I have some texts in english from the early christian writings regarding free will, which is what signifies in the christian theology "the image of God"
John of the Ladder, a sixth century Desert Father, in his spiritual classic
The Ladder of Divine Ascent wrote:
Of the rational beings created by Him and
honoured with the dignity of free-will, some are His friends, others are His true servants, some are worthless, some are completely estranged from God, and others, though feeble creatures, are His opponents (1991:3).
Justin Martyr and “The Philosopher” wrote:
For the coming into being at first was not in our own power; and in order that we may follow those things which please Him,
choosing them by means of the rational faculties He has Himself endowed us with, He both persuades us and leads us to faith (
First Apology 10;
Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. I, p. 165).
St. Irenaeus concurs:
This expression of our Lord, "How often would I have gathered thy children together,
and thou wouldest not, (Matthew 23:37) II , set forth the ancient law of human liberty,
because God made man a free agent from the beginning, possessing his own power,
even as he does his own soul, to obey the behests of God voluntarily, and not by
compulsion of God. For there is no coercion with God, but a good will towards us is
present with Him continually. And therefore does He give good counsel to all. In man,
as well as the angels, He has placed the power of choice...so that those who had yielded
obedience might rightly possess the good, given indeed by God, but preserved by
themselves. On, the other hand, they who have not obeyed, shall, with justice, be not
found in possession of the good, and shall receive condign punishment : for God did
kindly bestow on them what was good;... (
Against the Heresies, IV, 37, I).
and a fragment from Kallistos Ware, with references to the early texts:
The Creation of Man. "
And God said, let us make man according to our image and likeness" (Genesis 1:26). God speaks in the plural: "
Let us make man." The creation of man, so the Greek Fathers continually emphasized, was an act of all three persons in the Trinity, and therefore the image and likeness of God must always be thought of as a Trinitarian image and likeness. We shall find that this is a point of vital importance.
Image and Likeness. According to most of the Greek Fathers, the terms
image and
likeness do not mean exactly the same thing. ‘The expression
according to the image,’ wrote John of Damascus, ‘indicates rationality and freedom, while the expression
according to the likeness indicates assimilation to God through virtue
(On the Orthodox Faith, 2, 12 (P.G. 94, 920B)). The image, or to use the Greek term the icon, of God signifies man’s free will, his reason, his sense of moral responsibility — everything, in short, which marks man out from the animal creation and makes him a
person. But the image means more than that. It means that we are God’s ‘offspring’ (Acts 27:28), His kin; it means that between us and Him there is a point of contact, an essential similarity. The gulf between creature and Creator is not impassable, for because we are in God’s image we can know God and have communion with Him. And if a man makes proper use of this faculty for communion with God, then he will become ‘like’ God, he will acquire the divine likeness; in the words of John Damascene, he will be ‘assimilated to God through virtue.’ To acquire the likeness is to be deified, it is to become a ‘second god,’ a ‘god by grace.’ "
I said, you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High" (Psalm 81:6).
(In quotations from the Psalms, the numbering of the Septuagint is followed. Some versions of the Bible reckon this Psalm as 82.)
"Man at his first creation was therefore perfect, not so much in an actual as in a potential sense. Endowed with the image from the start, he was called to acquire the likeness by his own efforts (assisted of course by the grace of God). Adam began in a state of innocence and simplicity. ‘He was a child, not yet having his understanding perfected,’ wrote Irenaeus. ‘It was necessary that he should grow and so come to his perfection
(Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, 12). God set Adam on the right path, but Adam had in front of him a long road to traverse in order to reach his final goal.
This picture of Adam before the fall is somewhat different from that presented by Saint Augustine and generally accepted in the west since his time. According to Augustine, man in Paradise was endowed from the start with all possible wisdom and knowledge: his was a realized, and in no sense potential, perfection. The dynamic conception of Irenaeus clearly fits more easily with modern theories of evolution than does the static conception of Augustine; but both were speaking as theologians, not as scientists, so that in neither case do their views stand or fall with any particular scientific hypothesis.
The west has often associated the image of God with man’s intellect. While many Orthodox have done the same, others would say that since man is a single unified whole, the image of God embraces his entire person, body as well as soul. ‘When God is said to have made man according to His image,’ wrote Gregory Palamas, ‘the word man means neither the soul by itself nor the body by itself, but the two together
(P.G. 150, 1361C). The fact that man has a body, so Gregory argued, makes him not lower but higher than the angels. True, the angels are ‘pure’ spirit, whereas man’s nature is ‘mixed’ — material as well as intellectual; but this means that his nature is more complete than the angelic and endowed with richer potentialities. Man is a microcosm, a bridge and point of meeting for the whole of God’s creation."
