The Image of God in the Theology of Gregory of Nazianzus by Gabrielle Thomas

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Image of God in the Theology of Gregory of Nazianzus by Gabrielle Thomas Ilaria Vigorelli Gabrielle Thomas The Image of God in the Theology of Gregory of Nazianzus Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019 Pp. 196. $99.99. Gabrielle Thomas’s book is a text that helps us to understand the development of Christian anthropology in the fourth century, especially how it expanded enormously with the development of Trinitarian theology and, with it, the discovery of the relational dynamism present in the beginning and end of creation. No longer was change the central problem of thinking about being, but the divinization of created being: theosis. Being created in the image and likeness of God is the starting point for any biblical anthropology, but the Trinitarian and christological development of the fourth century, mainly due to the Cappadocians, contributed to a definitive differentiation of Christian anthropology from Old Testament and pagan anthropology. Although it remains evident that the theological language is indebted to many forms and images taken from the philosophy of the Mediterranean koiné, this was done by means of an accurate chrêsis, as Christian Gnilka (Chrēsis: Die Methode der Kirchenväter im Umgang mit der antiken Kultur [Basel: Schwabe, 1984]) has demonstrated, in contrast to Harnack’s theses. The author, following the school of Lewis Ayres, recognizes all this, but seems to leave it behind as a debate belonging to the last century, and proposes to take a further step: placing herself already within the horizon of Christian anthropology, she wants to show the historical and eschatological dimension of the eikon theoû (Genesis 1.26–27) in its existential dynamism, in what can rightly be called a human drama: “for Gregory this relates to being and becoming a divine image” (3). In fact, in the reading of Thomas, “rather than simply focusing upon the question, ‘what is human eikon?’ Gregory depicts the human eikon in her day-to-day existence; this involves struggling with the ‘world,’ ‘flesh,’ and the ‘devil’” (154). The book is structured in five chapters, which seem to retrace a tale in three acts: (a) the origins, in which the doctrine of creation “in Christ” is expounded: (1) “Being an Image of God,” (2) “Jesus Christ, the Identical Image”; (b) the development, in which we see how human reality differs from the purely spiritual: (3) “Creation of the Image of God”; (c) the decisive test, thanks to which vulnerability and the eikon’s restoration emerge in sequence: (4) “The Image of God and the Devil,” and finally the overcoming of the conflict in the happy ending: (5) “Theosis and the Divine Image.” [End Page 449] The composition is very well constructed and leads to the most relevant ontological question: What understanding of the image of God did Gregory of Nazianzus develop in the final resolution of the eschatological theosis? In what does the final resolution of the human drama consist? Since, as is demonstrated throughout the text, for Gregory the eikon refers not only to the spiritual soul, but to the whole human person, including the flesh, just as in Christ the flesh makes God visible, so the identical Eikon transforms the flesh as it is assumed by the Word. “Gregory describes Christ as a unified, visible eikon, which sets the stage for the entrance of a visible human eikon. [. . .] This results in human eikones being, quite literally, visible divine eikones who bear the presence of God. This also means that they are dynamic, not static; thus they have the potential for spiritual growth and theosis” (155). What ontological effect on human nature, then, is to be attributed to theosis? After having gone through the texts of the Nazianzen with order and accuracy and having analyzed the state of the different interpretations among contemporary theologians, the author shows that one cannot understand theosis in the texts of the Nazianzen as a metaphor, nor in the light of the Platonic homoiosis expressed by the Theaetetus (176a), but as a reality. She assumes “the ‘divinity’ of the human eikon as ontological, functional, ethical, relational, experiential, since the human eikon participates in, and is created to function like, the identical Eikon, Christ” (156). Thus, ontology...