DiotimosReading Desk

Creation scripture and the Word

Image of God

Imaginem DEI; Imaginem DEI imitationis

The image of God names humanity’s relation to its Creator and becomes a test of the distinction between substance and accident.

From the book

Candida Phoenix Philosophica

Anonymous · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordThe image of God names humanity’s relation to its Creator and becomes a test of the distinction between substance and accident.
  • In the CandidaThe first letter treats the image as co-created and lost; the reply disputes both the separation and the alleged loss.
  • TranslationThe speakers and their different readings remain explicit. Image is not assigned one unchanging classification across the exchange.
  • A place to readII.204.1–II.205.2, pp. 204–205, and II.225.2–II.227.L, pp. 225–227.

Meaning

The image of God enters a controversy that begins with light. The first correspondent is answering a syllogism: whatever God creates is substance; God created light; therefore light is substance. He rejects the major premise by arguing that God also creates innocent accidents, including qualities such as heat and colour. The divine image becomes his example of something created together with the human being that does not constitute the human essence.

The reply gives the image a different position. The second correspondent does not recognize a distinction between the image itself and the human being created in it. He appeals to the wording of Luther's translation and to scriptural descriptions of humanity as God's image. The question is consequently more exact than whether the image is important. The correspondents disagree about how it belongs to the person and how that relation bears upon the substance-and-accident dispute.

The Fall makes the classification consequential. The first correspondent warns that confusing image and substance opens a route to treating sin as substance and then making God the author of sin. The second agrees that sin cannot be substance, but seeks to establish this through his own definition of pure substance and accidental residues. Agreement on rejecting the theological conclusion does not erase disagreement about the image.

Use in the book

At II.204.1, the first correspondent says the co-created image enters neither the matter nor the form of the human being. Nor can it supply a third intrinsic cause, since his classification admits no such cause. He therefore treats it as an accident. His example is supposed to show that something created through God's Word can fail to be substance, defeating the universality of the original syllogism's major premise.7

The next paragraph uses the image's alleged replacement by sin as a warning. If the image were made substance, the first correspondent argues, what succeeds it after the Fall might likewise be made substance. The displayed Flacian syllogism is presented as an error to be avoided, not a conclusion he endorses. In his account, the image example has therefore remained relevant to the controversy about light: both test the overbroad assertion that everything God creates is substance (II.205.2).

The second letter returns to the image after developing a physical definition of substance, treating corruption and salvation, and comparing the Stone with resurrection. At II.225.2, the correspondent disputes the distinction between the image and what is created in the image. He frames the issue through the German scriptural wording: God makes the human being an image like himself. The direct object of creation is humanity under this description, rather than a person accompanied by a separately co-created image.

At II.226.1, dominion helps specify the relation. The human being is to rule over fish, birds, beasts and the earth. The correspondent then invokes Paul's unqualified statement that man is God's image. He is not merely repeating the first letter in a different vocabulary. He is replacing its account of a co-created adjunct with a reading of what the human being is said to be.

The continuation after the Fall is equally explicit. At II.226.2, the correspondent says he can find no scriptural statement of the image's loss. Genesis 9 repeats the language after the Fall, renews dominion and grounds the prohibition of killing in the fact that humanity was made in God's image. The argument combines a reading of scriptural chronology with an ethical consequence: human blood remains protected by the stated relation to God.

The reply concludes with Seibold, with whom Felden is said to agree, that the human being is God's image by imitation (II.227.L). The imitation includes dominion but is not exhausted by it. Holiness, righteousness and other Christian virtues belong to the closing account. The speaker also distinguishes the earthly and heavenly aspects of humanity: the dominion already described pertains especially to the earthly human being. The final formulation brings the physical analysis back toward Christian conduct.

This provides a significant connection with the treatise's own conclusion. There the author asks the person made in God's image to imitate divine generosity by serving the neighbour (II.237.2). That ethical use does not settle every classification debated in the letters, but it shows why image and imitation matter beyond an abstract logical example. The relation to God supplies a pattern for human action, including the choice to communicate useful knowledge.

Places to read

  1. Part II · II.203.1; II.203.2; II.204.1; II.204.2; II.205.22345The first letter’s syllogism, innocent accidents and the co-created image.
  2. Part II · II.218.1; II.220.2; II.222.123The reply’s alternative definition of substance and rejection of sin as substance.
  3. Part II · II.225.2; II.226.1; II.226.2; II.227.L234The image identified with the human being, retained after the Fall and explained by imitation.
  4. Part II · II.237.2Imitating divine beneficence through neighbourly service.

Translation

Imago Dei is image of God; the attested forms record its Latin inflections. Co-created preserves the first correspondent's concreatam and its argumentative force. By imitation renders imitationis in the reply's conclusion. The English retains the changing speaker so that readers do not mistake an objection, its answer and a later ethical application for a single uniform definition.

The reply's claims about Luther's wording are represented as its interpretation of the German text. An English translator should not silently replace that argument with wording from another Bible version, since the precise relation between image and what is made in the image is what the correspondent is debating.

Cautions

The exchange does not supply a neutral survey of all Christian doctrines of the image. Its propositions belong to two particular voices. The closing epistle locator is II.227.L, not II.227.1, which begins the next chapter.

Imaginem DEI

Imaginem DEI — image of God in an inflected Latin form. II.204.1.

Imaginem DEI imitationis

Imaginem DEI imitationis — image of God by imitation. II.227.L.

Source note

II.227.L closes the Second Letter and dates it 1669. The text then begins Chapter Fourteen at II.227.1. Keeping those same-page units distinct prevents the reply’s conclusion from being assigned to the narrator’s next chapter.