Sin and deliverance from it in Orthodoxy: anthropological aspects

Imago et similitudo Dei: the meaning of humans being God’s image and likeness investigated from a Christianphilosophical perspective This investigation is an effort to determine the meaning of the Biblical revelation that human beings were created in the image and likeness of God and to do so from a Christian-philosophical perspective. The following steps are taken: The introduction is a reminder that one’s view of reality (ontology) and of being human (anthropology) is decisive in terms of how one will understand the meaning of “imago Dei”. It is illustrated, firstly in the older essentialistic (or ontological) viewpoints, which explained the image of God in man analogically, in other words as similarity and difference between the divine and human natures. Next, it is indicated that the more recent relational viewpoints on the image of God also cannot really indicate its full richness. The next section provides an exposition of how a few reformational philosophers understood this mysterious Biblical expression about the human being. It is indicated how their viewpoint about human beings can solve many misconceptions connected with the “imago et similitudo Dei” and also open new, wider perspectives. The concluding part will summarise the results of the investigation.

Adresatami tekstów biblijnych mówiących o grzechu Adama i jego skutkach dla całej ludzkości są ludzie żyjący już pod jego wpływem. Od początku objawienie wyznacza perspektywę odkupienia dla człowieka dotkniętego grzechem pierworodnym. Właśnie ta perspektywa jest kluczem interpretacyjnym objawionej rzeczywistości. Perspektywa odkupienia prowadzi do Chrystusa. Przez grzech Adama ludzka natura została pozbawiona łaski uświęcającej oraz pewnych darów wiążących się ze stanem pierwotnym. Człowiek wciąż jest obrazem Boga i jest do Niego podobny, ale grzech pierworodny ogranicza wyrazistość tej fundamentalnej właściwości ludzkości stworzone przez Boga, a człowieka stawia na drodze oczekiwania na przyjście jego Odkupiciela. Chrześcijańska koncepcja śmierci nie ogranicza się jedynie do jej nieuchronności i powszechności oraz ścisłego związku z grzechem i nieposłuszeństwem. Chrystus rzucił nowe światło na jej tajemnicę. W świetle tym śmierć jawi się jako narzędzie zbawienia, a oddanie życia jako wykonanie Bożej woli w imię posłuszeństwa. Natura człowieka jest wyznacznikiem „porządku stworzenia” i tworzy ścisły związek z rzeczywistością Bożego obrazu. Z jego „trynitarnym rozumieniem” wiąże się kategoria daru, poprzez który mężczyzna i kobieta w communio personarum stają się jednością. Grzech pierworodny nie zniszczył tego układu. Historia mężczyzny i kobiety jest zapisem zbawczego dopełniania się „oblubieńczego” znaczenia ludzkiego ciała. Podstawą tego zapisu jest obraz Boży w człowieku, a jego głębia dotyka tajników ludzkiego serca.

According to Father Stăniloae, if God is transcendent, He is persona, and His personal character assures His transcendence. His persona transcends even His infinity. Likewise, the image of God in man lies essentially in the character of the person: every person becomes a new “eye” of spiritual transparency. The most adequate, expressive and communicative image of the supreme Image is the human being, or more precisely, the human face. Starting from the fact that personhood is no longer experienced as a mystery, Stăniloae turns to the Bible, which testifies that the face (panim) is the essence of a person. This biblical theology of God’s shining face or presence (panim) is the key to understanding Father Stăniloae’s eschatology and, by extension, his entire theology of the person. There is a dynamic and revelatory movement from the anthropological dimension of eikon–tselem (“image of God”) in his earlier studies, such as God’s Immortal Image, to the later theology of personhood in Volume 6 of his Dogmatics, which is indebted to the biblical dimension of prosōpon–panim (the human “face” of Christ). Eternal bliss, according to him, will be the contemplation of the face of Christ; this is the “eternal perspective of deification” — the divine energies conceived in and radiated from the face of Christ.

CHAPTER FOUR. The Image of God in Man: Before the Fall

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The church's mission (Missio Ecclesia) is to positively impact lives by bringing transformation to man and their environment. The Missio Ecclesia seeks to bring man back to God, acknowledging that, irrespective of man’s situation, every human has a part of God (Imago Dei). The early European Missionary enterprise in Africa, therefore, in an attempt to attain the church's mission, built social amenities like schools and hospitals as an evangelistic strategy. In modern times, the Church of Pentecost (CoP) has adopted prison reforms as one of its evangelistic strategies. Ministry to the marginalised, like prisoners, has a long Christian history as a targeted ministry of restoring the image of God in man. Adopting a historical lens, the paper traces the roots of prison ministry from early Christianity through the African missionary endeavours of the 15th century. Through a mixed method approach, this paper constructs the motivation of the CoP’s initiative to establish camp prisons as Inmate Skill Acquisition and Reformation Centres (ISARC) in Ghana. The paper identifies through interviews decongestion, biblical mandate, and reformation as the main push factors for the CoP in this initiative. The findings illuminate the positive impact of the CoP’s prison reform initiative while highlighting the need for sustained efforts, intentional support, and comprehensive reintegration programmes to ensure long-term success and societal benefits.

A Critical Analysis Of The Image Of God In Man According To Karl Barth

In the article the author analyzes the time ontology as noumenal relation, developed in the treatises of Ja.S. Druskin and genetically associated with the “leap” to biblical thinking implemented by L.I. Shestov. It is shown that the path of “conversion” of consciousness described by Ja.S. Druskin has the character of “inner mystery” of the soul, ascending to the counter gifts of the Spirit. This is a kind of “inner ritual” that the soul performs in every momentary effort to stand before the Creator and Judge, seeking reciprocal grace. Methodologically Ja.S. Druskin radicalizes the way of overcoming the “natural attitude” of consciousness, started by E. Husserl, and characterizes it as “philosophical paganism”, which can be overcome only by the biblical attitude of consciousness. The latter is a relation that transcends any ontology of the created world and carries out the act of returning the created “I” to its uncreated image, which is assumed as a relation to the absolute “Thou” of the Creator. This is the “personal eternity” that opens not as a logical timelessness, but as a special vision – as being in the Face of God. Exploring the architectonics of the noumenal “I – You” relationship, Ja.S. Druskin develops the philosophy of dialogue as new Philosophia prima, which includes the whole gamut of the traditional metaphysical problematics in the context of the primary absolute “I – Thou” relationship, including rethinking the category of time. In this context, the category of time acquires new eschatological meaning, since it is fi lled not with just simple duration, but with the process of human transformation – the transition from the “shadow of death” into eternity, from the state of immanent lies to the recovery of the gift of grace and the rediscovery of the image of God in man.

The Pauline Concept Of The Restoration Of The Image Of God In Man

Sophia is a Greek word commonly translated as “wisdom,” and in the Septuagint Old Testament it translates the Hebrew “Hochmah.” In the so‐called “Wisdom Books” of the Old Testament (Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Sirach, The Wisdom of Solomon, and in some lists, Psalms and the Song of Songs), Sophia is the Divine Wisdom, sometimes personified as a beautiful woman (Prov. 8:1–9:6; Wisd. of Sol. 7:22–29). In these, and other books of the Old Testament, meanings of Sophia range from the skillfulness that yields practical success, to the precepts of virtuous living, to the deep principles of divine creation and governance that underlie and rule the cosmos, along with the human ability to apprehend these principles and live in accordance with them. But underlying all these senses is the insistence that true wisdom comes from God (Sir 1:1: “All wisdom comes from the Lord, and is with Him forever”), implying both that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 111:10; Prov. 1:7, 9:10), and that this genuine wisdom makes foolish the wisdom of the world, even while it seems to the world itself like folly (1 Cor. 1:18–23). In the New Testament, St. Paul associates the divine wisdom with Christ (1 Cor. 1:24), who in the Prolog to the Gospel of St. John is said to be the eternal Logos, by whom all things were created, the source of light and life. Sophia is often discussed in patristic writings, where it begins to be associated not just with the Son, but with the Holy Spirit as well. Subsequently, some of Christendom's greatest churches, especially in the Greek East (e.g. in Constantinople and Thessalonica), were named Hagia Sophia, or The Holy Wisdom of God, and dedicated to Christ. Eventually, in Russia (e.g. in Novgorod and Kiev), churches of the Holy Sophia began to be dedicated to the Theotokos, the Mother of God, i.e. the Virgin Mary. Meanwhile, parallel to these developments, there arose Gnostic, hermetic, and kabbalistic traditions of speculation concerning Sophia, reemerging much later in Germany in the theosophical mysticism of Jacob Böhme, which was in turn taken up into the thought of Franz von Baader and F. W. J. Schelling.

This chapter traces the academic development of postmodern theology and gender studies, from the feminist theologies of the 1960s–1980s through the ‘linguistic turn’ to the emergence of the concept of ‘intersectionality’. Beattie argues that gender theory restores to theology the forgotten wisdom of its own tradition with regard to language and the interpretation of scripture. However, she cautions against the Manichaean seductions of postmodernism, arguing that the theology of gender must be rooted in the goodness of creation, including the human created male and female in the image of God. Analysing differences between Protestant and Catholic theologies in terms of grace and sacramentality, and with reference to Christian mysticism, she argues for a contemplative, sacramental theology of gender that is open to the divine mystery, animated by desire while remaining attentive to the distorting effects of sin on desire, and actively expressed in love of neighbour and of creation.

The article considers the marginal fear of despair, which causes a vacuum in the soul as an explication of the anxiety of nothingness and uncontrolled fear of death are chains of a single process, symptoms of the «creative disease» of European culture. Unfortunately, modern culture rejects marginal fear as something superfluous, unnecessary to man, as something outdated and does not meet today’s needs. Ironically, the first «bells» of secular culture began to sound in the late Middle Ages. As anxiety, it can destroy human life on an individual and social level. But in fact fear is necessary and cannot be completely eradicated. One must always balance between security and freedom, moving towards the other as a value. First, the main content of the methodological analysis of fear is one way or another, the metaphysical break of man with society, need or necessity. According to Protestant philosophers, the Fear of God (marginal fear) creates a set of religious and existential barriers that existentially prevent man from sin and evil, and at the same time it is the «beginning of wisdom», «the beginning of love», and even more so unites all believers in one common, consolidating and optimizing Fear. It was then that the accents began to change and in the face of death, man discovered the secret of his individuality. This connection shown by the Epicureans was long removed from the system of collective ideas and re-established in the minds of people only in the late Middle Ages. And since then individualism has influenced today’s world. The anxiety of non-existence, which destroys the logocentrism of being and the fear of death as a logical consequence of this anxiety lead to the marginalization of man, his attempts to somehow justify his existence, which results in individual destructive forms such as suicide (when anxiety grows into despair) destructive forms: neo-fascism, extremism, racism (in case of substitution of the Absolute by quasi-absolute). It is clear that in this way a person, in a situation of lonely, alienated existence in the world, distracts himself with surrogates of meaning, avoiding feelings of anxiety.

Many see the difference between neighbourly love and brotherly love in the restricted object of the latter. Consequently, the latter is seen as a deficient form of the former. This view depends upon the classification of both concepts into the same category. However, this classification is wrong. Attitudes are dispositions to act, and they have the mode of possibility. Therefore, attitudes can become the content of commandments. But, love can also be understood as a real relationship constituting the identity of the relata. In this case, love is not a possibility but a fact. Consequently, it cannot be commanded. The effect of God's reconciling work is the constitution of two real relationships: filial love between God and the believers, and brotherly love among the believers. Both are identity-constitutive. Therefore, the believers cannot love the sinful world in the same identity-constitutive way. Love as a real relationship always needs three relata: Lover, beloved and co-loved as a shared project. The shared project of filial love and brotherly love is the believer's attitude of neighbourly love towards the sinful world. Therefore, brotherly love encloses neighbourly love without being a deficient form of it. This whole framework of different kinds of love has the condition of its possibility in the intra-trinitarian love between Father, Son and Spirit.

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and other (LGBTQI+) community continues to experience health inequity and unmet needs. This manuscript examines the application of the Four Tenets of Osteopathic Medicine (FTOM) during a patient's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity to the provider, also known as coming out. Tenet One discusses the interplay between intersectionality and coming out. Tenet Two elucidates how coming out moves toward a balance of homeostasis and self-healing. Tenet Three examines how structure and function can be understood on a personal level and how society influences coming out. Tenet Four explains the resources available to facilitate the previously forementioned changes. By applying the Four Tenets, the provider may more readily understand what "coming out" means on personal and social levels and what implications they may have on their patients' health.

Analyzing the work of St Gregory of Nyssa, in the first approximation we can say that he is a typical representative of his age. In the theology of the 4th century the power of God as the absolute ruler was emphasized more than his other attributes, so the image of God did not show him as the One who reigns through humility. In this regard, it is worthwhile to draw attention to a small, polemic treatise In illud: tunc ipse filius of St Gregory, in which his understanding of God's omnipotence receives a deeper dimension that appears to the modern man. In his work, this Father of the Church comments on one verse from the Letter of St Paul to the Corinthians: „And when everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself with be subject in his tum to the One who subjected alt things to him, so that God may be all in all" (1 Cor 15, 28; KJ). The problem which preoccupied Gregory of Nyssa, was the incorrect opinion or heresy of Arius and his followers. According to them, the Son is subjected to God, by the rule of creation, so He cannot be equal to God the Father and, in this way, He is not God. One from the crown arguments, which the Arians used were St. Paul’s words from his Letter to the Corinthians. However, the Bishop of Nyssa shows, that exactly this quotation, from the historical-salvific perspective, emphasizes the divinity of Christ. He portrays to us the Son who is subjected to God's vivifying power and the Father who receives the Son's subjection in His human nature. So, in this way, God is omnipotent on the cross, as a humble man. The image of God, which emerges from Gregory's theology, allows us to include his voice into present discussion of God's omnipotence and man's free will.