what does it mean to be created in the image and likeness of god

My new understanding of the Holy Trinity and what it means to be created in God's image and likeness

A few days ago, I watched a speech by Dr. Scott Hahn, in which he describes the creation account in Genesis as a covenant between God and man. He also describes how man is created in God's image and likeness, which means both man and woman are like God, and that if man creates a family with a woman, then the Trinity can also be seen as a family. I had never thought of it that way before, and it led me to ask the following question:

The Bible say s God created humans in His image, and also that He created us male and female. I never thought about the implications of that until recently. If we're made in His image, then two other things must necessarily follow from that truth: 1)We must exist as a Trinity (we do- the family) 2)God Himself must have masculine and feminine qualities, (just in a different sense than we understand those words) because He didn't just create man and woman out of thin air, with no basis for our existence. He created us from His own breath, and in His image.

So, if God is a family, and God the Father is the father, then who's the mother? (again, this is purely as a metaphor, not a metaphysical reality) At first I thought Jesus could be the mother figure, since the love between Him and the Father results in the Holy Spirit. But then I realized that that's not really what happens. There is no birth because they're eternal. However, the Son is eternally begotten and generated from the Father. That's when I realized the Holy Spirit must be the maternal (not mother, but having maternal characteristics) figure. The Holy Spirit, together with the Father, generate the Son. What do mothers do? They give life, and the Holy Spirit gives life to us all (as it says throughout the Bible, just like the Father is the authority figure in the family, as human fathers are.

I wondered why I've never heard of this before. I came to this conclusion using deductive reasoning, and there are many theologians and priests who are smarter than me, so surely they could've reached the same conclusion. But I soon discovered that this is a complicated question, and the Church has no official teaching on it, so we're left up to using our own intellects to draw any conclusion about it. You won't come to this conclusion randomly. It takes much time and studying of the Bible and the theology of the Trinity to reach it, and most Catholics, even priests, simply haven't done that. You have to study the creation account in Genesis, as well as the various verses throughout the Bible that mention the Trinity as well as the Holy Spirit. Then you have to study the original Greek and Hebrew texts of the Old and New Testaments to understand what the original words really meant, and if they were meant to signify something as feminine or masculine.

I began to wonder why the Holy Spirit isn't talked about nearly as much as God the Father and God the Son is, either in scripture or by the Church today. I realized that it's because the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, so it's not as great as the first two persons, and thus not as much has been revealed about it. We can't talk or preach about what we don't know, and we don't know much about the Holy Spirit, other than by what it does. But its fundamental nature is still a mystery to us. However, we can study the verses in scripture that describe its workings and nature to some degree.

In general, we struggle to understand the Holy Spirit because it's a pure spirit. It didn't take the form of a man, as Jesus did, and it didn't reveal itself as a father figure, as God the Father did. So how can the average person relate to a pure spirit? It's very hard to, no doubt about that. But once I realized the Holy Spirit is the closest thing to a mother figure in the Trinity, I also began to understand that if we see it in this light, we can relate to it more. If the Holy Spirit is indeed God, and we're made in the image of God, then surely it must have some characteristics that we can relate to, since we're made in the image of every person of the Trinity- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I think priests and theologians have stayed away from this maternal aspect of God, and of the Holy Spirit in particular, because it's easy to become confused with it, and to lead people astray, especially in modern times, when liberals are trying to obscure the differences between the genders and feminize everything. There's a fine line between saying the Holy Spirit has some maternal qualities and saying it's a woman, or is feminine. By definition it can't be, because it's pure spirit. Being male or female is only possible for humans, since we're made up of bodies and souls. But we can say God has masculine, feminine, paternal, and maternal characteristics. Indeed, I believe we must teach that, since we're made in His image. Where else would our masculinity and femininity come from, if not God Himself?

A woman is like all of God's feminine traits distilled into one being, and a man is like all of God's masculine traits distilled into another being. We can't say God is male or female in any way, because that would be anthropomorphizing God. But we can say He's the perfected version of us, and we're the imperfect image of Him.

There was only one time in the Bible where God said something wasn't good, and it was in Genesis, when He created Adam and said "it's not good for man to be alone". He was referring to the fact that we're created in His image, which means in order for mankind to be an accurate image of God, he would have to be male and female. I always thought God created Eve because He knew Adam couldn't live alone and needed a companion, and because he needed someone to have children with. Both of those things are true. But that's not the primary reason why God created Eve. He created her because He created man in His image and likeness. In other words, He was taking a picture of Himself, and giving that picture life.

My question about who the mother in the Trinity is (no one) led me to another question, which is why does God want us to identify him as father and his son as a son, but no mother? I think that can be answered by asking several other questions, such as: Why did God create man first? Why did Jesus choose only male apostles? I think the answer is because there is a hierarchy in the Trinity. God the father is the most powerful, followed by God the son, followed by God the holy spirit. That's why Jesus said "The Father is greater than I". They're all equal, but have different roles, just like a CEO of a company is greater than a manager there, but they're both human and deserving of equal respect and treatment. So God created man first to show us that there is order to his creation, and to God himself. That's just part of his nature. That's why women were created to be receptive to men, and why men were created to be the leaders of their families and the Church.

My thesis on this subject is the following: God the Father has the masculine traits of God, God the Holy Spirit has the feminine traits of God, and God the Son has both, just like an earthly son receives genes from both parents and shares characteristics with both of them. As this article shows, God in general is portrayed throughout the Bible as having masculine and feminine traits, and Jesus specifically is shown as having both masculine and feminine traits.

So, if we're comparing the Trinity to the first family, Adam and Eve, it would be God the Father who is Adam, and the Holy Spirit who is Eve. God the Father breaths the Holy Spirit, and just like the Holy Spirit comes from Him, so Eve came from Adam. Likewise, as the Father eternally begets the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit, so too Adam, with Eve's help, begat a son, Seth. That's why every family is like an icon of the Trinity, as St. Pope John Paul 2 described in his Letter to Families, and in other writings.

Quotes and articles for further research:

This article, which is Dr Hahn's response to a fellow Catholic who criticized this thesis, explains it well http://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.com/2009/10/scott-hahns-response.html

http://www.pistissophia.org/The_Holy_Spirit/the_holy_spirit.html

"Being made in God's image, man is a mirror of the divine. Because he is God's icon, man can find God by looking within himself for "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Mt 5:8)." The doctrine of man's creation according to the image means that within each person, within his or her truest and innermost self, often termed the deep heart or ground of the soul, there is a point of direct meeting and union with the Uncreated. As Luke stated the kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21). The image doctrine means that man has God as the innermost center of his being. This is the determining element in our humanity".(The Orthodox Way by Archimandrite Kallis Ware).

The Incarnation

"The Incarnation of the Word is closely linked to our ultimate deification (In the Image and Likeness of God by Vladimir Lossky). Christ is the first perfect man. Christ is perfect in the potential sense, as Adam was in his innocence before the fall, and in the sense of the completely realized 'likeness'. The Incarnation is not simply a way of undoing the effects of original sin, but it is an essential stage upon man's journey from the divine image to the divine likeness. The true image and likeness of God is Christ himself (The Orthodox Way by Archimandrite Kallis Ware). It is through Christ that man is able to apprehend the Father (On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius). As St. Gregory of Nazianzus said, "The Son is not the Father, because there is only one Father, but He is what the Father is." In other words, the Son is a concise definition of the nature of the Father, for every being that has been begotten is a silent definition of his begetter (In the Image and Likeness of God by Vladimir Lossky). This can best be explained by considering that each human individual is "the picture of his father" by the family characteristics which he has in common with him, not by the personal qualities which distinguish his father".

https://www.redletterchristians.org/embracing-feminine-side-god/

http://www.moodychurch.org/crossroads/blog/gods-feminine-attributes/

http://www.hts.org.za/index.php/HTS/article/view/3225/html

"Although Ephrem Syrus (c. 306–373), who wrote most of his extant works in Edessa, conjugates the Syriac word rucha as feminine, one finds only one or two passages9 in his œuvre which highlight her femininity. In one of these it runs:

It is not said of Eve that she was Adam's sister or his daughter, but that she came from him; likewise it is not to be said that the Spirit is a daughter or sister, but that (She) is from God and consubstantial with Him". (Ephrem, Commentary on the Concordant Gospel or Diatessaron 19, 15 — Leloir 1953:277; tr. Murray 1975:318)

The following is a Bishop's review of Dr Hahn's book:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/review/RAFJFUDRBFO0B?ref_=glimp_1rv_cl

http://catholicexchange.com/is-the-holy-spirit-male-or-female

"The great 19th century German Thomist theologian, Matthias Joseph Scheeben, who is generally acknowledged to be the founder of Mariology as a distinct branch of Sacred Theology), writes: ""As the mother is the bond of love between father and child, so in God the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and the Son." He also notes: "As Eve can, in a figurative sense, be called simply the rib of Adam… St. Methodius goes so far as to assert that the Holy Spirit is the rib of the Word (costa Verbi)" (Mysteries of Christianity, 183–85)".

Comments on Dr Hahn's response to his critics:

>>>At any rate, my question was about specifically what St. Methodius meant by saying the Holy Spirit is Christ's rib, just as Eve was Adam's rib.

If I might make a suggestion here, maybe this is related to the patristic belief that the Holy Ghost is the "Soul of the Church." The Church is the Bride of Christ, and the Church Fathers saw the piercing of His Side on the Cross as paralleling God's opening Adam's side to create the first woman. I believe they said that the Church came forth from Christ's side while He "slept" (in death) on the Cross as Eve came forth from Adam's side while he slept.

If the Spirit is Mother Church's Soul — the basic principle of her being, life and unity — then that might explain the "rib" statement. God drew the rib from Adam's side and built it into Eve; the Spirit came forth from the New Adam's side and built up the New Eve, the Church.

Rosemarie said…

+J.M.J+

Another point before I go to sleep. Ben also asks:

>>>Wouldn't Adam be an image of the Father, because he's the human father of the family? And then wouldn't Eve be an image of the Son, because she came out of the side of Adam just as the Son comes out of the bosom of the Father? And then both Adam and Eve begot their child, likewise, the Spirit is spirated by both the Father and the Son?

One of the Church Fathers (I forget which) used Adam, Eve and Seth as an illustration, to show how the Holy Spirit could proceed from the Father but not be another son. He pointed out that Adam begot Seth, as God the Father eternally begets God the Son, but Eve came forth from Adam's side without being his offspring, even as the Father "breathes" the Holy Spirit without the latter being His son. So here the parallels would be Adam = God the Father, Seth = God the Son, and Eve = God the Holy Ghost.

Of course, this was merely an analogy that attempted to explain the difference between the begetting of the Son and the spiration of the Spirit. It was not intended to attribute gender to the Divine Persons or to suggest that the Trinity is a "family" consisting of a father, mother and son. It would be quite wrong to say that the Holy Ghost is the eternal "mother" of God the Son along with God the Father; Scott Hahn is not saying that, of course.

He's saying that the Spirit is the eternal bond of Love between the Father and Son (quite true and orthodox), and that in a human family the mother plays a similar role, as a "bond of love" between the father and his children by her. So perhaps this aspect of human motherhood was patterned after the Holy Spirit's role in the Trinity, similar to how human fatherhood is a created image of the Divine Paternity. That doesn't make the Third Person of the Trinity female or feminine.

In Jesu et Maria,

Rosemarie

>>>I also cannot accept that Mary is solely identified with the Holy Spirit. In her role as Co-redemptrix it seems to me she is very closely identified and united with our Lord.

She isn't "solely" identified with the Holy Ghost. The role of the Spirit is to bring us to Christ (which is Mary's role as well, of course). It isn't possible for someone to be associated with the Spirit and not with Christ; the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Our Lord became incarnate by the power of the Holy Ghost. The Spirit Himself brought about Mary's close identification and union with Our Lord when He formed Jesus' Sacred Body out of part of her own body.

The Spirit also descended upon Him in bodily form as a Dove at the beginning of His ministry. On the Cross, He offered Himself up to the Father through the Eternal Spirit (Hebrew 9:14), Who was also involved in the Resurrection (Romans 8:11). He sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost to breath life into His Bride. Christ is the Head of the Church and the Spirit is her Soul.

Rosemarie said…

+J.M.J+

>>>You said: "One of the Church Fathers (I forget which) used Adam, Eve and Seth as an illustration." Do you have his name written down somewhere? It'd be good to know. :-)

It was St. Gregory of Nazianzus; here's the quote:

"What was Adam? A creature of God. What then was Eve? A fragment of the creature. And what was Seth? The begotten of both. Does it then seem to you that Creature and Fragment and Begotten are the same thing? Of course it does not. But were not these persons consubstantial? Of course they were. Well then, here it is an acknowledged fact that different persons may have the same substance. I say this, not that I would attribute creation or fraction or any property of body to the Godhead (let none of your contenders for a word be down upon me again), but that I may contemplate in these, as on a stage, things which are objects of thought alone. For it is not possible to trace out any image exactly to the whole extent of the truth. But, they say, what is the meaning of all this? For is not the one an offspring, and the other a something else of the One? Did not both Eve and Seth come from the one Adam? And were they both begotten by him? No; but the one was a fragment of him, and the other was begotten by him. And yet the two were one and the same thing; both were human beings; no one will deny that." (Fifth Theological Oration: On the Holy Spirit, XI)

>>>This already goes a long way to explaining how these eminent saints could describe the Holy Ghost in particular with maternal metaphors.

Well, that and the fact that the Syriac word for "spirit" is feminine in gender. Many of the Fathers who used such metaphors were Syrian.

I don't think Scott Hahn mentions this, but St. Basil the Great, though not Syrian himself, mentions that Syrian Christians understood Genesis 1:2 as an image of the Holy Ghost as a mother bird hovering over her nest:

"How then did the Spirit of God move upon the waters? The explanation that I am about to give you is not an original one, but that of a Syrian, who was as ignorant in the wisdom of this world as he was versed in the knowledge of the Truth. He said, then, that the Syriac word was more expressive, and that being more analogous to the Hebrew term it was a nearer approach to the scriptural sense. This is the meaning of the word; by "was borne" the Syrians, he says, understand: it cherished the nature of the waters as one sees a bird cover the eggs with her body and impart to them vital force from her own warmth. Such is, as nearly as possible, the meaning of these words — the Spirit was borne: let us understand, that is, prepared the nature of water to produce living beings: a sufficient proof for those who ask if the Holy Spirit took an active part in the creation of the world." (Hexameron II:6)

Nothing wrong with referring to God in the feminine, Pope John Paul I did it in the month of his papacy, the Syrian Church Fathers did it in following rabbinical tradition (as Hahn mentioned ST Ephrem as one), ST Aphraates does too, saying the mother and father of Genesis 2 that a man leaves are God the Father and the Holy Spirit. And even the bible seems to do it in Proverbs 8, Sirach 24, and a couple other places. In the Aramaic version of the New Testament the Holy Spirit is explicitly called "she". One of the earliest orthodox writings of the Early Church, the Odes of Solomon calls the Holy Spirit a She, and it sort of feminizes the Father. Fr Robert Murray addresses this issue in his book "On Symbols of Church and Kingdom" and quotes a few instances where the Syrian Fathers refer to the Holy Spirit in the feminine.