The Image of God and His Likeness in Man

Man is created in the image and likeness of God. This direct teaching of Divine Revelation (Gen. 1:27) is revealed by the Holy Fathers on the basis of their spiritual experience. When we pronounce these words themselves, "image" and "likeness," their direct meaning indicates that there must be something in man, so to speak, similar to God. And so the Holy Fathers show us these similarities. First of all, they pay attention to the royal dignity of man among all other creatures. Man was created last and was placed to possess the entire material world by the will of God, rationally, kindly-heartedly. All other creation, living and inanimate, was created for man's help and edification. Man uses some creatures for his life, and looking at others, he comprehends the wisdom and goodness of his Creator. Thus, all of God's creation is useful to man for soul and body, and man himself is the master of God's world, in the image of the Almighty Himself, Who is in full and excellent measure the Lord of all creation, including angels and men. Another important feature of the image of God in man is the ability to create independently, even the inclination and craving for it. A rare person does not want to create any object for his own benefit, any artistic image or scientific idea, in other words, such a thing that is based on his own original thought. We will single out these two features separately, as inherent only in God and man. Of course, the concept of the image of God in man is not exhausted by them. The Creator has communicated to man a rational spiritual essence, an immortal soul in the image of the eternity of God Himself. Man is given the freedom of moral choice in the image of God's infinite freedom, that is, the opportunity to independently choose the path of pleasing God or the path of resisting Him. The qualities of our soul: its uniqueness in each person, its freedom and immortality, the mind capable of abstract thinking, the senses capable of perceiving God's holiness and beauty – all these are undoubtedly the features of God's image. But they are also characteristic of other moral creatures of God, namely angels. The dominion over the visible creature and the ability to create are left to the exclusive use of man alone. Angels are not appointed to rule over the world or to create anything on their own. The Holy Scriptures say of them: "Are they not all ministering spirits, poured out to serve for those who have to inherit salvation" (Heb. 1:14). In this sense, man, according to the Creator's plan, was called to be even higher than them. The aspects of the image of God that we have mentioned do not yet exhaust this concept completely. Neither the Bible nor the Holy Fathers have listed all these traits for us point by point. There is something else in man from this image that is generally incomprehensible to us. The image of God is given to man inalienably, once and for all. And at the same time, the similarity, the unity of man with God was not originally complete and perfect. Man had to freely choose the path to God and work for himself in order to become like Him. This possibility of the development of the image of God in the human soul for the better is called the likeness of God. Image is a static concept, and similarity is dynamic. If this phrase is not clear, then you can put it more simply. Likeness differs from an image, as a harvest from planted seeds, as a finished product from raw materials. Without seeds, there will be no harvest, but a harvest is more than the seeds themselves. In the same way, an image is something that is given from the beginning and is not taken away, and likeness is something that a person could achieve, something with which he could adorn the original image in himself - by means of a virtuous life. But the first people in paradise chose the path of disobedience to God, and the likeness of God had to be forgotten for a long time. And the image of God, although it did not disappear, was distorted in man beyond recognition. After all, the features of the image of God still say little about the dignity of man, all of them can be turned into evil, into unseemly deeds. And so it happened. Man's dominion over the world turned into a struggle with God's creation, into its desecration and destruction. The mind, capable of comprehending spiritual objects and communicating with the Creator, turned to communication with the fallen angels and was able to learn many bad things from them. Creativity turned to many malicious inventions in the field of science, technology and culture. So darkened and distorted is the image of God in us. But the Lord Jesus Christ, having suffered for us, restored this image for all mankind as a whole. And each of us is given the opportunity for this restoration by faith in Christ and the grace of the Holy Spirit. We have the opportunity to receive the fruits of our redemption, to restore the darkened image and to regain the lost likeness of God. The Orthodox Church knows many examples of how this is achieved. Such are all our saints. Looking at their lives, we can see what a person restored in Christ is. He not only avoids all sin, but also regains the qualities that Adam had before the fall. For example, our Russian miracle-workers Sergius of Radonezh and Seraphim of Sarov, who attained such purity of heart that wild bears obediently obeyed them. Saint Gerasim of Jordan was served by a lion, whose sick paw was healed by this hermit. Such ascetics are usually called venerables, because they, becoming like the Lord in their lives, restored in themselves the likeness of God. This assimilation has no limits: man can draw infinitely near to God, attaining deification or communion with the Divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). Can you imagine this: a person who is limited by nature and moreover sinful receives the opportunity to unite by grace with the Unlimited and Holy God Himself? And this is precisely the purpose of man. And the saints reached it. Many of them have spiritually felt this union with God, and even if we do not yet have such an experience, we will nevertheless remember the purpose for which we were created, and strive for it in the way indicated to us by Christ and His saints.

Spirit, Soul and Body

Speaking of image and likeness, we try to judge a person by his Creator. It is also possible to look at man in another way: from the point of view of his own nature. And this approach is also given in the Scriptures. A person consists of a soul and a body. He is placed by the Creator on the border between visible and invisible, material and immaterial nature, being in some ways similar to an animal, and in some ways to an angel. Our body is quite material, it was once created from the earth by a special creative action, just as all other animals according to their kind were created from the earth. (Here we note that these words have a completely direct scientific meaning. The theory of the origin of man from an ape is incomprehensible even to those who invented it. And the history of the search for various "ape-men" is the most shameful page in science - there were so many fakes, falsifications, strained explanations, irrepressible imagination of artists and popularizers of this godless idea!) The human body bears a resemblance to the body of animals, but this in no way means that it originated or was produced from the body of any animal. This only means that man in his body belongs to the world of living nature. The soul is invested in a person by a special inspiration - it means that a person is something more than his body. Do animals have a soul? Eat. And this is what both the Scriptures and everyday experience tell us. The Scripture says: And God said, Let the earth bring forth a living creature after its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth their kind. And it was so (Gen. 1:24). In other words, by Divine plan and command, the souls and bodies of animals arose from the earth in their mysterious union. Both experience and science tell us that in any living body there is something greater than this body. If we collect all the molecules that make up a living cell in the correct sequence, we will get a dead cell. No life exists without every living being wanting to live and behaving accordingly. Even the amoeba tends to swim out into the water that suits it best. In the same way, all other plants and animals are not indifferent to the fact of their life, and as far as they are given the opportunity, they strive to approach more advantageous conditions of existence and avoid unfavorable ones. This manifests a certain vital force inherent in all living things and inaccessible to our senses or devices. It is also manifested in the desire of every living thing to produce offspring similar to itself. This vital force is not a property of the complex molecules of living organisms. It is something more, and in essence unknown to us. In Scripture, the words "soul" and "life" are often used interchangeably. In addition, highly organized animals show certain mental abilities, feelings, desires, and character traits: the fox is cunning, the dog is loyal, the donkey is stubborn, the cat is affectionate, the wolf is angry, and the hare is cowardly. Children also know this. Even among dogs and cats, different "character traits" can be observed, as well as different mental abilities. All this: from simple vital force, instincts of self-preservation and multiplication of the species to the character of the animal - all the properties of the living, irreducible to the biochemical processes of its organism, belong to the spiritual side of animal life. The soul of animals is essentially unknown to us - let us repeat this once again, but we know that in essence all the features of the soulfulness of an animal are inherent in man, since he is also a living being, created by the same Creator from the same earth. But, of course, the human soul is higher than the soul of animals. It was not produced from the earth, but was specially placed in the body by God at creation. That is why it is able to bear within itself the image and likeness of God. What distinguishes the human soul from the souls of animals is first of all a great and insurmountable difference in their common features: in reason, in feelings, in intentions. In the same way, the human body, being somewhat similar to the bodies of animals, differs from them by qualitative, insurmountable differences. Animals are able to think, and humans are able to think abstractly. For example, a monkey can distinguish two bananas from three, but it is incapable of rising to the concept of number by adding one to two in its mind, and in this arithmetic without remembering bananas. The number 2 exists for her if only she sees these bananas or oranges in front of her. A person is able to think in more abstract concepts. Animals are able to communicate with each other with sounds and signs. But not being able to think in abstract concepts, they are incapable of grammatical construction of their speech. And a person is capable of this. That is why animals have long been called wordless, not in the sense of their lack of their own language, but in the sense of their inability to express their thoughts in abstract words. It should be noted that the human body is adapted to have a verbal, thinking soul living in it. The human brain has speech centers, and the jaws are perfectly adapted for articulate speech. The complex structure of the inner ear allows a person to keep balance on two legs, and the structure of the hand allows you to perform very delicate work. All these are unique features of the human body only. But the main difference of the human soul is qualitative. The human soul is a moral creature, capable not only of thinking and speaking in abstract concepts, but also of rushing into the realm of speculative, supersensible being. The human soul is able to know its Creator, to communicate with Him, to understand His will and to judge its intentions by it, whether they are good or bad, good or evil. Just as the body of an animal is qualitatively different from that of a human, so the soul of an animal is qualitatively different from that of a human. The word "qualitatively" in both cases means the same thing: man has something, and the animal has nothing at all. And this main, qualitative difference between the human soul and the animal soul, this higher side of the human soul, which is completely absent in animals, is usually called spirit. The spirit is an ineradicable religious principle that lives in man. By the spirit man finds his god (whether true or false), by the spirit he worships him, by the spirit he solves the question of the meaning and purpose of his life. Animals never ask all these questions. We have already said that there are no completely non-religious people at all. Any atheist believes in the absence of God, in the great creative power of matter, worships the creature instead of the Creator, but he really believes in it in his spirit, worships it, and sometimes devotes many years of his life to his faith. Yes, strange as it may seem, it is to this "belief in unbelief," to this "god-not-god" that many and expensive sacrifices are made, a kind of spiritual life, but this is precisely the life of the spirit, and not of the animal soul. The holy sense of the Divine in the human spirit is directly subordinated to conscience, which dictates to man what is in accordance with the will of his divinity and is subject to fulfillment, and what is contrary to this will and is forbidden. Conscience is often able to guide human actions, and even more often it evaluates our actions after they have been committed and either approves, comforts us, or, on the contrary, mercilessly gnaws at us with its reproaches. Thus, conscience for a person is an internal source of external power: legislative, executive, and, especially, judicial. A slightly unusual, paradoxical definition: "an internal source of external power." You may ask: what is conscience: our inner spiritual organ, or some external one? In the spirit of man, as in his highest part, the gates to the world, higher than the earthly, are already opening. In human freedom, however, there remains a choice on which side to open them: to God or to the devil. This choice will determine the voice of conscience. He will be external to us, coming to us from our god (true or false). And this voice itself is to some extent in our power. Just as the voice of a radio receiver can be muffled or amplified, so can the voice of conscience in the spirit. Thus, conscience turns out to be an internal source of external power, an external voice that we ourselves are able to influence. Losing spiritual manifestations, a person increasingly loses his properly human appearance. If he is not guided by conscience at all and nothing sacred remains for him, then it is said of him that he either becomes brutalized or bestial, that is, approaches the animal state. Such a person also loses his unique personality. At the same time, he is able to preserve the features of the soul - thoughts, feelings, desires, which are also characteristic of animals. If the spirit in it could die out completely, we would have a new kind of bipedal animal.

The Three Forces of the Soul

Having now understood what the human spirit is, we will already more easily understand the composition of the lower part of our soul. This lower part of the soul, or the soul proper, has everything that the higher animals have in embryo and that still remains even in completely unspiritual, unscrupulous people. There are three powers of the soul: reason, feelings and will, or thoughts, experiences and desires. In all these three respects the human soul is superior to the animal soul created from the earth: the objects of our thoughts, feelings, and aspirations can and must be higher than earthly objects. Practically all the thinking abilities of animals are tested and developed on a purely material stimulus: the animal must receive a food reward for its ingenuity, and, having eaten its fill, it will no longer strain its cerebral convolutions. In the same way, the feelings of animals are usually determined by external reactions: a man is affectionate to a dog - it is faithful to him, a cat is warm on the stove - it purrs with pleasure, birds are happy to return to their nests in the spring and celebrate weddings - they glorify God with their songs, but they themselves do not realize it. Finally, the desires of animals are almost completely reducible to carnal needs. Of course, it happens that they play, but their game is just a bodily pleasure. Such is the mental activity of animals. And can the human soul limit itself to only such manifestations? Or does she need something more?

The needs of the spirit, soul and body of a person and their activities

Thinking about this question, we come to the conclusion that our spirit, soul and body have their own needs. The bodily needs of man are simple and known to everyone: food, drink, sleep, warmth - everything is the same as in animals. And the spiritual needs of a person are more complicated. And if in animals the mental needs are almost completely subordinated to the bodily ones, then in humans they are higher. The human mind is in constant motion. Various thoughts come into it or are born in it, and the mind cannot remain completely idle or closed in on itself. He demands external stimuli or impressions. A person wants to receive information about the world around him. This is a need of the rational part of the soul, and the simplest one at that. A higher need of our reason is the craving for reflection and analysis, which is characteristic of some to a greater extent, and to others to a lesser extent. The sensitive (emotional) side of the soul also requires impressions inherent in it. These are, first of all, aesthetic requests: to contemplate, to listen to something beautiful in nature or in human creativity. Some artistically gifted natures also have a need for creativity in the world of beauty: an irresistible craving to draw, sculpt or sing. A higher manifestation of the sensitive side of the soul is empathy for the joy and sorrow of other people. There are also other movements of the heart. Finally, the volitional side of the soul also has a craving for self-manifestation. For the first time, it wakes up in a child together with the first words: "I myself" (in the sense of doing this or that myself). In general, this is a natural human need - not to be someone's tool or automaton, but to make independent decisions. Our desires, being stricken with sin, require the greatest educational work in order to be directed towards good, and not towards evil. People also have spiritual needs: to know God, to communicate with Him, to do His will in accordance with the voice of conscience. Any human activity also corresponds to needs. Bodily needs are served by any productive labor, the fruit of which are things useful for bodily life. Mental activity includes the entire cultural life of mankind. Science occupies mainly the mind, the arts are conducted for the most part by the senses; Political and military activity is mainly connected with the volitional side of the soul. Finally, religious activity is called upon to satisfy spiritual needs. Of course, there are no sharp boundaries between all these spheres of activity, just as there are no boundaries between the colors of the rainbow, although we distinguish these colors.

The Relationship Between Spirit, Soul and Body

According to the Creator's plan, the body should be subordinate to the Soul, and the soul to the spirit. Or, in other words, the soul should serve as a working organ for the spirit, and the body is intended to carry out the activity of the soul. With a person undamaged by sin, this is exactly what happened: the Divine voice was heard in the very sanctuary of the spirit, the person understood this voice, sympathized with it, wished to fulfill its instruction (that is, the will of God) and fulfilled it by deed through the medium of his body. So it is now, most often, a person who has learned, with God's help, to always be guided by the voice of the Christian conscience, which is able to correctly distinguish between good and evil, thereby restoring the image of God in himself. Such a restored person is intrinsically whole, or, as they also say about him, purposeful or chaste. (In all words there is one root - whole, the same root in the word "healing." There is no internal discord in it. Conscience proclaims the will of God, the heart sympathizes with it, the mind considers the means for its implementation, the will desires and achieves, the body submits to the will without fear and murmuring. And after performing actions, conscience gives a person consolation on his morally correct path. But sin has perverted this correct order. And it is hardly possible in this life to meet a person who always lives chastely, wholeheartedly, according to his conscience. In a person who has not been reborn by God's grace in ascetic asceticism, his entire composition acts at odds. Conscience sometimes tries to insert its own word, but much louder is the voice of the soul's desires, focused mainly on carnal needs, moreover, often excessive and even perverted. The mind is directed to earthly calculations, and more often it is completely disconnected and is satisfied only with the incoming external information. The heart is guided by inconstant sympathies, which are also sinful. The person himself does not really know what he lives for, and therefore what he wants. And in all this discord, you can't understand who the commander is. Most likely, it is the body, because its needs are mostly in the first place. The soul is subordinate to the body, and the spirit and conscience are in the last place. But since such an order is clearly unnatural, it is constantly violated, and instead of wholeness in man there is a continuous internal struggle, the fruit of which is constant sinful suffering.

The Concept of Passions

This suffering arises from the fact that some forces of the soul or body claim the commanding role of the spirit in man and seize it. For example, the need for nutrition goes beyond the limits of reason and in many respects subordinates a person, forcing him to constantly take care of the quantity and quality of food. In this case, it is said that a person submits to the passion of gluttony. This is one of the most common carnal or bodily passions. Other carnal passions are: laziness, drunkenness, smoking, drug addiction, fornication (in its gross manifestation). In other words, carnal passions are perversely developed carnal needs. They often end in simple bodily disorders and illnesses. And rightly so. The body is a subordinate part. Trying to control a person, it cripples itself. More subtle, diverse, and dangerous are the passions of the soul: vanity, man-pleasing, envy, anger, idle talk... The love of money and fornication stand as it were between the physical and the mental, or rather, these are both bodily and spiritual passions. Finally, there are spiritual passions, the most indomitable and evil. They can be reduced to two. For people who do not live a spiritual life, the main passion is petrified insensibility or paralysis of the spirit. Those who try to live spiritually are beset by an equally terrible danger into which the devil once fell - this is pride, which exalts itself not just over people, but over God Himself. People sometimes try to fight their bodily and spiritual passions more or less successfully, but spiritual passions are completely incurable by our own efforts. Having developed in the soul of a person, they sometimes lead him to a complete loss of human appearance. An ordinary fallen person is a whole clot of different passions. Turning to Christ, he overcomes to a certain extent the petrified insensibility - only by the cooperation of God's grace. Further, the Christian spiritual life is a struggle with other passions, the end of which is the purification of the heart, the restoration of the image of God, the correct relationship between the spirit, soul and body. And most importantly, a person returns to the correct communion with God in Christ Jesus and in the Holy Spirit. The passionate state is essentially continuous and useless suffering. The word "passion" has the same root as the word "suffering." And the torment of passions can follow a person into eternity, if he does not have time to sincerely repent before death. And on the contrary, freedom from passions in the language of the Gospel is called blessedness, which means the absence of sinful suffering. For example, the poor in spirit and the weeping are free from petrified insensibility, the merciful are free from the love of money, and the meek and peacemakers are free from anger. In the Gospel, the Savior calls all of them blessed. And this bliss, of course, passes with them into eternity.

Freedom of man and his will

The choice between suffering and blessedness, between sin and virtue, between passions and God, is left to man himself, to his own will. Volition is a special function of the spirit, in which the whole mystery of the human personality is contained. It must be distinguished from the natural will. For example, we can say of a fasting person that he wants to eat, and we can say that he does not want to eat, but to fast. Both will be true if you understand correctly what is meant by the word "wants". He wants to eat by his natural will, but refuses food by his own will. In the same way, a martyr wants to live by his natural will, but chooses by his own will to suffer and die for Christ, in order to live eternally with Him. Our will is in a fallen, sinful state. Our desires remain unfaithful and corrupt long after we have voluntarily taken the side of God against sin. God, people, and demons act on our will, showing and inspiring us with various desires. But no one acts on our will except ourselves. That's how God arranged it. And this is one of the main mysteries of His creation, called man, that He does not want to interfere in our very sanctuary, leaving us our own choice between good and evil at our discretion. However, in a person who has conquered sinful passions and desires, the natural will does not contradict volition, and volition no longer chooses. The choice has already been made once and for all: a person has chosen the path of Christian life and strengthened himself on it, proving by his deeds where his will has inclined. Such a person has conquered only sinful temptations, not only coped with such things, he has also managed to overcome impure desires. And his natural will, in full and constant accord with his will, no longer seeks sin, as in the case of a passionate man who has not yet been cleansed. And on the contrary, the possibility of choice, the constant hesitation of this choice, testifies to the sinful fall of our will and our spirit, to our painful state of slavery to the passions. And the real freedom of a Christian is not the freedom of the present choice. It is the freedom of the past good and final choice in favor of God. In a person who is in a state of petrified insensibility, volition practically does not manifest itself independently. It is completely subordinate to the natural will, led by sinful passions. Here, too, everything was decided by the past evil choice, there is almost no freedom in sight, there is only a miserable slavery to passions. And yet, the freedom of will is not taken away from a person until death. As long as we are alive, we can repent. But even after repenting, we can return to sinful slavery again. Any choice is a matter of our free will! And now you see what a human being is according to the Divine plan and in real life: a very delicate, complex creature, standing on the verge of the visible world and the invisible; a creature corrupted by sin. How should it live in order to conform to the will of its Creator? For this purpose, the Lord left us His commandments.