The Continuity before and after St. Basil

St. Basil follows and is followed by fathers of the Church responding with all the same ideas to these dangerous misinterpretations of the faith. We can see themes of right doctrine carried throughout all these storms which fell upon Christ’s faithful, from the Apostles, through the Cappadocians, and beyond.

St. Athanasius the Great of Alexandria starts his explanation back at the creation of man, explaining the “further gift” given to man, that is, more than the irrational beasts, “making them according to his own image, giving them a share of the power of his own Word, so that...they might be able to abide in blessedness, living the true life which is really that of the holy ones in paradise.” This focus on the image stamped in man is carried throughout, up to St. John Chrysostom:

What then was the tabernacle in which He dwelt? Hear the Prophet say; I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen. It was fallen indeed, our nature had fallen an incurable fall, and needed only that mighty Hand. There was no possibility of raising it again, had not He who fashioned it at first stretched forth to it His Hand, and stamped it anew with His Image, by the regeneration of water and the Spirit. And observe I pray you, the awful and ineffable nature of the mystery. He inhabits this tabernacle for ever, for He clothed Himself with our flesh, not as again to leave it, but always to have it with Him.

St. Athansius further asks,

human beings had become so irrational [non-Logos-oriented]...thus...hiding the knowledge of the true God, what was God to do? ...Let human beings be deceived by the demons and be ignorant of God? But then what need was there in the beginning for human beings to come into being in the image of God? ...Or what should be done, except to renew again the “in the image”, so that through it human beings would be able once again to know him? ...So the Word of God came himself, in order that he being the image of the Father, the human being “in the image” might be recreated.

That is Athanasius speaking affirmatively, but when speaking against Arius, he takes a further step: “if God had merely spoken and the curse had been annulled...man would only have been restored to the condition of Adam before his sin, receiving grace from outside, and not have it united with the body; for that was man’s state when he was set in paradise” He is beginning explain the image as something even more than it was in the beginning: “For he was incarnate that we might be made god; and he manifested himself through a body that we might receive [the in-nous-ing] (ἔννοιαν - 'taking on the mind') of the invisible Father”, that is, having the mind of the Father, through Christ.

Much in the same vein, St. Gregory the Theologian and St. Gregory of Nyssa speak of the image imprinted in man drawing man back to the archetype himself. The Theologian says, “What God is in nature and essence, ...in my opinion it will be discovered when that within us which is godlike and divine, I mean our mind (νοῦν) and reason (λόγον), shall have mingled with its Like, and the image shall have ascended to the Archetype, of which it has now the desire.” And Gregory of Nyssa takes up the same idea in saying, “the whole intellectual creation has a tendency towards that archetypal good because the higher level of existence has fellowship with it; and...participates in it of necessity.” He continues with a theme which we will take up later in this paper, examining how that ‘participation’ or ‘communion’ in Christ is dependent on our deeds: “But there are different degrees of this participation, varying according to the exercise of responsible freedom of choice.”

And to what degree can man be united with God? St. Gregory of Nyssa puts no limits on it in saying, “for if he is made worthy of becoming a son of God, he will possess in himself the dignity of the Father and be made heir of all the Father's goods. How munificent is this rich Lord!”, though we should avoid asking how this works, for “we are not capable of detecting how the Divine and the human elements are mixed up together. The miracles recorded permit us not to entertain a doubt that God was born in the nature of man.” Or more simply, “the Human Nature is glorified by His assumption of it”.

Nyssa is not speaking merely of being glorified to the state of first-created man, but rather that man, “when mixed with the Divine no longer remains in its own limitations and properties, but is taken up to that which is overwhelming and transcendent”. He uses an illustration in a couple places to explain what he means:

Just as happens in the open sea, if someone throws a drop of vinegar into the sea, and the drop, made over into a marine quality, becomes the sea, so too with the true Son and only-begotten God, who, through flesh, is manifested to men. Flesh which by its own nature is flesh, is made over in accord with the sea of incorruptibility, just as in the saying of the Apostle, that ‘mortality is swallowed up by life’, and all those things that are manifested according to the flesh are changed to accord with the divine and undiluted nature.