The Orthodox Teaching on Image and Likeness
The Orthodox Teaching on Image and Likeness

Summary/Abstract: The Church teaches that man was created by God in a way apart from the other beings. If the other creatures were created by word, man was created through a special intervention of God, both in regard to the body and the soul. Although man is made up of body and soul, he remains united in his psycho-physical being. The soul is not confused with the body, and the body is not a separate reality from the soul, because the body has a plasticizing rationality that remains anchored in the spiritual and unitary reality of God's image in man. The human constitution has a dichotomous character, being made up of God from body and soul, but this dichotomy finds its unity in the image of God, which embraces both the soul and the body. Through the image of God in his being, which is the image of the Trinity, man was created for a life of communion, and not for autonomy or bondage to the world.

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