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Library / Commentaries and Disputations on Genesis, Volume I

Book Four — the creation of the first human beings

A MORAL DIGRESSION. Why God made man to his own image

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A MORAL DIGRESSION. Why God made man to his own image.1

DIGRESSIO MORALIS. Cur Deus fecerit hominem ad imaginem suam.

CAETERUM, libet hoc loco superiorum quaestionum, quas de imagine Dei explicavimus, velut clausulam adiicere moralem quandam disputationem, de causis cur Deus hominem ad sui imaginem et similitudinem effinxerit. Et complures quidem, valdéque probabiles, eius rei causas afferre possumus.
But it pleases me here, as a kind of close to the foregoing questions which we have explained concerning the image of God, to add a certain moral disputation, on the causes why God fashioned man to his own image and likeness. And we can indeed adduce several, and very probable, causes of this matter.2
SIT igitur PRIMA CAUSA. Fecit Deus hominem sui similem, ut palam esset quantum intersit inter Dei bonitatem ac benignitatem, atque hominis malignitatem et invidiam. Homo enim, si re aliqua excellat (velut divitiis, potentia, nobilitate, honoribus, ac sapientia), nollet quemquam aliorum hominum sibi ea re parem, aut etiam similem esse: at Dei tanta est bonitas, támque omnis expers invidiae, ut quibus rebus excellit ipse, earum capacem et participem fecerit hominem; et quibuscumque modis homo similis Deo esse poterat, iis omnibus hominem sibi fecerit similem. Fecit enim eum sibi similem secundùm naturam, provehendo eum ad summum gradum naturae in quo ipse est, naturam scilicet rationis compotem ei dando; deinde secundum bona supernaturalia et divina, faciendo eum suae gratiae, sapientiae, et foelicitatis participem atque consortem; denique naturam hominis secum coniungendo in unitatem personae divinae, ita ut non tantùm homo similis Deo sit, sed etiam Deus et nominetur et sit.
Let the FIRST CAUSE, then, be this. God made man like to himself, that it might be plain how great is the difference between God's goodness and kindness and man's malignity and envy. For man, if he excels in anything (such as riches, power, nobility, honors, and wisdom), would not wish any other man to be his equal, or even his like, in that thing; but so great is God's goodness, and so wholly devoid of envy, that he made man capable and a partaker of the very things in which he himself excels; and in whatever ways man could be like God, in all those he made man like to himself. For he made him like to himself according to nature, by raising him to the supreme grade of nature in which he himself is, namely by giving him a nature possessed of reason; then according to supernatural and divine goods, by making him a partaker and consort of his grace, wisdom, and happiness; and finally by joining the nature of man to himself into the unity of the divine person, so that man not only is like God, but is even both called and is God.3
SECUNDA CAUSA. Ut res omnes corporales revererentur hominem, ut qui tam illustrem et expressam Dei, omnium conditoris et dominatoris, imaginem in se gereret. Sic Deus dixit Noë, Gen. 9., Terror vester ac tremor sit super cuncta animalia terrae, et super omnes volucres caeli, etc. Et ne caeli atque astra inservire homini, aut etiam Angeli ei ministrare, dedignarétur; denique ne daemones hominem laedere auderent, néve, propter hominis rebellionem adversus Deum, omnes creaturae in ipsum insurgerét: sua hominem imagine Deus insignire et munire voluit. Figura eius rei fuit quòd legitur, libri Geneseos cap. 4., posuisse Deum signum super Cain, ne qui inveniret ipsum, signúmque Dei in eo videret, interficere eum auderet. Et quemadmodum
SECOND CAUSE. That all corporeal things might reverence man, as bearing in himself so illustrious and express an image of God, the founder and ruler of all. So God said to Noah, in Genesis 9, Let the fear and dread of you be upon all the animals of the earth, and upon all the fowls of the air, etc. And lest the heavens and the stars should disdain to serve man, or even the Angels to minister to him; and finally lest the demons should dare to harm man, or all creatures, because of man's rebellion against God, should rise up against him: God willed to mark and fortify man with his own image. A figure of this was what is read in chapter 4 of the book of Genesis, that God set a sign upon Cain, lest anyone who found him, and saw the sign of God upon him, should dare to kill him. And just as4
[Et quemadmodum Io]seph patriarcham Aegyptij, et Mardochaeum Iudaeum Persae ac Medi honorabant ac venerabantur, quòd insignia Regum (ille Aegypti, hic Persarum ac Medorum) gereret, sic omnes creaturae hominem, effigie Dei insignitum et decoratum, colunt ac reverentur.
[And just as] the Egyptians honored and venerated Joseph the patriarch, and the Persians and Medes Mordecai the Jew, because they bore the insignia of kings (the former of Egypt, the latter of the Persians and Medes), so all creatures cherish and reverence man, marked and adorned with the image of God.5
TERTIA CAUSA. Omnia Deus homini donaverat, sed ipsum tamen hominem divini iuris et possessionis esse voluit: quocirca, ut agnosceretur hominem esse quid Dei proprium et peculiare, obsignavit eum sigillo suae imaginis, tam altè ac tenaciter impressae ut, salva hominis natura, signaculum illud auferri nullo modo posset. Quemadmodum memoriae proditum est nobilissimum illum Phidiam fecisse clypeum Minervae, atque in eum tanta arte effigiem suam inclusisse, ut ea integro clypeo non posset eximi. Homo igitur gestat Dei imaginem: ut filius sui patris, cui debet amorem et pietatem; ut mancipium domini sui, quem timere ac revereri debet; ut miles sui ducis et imperatoris, cui fidem et obedientiam praestare oportet; denique ut minister et dispensator bonorum heri et domini sui, cui rectum usum creaturarum, quae dispensationi eius commissae sunt, exhibere debet.
THIRD CAUSE. God had given all things to man, but he willed man himself nevertheless to be of divine right and possession: wherefore, that man might be recognized as something proper and peculiar to God, he sealed him with the seal of his own image, so deeply and tenaciously impressed that, while man's nature remains, that seal could in no way be removed. Just as it is recorded that the most renowned Phidias made the shield of Minerva, and enclosed in it his own likeness with such art that it could not be taken out without destroying the whole shield. Man, therefore, bears the image of God: as a son does his father's, to whom he owes love and piety; as a slave his master's, whom he ought to fear and reverence; as a soldier his general's and commander's, to whom he ought to render faith and obedience; and finally as a minister and steward of the goods of his lord and master, to whom he ought to render a right use of the creatures committed to his stewardship.6
QUARTA CAUSA. Quemadmodum, quia nullum animalium inveniebatur simile Adae, cum quo societatem et amicitiam et familiaritatem habere posset, creavit Deus Evam tanquam eius sociam, ita, creatis rebus omnibus corporeis, cùm nulla esset Dei similis, et cum qua Deus societatem et familiaritatem inire posset, fecit hominem sui similem, ut esset quem Deus amaret et à quo vicissim amaretur amore amicitiae. Et de aliis quidem rebus, cùm eas Deus à se factas cerneret, approbasse eas dicitur: Vidit Deus, inquit Scriptura, cuncta quae fecerat, et erant valde bona; de homine autem multò aliter locutus est Deus per Salomonem, Proverbiorum octavo, dicens, Deliciae meae esse cum filijs hominum. Caetera igitur ut bona laudavit et approbavit Deus; solum autem hominem ut amicum amare, et velut cum familiari consuetudinem habere, et suae foelicitatis consortem esse voluit. Meritò igitur Iob cap. 7., tantam Dei erga hominem benevolentiam et benignitatem admirans, exclamavit: Quid est homo quia magnificas eum? aut cur apponis erga eum cor tuum? visitas eum diluculo, etc. Illud Visitas denotat societatem, conversationem, et familiaritatem Dei cum homine; illud autem, Apponis erga eum cor tuum, significat amorem amicitiae quo Deus hominem dignatur atque complectitur. Verùm admirationi Iob rectè possumus respondere, propterea Deum visitare hominem et apponere erga eum cor suum, quia Deus fecit hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem suam: similitudo enim amorem conciliat et amicitiam conglutinat.
FOURTH CAUSE. Just as, because no animal was found like to Adam, with whom he might have society and friendship and familiarity, God created Eve as his companion, so, when all corporeal things had been created, since there was none like to God, and with whom God might enter into society and familiarity, he made man like to himself, that there might be one whom God might love and by whom in turn he might be loved with the love of friendship. And of the other things, indeed, when God beheld them made by himself, he is said to have approved them: God saw, says Scripture, all the things that he had made, and they were very good; but of man God spoke far otherwise through Solomon, in the eighth of Proverbs, saying, My delights were to be with the children of men. The rest, therefore, God praised and approved as good; but man alone he willed to love as a friend, and to have, as it were, familiar fellowship with, and to be a partaker of his happiness. Rightly, therefore, Job, in chapter 7, marveling at so great a benevolence and kindness of God toward man, exclaimed: What is man that thou magnifiest him? or why dost thou set thy heart toward him? Thou visitest him at daybreak, etc. That 'Thou visitest' denotes the society, conversation, and familiarity of God with man; and that 'Thou settest thy heart toward him' signifies the love of friendship with which God deigns to embrace man. But to Job's wonder we can rightly answer that God visits man, and sets his heart toward him, because God made man to his own image and likeness: for likeness conciliates love and cements friendship.7
QUINTA CAUSA. Omnia quae à Deo creata sunt et Mundi ambitu continentur, hominem (ea, ut par est, contemplantem) ad cogni-
FIFTH CAUSE. All things that have been created by God and are contained within the compass of the World lead man (contemplating them, as is fitting) to the know-8
[ad cogni]tionem Dei eorum opificis perducunt. Namque invisibilia Dei, ut Paulus testatur, à creatura mundi per ea quae facta sunt intellecta conspiciuntur, sempiterna quoque virtus eius et divinitas. Verùm, ne cogeretur homo cognitionem Dei extra se et è longinquo quaerere ac petere, posuit Deus intra hominem, in ipso eius animo, pulcherrimam sui effigiem et imaginem, quae quidem sola expressius quàm aliae res omnes simul Dei vim et naturam declararet. Hanc igitur Dei imaginem intra se intuens homo, per eam cognoscit qualis sit Deus: nam, quia hominis animus similis Deo est, qualis imperfectè animus est, tale perfectè (remotáque omni imperfectione) Deum esse existimare oportet. Itaque, sicut animus noster, ita Deus est intelligens, libero arbitrio pollens, plenus virtute, gratia, et sapientia, mundum conservans, regens, atque continens, sicut animus corpus suum.
[to the] knowledge of God, their maker. For the invisible things of God, as Paul testifies, are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made—his eternal power also and divinity. But, lest man be forced to seek and ask the knowledge of God outside himself and from afar, God placed within man, in his very soul, a most beautiful effigy and image of himself, which alone, more expressly than all other things together, declares the power and nature of God. Beholding, therefore, this image of God within himself, man knows through it what God is like: for, because man's soul is like God, whatever the soul is imperfectly, that God must be esteemed to be perfectly, with all imperfection removed. And so, as our soul is, so God is intelligent, strong in free will, full of virtue, grace, and wisdom, preserving, ruling, and containing the world, as the soul does its own body.9
SEXTA CAUSA. Ideo factus est homo ad imaginem Dei, ut posset homo esse aeternitatis, infinitatis, et divinitatis quodammodo capax; nullúmque esset tantum bonum, ut non id auderet homo petere à Deo, et impetraturum se ab eo sperare. Possumus enim Deo fidenter dicere: Domine, imple bonis tuis infinitam hanc nostrae mentis et voluntatis capacitatem, quam dedisti nobis: nam si tu non pateris esse aliquid vacuum in natura, sed omnia loca vis esse obsessa et impleta corporibus, quantò minùs velle te putandum est aliquid esse vacuum in animo nostro? Tu igitur, qui solus potes replere in bonis desiderium nostrum, reple nostram voluntatem, quam nulla res praeter unum te explere et satiare potest. Quemadmodum igitur vas rotunda figura praeditum non potest omni ex parte repleri nisi à corpore similiter rotundo, ita nec animus hominis ad imaginem Dei factus nisi à solo Deo, cuius similis est, repleri et satiari potest.
SIXTH CAUSE. Man was made to the image of God for this reason, that man might be in some way capable of eternity, infinity, and divinity; and that there should be no good so great that man would not dare to ask it of God, and hope to obtain it from him. For we can confidently say to God: Lord, fill with thy goods this infinite capacity of our mind and will, which thou hast given us: for if thou dost not allow anything to be void in nature, but willest all places to be occupied and filled with bodies, how much less art thou to be thought to will anything to be void in our soul? Thou, therefore, who alone canst fill our desire with good things, fill our will, which nothing but thee alone can fill and satisfy. Just as, then, a vessel of round shape cannot be filled in every part except by a body likewise round, so neither can the soul of man, made to the image of God, be filled and satisfied except by God alone, to whom it is like.10
SEPTIMA CAUSA. Quemadmodum Rex, condita à se civitate, in medio eius loco celebri imaginem suam collocat, ex materia quapiam eximia et pretiosa confecta, ut manifestum sit omnibus eam intuentibus quis fuerit eius civitatis conditor: ita Deus, fabricato à se mundo, effigiem suam posuit in medio eius, id est, in homine, qui est medium quiddam inter res à Deo conditas, ut ex eius aspectu et contemplatione in aperto et manifesto sit omnibus qualis fuerit huius mundi fabricator et opifex. Et sicut Appelles simulachrum Veneris inchoatum, morte occupatus, non potuit absolvere, nemóque posteà pictor qui succederet operi ad praescripta lineamenta inventus est (oris enim pulchritudo reliqui corporis imitandi spem auferebat), ut tradit Cicero in exordio lib. 3. de Officiis, et Plinius lib. 35. cap. 10.: simili ratione Deus per creationem homini dedit imaginem suam, sed imperfectam, quam tamen nulla res alia praeter Deum (ne ipse quidem homo, aut etiam Angelus) posset perpolire et absolvere: id enim proprium Dei est, qui, quam imaginem inchoavit per crea-
SEVENTH CAUSE. Just as a King, having founded a city, places his own image in a famous spot in the midst of it, made of some choice and precious material, so that it may be manifest to all who behold it who was the founder of that city: so God, having fashioned the world, placed his own effigy in the midst of it—that is, in man, who is a kind of middle thing among the things founded by God—so that, from the sight and contemplation of him, it might be open and manifest to all what the fashioner and maker of this world was like. And just as Apelles, prevented by death, could not finish the image of Venus he had begun, and no painter was afterward found who might succeed to the work according to the prescribed lineaments (for the beauty of the face took away the hope of imitating the rest of the body), as Cicero relates at the opening of the third book On Duties, and Pliny in book 35, chapter 10: in like manner God, through creation, gave man his own image, but an imperfect one, which nevertheless nothing else but God (not even man himself, nor even an Angel) could polish to completion and finish: for this is proper to God, who, the image he began through crea-11
[per crea]tionem, eam polit et ornat per iustificationem, et absolvit atque consummat per glorificationem. Quemadmodum igitur reus laesae maiestatis haberetur, et dignus extremo supplicio, qui regis imaginem loco publico et celebri positam deturbaret iniurioséque tractaret, ita qui Dei imaginem in se positam et expressam sceleribus foedat ac maculat, et quantùm in ipso est destruit ac delet, quasi in Deum iniuriosus et contumeliosus gravissima meretur supplicia.
[the image he began through crea]tion, he polishes and adorns it through justification, and brings it to completion and consummates it through glorification. As, therefore, one would be held guilty of treason, and worthy of the extreme penalty, who should cast down the image of the king set in a public and frequented place and treat it insultingly, so he who befouls and stains with crimes the image of God set and expressed in himself, and, as far as in him lies, destroys and blots it out, deserves, as one injurious and contumelious toward God, the gravest punishments.12

Translator’s notes

  1. Title of the moral digression appended to the questions on the image, set centered. ↩
  2. Introduction to the seven 'causes' (causae). ↩
  3. Margin: 'Septem causae cur Deus hominem fecerit ad imaginem suam.' First cause: God's envy-free bounty, making man like himself by nature, by grace, and (in the Incarnation) by hypostatic union. ↩
  4. Second cause: man, bearing God's image, is revered and protected by all creatures. Gen 9:2 (Noah); Gen 4:15 (the sign on Cain). Page breaks; catchword 'Ioseph' (the Joseph/Mordecai example, completed on p. 388). ↩
  5. Page header: 'COMMENTARIORVM 388.' Conclusion of the second cause (the Joseph and Mordecai analogy; cf. Gen 41:42; Esther 8:15). ↩
  6. Margin: 'Opus Phidiae nobilissimum.' Third cause: the indelible seal of God's image (Phidias's self-portrait in Minerva's shield); man's fourfold relation to God (son, slave, soldier, steward). ↩
  7. Fourth cause: friendship with God (man as the only creature like God). Gen 2:18–22 (Eve as companion); Gen 1:31; Prov 8:31 ('Deliciae meae...cum filiis hominum'); Job 7:17–18 ('Quid est homo...'). ↩
  8. Fifth cause begins (the world leading man to the knowledge of God). Page breaks at 'cogni-' (cognitionem). ↩
  9. Page header: 'IN GENESIM, LIB. IIII. 389.' Conclusion of the fifth cause: 'invisibilia Dei...à creatura mundi...conspiciuntur' = Rom 1:20; the image within the soul as the nearest mirror of God. ↩
  10. Sixth cause: the soul's infinite capacity, fillable only by God (the Augustinian 'cor inquietum'; nature's abhorrence of a void applied to the soul). 'Reple in bonis desiderium nostrum' echoes Ps 103:5 (Vulg.). ↩
  11. Seventh cause: man as the central image revealing the world's Maker; the unfinished Venus of Apelles (Cicero, De officiis 3.2; Pliny, Naturalis historia 35.10) as a figure of the image only God can complete. Page breaks at 'crea-' (creationem); catchword 'tionem'; signature 'CC 3'. RESUME next batch at PDF 431 with 'quam imaginem inchoavit per crea[tionem]...'. ↩
  12. Page header: 'COMMENTARIORVM 390.' Conclusion of the seventh cause and of the Moral Digression: God begins the image by creation, polishes it by justification, completes it by glorification; defacing it is a treason against God. ↩