Spirituality

Image of God

Saint Augustine begins his famous autobiography, the Confessions, with the following prayer:

Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we humans, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you – we who carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sins and with it the proof that you thwart the proud. Yet these humans, due part of your creation as they are, still do long to praise you. You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you. (Confessions 1,1,1)

Through this prayer Augustine manifests not only his ardent desire to praise the almighty God, but also his deep conviction that all humans do desire to do the same. The reason for this deep conviction is the fact that God has made man and drawn man to himself, and that consequently man’s heart is unquiet until it rests in Him. This is Augustine’s reflection on the Biblical passage of Genesis 1,26-27:

God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in the likeness of ourselves…

God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him…

So though man, like every other creature, is created by God, yet there is one fundamental difference since man is also created in the image of God. From this Augustine concludes that first the spiritual endeavour is something natural to every person and second that this spiritual endeavour is none other than the becoming aware of the fact that man is created in the image of God, and eventually to become more like God.

Augustine’s spirituality is founded on the Biblical teaching that man is created in the image of God and accordingly the spiritual endeavour is none other than the becoming aware of this fact.