Likeness To God

Abstract

The idea of likeness to God plays an important role in the question discussed in the final section of the last chapter. But it has been implicit throughout the last three chapters: for it is believed that the Holy Spirit makes men like God, that the saints are more like God than ordinary men are, and that the men of the age to come will be like God. We find these beliefs expressed by some of the early Fathers of the church. Origen, for instance, says that ‘The highest good is to become as far as possible like God’ (De Princ. iii. vi.1) and he distinguishes between God’s image, which we received at our first creation and of which traces are manifest in our wisdom, justice, moderation, virtue and discipline (iv.iv.10), and the perfection of God’s likeness. The latter ‘was reserved for him [man] at the consummation. The purpose of this was that man should acquire it for himself, by his own earnest efforts to imitate God’.¹ The role of the Holy Spirit is spelt out by St Irenaeus, who describes him as the image of God (Adv. Haer. iv.vii.4) and says that the man made in the image and likeness of God is ‘rendered spiritual and perfect because of the outpouring of the Spirit’;² but, he says, in this life we receive only an earnest through the Holy Spirit, and the full image and likeness to God will be given only by the complete grace of the Holy Spirit (v.viii.1).³