things from one God; woman, made from man, is not the image of God, and so is veiled and does not teach.
Question 45, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Unlike Babel’s “let us go down,” addressed to angels, “let us make man in our image” cannot be addressed to angels, since God and angels share no common image; the same God spoke and made.
Question 45, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · “Let us make” shows distinct persons in one God: the Father speaks, the Son makes through the Spirit, and the image of all three is one; man is God’s image as the one source of all humanity.
Question 45, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The image of God cannot consist in dominion, since that would make the Son’s co-creators mere angelic powers and would make woman God’s image, which Ambrosiaster rejects since she has no authority.
Question 97, section 5Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Father and Son differ only as unbegotten and begotten; the one image in Gen 1:26, the Jews’ charge against Jesus, and Isaiah 45 show that they share one nature.
Question 106, section 16Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Man was made last, by God’s own hands and in the image of Father and Son, to enjoy the finished world.
Question 106, section 17Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Ambrosiaster defines the image of God as the man’s rule as God’s representative, from whom all others descend, and so holds that the woman, made from the man, is not in God’s image though she shows his likeness.
Question 106, section 19Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The six days of creation prefigure six thousand years of history, with Christ coming in the sixth millennium and the seventh bringing rest; the tree of life is the Lord’s body and the tree of knowledge the law.
On Virginity 12Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Passion and death were not part of man’s nature but came by his free choice; restoring the hidden image of God, like the woman’s lost coin, means retracing the steps of the fall, beginning by leaving marriage, the last stage of the exile from paradise.
Letter 43.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome contrasts his and Marcella's distracted Roman life, full of visits, gossip, and money, with Origen's devotion.
Letter 51.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Epiphanius urges John to reject Origen and argues from Scripture that humans did not lose the image of God after Adam's sin.
Letter 51.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Epiphanius criticizes Origenist speculations about the image of God and affirms that it remains in all people, while its nature is known to God.
Ancoratus 11.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Humanity has God's image as a gift of grace.
Ancoratus 11.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Man, made in the image, is not like God in himself.
Ancoratus 55.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · God placed man, made in his image, in paradise.
Ancoratus 55.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · All humans bear God's image.
Ancoratus 55.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The image cannot be identified with body, soul, mind, or virtue.
Ancoratus 55.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The image is in man; how, God knows.
Ancoratus 55.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The visible body cannot image the invisible God.
Ancoratus 56.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The soul is limited, so it cannot simply be the image.
Ancoratus 56.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The mind can be captive, so it is not simply the image.
Ancoratus 56.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Virtue cannot be the image, since Adam was made before any virtue.
Ancoratus 56.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Baptism cannot be the image; the righteous before it bore the image.
Ancoratus 57.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · All bear the image by grace, not by equality with God.
Ancoratus 57.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · God truly gave the image, as a comparison shows.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 23.1.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The angels said, “Let us make man in image and likeness.”
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 23.1.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Satornilus omitted “our” from Gen 1:26.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 23.5.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God, not angels, made man in “our” image.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.19.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Image and likeness are read as the material and the psychic man.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 44.4.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Scripture teaches that God made man in his image.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 44.4.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Genesis 1:26 lights the way from Apelles' error to the truth.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.4.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · He said Adam lost the image and the coats of skin are bodies.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.26.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Man is God’s image in the world.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.27.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Man bears the image of the Only-begotten.
On Paradise 5Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The man placed in paradise is man according to the body, not the incorporeal image of God; he awaits the kingdom.
Apostolic Constitutions 7.34.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Man, made in God's image with body, soul and mind, crowns creation.
On the Christian Faith 1.7Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · From Paul’s calling Christ the image of the invisible God, from Wisdom 7:26, from John 14:9, and from Gen 1:26, Ambrose argues that the Son is not unlike the Father.
On Noah 86Ambrose · ca. 378-384 · The blessing and dominion given to Noah repeat those given to man made in God's image, to whom the just Noah is compared.
On Noah 99Ambrose · ca. 378-384 · 'In the image of God' points to the Father and the Son, and because man is made in God's image, God avenges violence against him.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 41Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Macrina rebukes the view that what sense cannot grasp does not exist, since that would abolish God; the mind is not the same as God but like him as his image, as a small piece of glass reflects the whole sun.
On the Making of Man 3Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Unlike the rest of creation, which God made by a bare command, man was made after deliberation, which shows that he is more precious than everything visible.
On the Making of Man 4Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Human nature was made for kingship: the soul is free and self-governing, and as God’s living image it is robed not in purple but in virtue, immortality, and righteousness.
On the Making of Man 5Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · God’s image in man is painted not in colours but in virtues; mind, word, love, and the power to perceive and search out things mirror the divine nature.
On the Making of Man 6Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Just as one human mind works through many senses, God is not divided by his many powers; and since the three persons make one image, they cannot be unlike in nature, as the Anomoeans claim.
On the Making of Man 11Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · The mind, which is distinct from the senses, cannot comprehend its own nature; this unknowability is itself a mark of its likeness to the incomprehensible God whose image it is.
On the Making of Man 16Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Man’s greatness lies not in being a little world but in being made in God’s image, which belongs to the whole of humanity as one; the division into male and female was added afterward, in view of the foreseen fall, and does not belong to the divine archetype.
On the Making of Man 18Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · The passions came to man through his kinship with the animals; reason can turn them into vices or virtues, and the divine image shows in the virtuous; in the resurrection man will be freed from the need to eat.
On the Making of Man 30Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Gregory sketches the body’s structure and physiology (brain, heart, liver, nerves, breathing, digestion) to show that soul and body grow together from one beginning, the soul’s powers appearing as the body is perfected, and ends by calling all to return to the image of God.
On the Beatitudes 1197Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Only God is blessed in the full sense; humanity, made in his image, is blessed by participation, and Christ, who cleanses the image from sin, now paints the features of blessedness, beginning with poverty of spirit.
On the Beatitudes 1225Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Christ blesses not grief but the knowledge of the lost good; that good, God himself, cannot be named or grasped, but our very inability shows its greatness, and we were once made in its likeness, sharing incorruption, blessedness, and freedom.
On the Lord's Prayer 1125Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · God’s benefits span past, present, and future, so we can never thank him enough; yet we give him no time, though he made the world for us, formed us in his image, and restores us to paradise, while we stay awake only for gain.
Book of Heresies 97.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some say the body was made first and is God's image.
Book of Heresies 126.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The soul, God's image, is made a little lower than the angels.
Book of Heresies 137.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some misunderstand the image and likeness of God.
Book of Heresies 137.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Every soul is God's image; likeness comes by faith and life.
Book of Heresies 137.3Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The sinful soul cannot be God's natural image.
Book of Heresies 137.4Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Only Christ is God's natural image.
Book of Heresies 137.5Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · All souls are God's image, but only saints have the likeness.
Canons on the Letters of Paul 31Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · The new, inner man bears the heavenly image and is renewed by grace and clothed with mercy, faith, and love.
Eleven Tractates 1.23Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Taught by Christ, believers put off the old man and put on the new; God, not demons, made man in his image, and Eve is saved through childbearing and returns to her husband.
Eleven Tractates 5.87Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · God made man in his image to be his rest (sabbath) and a temple; through all Scripture God wishes to be called by every name.
On the Complaints of Job and David 3.24Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · The image of God shines in the heavenly city in the good, but in the wicked it is erased, like a tyrant’s statue.
Catechetical Oration 21Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Man, created from nothing and an image rather than the archetype, is changeable; his will always moves either toward the true good or, deceived by appearances, toward its opposite.
Exposition of Psalm 118 2.13.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · To know oneself is to know that man is made in God’s image, a rational being who must govern himself.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.8.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · God made man last, in his image and likeness, above all creatures.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.10.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Man is precious by virtue, faith, and the image of God that should shine in his heart.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.11.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Scripture calls man only the one who keeps God’s image; the sinner it calls by the names of beasts.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.11.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Sinners are called horse, fox, and vipers; we must not lose the great gift of God’s image.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.11.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · God does not punish his own image but the sin by which a man has lost it.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.11.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · If God’s image is kept, it is crowned; the sinner is condemned for what he has become.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.13.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · One hand of God made the heavens, but both his hands formed man, made in his image.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.15.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Scripture speaks twice of man’s creation: once as made in God’s image.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.15.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Man’s body was fashioned from dust, but the image of God is in the rational soul.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.16.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ is the image of God; man is made according to that image.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.16.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ, the Image, comes to restore the image lost in us.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.25.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · In the poor we honor the one in whose image they are made, Christ himself.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.25.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · As honor to an emperor’s statue honors him, so honor to man honors God’s invisible image.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.26.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · We walk among Christ’s images; to harm the poor is to insult their maker.
Exposition of Psalm 118 13.20.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Being “men” signifies both mortal weakness and the dignity of God’s image, which Christ shared.
Letter 92.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that God, who is not in place, cannot be seen by bodily eyes, but will be seen by the inner man as he is renewed in God’s likeness.
Letter 120.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine teaches that the Trinity surpasses all bodily things and is to be approached through understanding the soul made in God's image, or else held by faith until the promised vision.
Letter 120.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine concludes that God's beauty, like the beauty of justice in the inner man, is not bodily, and urges Consentius to correct his own errors humbly.
On Fleeing the World 11Ambrose · ca. 387-391 · The three cities beyond the Jordan are the image of God, love of God, and fear of God, virtues of the few.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.41Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The Son, the image of the invisible God, is one in substance with the Father; “Let us make … our likeness” excludes inequality.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.42Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Know your soul, not your possessions; the soul painted by God bears the image of Christ, which Adam lost by sin.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.43Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The soul is God's image and the whole of man; the body is shared with the beasts.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.44Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The image of God is not in the body: our height, sight, and hearing are limited and surpassed by animals.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.45Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The soul, which by thought ranges over the whole world and up to heaven, is the image of God.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.46Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Scripture calls man a “soul,” and the soul is conformed to Christ's image and justified, not the body.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.47Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God has painted the soul in his image; women who paint their faces with cosmetics deface God's work.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.49Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God rested only after making man in his image; he rests in humble souls, which he has fortified like a walled city.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.24.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The image in which man walks is Christ, God's image.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.4.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Our true self is the mind made in God’s image; the psalmist speaks of the flesh as of another.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.13.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · God is pleased in his Image, the Son, and in those made according to that image, whose likeness will be revealed.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 48.20.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Man, made in God’s image, is likened to beasts when he does not understand his honour; one who understands is like the angels.
On the Greatness of the Soul 2Augustine of Hippo · 387–388 · The human soul is like God, made in his likeness, though, like a portrait compared with its subject, it lacks its maker's power.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Against the Manichaean mockery of God's image as bodily, Augustine argues that Scripture's bodily language about God is figurative and that man is God's image in his inner self, reason and understanding, shown also by his upright posture.
Homily 2Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390–394 · Expounding Song 1:5–8, Gregory teaches that the soul, blackened by sin through the free choice of fallen powers rather than by its Creator, is made beautiful by Christ's love, and must guard that beauty by knowing itself as God's image.
Homily 15Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390–394 · On Song 6:1–9 Gregory, beginning from Philip leading Nathanael to Christ, reads the bride's directions to the young women as the gospel of the Word who came down to replant humanity as his garden, "I am my beloved's" as the soul become a clear mirror of Christ, the bride's praised features as ranks in the church, and the sixty queens, eighty concubines, and countless young women as souls advancing by love, by fear, or as beginners, all meant to become the one perfect dove, united by the Spirit until God is all in all.
Sermon 8.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The fifth commandment against adultery is opposed by the plague on cattle: the adulterer lives like a beast, though reason and the image of God enable a human being to restrain desire.
Sermon 9.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God hates us as we are in order to make us what we are not yet: an image of him, not equal like the Son but like the emperor's image on a coin; agreement with God begins with hating ourselves as we are.
Sermon 9.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The man who goes to prostitutes wrongs God himself, for he corrupts in himself God's image and temple, just as stoning a man's portrait insults the man.
Sermon 24.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · No creature, not even man made in God’s image, can be compared with God; how much less a stone Hercules, whose dedication “To Hercules, the god” shames its worshipers.
Sermon 43.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Man shares existence with stones, life with plants, and sensation with beasts, but has reason, in which he is made in God’s image; reason precedes and seeks understanding.
Sermon 43.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Only the Creator can restore the image we deformed; to the dispute whether we must understand in order to believe or believe in order to understand, Augustine proposes a prophet as judge.
Sermon 52.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Since man alone was made in God’s image, the likeness of the Trinity should be sought in ourselves, though our image differs greatly from the Son, who is the Father’s perfect image.
Sermon 52.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The likeness must be sought in the inner man who hears and sees through the body; and man is the image of the whole Trinity, as “Let us make man in our image” shows.
Sermon 60.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Man, made in God’s image, is troubled in vain, heaping up treasure without knowing for whom; life is toil, and the miser’s soul burns with anxiety.
Sermon 90.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Love must reach beyond family to God and to all, even enemies, so that God’s image in us, worn down by earthly desire, is re-engraved and rendered to God as Caesar’s coin is to Caesar.
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393 · On “Let us make man to our image and likeness,” Augustine distinguishes image from likeness, presents the Son as Likeness itself in which creatures participate, places the image in the human mind, and concludes that man was made to the image of the whole Trinity.
Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine reconciles man's creation in God's image with Christ calling unbelievers sons of the devil by distinguishing sonship by nature, teaching, and imitation.
Confessions 6.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Hearing Ambrose preach, Augustine learned that the church does not understand the image of God in man as a bodily form, and blushed that he had attacked a caricature of the catholic faith.
Confessions 6.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Ashamed of having attacked uncertain things as certain, Augustine rejoiced that the catholic church, the body of Christ, did not teach that God has a human bodily shape.
Confessions 13.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Man is made in God's image, not "according to kind"; the renewed mind learns directly from God and sees the Trinity.
Confessions 13.47Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine surveys the whole of creation in the order of Genesis 1 and sees it all very good.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine defines sin as anything done, said, or desired against the eternal law that preserves the natural order, in which body is subject to soul, and action to contemplation.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 24.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Paul’s inner and outer man are one man wholly made by God, whose whole nature, grown old through sin, is renewed now inwardly and at the resurrection outwardly.
On the Trinity 7.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Neither genus–species nor common matter (three statues from one gold) explains “three persons, one essence”; Augustine shows how Scripture's plurals signify relations and how man is made “to the image” of the Trinity, and urges faith where understanding fails.
On the Trinity 9.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Turning to man as an unequal image of God, Augustine finds that when the mind loves itself there seem to be only two, mind and love, which are relatively two but one spirit.
On the Trinity 9.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Knowledge is like what it knows; our knowledge of God is an unequal likeness, but the mind's knowledge of itself is its perfectly equal word and image.
On the Trinity 11.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine proposes to look for a trace of the Trinity even in the outer man, starting with the sense of sight.
On the Trinity 11.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The outer trinity is not the image of God, though like every good thing it bears some likeness to God, and in it the will faintly suggests the person of the Spirit.
On the Trinity 12.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The trinity must be sought in the whole mind, but the image of God is found only in the part that contemplates eternal things.
On the Trinity 12.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · From Gen 1:26–27 Augustine shows that man was made in the image of the whole Trinity, the one God, and that Scripture does not place that image in father, mother, and child.
On the Trinity 12.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Interpreting 1 Cor 11:7 with Gen 1:27, Augustine holds that woman as well as man is the image of God in the rational mind, where there is no sex, and reads the veil as a figure of reason directed to temporal things.
On the Trinity 14.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The image of God must lie in something as lasting as the immortal soul; the later memory of our faith would form a different trinity, as the memory of a vanished body differs from seeing it.
On the Trinity 14.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The image of God is in the rational soul, which can know God; it always remains, though it may be deformed, and the mind always knows itself.
On the Trinity 14.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The mind remembering, understanding, and loving itself is the image of God, not a trinity formed from adventitious things that enter the mind in time, such as learned facts or faith.
On the Trinity 14.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The mind's trinity is the image of God because it can remember, understand, and love its Maker; doing so is wisdom, while not to be with God, in whom we exist, is great misery.
On the Trinity 14.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Rightly loving itself, the mind loves God; though weak and erring it never loses memory, understanding, and love of itself, and when it clings to God it will be one spirit with him and unchangeable.
On the Trinity 14.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The image of God is re-formed in the mind by God, not by itself; Augustine explains Paul's “spirit of the mind” and shows that the renewal takes place in the mind, where the image is.
On the Trinity 14.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · John's “we shall be like him” may refer to the full sight of God or to the immortal body, in which we are conformed to the incarnate Son alone.
On the Trinity 14.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The image of the Trinity will be perfected by the sight of God after the judgment, which is eternal life; Cicero's praise of contemplative philosophy falls short without faith in the Mediator.
On the Trinity 15.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The trinity in the human mind is something a man has, not what he is, and its three operate only through one another, whereas each divine person is himself memory, understanding, and love; God's timeless knowledge surpasses all comprehension.
On the Trinity 15.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Paul's “mirror” means an image, and the image through which we now see God is ourselves, being transformed by grace from glory to glory.
On the Trinity 15.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine refutes Eunomius's claim that the Son is a son of God's will rather than of his nature, and sums up: the human mind's memory, understanding, and will are an image, though a very unlike one, of the Trinity.
On the Trinity 15.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The trinity of one human person is only an unequal image of the three-personed God, whose persons are more inseparable than the mind's three powers; we see the Trinity now through the image, later face to face.
On the Trinity 15.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Those who see the trinity in their mind but not that it is God's image miss the One it reflects; without the faith that cleanses the heart, their understanding condemns them, darkened as it is by the penalty of sin.
On the Work of Monks 40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Augustine rejects the claim that celibate monks are no longer men and so may wear long hair, explaining that the unveiled head of the man and the veiled head of the woman figure the mind ruling desire, while in the renewed mind there is no male or female.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine reads “Let us make man in our image” as showing the plurality of persons and “in the image of God” as showing the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine locates the image of God in the rational mind and explains why “and so it was done” is omitted for the creation of man, as for the first light.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine rejects the view that only the soul was made on the sixth day, and holds that the woman, having the same rational mind, was also made in the image of God, though Paul calls only the man the image of God in a figurative sense.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God did not form Adam with bodily hands; his “hands” are his power. Man excels not because God made him personally but because he was made to God's image in mind; his upright body befits this.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · We recover the righteousness Adam lost, renewed in mind after God's image, but our body will be renewed into something better, a spiritual body, which Adam did not yet have.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · We recover in the mind the image of God that Adam lost; the spiritual body is something better that Adam never had, and he “lost” it only in failing to attain it.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · On this view Adam had an animal body but a spiritual mind in God's image, which he lost by sin; spiritual men can still sin, as Paul shows. Augustine holds the view provisionally.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 10.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine recalls his earlier conclusion that the first man's soul was made in the six days while his body's reason was made in the world as in a seed, avoiding harsher alternatives.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 3.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The crucified Christ seen by the Jews is not the whole Christ, who is also the eternal Word; the life in him is the light of men, the light of the mind that bears God's image.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 18.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Returning to the heart, where the image of God is, we find that it sees and hears without separate organs; so much more in the Son are seeing and hearing one with his very being.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 23.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine turns the hearer inward to the mind, made in God's image, to find a likeness of the Father's showing and the Son's seeing.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 40.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · We believe in order to know: faith in what is not seen will be rewarded with the sight of the truth, when God's image, worn away in us like a coin's, is stamped anew.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 8.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Pride is a kind of greed, going beyond measure, as Adam did; man, made in God's image in his rational mind, was given power over beasts, but by deserting God became subject to lower things.
On the Spirit and the Letter 48Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Even if the gentiles of Rom 2 are unbelievers with remnants of God's image, the new covenant's distinctiveness stands; their good works cannot save them, though punishment will differ in degree.
City of God 11.2Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Knowledge of the unchangeable God is reached only through faith in Christ the mediator, who as man is the way and as God the goal.
City of God 11.26Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The human mind bears an image of the Trinity in being, knowing, and loving, of which it is certain even against the skeptics: if I am deceived, I am.
City of God 11.28Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · We also love the love by which we love; all things seek their place as by a love, and man, as God's image, should return like the prodigal son to God, in whom being, knowing, and loving will be perfected.
City of God 12.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God made man in his image with a rational soul, formed Adam from dust and gave him a soul, and made Eve from his side, not with hands but by his power.
On the Soul and Its Origin 4.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Victor’s corporeal inner man and inmost spirit, moulded to the body, could not be renewed to the image of the incorporeal God.
On the Soul and Its Origin 4.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Augustine distinguishes bodily sight, imaginative sight of likenesses, and intellectual sight of things like faith, hope, and love, where we are renewed in God’s image and there is no sex.
Retractations 1.25Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Augustine lists the titles of his Eighty-Three Different Questions, noting which are not his own, and corrects several statements, among them on the image of God, the thief on the cross, and the mercy that precedes the will.
Retractations 2.24Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Reviewing On Genesis according to the Letter, Augustine admits that more was sought than found, and corrects his reading of Gal 3:19, his statement that Adam lost the image of God, and his treatment of the underworld.
The Conferences 10.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theophilus of Alexandria’s Easter letter condemned the Anthropomorphites, who pictured God in human form; most Egyptian monks rejected it, and in Scetis only Paphnutius let it be read.
The Conferences 10.3John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The venerable Sarapion, persuaded by the deacon Photinus that God’s image is spiritual and not bodily, accepted the catholic faith but wept in prayer that his God had been taken from him; Cassian and Germanus return to Isaac.
The Conferences 10.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Isaac traces Sarapion’s error to the habits of paganism, which worshiped gods in human shape; the Anthropomorphites misread Genesis 1:26, whereas pure prayer admits no image, word, or form at all.
Theodotus, ACO I.1.2, homily 72.10Theodotus of Ancyra · 431 · God made man from lowly earth yet in his own image, so that the memory of his origin would keep him humble.
Letter to Valerian, paragraph 3Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 432 · The soul, the image of God and his deposit, is mistress and the flesh servant; salvation is the foundation of every other good, for nothing profits a man who gains the world and loses his soul.
Poem on Genesis 91–120Hilary of Arles · ca. 440-449 · God adorns the earth with plants, beasts, and birds, and then, speaking with his Son, makes man in his image and woman from his rib.
Poem on Genesis 121–150Hilary of Arles · ca. 440-449 · The poet praises man's upright form, reason, and speech, the breath of God breathed into him, and his appointment as lord of creation.