3.

 What is meant by the a) image and b) likeness of God in the creation of man?

            These words are from the “prophecy of the past,” as St. John Chrysostom calls Moses' exalted vision of what the world was in the beginning.

And God said: let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them (Gen 1:26-27).

Regarding this act of creation of mankind, Metropolitan Philaret, former First Hierarch of the Russian Church in Exile, explained that “the Creator made man after His image and likeness and placed the imprint of this image on man's very being, on human nature itself.” Also commenting on this passage, the Holy Fathers draw a distinction between the words image and likeness.

            Orthodox theology lays a tremendous emphasis on the image of God in man. Image is taken to mean a share in the spiritual attributes of the Creator. Image is that which distinguishes man from animal creation, and it includes qualities of rationality, free will, and man's sense of moral responsibility, qualities with which every man, from the first moment of his existence, is endowed by God. To be created in God's image means that people are God's offspring and that between God and man is an essential similarity. However sinful a man may become, the image of God in him is indestructible. As the Fathers state, the image is given to us in full and cannot be lost. Moreover, in patristic theology it is said that the image of God in man is stronger than in angels, precisely because man has a nous (the eye of the soul), word and spirit, the spirit quickening the body joined to it, which is not the case with the angels.

            The likeness of God, however, is given in the beginning only potentially, and man himself was to work on attaining its perfection. Likeness is a goal, it is what man must aim at and work for. Man is created in God's image and can know and have communion with His Creator and participate in His nature. Man is also made to become ever more like God for all eternity. If man properly uses the faculty for communion with God, he acquires by degree a divine likeness. Man becomes, in the words of St. John of Damascus, “assimilated to God through virtue.” Likeness, or moral perfection, is something man is called to acquire through his own efforts and moral choices (though in conjunction with the grace of God, of course). As Archpriest Seraphim Slobodskoy comments:

The likeness of God depends on the direction of spiritual abilities. This requires that man work on himself spiritually. If a man strives for truth and good, for the righteousness of God, then he becomes like God. However, if a man loves only himself, lies, makes enemies, does evil, cares only for earthly goods, thinks only about his body and does not care for his soul, then such a person ceases to be in the likeness of God and becomes in his life like a beast, and can finally become like an evil spirit, a devil [The Law of God, p. 112].

Parenthetically, regarding the same passage quoted above from the book of Genesis, it is important to note that the name of God (Elohim in the Hebrew text) has the grammatical form of the plural number. Moreover, the first person pronoun Us and the possessive adjectives Our are likewise plural.

            The same plural form of the name of God appears even earlier in the original Hebrew text of the Bible. It appears in the very first lines (Genesis 1:1), along with the verb created (bara), which is in the singular. Thus, the beginning lines of Old Testament Scripture start out by revealing the singular essence of the Persons (plural) of the Holy Trinity. Archpriest Seraphim Slobodskoy explains that these very first lines of the Bible say, as it were, “In the beginning, Gods (the three Persons of the Holy Trinity), created Heaven and earth.”

            Another of the Old Testament passages that expresses the Tri-Unity of God (there are twelve such passages) is that of Isaiah 6:3. The Seraphim who stand around the throne of God offer doxology in triple form, saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” The Fathers see this passage as an indirect reference to the Holy Trinity, to God's Tri-Personal Being.

            Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky lists other indications of the Trinity of Persons of God. This truth, Fr. Michael notes, is expressed in the Old Testament in a veiled way, only half-revealed, beginning, it bears repeating, in the very first lines of the Bible, in Genesis 1:1. As another writer adds, God did not yet reveal Himself as a Triune God lest the Hebrews apostatize to the polytheism of their neighbors and worship false “gods,” that is, demons, for “the gods of the heathens are demons” (Ps 95:5 [Russian Bible], Ps 96:5 [English ]). As Fr. Michael concludes, the Old Testament testimonies of the Holy Trinity are revealed and explained in the light of the Christian faith.

            In the New Testament, the plurality of the Tri-Hypostatic God is more explicitly revealed to be the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One in Essence, Ever-Existing, Undivided and Indivisible. As Archpriest Vladimir Glindsky explains:

The mystery of the Tri-Unity was shown in part in the Old Testament, and clearly proclaimed in the Gospel. The Lord Jesus Christ commanded belief in the Holy Trinity and defined Its Persons. His Holy Apostles taught the Christians the worship of the indivisible Triune God. After the Apostles, the consciousness of the Church always piously protected the faith in the Holy Trinity. In the fourth century, the Ecumenical Councils, defending the Apostolic faith from heresies, promulgated dogmas concerning the individual attributes of the Persons of the Trinity, thus creating the Creed. Therefore, the Orthodox Christian believes, serves, worships [the Holy Trinity and protects] with all his might his faith in the Trinitarian Truth [“Fundamentals of the Orthodox Christian Faith,” Orthodox Life, vol. 51, no. 1, 2001, pp. 30-31].