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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." 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;" 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;" 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;" 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;" 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 says 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"? (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, and yet has not omitted here
to name her.
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