VII.
82. The image and likeness of God in man. The image and likeness of God, the purest spirit. According to the teaching of the church, the Theology says, as it said before, that this purest spirit has mind and will, and so the image and likeness of God means mind and will. But mind and will, as we have seen, were ascribed quite arbitrarily to God. In the whole book there is not the slightest hint why we should assume mind and will in God. So it turns out that in the division about God the division of the pure spirit into mind and will was introduced, not because there were any causes for that in the concept of God itself, but because man, comprehending himself as mind and will, has arbitrarily transferred this division to God.
Now, in the division about man, in explaining the word “he was made in the image and after the likeness of God,” it says that since the attributes of God are divided into mind and will, the word image means mind, while likeness means will. But the concepts of mind and will have been transferred to God only because we find them in man! Let not the reader think that I have anywhere omitted the definition of God’s mind and will. It does not exist. It is introduced as something known in the definition of the attributes of God, and now the attributes of man are deduced from it. In this article we have the following exposition:
“To be in the image of God is natural for us according to our creation; but to become after the likeness of God
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