Greek patristic foundations for a theological anthropology of women in their distinctiveness as human beings

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Greek patristic foundations for a theological anthropology of women in their distinctiveness as human beings
Anglican Theological Review, Summer 2002 by Parmentier, Martien

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3818/is_200207/ai_n9142716/pg_1

Arguments from theological anthropology play a not unimportant role in the debate about the ordination of women. Of what significance for the theology of ministry is the verse about human beings as man and woman having been created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27)? What is the relationship between this passage describing human beings as created in the image of God and Colossians 1:15, which names Christ as the image of God? What significance does the concrete maleness of Jesus Christ have in this context? What is the relationship between human beings, men and women, as the image of God and the divine original? These four questions will be investigated in this essay with reference to selected texts from Greek church fathers. But first of all, we consider some relevant texts from Scripture:

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Then God said, "Let us make a human being in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created the human being in his own image, in the image of God he created him: male and female he made them (Gen. 1:26-27).

but we preach . . . Christ the power and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24).

But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God (1 Cor. 11:3).

For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man (1 Cor. 11:7).

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28).

He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation (Col. 1:15).

The theme of the "image of God" dominates the Christology, anthropology, and spirituality of both the Greek and the Latin fathers of the church. We will limit our present investigation to the Greek fathers.1

The Human Being Created in the Image of God

The desert father Daniel (fifth century) says this in the Gerontikon:

In the beginning God took dust from the earth and formed the human being in his image, and nobody can say that he is not an image of God, even though it is incomprehensible.2

This incomprehensibility has led to a variety of opinions concerning the question as to when and where the image of God is to be discerned.

At which moment did the human being become the image of God?

Philo, Origen, and Evagrius interpret Genesis 1 and 2 as the expression of two distinct creations, the first as the creation of minds, the ... , in the image of God, the second as the moment at which these minds, which had already fallen into time and corruptibility, were joined to bodies. This Origenist proposition was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 553. The Orthodox fathers hold to one creation only and most of them agree that the image of God is given to human beings at their birth as a natural gift. Because of the fall, however, this image is more or less obscured.

There are patristic writers who look upon the new creation at baptism as the moment at which the assimilation to God either takes place or takes place afresh. They often use vigorous imagery. Thus Didymus (313-398) says, at baptism:

we receive the image and likeness of God which we know from scripture and which we had been given through divine inspiration and lost through sin, and we become again as we were in the first-- formed: sinless and self-determining, for this is what image and likeness mean.3

The question raised here is the old question of the depth of the fall. Has Adam completely lost the image of God by his sin or was it only obscured? Generally speaking, the Greek fathers are more optimistic here than Western theologians, especially since the Middle Ages. Origen, Athanasius, and Basil are of the opinion that the image of God is indestructible, even when it is hidden by sin. Epiphanius and Jerome incorrectly attribute to Origen the opinion that humanity has lost the image and likeness of God altogether because of sin.4

Several authors distinguish two levels of being in the image of God. One level is that of the image ..., which humanity already possesses in the present, and the other is the level of the likeness ...), which was lost in the fall and which humanity can only regain through the life in Christ. Many church fathers, however, do not distinguish between image and likeness. Cyril of Alexandria, for example, argues extensively against this distinction in his ninth letter.5 Gregory of Nyssa distinguishes two stages in humanity's creation according to the image: first an asexual and immortal stage, and a second stage after the fall, when humanity finds itself both sexual and mortal.6

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Finally, we can observe that for all the fathers the reestablishment of the either lost or obscured image is the work of salvation through Christ.


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