Section 2:
Supplemental Knowledge
Pertaining to the Image of God from
Augustine Book VII:
Works of Augustine on the Trinity
Supplemental insights to the Image Dei in accordance with this ministries Orange to Oranges Analogy are contributed by a prominent christian voice in world history who lived in the 4rth & 5th century A.D. Saint Augustine, the North African Bishop of Hippo who compliments the matter in Book VII: the Works of Augustine on the Trinity. Two key concepts emerge as follows:
that Augustine-
1: concurs on biblical grounds that concerning the individual, man alone, not the woman, is created in the Image of God as referenced in Genesis 1:27 via scriptural sufficiency.
2: places a woman correctly in so far as having place with the man as a constituent composite unity which forms another Image of God pertaining to Genesis 1:27, affirming the latter half of the verse,
“... male and female created he them.”, as being creation related though logically non-dependent to the verses' first portion. That Genesis 1:27 is not an argument as it has no premise nor linked conclusion, and neither decrees that God has said woman is the Image of God nor that she was created in his image as do today's religious voices and institutions in maintaining egregious heresy.
Summation the abridgment of Respond47 and Augustine concerning the portion of the Image of God in Augustine Book VII: Works of Augustine on the Trinity
is as follows-
“How man is the image of God. Whether the woman is not also the image of God. how the saying of the apostle, that the man is the image of God, but the woman is the glory of the man, is to to be understood figuratively and mystically.”
Ch 7 p.291
“But we must notice how that which the apostle says, that not the woman but the man is the image of God, is not contrary to that which is written in Genesis, "God created man: in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them: and He blessed them.” Ch 7 p.291
“How then did the apostle tell us that the man is the image of God, and therefore he is forbidden to cover his head ; but that the woman is not so, and therefore is commanded to cover hers ? Unless, forsooth, according to that which I have said already, when I was treating of the nature of the human mind, that the woman together with her own hus-band is the image of God, so that that whole substance may be one image (2); but when she is referred separately to her quality of help-meet,
which regards the woman herself alone, then she is not the image of God (1)
; but as regards the man alone, he is the image of God as fully and completely (1) as when the woman too is joined with him in one.(2)” Ch 7 p.292
Epilogue, Augustinian Errors:
Though perhaps untactful, to imbue upon Augustine polemic bias for being too heavily influenced by admiration for one's mother, it would not appear too far a stretch to speculative history, when one acknowledges the extremely close relationship he held with his mother and the sway of his mother influence over him.Was she not the strongest factor and in Augustine determination that he should remain unmarried and thereby more upwardly mobile in the practice of a priestly profession? From what I have read of him and his works, I find that I am in a difference of opinion with Augustine on a number points, while scholars have at times found Augustine vague and duplicitous, noting that occasionally Augustine writes with “two minds” about the same issue.
For instance in Augustine of Hippo A Life, concerning a refutation of Pelagain Julian, author Henry Chadwick writes, “... that Augustine is being deliberately oracular . Such language must in effect leave a large part of the battlefield in Julian's possession. Augustine has failed to distinguish the desire from the disorder of the
affections. Augustine is never quite consistent.” (p. 164) Also, “On the central problem of suffering, Augustine speaks with two voices, like a man who cannot quite make up his mind.” (p. 158)
Book VII. Works of Augustine on the Trinity wavers on point of the woman. Augustine appears uncomfortable in approaching what would be his contradiction to the Apostle Paul in saying that among Christians, woman is as equal an “Image of God” as man, being perhaps inclined to too great a matrifocal admiration and devotion to his mother to achieve full insight. It appears that on the level of the “intelligence” Augustine is looking to say heterodox-ally that woman is the equal of the man, a claim which he inserts in his
Confessions (13.32.47) “in mind and intelligence woman is man's equal.” while simultaneously maintaining paradox “as a self-evident truth that a woman is subordinate in the public order of
society and in marriage, …”(Henry Chadwick AoHaL, p.164).
Conspicuously heterodox, as man and woman are not biblical equals. The male adult Hebrew is estimated at fifty shekels of silver (Leviticus 27:3), and the estimation of the Hebrew woman, thirty shekels of silver. (Leviticus 27:4) Pointing to eternity, when added together in a unity they comprise 80 units in 2 persons deriving 40 in each individual from the forms that for 40 years God lead the children of Israel in the wilderness in a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. As a certain foundational construction block of cement, the re-bar is not equal and identical to the concrete? Nevertheless, they form one composite building block or stone. Neither is the man equal and identical to the woman, yet never the less they together form a unity.
Yet Augustine maintains that the mind of man and the mind of woman is equal. Yet, in the biblical sense, the mind cannot be equal as from the Genesis image of God, the “intelligence” cannot descend equally and identically upon man and woman. Aristotle (Book 4 on the History of Animals, Chapter 1 page 608b lines 4-16) and Solomon (Ecclesiastes 7:27-29, Ecclesiastes 5:5-6) in normative do not think the mind, virtue, & intelligence of woman is equal and identical to man which is a point I have made elsewhere in further detail. Also, Moses and Jesus Christ do not think a woman is equally valuable as a man. (Deduction by
Leviticus 27:3-4, John 16:21, 5:46-47, Luke 16:17,
Mathew5:17.)
With the advantage of 16 centuries of the progression of human knowledge and likewise, the ergonomic access to that information, I would think that I would be at considerable advantage to Augustine on the matter. One notes in the Orange to Orange analogy summary, I allude to a metaphysical “mind/body/soul” synthesis which underlines and interdependence between constituent interlinking corporeal and metaphysical components of the human being rather than the separation theory which Augustinian's brand of Platonism offers where intelligence and mind is separate from soul and also body in affect from the Image of God. This I maintain is incorrect. A deductive reasoning approach to the cross in Jesus Christ in the testimony of his life and death upon it, usurps the Augustinian notion of mind independence from the other modal constituencies. Principally then mind intelligence for man, it would be from the source through mechanism of God's Image.
One asserts the following-
In the New Testament Bible, the mind of Christ is on display in Jesus life. Jesus Christ posses a perfect “gnosis” and a perfect gnosis trajectory of understanding or “learning trajectory”. He teaches in the temple at Jerusalem at the age 12. (reference Luke 2:46-47) He knows all things and he can and in the maturity of his days not only knows the answer to all questions, but answers them all in the most succinct fashion, because his spiritual connection to
God through God's Image is entirely perfect and untainted.
Now, the 7th century B.C. prophecy concerning him was “...because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors;
and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Isaiah 53:11) and “Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put [him] to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see [his] seed, he shall prolong [his] days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.” (Isaiah 53:10) I think Jesus knew these two passages of Isaiah. He demonstrates before Caiaphas a fully succinct knowledge of the scriptures as to discern in his own manifest being in Psalm 21:6 as the “the Son of the Blessed” Mark 14:62. Also, when Jesus informs John the Baptist “ ...for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.”
Mathew 3:15 he is claiming the trajectory of those two passages of Isaiah as Messiah along with John The Baptist who is to be executed as well for having composite modal part with Christ in the form of Elias (Elijah). If Christ does not know those passages then he certainly knows the theological scope of them just prior, in the days of his ministry.
The blood is the life thereof, reference Genesis 9:4. Bloods physicality aspect is corporeal and a quantity possession of the body while its metaphysic form in container is linked to life “potency”. No blood, no life though one might expire from other means then loss of blood.
On the cross, with the brokenness in body on approach to death and the dissipation of blood, we see the loss of life connection, mind/body/soul. So when Jesus “poured out his soul unto death” on the cross (one suppose a slow exhaustion internal suffocation death), his last words indicated the dissipation of his gnosis which he had held prior in his life. Tied to the breaking and bleeding out of his body in the completion of death, was the spiritual and metaphysical loss of understanding he possessed. In that asymptotic temporal instant of the loss of knowledge, Jesus cried out his last words “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mathew 27:46) no longer in command of the scriptures including Isaiah 53:11 and Isaiah 53:10, passages
which again, it is reason he knew prior. Hence, in a brief near death instant, Christ lost his intellectual grasp of Messianic prophecy and the personal relevance in the unfolding of God's providence in his crucifixion. Christ's phrase of expiration is a recursion of the psalm passage 22:1, and Jesus would never speak that in vain. He would not declare that if he had not lost his understanding. The pureness of Christs heart is the precedent in which the pure in heart are able to stand in the presence of God, referencing Christs own beatitude Mathew 5:8.
Then we see that if the Gospel account of Christ is true, then the means of Augustine's Platonism, in the notion that the mind and “the intelligence” as being metaphysically separate and independent the soul and the body in the Image of God must be false. The gospel account of Jesus Christ's crucifixion point to dynamic Gnostic capacity linked in mind/body/soul interdependence.
Furthermore, Augstitine writes, “Why, then, is the man on that account not bound to cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God, while the woman is bound to do so, because she is the glory of the man; as (A.)though the woman were not renewed in the spirit of her mind, which spirit is renewed to the knowledge of God after the image of Him who created him?
But because she differs from the man in bodily sex, it was possible rightly to figure under her bodily covering that part of the reason which is diverted to the government of temporal things ; (B.)so that the image of God may not remain, except on that side of the mind of man on which it cleaves to the beholden- or the consulting of the eternal reasons of things ; and this, it is clear, not men only, but also women have although in the merely different sex of two human beings.(p. 294)
Concerning point (A.), though the authentic Christian Woman is reborn in God's Image, Augustine is incorrect that she is born in God a second time via Genesis of the Father, as she is rather born again of the Son in the Image of the Son's submission to baptism (John3:3), not as a man is born into world in the Genesis Image which men have only or even as the unity of man and woman when joined together.
In that the Genesis creation account Image of God which is being referred to by him in the examination of the Apostle and in the latter half of Augustine own sentence (Genesis 1:27) is not the christian context of “the renewing of the mind” where Romans 12:2 is implicitly referenced in argument here. It is not that the “spirit is renewed to the knowledge of God after the image of Him who created him”
via God in Genesis breathing the breath of Life into Adams nostrils (Genesis 2:7) or even via God likewise fashioning Eve from the rib which he took from Adam. It is the rather “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, ...” Romans 12:12 and “And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Ephesians 4:24 which is accounted for and refuted by the Apostle Paul from
the form of the “Last Adam” noted in Corinthians. “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. {15:45} And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. (Corinthians 15:44-45). This image is from the mediator of the New Covenant, (Hebrews 12:17), the Lord Jesus Christ, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS (Jeremiah 23:6 ≈585 B.C.). Augustine has selected the wrong mode of origin to form both a fallacious premise & conclusion. That I do not, but rather I show the difference in mode between the concept of the color “orange” and the concept of the fruit “orange”. The
Image of God is the right concept. The creation account of Genesis is Augustine's wrong “potency” supposition of that concept.
And this explains also why Augustine has such a difficult time in explaining the purpose of Baptism other than as a sort of ritual which acts merely as a cancellation of sin in his refutation of the Pelagains. Chadwick again critics him, “Augustine therefore has some difficulty in making clear what baptism achieves.”
(Henry Chadwick, AoHaL, p.156) In both cases, Augustine does not appear to understand that baptism reverberates as a precedent from God in the Image of God of the Last Adam, Jesus Christ, which such notion I use as a supporting cause in prior work of Analogy. I use it to explain why Christ made himself weak as like unto one of us who are under precedent of original sin. It is because, “The intelligible world is a hierarchy.” (reference Introduction p.XX par 4,
Neoplatoninc Philosophy Introductory Readings, John
Dillion and Lloyd P. Gerson)
Augustine errors on Point (B.) in that in certain instances of Christianity modal-ism, man and woman may and do posses the same Image of God, the same “potency” in effect, but there is still the Gen 1:27 “potency” in existence that in individuals, the man posses alone in his person, and not the woman as man was created in the image of God, and woman was created from abstraction of the image as Adam's compliment.
And in unities man and woman are not equals which Augustine unnecessarily claims. When Augustine headed a monastery with a house for nuns, Chadwick notes of Augustine, “In 401 (A.D.) he composed a treatise On Holy Virginity to inspire the sisters with the dignity of their high calling. By being born of Mary the Lord has sanctified both sexes equally. The nun free of family ties takes Mary as her model, and follows the Lamb wherever he goes.” (Henry
Chadwick AoHaL, p.54)
The Augustinian notion and Chadwicks affirmation, thereof, is hermeneutically incorrect. The atonement of Christ takes away the sin of the world, and the guidance of Christ, who sits at the right hand of power, sanctifies. He is leading his people on “... the path of the just ...unto the perfect day” (Proverbs 4:18), but know that the Son of God did not come to earth to make men and women equals in defiance of the “Father” from the beginning (deductive reference
Mathew 5:17-18).
It is not enough to be “born” of Mary, but to venture on the path of certain salvation, one must be born of Jesus Christ. Mary doesn't follow Jesus upon the cross, but on the cross Jesus makes space for Mary to live out life in widowhood. (John 19:26-27) Without Jesus Christ the children of Joseph are under “the curse”. Without children from Joseph and Mary, Jesus Christ is still “son of the most blessed forever”, modal human being or Angel (Psalm
21:6, 110:01, Daniel 7:13 , 10:10-21 (5th century B.C.), Revelation 1:13). Secondly, in sanctification, they, men and women, need not be and are not sanctified unto equals, nor
are they identical as Adam and Eve were not equals nor identical. Deductively, even before the fall of creation, before Gods laws of casualty decreed woman's husband shall rule over her, (reference Genesis 3:16) Adam and Eve were not equals. God did not fashion the origins of humanity in error that subsequently needed to be corrected by means of equality in Jesus Christ. Rather it was that in the perfection of God's harmonious creation, there was no need of exercising authority over the marital partner. All action was in harmony
with all causality, and vice versa. Everything that was, was HOLY. (reference Genesis 1:4, 11, 13, 19, 22, 26, & 31)
Augustine even confided in fellow ascetic peer Euodius “that he contemplated his work on the Trinity with misgivings. “burdensome to write and within the intellectual grasp of few. (Epistolae 169. I. I)”He
felt painfully conscious of its shortcomings.” (Henry Chadwick, AoHaL, p.122) bur ”The greatest to which we can aspire is often no more than 'learned ignorance'.(Confessions 12. 5. 5)
Augustine's difficulties and confusions make an appropriate segway into Section 3: Advanced Christology, Conceptualized Full Span of the Image of God, where “Image of God” dilemma centuries old is absolved circumspect to the elegant venerated “full” solution.
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