04 — Image and Likeness
Theosis presupposes an anthropology, and without it the doctrine is unintelligible. The human being is created in the image of God and set moving toward the likeness; the image is not a faculty but a relation to an Archetype, and the Archetype is Christ. This section sets out that anthropology, then the fallen condition it must reckon with — the garments of skin and the ancestral wound — and shows why deification is the fulfilment of human nature rather than its violation.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox
Contents
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| image-likeness-and-the-archetype.md | Genesis 1:26 and the Irenaean distinction of image and likeness; the image as relation rather than faculty; Christ as the archetype of the human and man as “the image of the Image”; why deification completes nature |
| the-garments-of-skin-and-the-ancestral-wound.md | The fall as read in the East: ancestral sin, inherited mortality and not inherited guilt; the garments of skin as consequence and provision; and how a wounded creature is nonetheless a deifiable one |
Reading Order
Read image-likeness-and-the-archetype.md first for the constitution of the human being as the doctrine requires it, then the-garments-of-skin-and-the-ancestral-wound.md for the condition in which that constitution is actually found and what the fall did and did not destroy.
See Also
- Master README — collection overview and navigation
- 03 — The Patristic Witness — the Fathers from whom this anthropology comes
- 05 — Essence and Energies — the divine side of the same question, next in sequence
- Panayiotis Nellas — the modern exposition on which this section leans
- Theological Anthropology — the hub article
- Ancestral Sin vs. Original Sin — the doctrine of the fall in its Eastern form