| | The aforementioned church father reveals a funky view of nature and grace (let funky = that which had not previously come to my attention). According to him, man was created by nature like any other beast, and the image of God was a gracious addition to this nature.
"Having taken especial pity, above all things on earth, upon the race of men, and having perceived its inability, by virtue of the condition of its origin, to continue in one stay [say what?--A the P], He gave them a further gift, and He did not barely create man, as He did all the irrational creatures on the earth, but made them after His own image, giving them a portion even of the power of His own Word...." And later, "For transgression of the commandment was turning them back to their natural state, so that just as they have had their being out of nothing, so also as might be expected, they might look for corruption into nothing in the course of time." And further, "Men...being, as I said before, by nature corruptible, but destined, by the grace following from partaking of the Word, to have escaped their natural state, had they remained good." (De Incarnatione, 3.2, 4.2, 5.1.)
Th'only reason I thought it was funky is because he almost implies that it comes in two stages: man was an animal like all the others until, somewhere in the process of creation, God took pity on him, lifting him out of his ignorance by bestowing on him the image of God. It's also how Athanasius explains man's capacity to decay and die--the loss of the image of God through sin returns him to his natural state. Previously, assuming that man was an image-bearer in his natural state, his default condition being one of perfect communion with God, I had wondered how man's sinless nature was capable of corruption while God's sinless nature was not.
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| | Posted 2/26/2009 5:38 PM - 118 Views - 8 eProps - 6 comments
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