imagination. The correlation or rather the identity of God and man is veiled in religion by representing both as persons or individuals, and God as a self-subsistent, independent being apart from his paternity:—an independence which however is only apparent, for he who, like the God of religion, is a father from the depths of the heart, has his very life and being in his child.
The reciprocal and profound relation of dependence between God as father and man as child, cannot be shaken by the distinction, that only Christ is the true, natural son of God, and that men are but his adopted sons; so that it is only to Christ as the only-begotten Son, and by no means to men, that God stands in an essential relation of dependence. For this distinction is only a theological, i.e., an illusory one. God adopts only men, not brutes. The ground of adoption lies in the human nature. The man adopted by divine grace is only the man conscious of his divine nature and dignity. Moreover, the only-begotten Son himself is nothing else than the idea of humanity, than man preoccupied with himself, man hiding from himself and the world in God,—the heavenly man. The Logos is latent, tacit man; man is the revealed, expressed Logos. The Logos is only the prelude of man. That which applies to the Logos applies also to the nature of man.[1] But between God and the only-begotten Son there is no real distinction,—he who knows the Son knows the Father also,—and thus there is none between God and man.
It is the same with the idea that man is the image of God. The image is here no dead, inanimate thing, but a living being. “Man is the image of God,” means nothing more than that man is a being who resembles God. Similarity between living beings rests on natural relationship. The idea of man being the image of God reduces itself therefore to kinship; man is like God, because he is the child of God. Resemblance is only kinship presented to the senses; from the former we infer the latter.
But resemblance is just as deceptive, illusory, evasive an idea
- ↑ “The closest union which Christ possessed with the Father, it is possible for me to win . . . . All that God gave to his only-begotten Son, he has given to me as perfectly as to him.”—Predigten etzlicher Lehrer vor und zu Tauleri Zeiten. Hamburg, 1621, p. 14. “Between the only-begotten Son and the Soul there is no distinction.”—Ib. p. 68.
