Thomistic Note: Imago Dei

In the prologue to the Secunda pars of the Summa theologiae, St. Thomas (citing St. John Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa [book 2, chapter 12]) explains the imago Dei: “Man is said to be made in God’s image, in so far as the image implies ‘an intelligent being endowed with free-will and self-movement.’” St. Thomas then proceeds to contextualize the moral implications of the imago Dei within the broader structures of sacra doctrina in general and the Summa theologiae in particular: since in the Prima pars of the Summa theologiae “we have treated the exemplar, i.e., God, and of those things which come forth from the power of God in accordance with His will; it remains for us to treat of His image, i.e., man, inasmuch as he too is the principle of his actions, as having free-will and control of his actions” (STh, I-II, Prologue). From man’s creation in the image of God flows significant corollaries: man is the principle of his actions, and thus possesses free will (liberum arbitrium) and control (potestatem) of his actions.

All contingent being, by definition, experiences intrinsic restrictions and limitations. All contingent being is created by God—he who is the most perfect being (see STh I, q. 44, a. 1). As properly composed of potency and act, all contingent being exists by way of participation.¹ Contingent beings receive their being from Actus Purus.² Additionally, God’s act of creation is a free act that proceeds from his divine intellect and will. ³ St. Thomas explains: “God is the cause of things by His intellect and will, just as the craftsman is cause of the things made by his craft.” Thus, we can say that “the processions of the [Divine] Persons are the type of the productions of creatures inasmuch as they include the essential attributes, knowledge and will.”⁴ This summary of the metaphysics of creation vis-à-vis the intellection and volition of God’s essence is preliminarily necessary for an adequate consideration of man as imago Dei.

St. Thomas explains man’s creation ad imaginem Dei in the opening pages of the Summa theologiae:

Man is said to be after the image of God [ad imaginem Dei], not as regards his body, but as regards that whereby he excels other animals… Now man excels all animals by his reason and intelligence; hence it is according to his intelligence and reason, which are incorporeal, that man is said to be according to the image of God.⁵

St. Thomas points to man’s reason and intelligence in order to explain the human ad imaginem Dei nature. Man is a rational animal, and it is through his incorporeal rational powers that man formally images God. Why is this the case? Elsewhere, St. Thomas explains that “image includes the idea [ratio] of similitude.”⁶ However, he clarifies: “not any kind of similitude suffices for the notion of image, but only similitude of species, or at least of some specific sign.”⁷ Thus, image is a specific similitude. “Image, properly speaking, means whatever proceeds forth in likeness to another.”⁸ Likeness is an essential quality of an authentic image, because the thing imaged “is produced as an imitation of something else.”⁹ There must be a formal-causal link between the thing imaged and the imaged thing. The image must be “produced as an imitation of something else” in order to be a true image.¹⁰ “Wherefore, for instance, an egg, however much like and equal to another egg, is not called an image of the other egg, because it is not copied [expressum] from it.”¹¹ However, although likeness and imitation are requisite for authentic images, St. Thomas clarifies: “equality does not belong to the essence of image… as we see in a person’s image reflected in a glass.”¹² The image reflected in a glass is perfect—“for in a perfect image nothing is wanting that is to be found in that of which it is a copy.” However, “in man [while] there is some likeness to God, copied from God as from an exemplar; yet this likeness is not one of equality, for such an exemplar infinitely excels its copy.” Therefore, St. Thomas concludes, “there is in man a likeness to God; not, indeed, a perfect likeness, but [an] imperfect [likeness].”¹³ An image can be authentic but imperfect if the image originates from the thing imaged but does not equal the thing imaged. This is why man is said to be ad imaginem Dei—“to the image”—and not the imago Dei, the perfect image (which, of course, only the Eternal Son is): “Man is said to be both ‘image’ [imago] by reason of the likeness; and ‘to the image’ [ad imaginem] by reason of the imperfect likeness. And since the perfect likeness of God cannot be except in an identical nature, the Image of God exists in His first-born Son.”¹⁴

Man’s rational nature situates him ad imaginem Dei in a unique manner among other composite beings. All composite things are like God insofar as they exist and have real being. Some composite things are like God in that they live. But only rational creatures are like God in that they can know and understand. Because of this rational similarity to God, “intellectual creatures alone, properly speaking, are made ad imaginem Dei.”¹⁵ Cardinal Cajetan helpfully outlines St. Thomas’s argument: “Only intellectual creatures are assimilated to God as he understands and knows [ut intelligit et sapit]; therefore only intellectual creatures are assimilated to God according to the quasi-ultimate difference [quasi ultimam differentiam]; therefore only they are assimilated according to species; therefore only they are created ad imaginem.”¹⁶

St. Thomas explains that man “is the most perfectly like God according to that in which he can best imitate God in his intellectual nature.”

Now the intellectual nature imitates God chiefly in this, that God understands and loves Himself. Wherefore we see that the image of God is in man in three ways. First, inasmuch as man possesses a natural aptitude for understanding and loving God; and this aptitude consists in the very nature of the mind, which is common to all men. Secondly, inasmuch as man actually and habitually knows and loves God, though imperfectly; and this image consists in the conformity of grace. Thirdly, inasmuch as man knows and loves God perfectly; and this image consists in the likeness of glory. Wherefore on the words, “The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us” (Ps 4:7), the gloss distinguishes a threefold image of “creation,” of “re-creation,” and of “likeness.” The first is found in all men, the second only in the just, the third only in the blessed.¹⁷

Here, St. Thomas explains the three ways the imago Dei can be identified in rational animals. The first way consists in man’s aptitude for knowing and loving God according to man’s rational nature per se. This aptitudinal image is universal to all human persons, and it is potential in nature—every rational soul stands in potency to knowing and loving God actually, whether or not the rational soul actually knows and loves God. The second way the imago Dei is found in human persons is when the rational soul “actually and habitually knows and loves God, though imperfectly.” This imago Dei likeness is not universal. Indeed, it is only made possible through the conformity of grace, and thus it exists only in the just. Thomists refer to this recreated imago as the image of grace.¹⁸ Finally, St. Thomas points to the imago Dei as it is found in those who know and love God perfectly. The active likeness of this image receives its form from the lumen gloriae. Thus, it is referred to as the image of glory, and it is found only in the blessed. Hence, we observe in St. Thomas’s fundamental teaching on the imago Dei a threefold likeness with varying degrees of likened conformity. All three expressions of the imago Dei are founded upon man’s rational nature.

Thomist commentators have observed that in the Prima pars of the Summa theologiae, St. Thomas examines the imago Dei as an “imperfect image of God” insofar as “like God, man can know and love himself, thus representing not only the divine nature, but also the divine Trinity.”¹⁹ In the Secunda pars, however, St. Thomas “proceeds to show that man is God’s image, not only by his higher faculties, but also in his free activities, whereby he knows and loves not only himself, but also God, as God knows and loves Himself.”²⁰ This higher, perfect image of God is significant because “this knowledge and love [of God] are indeed the final goal of all human life.”²¹ This leads Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., to summarize moral theology as nothing less than “the science of imitating God.”²²

In his 1955 S.T.Lr. thesis, William J. Hill, O.P., expounds upon St. Thomas’s teaching on the image of God (imperfect and perfect) as the image of representation and the image of conformity.²³ “The soul is enabled to know and love itself through its own essence; the knowledge and love coming not from an impressed species as a ‘medium quo,’ but through the soul’s own essence as a ‘principium quo.’” This is the image of representation: man’s ability to know and love himself. Through the rational soul’s self-knowledge and self-love it resembles God’s self-knowledge and self-love. In the image of representation, there is found “an analogical similitude of God’s eternal knowledge and love of Himself through Himself”—“such immanent ‘activity’ within the Godhead proceeds forth and terminates ‘ad intra’ at the consubstantial Person of the Word and of the Holy Spirit.”²⁴ God’s expressed self-knowledge and spirated self-love are the eternal processions of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Moreover, through the rational soul’s own expressed self-knowledge and self-love, the rational soul as imago Dei imitates the divine immanent processions insofar as “the mind of man in its experiential self-awareness produces its mental ‘verbum’ and an ‘impulsus’ of the will.”²⁵ Granted, the immanent processions within God and the immanent operations within the rational soul of man admit to an infinite degree of difference. However, Father Hill observes, while “the points of disconvenience [disconvenientia] are many; yet there is a proportion between power, object, and term principled (in both knowledge and love) in the one and the Other.”²⁶

It is through the image of conformity that the most perfect actual expression of the imago Dei within man is realized. Because “every knower becomes an image of what he knows by an objective assimilation or an identity in the order of intention” with the object of his knowledge, “the soul, regarding God as its object of contemplation, is a more explicit likeness of Him then in its knowledge of self.”²⁷ The reason for this is clear. The similitude achieved through the image of conformity is not merely that of an “analogical similarity of operation” as in the image of representation. For in the image of conformity, “there is not simply a similitude between distinct powers in an order to their distinct objects, but between distinct powers in an order to one and the same object.”²⁸ This point is important because the rational knowing power (i.e., the intellect) also has a proper appetite (i.e., the will). And the conformity of the intellect to the object known works in conjunction with the inclination of the will towards the object loved: “the perfection of an appetite being its inclination towards the object, whereby the beloved is said to be in the lover as the known is in the knower.” Thus, God as the object of the intellect and of the will is present and assimilated to man in a unique manner through the image of conformity.²⁹ Union with God is achieved through knowledge and love. In the image of representation, it is possible for the rational creature to image God “without” God, so to speak—in other words, knowing and loving himself as God knows and loves himself (but God is not the object of the knowledge and love). Through the image of conformity, however, the rational creature images God in a more perfect way by actually knowing and loving God (as God knows and loves himself).

Again, because human nature is created and contingent, it can never be the perfect imago Dei. Only the Eternal Son is the Imago Dei. Rather, human nature admits to degrees of perfection vis-à-vis the imago Dei (i.e., the image of creation, the image of grace or recreation, and the image of glory or similitude). This is why St. Thomas’s explicit reference to man as created ad imaginem Dei is significant. There is always something of the “ad” in man’s conformity to God. Man’s conformity to God always retains some degree of imperfection because of his contingent nature. Nonetheless, while “ad” always implies some degree of separation and difference, “ad” also connotes significant—indeed, eternal—degrees of intimacy or distance.

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1. “All beings apart from God are not their own being, but are beings by participation. Therefore it must be that all things which are diversified by diverse participation of being, so as to be more or less perfect, are caused by one First Being, Who possesses being most perfectly” (STh I, q. 44, a. 1).↩︎

2. “God is pure act, without any potentiality” (STh I, q. 3, a. 2). See STh I q. 2, a. 3.↩︎

3. “We must hold that the will of God is the cause of things; and that He acts by the will, and not, as some have supposed, by a necessity of His nature… Both intellect and will act for an end… Hence, since God is the first in the order of agents, He must act by intellect and will” (STh I, q. 19, a 4).↩︎

4. STh I, q. 45, a. 6. Emphasis added.↩︎

5. STh I, q. 3, a. 1, ad 2.↩︎

6. STh I, q. 35, a. 1.↩︎

7. Ibid.↩︎

8. STh I, q. 35, a. 1, ad 1.↩︎

9. “Likeness is essential to image” (STh I, q. 93, a. 1).↩︎

10. STh I, q. 93, a. 1. Emphasis added.↩︎

11. Ibid.↩︎

12. Ibid.↩︎

13. Ibid.↩︎

14. STh I, q. 93, a. 1, ad 2.↩︎

15. STh I, q. 3, a. 3.↩︎

16. Commentary on STh I, q. 93, a. 3 (no. 2).↩︎

17. STh I, q. 93, a. 4.↩︎

18. See Romanus Cessario, O.P., “Sonship, Sacrifice, and Satisfaction: The Divine Friendship in Aquinas and the Renewal of Christian Anthropology,” Letter and Spirit 3 (2007): 71-93.↩︎

19. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Beatitude: A Commentary on St. Thomas’ Theological Summa, Ia IIae, qq. 1-54, trans. Patrick Cummins, O.S.B. (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1956), 3. Unfortunately, as a whole, this translation of Father Garrigou’s De beatitudine is not of the highest quality.↩︎

20. Ibid.↩︎

21. Ibid.↩︎

22. Ibid.↩︎

23. Hill’s thesis was later published as Proper Relations to the Divine Indwelling of Persons (Washington: The Thomist Press, 1955).↩︎

24. Ibid., 5.↩︎

25. Ibid. “Such processions in the soul are immanent and are only two in species (though multiplied numerically); there are three distinct terms, one that does not proceed, and two proceeding, and proceeding in an order that imitates the order of origin of the divine Person” (ibid., 6).↩︎

26. Ibid., 6.↩︎

27. Ibid.↩︎

28. Ibid. Emphasis added.↩︎

29. Hill, Proper Relations, 6-7.↩︎