The ancient philosophers loved to stress the central place of Man in the universe. They said that Man is the only animal which stands upright, and so symbolizes the dimensions of space, first the high, or heavenly, and the low, or earthly. Other animals walk on all fours or crawl. Their space is purely earthly; it is only by Man that they are connected to the heavens. True, trees and rocks stand upright, symbolizing the world’s vertical axis, but they cannot move; they are not free to choose a right or wrong direction, to express or repress the prayer which is, however blindly, their essential nature, their mysterious ‘sacramentality’.
This symbolism is familiar to all the great spiritual traditions. In the Far East, for example, Man is portrayed in an ideogram as the intermediary between earth and heaven. And the Japanese, when arranging flowers, place a horizontal branch for the earth, a vertical one for heaven, and a third in the middle, to represent Man the cosmic mediator.
The Fathers developed this theme, emphasizing that human beings unite in themselves the visible and the invisible, and thus sum up the universe. But for the Fathers humanity’s true glory is never the summing up of the universe, but always its being made in the image of God. ‘There is nothing remarkable,’ writes Gregory of Nyssa, ‘in Man’s being the image and likeness of the universe, for earth passes away and the heavens change… in thinking we exalt human nature by this grandiose name (microcosm, synthesis of the universe) we forget that we are thus favoring it with the qualities of gnats and mice’ (PG.XLIV.1770-1801).
The friend of Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, said, ‘In my earthy character, I am attached to the life I have down here, but being also a divine particle, I bear in my heart the desire for immortality’ (PG.XXXVII.452).
So human beings, like God, are personal beings. Human nature is not blind, like that of a rock or a tree. A human being must consciously and responsibly embody, express and explain his or her nature; by means of it he or she must answer the call of God. The image is therefore not something within humanity; it is at once the fulfilment a human being’s nature longs for and the basis of personal freedom.
From Olivier Clement, On Human Being: A Spiritual Anthropology
“The tender flesh itself will be found one day—quite surprisingly—to be capable of receiving, and yes, full capable of embracing the searing energies of God. Go figure. Fear not. For even at its beginning the humble clay received God’s art, whereby one part became the eye, another the ear, and yet another this impetuous hand. Therefore, the flesh is not to be excluded from the wisdom and the power that now and ever animates all things. His life-giving agency is made perfect, we are told, in weakness— made perfect in the flesh.” ~Saint Irenaeus
From Scott Cairns, Love’s Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life
