The innate image of God in man, seen primarily in his dominion over creation, manifests itself through the higher capacities of the soul. Man has been “dignified with reason,” enabling him to comprehend and govern the sensible world (Homily 7.18). Man’s ratio (reason) is balanced by his conscience, also implanted at creation, to enable him to freely choose the good (Homily 5.6). Free will, the characteristic most closely associated with the Divinity, is essential to this discernment process and is never coerced by God; the conscience is meant to interact with the will to inspire righteousness (Homily 20.9). In this way, man is called to lay hold of virtue, thereby actualizing the likeness of God within himself (Homily 23.17).
A Psychosomatic Unity
force” empowers the soul to direct the body to which it is holistically joined (ibid.). The soul is also the locus of man’s higher capacities. A human is “a rational being by reason of a soul, by which this living thing [has] emerged complete and perfect” (ibid.). St. John relates the image of God primarily to the soul, by which man fulfills his role as king of creation (Homily 12.14). Yet the body is so closely united with the soul that human beings are able to fight against spiritual forces while in the flesh; and the virtuous man walks through life as though in heaven (Homily 12.17).
The Ancestral Fall
Contrary to dualistic tendencies prevalent in the secular thought of his day, St. John emphasizes man's psychosomatic unity: body and soul together, perfectly intertwined and operating in unison. He notes that the body of the first human was fashioned from earth and water together (Eight Sermons, p. 129). From this humble beginning, man must remember his unity with the sensible realm he inhabits: “The human being takes the beginning of its composition from the earth [just] as the plants and irrational beings” (Homily 12.14). But this same “earthen vessel” is also a spiritual creature. The “creature shaped from the earth [is] endowed with breath as a vital force, and this In the Ancestral Fall, man became the origin of the soul’s becomes mortal, subject to death being” (Homily 12.15). This “vital and corruption; his intelligence is
ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
The disobedience of Adam and Eve turns the cosmos upside down. In separating himself from God, man is cast down from his throne, no longer able to act as God’s representative king over creation (Eight Sermons, p. 61). Yet in His loving kindness, God does not abandon man. He allows man the ability to domesticate animals for his benefit, even though his power over them has been curtailed (Homily 7.15). Stripped of their “ineffable glory” and ashamed of their nakedness, Adam and Eve are taught by God how to fashion garments of skin to cover their bodies (Homily 17.3-4). And although the soil has been cursed, God allows for this to become a corrective and therapeutic reality, converting man’s toil and labor into a salvific work (Homily 17.41).
The disobedience of Adam and Eve turns the cosmos upside down. In separating himself from God, man is cast down from his throne, no longer able to act as God’s representative king over creation. Yet in His loving kindness, God does not abandon man. 35