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Second article in the series Man and Woman – Image of the Triune God

In his trial before the Roman prefect, Rusticus, St. Justin Martyr was asked, “What system of teaching do you profess?” Justin said: “I have tried to learn about every system, but I have accepted the true doctrines of the Christians.” Justin was a professional philosopher, and he studied the various systems of belief with the trained mind of a philosopher. I am not a philosopher, and I am not trained in anything except possibly my Carmelite vocation. However, like Justin, I too have “tried to learn about every system,” and, also like Justin, I have come to accept the true doctrine of the Christians as it is proclaimed by the Catholic Church. I have found that – of all the world views and religions that I have encountered – the Catholic teaching as it is taught by the Pope and the Magisterium and presented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church is the most consistently holistic and, when it is put into practice, the most conducive to the wholeness and fulfillment of the human person.

I write this in order to present the framework within which I will develop my thoughts and insights of the subject of this series. I want to make it clear at the outset that I am not writing as an apologist. I am not making any attempt to convince anyone of the validity of the Catholic faith. In this series, I take that as an accepted basis for my presentation. An apologist writes in order to persuade readers that the realm expressed by the Catholic faith is worth exploring. The apologist stands at the entry to that realm to encourage others to enter it and discover for themselves the truth and validity of what the Church teaches.

I am not an apologist – I am an explorer. An explorer has already accepted that the Catholic faith is worth investigating and has set out to discover its reality for himself. I have made that act of setting out, and what I write is an attempt to share with others the discoveries that I have made. I am writing primarily for myself, though I hope that what I write may give to others a glimpse of the richness of the faith that I find so enthralling.

Those who do not accept the Church’s teaching will certainly not accept what I share, but they should not blame me if they don’t like what I present. I have written here at the outset what I am doing and why I am doing it. Anyone who wants me to prove the foundational basis on which I explore will be disappointed. That is the work of apologetics, and – I repeat – I am not an apologist, I am an explorer. Anyone who wants to join me in my explorations is more than welcome, not only to join me, but to share their own discoveries.[1]

The title of this series is “Man and Woman – Image of the Triune God.” The Church has consistently taught that “the divine image is present in every man” first because each human being is “endowed with ‘a spiritual and immortal’ soul” that makes him capable of knowing and loving.[2] As Gaudium et Spes states, “the human person is ‘the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake.’”[3]

This last phrase is intriguing, and we will come back to it. First, however, we need to look more closely at what constitutes the image of God in a creature. As we have seen, it is the ability to know and to love that establishes each human being as existing in the image of God. We find this ability in human beings and also in the spiritual creatures that we call angels. As pure spirits endowed with reason and free will, angels resemble God in their nature more than do human beings. As pure spirits, the angels do not exist within the limits of physical dimensions. They exist and act in a timeless and spaceless manner, though their actions can influence creatures within space and time. Therefore, in their manner of being and of action, the angels image God as One.

Each human being is created in the image of God, as we have seen, yet, according to Scripture, this image is not said to exist primarily in having the ability to know and to love. For Scripture says:

“Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; … So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”[4]

Human beings were created in God’s image as male and female and from that we see that humanity was created in God’s image as a relationship. Just as God exists as a relationship, three Persons in one nature, so also human beings were created in one nature and a relationship of persons. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in “Caritas in Veritate,” “The Trinity is absolute unity insofar as the three divine Persons are pure relationality. The reciprocal transparency among the divine Persons is total and the bond between each of them complete, since they constitute a unique and absolute unity.”[5] Created as the image of this relationality, humanity finds its essence in its relationships. Unlike the angels, who each exist independently of the others, while indeed interacting with one another, each human being is in his and her very essence united with every other human being.

This essential basis of humanness is comprehensibly only in the mystery of the Trinity. The revelation that God is One and a unity of Persons is also the revelation of the value and interaction of human persons. Humanity is not the sum of individual persons who can exist and find their meaning separately from others. Each human person possesses the fullness of humanity just as each divine Person is fully God. God is not the sum of three separate Persons, but three Persons who so totally share themselves with each other that each is the fullness of God. At the same time, each divine Person acts as the source of his own actions: Father, Son, and Spirit each know and love one another, their own actions springing from their personhood and in no way being simply the reflection of the actions of the others. It is rather the same knowledge and the same love that flows from each Person.

In the same way, each human being is the fullness of humanity and each acts as the source of his or her own actions. This understanding of how humanity images the three Persons of the Godhead is essential when we seek to understand that “in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” God created them as distinct persons, but each of them, male and female, is the fullness of humanity, just as each divine Person is the fullness of deity.

This is important because otherwise we risk understanding the relationship of man and woman as being together the sum of humanness. We can fall into the mistake of thinking that, together, they add up to the whole of humanness, or that each needs the other to be fully human. There is an important distinction here: the distinction between being and acting, between essence and relationship. Created in the image of the Trinity, each human person is fully human, or if you prefer, each possesses the fullness of humanity. At the same time, created in the image of the Trinity, each acts in relationship with the others. Each exists in relationship with the others. This means that, while each human being is individually totally human, no human being acts individually, outside of any relationship with the others.

This can seem a daunting exposition, hard to grasp, but it becomes much clearer when we consider an essential teaching of Christianity: the teaching that God is love.[6] An online search asking “What religions teach that God is love” produces various articles showing how love – love of God and/or love of others – is an essential teaching in major religions. Yet, while most teach that God is loving to His creatures, only Christianity teaches that God in His essence is love. This statement is possible because love is a relationship of persons, and Christianity teaches that God is a relationship of Persons and that the interactions of these Persons, the self-giving on one to the others, is so total that they are one being.

The revelation that God is a Trinity[7] is the source of the teaching that God is love. It is the revelation of the inner life of self-giving love that exists in all eternity within the Godhead. This is the relationship that human persons are created to image. Moreover, because the relationship is a living reality, human beings do not image it in a static way like an illustration, but actively by sharing in the active reality of the relationship. We live our humanity to the extent that we live by God’s inner life of self-giving love.

At this point, we can step back and see the details that we have been considering in their larger picture. Human beings image God by sharing in His own inner life and making it manifest in their relationships with one another.

And what of the angels? God’s threeness exists in His inner life among the divine Persons. God’s oneness is manifested in His actions outside of Himself: creating, maintaining, caring for His creatures. Though, for reasons of simplification, different actions are ascribed to different Persons of the Trinity (creating is ascribed to the Father, redeeming to the Son, sanctification to the Spirit), the Church teaches that all three Persons share in every act outside of the Godhead.[8]

This understanding of God’s way of acting as One gives us the framework for understanding the action of the angels. We have seen that each angel images God’s oneness and Scripture explains how this takes place, for it says of the angels, “Are not all angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?”[9] The angels act to further God’s plan for humanity. Their actions are not aimed at aiding in the salvation of other angels, for each angel has already made that decision. Their actions are aimed at affecting our salvation. Their actions are aimed outside of themselves.

We see then that God’s plan of creation is centered around enabling human persons to live with Him and among ourselves by His own self-giving life. This provides the framework for the statement that “the human person is ‘the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake.’” Around this focal point of humanity’s relationship with God we find the angels centered to help bring this about. The engraving from Gustave Dore’s “Paradiso” is an apt illustration of this it and shows the vastness of God’s plan. Only when we see however dimly what being created in the image of God means for human beings will we be able to come to some understanding of what the essence is of both man and woman.

We will go more deeply into this in our next article “Gift and Response.”

Notes

[1] For those who want a presentation of a solid basis for the Catholic faith, I recommend the Catechism of the Catholic Church and “Introduction to Christianity” by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

[2] Cf. CCC #1702-1703, also Gaudium et Spes,#14,2

[3] Gaudium et Spes #24,3; CCC #1703

[4] Gen. 1, 26-27

[5] “Caritas in Veritate”, para.54

[6] 1 Jn 4, 8 & 16

[7] CCC #237

[8] CCC #292, #235

[9] Heb. 1, 14


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Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, O.C.D. (Sr. Gabriela Hicks) was born in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the Gold Rush country of California, which she remembers as heaven on earth for a child! She lived a number of years in Europe, and then entered the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Flemington, New Jersey, where she has been a member for forty years. www.flemingtoncarmel.org.

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