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| How Man is the Image of God. Whether the Woman is Not Also the Image of God. How the Saying of the Apostle, that the Man is the Image of God, But the Woman is the Glory of the Man, is to Be Understood Figuratively and Mystically.
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Chapter 7.—How Man is the Image of God. Whether the
Woman is Not Also the Image of God. How the Saying of the Apostle,
that the Man is the Image of God, But the Woman is the Glory of the
Man, is to Be Understood Figuratively and Mystically.
9. We ought not therefore so to
understand that man is made in the image of the supreme Trinity,
that is, in the image of God, as that the same image should be
understood to be in three human beings; especially when the apostle
says that the man is the image of God, and on that account removes
the covering from his head, which he warns the woman to use,
speaking thus: “For a man indeed ought not to cover his head,
forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the
glory of the man.” What then shall we say to this? If the woman
fills up the image of the trinity after the measure of her own
person, why is the man still called that image after she has been
taken out of his side? Or if even one person of a human being out
of three can be called the image of God, as each person also is God
in the supreme Trinity itself, why is the woman also not the image
of God? For she is instructed for this very reason to cover her
head, which he is forbidden to do because he is the image of God.756
10. But we must notice how that
which the apostle says, that not the woman but the man is the image
of God, is not contrary to that which is written in Genesis, “God
created man: in the image of God created He him; male and female
created He them: and He blessed them.” For this text says that
human nature itself, which is complete [only] in both sexes, was
made in the image of God; and it does not separate the woman from
the image of God which it signifies. For after saying that
God made man in the image of God, “He created him,” it says,
“male and female:” or at any rate, punctuating the words
otherwise, “male and female created He them.” How then did the
apostle tell us that the man is the image of God, and therefore he
is forbidden to cover his head; but that the woman is not so, and
therefore is commanded to cover hers? Unless, forsooth, according
to that which I have said already, when I was treating of the
nature of the human mind, that the woman together with her own
husband is the image of God, so that that whole substance may be
one image; but when she is referred separately to her quality of
help-meet, which regards the woman herself alone, then she
is not the image of God; but as regards the man alone, he is the
image of God as fully and completely as when the woman too is
joined with him in one. As we said of the nature of the human mind,
that both in the case when as a whole it contemplates the truth it
is the image of God; and in the case when anything is divided from
it, and diverted in order to the cognition of temporal things;
nevertheless on that side on which it beholds and consults truth,
here also it is the image of God, but on that side whereby it is
directed to the cognition of the lower things, it is not the image
of God. And since it is so much the more formed after the image of
God, the more it has extended itself to that which is eternal, and
is on that account not to be restrained, so as to withhold and
refrain itself from thence; therefore the man ought not to cover
his head. But because too great a progression towards inferior
things is dangerous to that rational cognition that is conversant
with things corporeal and temporal; this ought to have power on its
head, which the covering indicates, by which it is signified that
it ought to be restrained. For a holy and pious meaning is pleasing
to the holy angels.757
For God sees not after the way of
time, neither does anything new take place in His vision and
knowledge, when anything is done in time and transitorily, after
the way in which such things affect the senses, whether the carnal
senses of animals and men, or even the heavenly senses of the
angels.
11. For that the Apostle Paul, when
speaking outwardly of the sex of male and female, figured the
mystery of some more hidden truth, may be understood from this,
that when he says in another place that she is a widow indeed who
is desolate, without children and nephews, and yet that she ought
to trust in God, and to continue in prayers night and day,758
he here
indicates, that the woman having been brought into the
transgression by being deceived, is brought to salvation by
child-bearing; and then he has added, “If they continue in faith,
and charity, and holiness, with sobriety.”759
As if it could possibly hurt a good
widow, if either she had not sons, or if those whom she had did not
choose to continue in good works. But because those things which
are called good works are, as it were, the sons of our life,
according to that sense of life in which it answers to the
question, What is a man’s life? that is, How does he act in these
temporal things? which life the Greeks do not call ξωή but
βίος; and
because these good works are chiefly performed in the way of
offices of mercy, while works of mercy are of no profit, either to
Pagans, or to Jews who do not believe in Christ, or to any heretics
or schismstics whatsoever in whom faith and charity and sober
holiness are not found: what the apostle meant to signify is plain,
and in so far figuratively and mystically, because he was speaking
of covering the head of the woman, which will remain mere empty
words, unless referred to some hidden sacrament.
12. For, as not only most true
reason but also the authority of the apostle himself declares, man
was not made in the image of God according to the shape of his
body, but according to his rational mind. For the thought is a
debased and empty one, which holds God to be circumscribed and
limited by the lineaments of bodily members. But further, does not
the same blessed apostle say, “Be renewed in the spirit of your
mind, and put on the new man, which is created after God;”760
and in
another place more clearly, “Putting off the old man,” he says,
“with his deeds; put on the new man, which is renewed to the
knowledge of God after the image of Him that created him?”761
If, then, we
are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and he is the new man who is
renewed to the knowledge of God after the image of Him that created
him; no one can doubt, that man was made after the image of Him
that created him, not according to the body, nor indiscriminately
according to any part of the mind, but according to the rational
mind, wherein the knowledge of God can exist. And it is according
to this renewal, also, that we are made sons of God by the baptism
of Christ; and putting on the new man, certainly put on Christ
through faith. Who is there, then, who will hold women to be alien
from this fellowship, whereas they are fellow-heirs of grace with
us; and whereas in another place the same apostle says, “For ye
are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus; for as many
as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ: there is
neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is
neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus?”762
Pray, have
faithful women then lost their bodily sex? But because they are
there renewed after the image of God, where there is no sex; man is
there made after the image of God, where there is no sex, that is,
in the spirit of his mind. Why, then, is the man on that account
not bound to cover his head, because he is the image and glory of
God, while the woman is bound to do so, because she is the glory of
the man; as though the woman were not renewed in the spirit of her
mind, which spirit is renewed to the knowledge of God after the
image of Him who created him? But because she differs from the man
in bodily sex, it was possible rightly to represent under her
bodily covering that part of the reason which is diverted to the
government of temporal things; so that the image of God may remain
on that side of the mind of man on which it cleaves to the
beholding or the consulting of the eternal reasons of things; and
this, it is clear, not men only, but also women have.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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