Religion Compose paper
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GOD’S MANY-SPLENDORED IMAGE
Foreword:
This book aims to show readers that all people have value before God.
Acknowledgments:
Thanks for those who were share opinions with Sr. Nonna Verna Harrison
Introduction:
The experience for thinking about “who I was as a human person” as a Christian.
Christians have believed that the image of God in which we are created is at the core of who we are and defines us as human.
God given us rationality, freedom, and the capacity for growth in virtue and communion with God.
Freedom:
What is freedom?
Inner freedom is the freedom of mind and heart. It is the ability to reason and make choices without constraint, including choices about the thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and drives that fill the inner landscape of oneself.
The importance of freedom:
People always wonder whether they had real freedom of choice.
Freedom and Image of God:
By our creation we have the first(image), and by our free choice we build the second.
Since freedom is included in God’s excellence, humans are free too.
Human freedom is self-initiated; its actions are not determined by any external force.
Human are always change, but God not.
The Struggle for Inner Freedom:
We have to struggle with our freedom, to discover how we can still use it in spite of the constraints of obsessive thoughts, unruly emotions, and bad habits.
God can help us to train our freedom.
Everybody is equal, whatever they did what kind of work.
Mental choice is where human freedom begins its work, for good or ill based on which choice they choiced.
People need help from God. As Anthony says, they need prayers when they break down the bad habits.
Grace and Human Freedom:
Grace does not conflict with our capacity to choose but brings our freedom to fullness of life, creativity, and activity.
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What determines who we are and what we do, heredity or environment, our genes or our upbringing? ----- God is the one who make us who we are.
The Model and the Image
According to early Christian writers, from the beginning God created humankind in God’s own image, thus establishing a relationship with human beings as a defining characteristic of who they are.
Creation in the Image of God
God’s creation of human beings is an expression of his love.
One whom God has fashioned and made in his own image [see Gen. 1:26] is either created as desirable to God himself, or fashioned as desirable for the sake of another.
The Fall of Humankind
God created the human being for incorruption and made him an image of his own eternity; but through the devil’s envy death entered the world
The Restoration of the Image
The Word of God came near through himself, that as Image of the Father he would be able to recreate the human being according to the image.
Human beings are made according to the image, and only Christ is the Image in an absolute sense; he is the model according to which we were made in the beginning.
From Adam to Christ
Christ replaces Adam as the head of humankind
Death reigned over the flesh, so when it was abolished through flesh, it was necessary that it release the human from its oppression.
Death conquered human flesh, but Christ’s flesh conquers death.
Christ sums up humankind across all time and space, provided they are willing, by uniting all to himself.
The Source of Our Human Identity
People should have their own significance, value and divine image.
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Harrison Chapter 3
Spiritual Perception
This text speaks volumes about the hierarchy, snobbery, and class prejudice in Greco-Roman society.
Our character determines who we really are now and who we will be in eternity.
If we see something of God, we will be able to recognize his image in our neighbors.
The Vision of God
The ability to perceive God and other people spiritually is an important facet of the divine image in us.
The vision itself is entirely God’s gift
SPIRTUAL INTELLECT
Divine and earth made human ---- spiritual realities; the physical earth.
The mind not only organizes data we obtain through sight and touch but also perceives and receives spiritual realities.
Through both our eyes and our spiritual perception we are at one with the natural world and with God
Wounded Spiritual Eyes and Their Cure
Our spiritual eyes are wounded because we have fallen away from God.
The creature rather than the Creator
Once we had recognized God in Christ, we could begin to see God present in our neighbors and God at work throughout the material world.
Seeing People Truly
Once we come to know God, we will perceive his character, that is, his gentleness, patience, generosity, wisdom, justice, and love. Then we will slowly begin to recognize the divine character in people we meet, to see in them the divine image and likeness.
The erring monk would feel hurt when accused of sin.
As a man of prayer, Bishop could see who the sinners really were as well as the context of their lives, regardless of what they had done wrong.
Poemen, Achillas, and Ammonas could see the divine image in people they met, both those who imitated God’s virtues and those who sinned. So, like God, they acted toward their neighbors with dignity and kindness.
People today know others who have set good examples they can follow or who have served as mentors, through them we can see God present in his image and likeness.
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Harrison Chapter4 Virtues and Humility
Virtues and Humility
Human beings can become good and can do good for others, because God will help them.
Virtues as Image and Likeness of God
“How did they do it? Can I learn from their example?”
Early Christian writers are also very interested in good character. Their writings, especially their sermons, are full of reflection about virtues. Like today's monks and nuns, they seek to analyze how people do good, and then look for examples that they and their congregations can follow.
The word arete , which is usually translated “virtue,” means excellence of action, habits, and especially character.
Besides being free by nature, we humans have from God the ability to acquire all the virtues.
By “putting on Christ,” by becoming unite d with him, one is enabled to share in his virtues.
Virtues are the free gift of God and Christ to us.
Every person is the painter of his own life, and choice is the craftsman of the work, and the virtues are the paints for producing the image.
Being an “imitator of Christ” requires effort, skill, concertation, and precision.
Just as he would refuse to react to insulting words, he enables us also to forgive those who insult us.
God is the Creator of the divine image in the human person at the beginning and continues to create the divine image and likeness in us throughout our lives as we grow in the virtues.
Virtues and Passions
Soul gives life to the body, yet it also contains mental and emotional capacities, including reason and free choice.
Each person is a whole that moves in various directions and reacts to his or her environment in various ways.
In a mature, well-balanced human life, our intellect is supposed to discern, receive, and obey the will of God and to guide and bring order to the other two “parts” of the soul, which are understood to include the instinctive and emotional impulses and drives.
Greek Christian spirituality, passions are instincts or emotions that are misdirected and therefore pull us away from God.
Wisdom is deep, abiding insight about the meaning of Scripture, about virtues and vices, and about God and spiritual realities.
Humility
Early Christian spirituality: humility.
Real humility has nothing to do with creating in myself a low self-image or making myself feel guilty.
Humility is not about pondering how awful I think I am. It is about how I relate to others.
Acquiring Humility
The remembrance of one's own impending death will teach the affluent humility.
