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Handout #82 |
Gregory of Nyssa (335-394 A.D.) |
| The image and
similitude of God in man
It is true, indeed, that the divine beauty is not adorned with any shape or endowment of form with any beauty of color, but is given the form of excellence in unspeakable bliss. As painters transfer human forms to their pictures by means of certain colors, laying on their copy the proper and corresponding tints, so that the beauty of the original may be accurately transferred to the likeness, so I would have you understand that our Maker also, painting the portrait to resemble his own beauty, by the addition of virtues, as it were with colors, shows in its his own sovereignty; and manifold and varied are the tints, so to say, by which his true form is portrayed, not red, or white, or the blending of these, whatever it may be called, nor a touch of black that paints the eyebrow and the eye, and shades, by some combination, the depressions in the figure, and all such arts which the hands of painters contrive, but instead of these, purity, freedom from passion, blessedness, alienation from all evil, and all those attributes of the like kind which help to form in man the likeness of God: with such hues as these did the maker of his own image mark our nature. And if you were to examine the other points also by which the divine beauty is expressed, you will find that to them too the likeness in the image which we present is perfectly preserved. The Godhead is in minds and word for 'in the beginning was the Word, and the followers of Paul have the mind of Christ which speaks in them: humanity too is not far removed from these: you see in yourself word and understanding, an imitation of the very mind and word. Again, God is love, and the fount of love: for this the great John declares, that 'love is of God, and God is love': the fashioner of our nature has made this to be our feature too: for hereby, he says, 'shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another' thus, if this be absent, the whole stamp of the likeness is transformed. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man V. |
