The man created in God’s image - the spiritual axis of the world. Saint Gregory of Nyssa’s theology
The man created in God’s image - the spiritual axis of the world. Saint Gregory of Nyssa’s theology

Summary/Abstract: Man has been created at the crossroads between the material and the spiritualthings, being given the greatest honour among creatures, since he is the onlyone edified in God’s image and likeness. With Saint Gregory, the image doesnot mean, as in Platonism, the rough analogy of the sensitive world in relationto the intelligible world, but participation, a communion, yet without supposinga transfer of substance. There are two levels of the image in his theology:Christ – Logos of the Father, archetypal image, on this level the imagesupposing the very communion of nature, the hypostatizing of the unique divinebeing, and man – image of the Logos, level on which the image supposes theontological distinction, yet simultaneously, by its quality of direct image, ofnon-mediated reflection, is a faithful image, this image containing in itselfprecisely the promise of communion, though, by its character, it has to definethe eternity of the distinction between created and uncreated.

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