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| Why This Opinion is to Be Rejected.
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Chapter 6. —Why This Opinion is to Be
Rejected.
6. We do not therefore reject this
opinion, because we fear to think of that holy and inviolable and
unchangeable Love, as the spouse of God the Father, existing as it
does from Him, but not as an offspring in order to beget the Word
by which all things are made; but because divine Scripture
evidently shows it to be false. For God said, “Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness;” and a little after it is said,
“So God created man in the image of God.”749
Certainly, in that it is of the
plural number, the word “our” would not be rightly used if man
were made in the image of one person, whether of the Father, or of
the Son, or of the Holy Spirit; but because he was made in the
image of the Trinity, on that account it is said, “After our
image.” But again, lest we should think that three Gods were to
be believed in the Trinity, whereas the same Trinity is one God, it
is said, “So God created man in the image of God,” instead of
saying, “In His own image.”
7. For such expressions are
customary in the Scriptures; and yet some persons, while
maintaining the Catholic faith, do not carefully attend to them, in
such wise that they think the words, “God made man in the image
of God,” to mean that the Father made man after the image of the
Son; and they thus desire to assert that the Son also is called God
in the divine Scriptures, as if there were not other most true and
clear proofs wherein the Son is called not only God, but also the
true God. For whilst they aim at explaining another difficulty in
this text, they become so entangled that they cannot extricate
themselves. For if the Father made man after the image of the Son,
so that he is not the image of the Father, but of the Son, then the
Son is unlike the Father. But if a pious faith teaches us, as it
does, that the Son is like the Father after an equality of essence,
then that which is made in the likeness of the Son must needs also
be made in the likeness of the Father. Further, if the Father made
man not in His own image, but in the image of His Son, why does He
not say, “Let us make man after Thy image and likeness,”
whereas He does say, “our;” unless it be because the image of
the Trinity was made in man, that in this way man should be the
image of the one true God, because the Trinity itself is the one
true God? Such expressions are innumerable in the Scriptures, but
it will suffice to have produced these. It is so said in the
Psalms, “Salvation belongeth unto the Lord; Thy blessing is upon
Thy people;”750
as if the
words were spoken to some one else, not to Him of whom it had been
said, “Salvation belongeth unto the Lord.” And again, “For by
Thee,” he says, “I shall be delivered from temptation, and by
hoping in my God I shall leap over the wall;”751
as if he said to some one else,
“By Thee I shall be delivered from temptation.” And again,
“In the heart of the king’s enemies; whereby the people fall
under Thee;”752
as if he
were to say, in the heart of Thy enemies. For he had said to that
King, that is, to our Lord Jesus Christ, “The people fall under
Thee,” whom he intended by the word King, when he said, “In the
heart of the king’s enemies.” Things of this kind are found
more rarely in the New Testament. But yet the apostle says to the
Romans, “Concerning His Son who was made to Him of the seed of
David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God
with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the
resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ our Lord;”753
as though he
were speaking above of some one else. For what is meant by the
Son of God declared by the resurrection of the dead of Jesus
Christ, except of the same Jesus Christ who was declared to be Son
of God with power? And as then in this passage, when we are told,
“the Son of God with power of Jesus Christ,” or “the Son of
God according to the spirit of holiness of Jesus Christ,” or
“the Son of God by the resurrection of the dead of Jesus
Christ,” whereas it might have been expressed in the ordinary
way, In His own power, or according to the spirit of His own
holiness, or by the resurrection of His dead, or of their dead: as,
I say, we are not compelled to understand another person, but one
and the same, that is, the person of the Son of God our Lord Jesus
Christ; so, when we are told that “God made man in the image of
God,” although it might have been more usual to say, after His
own image, yet we are not compelled to understand any other person
in the Trinity, but the one and selfsame Trinity itself, who is one
God, and after whose image man is made.
8. And since the case stands thus,
if we are to accept the same image of the Trinity, as not in one,
but in three human beings, father and mother and son, then the man
was not made after the image of God before a wife was made for him,
and before they procreated a son; because there was not yet a
trinity. Will any one say there was already a trinity, because,
although not yet in their proper form, yet in their original
nature, both the woman was already in the side of the man, and the
son in the loins of his father? Why then, when Scripture had said,
“God made man after the image of God,” did it go on to say,
“God created him; male and female created He them: and God
blessed them”?754
(Or if it is
to be so divided, “And God created man,” so that thereupon is
to be added, “in the image of God created He him,” and then
subjoined in the third place, “male and female created He
them;” for some have feared to say, He made him male and female,
lest something monstrous, as it were, should be understood, as are
those whom they call hermaphrodites, although even so both might be
understood not falsely in the singular number, on account of that
which is said, “Two in one flesh.”) Why then, as I began by
saying, in regard to the nature of man made after the image of God,
does Scripture specify nothing except male and female? Certainly,
in order to complete the image of the Trinity, it ought to have
added also son, although still placed in the loins of his father,
as the woman was in his side. Or was it perhaps that the woman also
had been already made, and that Scripture had combined in a short
and comprehensive statement, that of which it was going to explain
afterwards more carefully, how it was done; and that therefore a
son could not be mentioned, because no son was yet born? As if the
Holy Spirit could not have comprehended this, too, in that brief
statement, while about to narrate the birth of the son afterwards
in its own place; as it narrated afterwards in its own place, that
the woman was taken from the side of the man,755
and yet has not omitted here to
name her.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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