Gen. i. 26. “The ancient Church very
accurately distinguished between εἰκών (image)
and ὁμοίωσις
(likeness), and the Greek Church does the same in its
Confession. The latter phrase expresses man’s destination,
which is not to be regarded as carried out at the moment of
creation. (Dorner, System of Christian Doctrine, E. Tr.
II. p. 78). The image lies in the permanent capacities of
man’s nature (Gen. ix. 6; 1 Cor. xi. 7; Jas. iii.
9), the likeness
in their realisation in moral conformity with God (ὁμοήθειαν
Θεοῦ, Ignatius, Magnes vi).
“The image of God is a comprehensive thing.…To this belongs
man’s intellective power, his liberty of will, his dominion over
the other creatures flowing from the two former. These make up
the τὸ
οὐσιῶδες, that
part of that divine image which is natural and essential to man, and
consequently can never be wholly blotted out, defaced, or extinguished,
but still remains even in man fallen. But beside these the Church
of God hath ever acknowledged, in the first man, certain additional
ornaments, and as it were complements of the divine image, such as
immortality, grace, holiness, righteousness, whereby man approached
more nearly to the similitude and likeness of God. These were (if
I may so speak) the lively colours wherein the grace, the beauty, and
lustre of the divine image principally consisted; these colours faded,
yea, were defaced and blotted out by man’s transgression.
(Bull, The State of Man before the Fall, Vol. ii. p. 114,
Ox.). Cf. Iren. (V. vi. § 1; xvi. § 2);
Tertullian (de Baptismo, c. 5); Clem. Alex. (Exhort. c.
12); Origen (c. Cels. IV. 30).