Book contents
- Participation in God
- Participation in God
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Works of Thomas Aquinas: Texts, Translations, and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- I Participation and Causation
- 1 By and from God
- 2 ‘From Him and through Him and to Him Are All Things’
- 3 Not out of God
- 4 After God’s Likeness
- 5 To and for God
- II The Language of Participation and Language as Participation
- III Participation and the Theological Story
- IV Participation and the Shape of Human Life
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index of Names
- Subject Index
- Index of Biblical References
- Index of Works of Aquinas
4 - After God’s Likeness
Formal Causation and Creaturely Characterfulness
from I - Participation and Causation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 August 2019
- Participation in God
- Participation in God
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Works of Thomas Aquinas: Texts, Translations, and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- I Participation and Causation
- 1 By and from God
- 2 ‘From Him and through Him and to Him Are All Things’
- 3 Not out of God
- 4 After God’s Likeness
- 5 To and for God
- II The Language of Participation and Language as Participation
- III Participation and the Theological Story
- IV Participation and the Shape of Human Life
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index of Names
- Subject Index
- Index of Biblical References
- Index of Works of Aquinas
Summary
Ideas of likeness are central to accounts of participation. In this chapter, we consider not only what it means for creatures to derive their existence (or – better – being) from God but also their nature, essence, or characterfulness. This is the territory of exemplarity and exemplary causation. A Platonic tradition of thinking about exemplarity is considered, not least in terms of the way it has been taken up and transformed by writers working in a Biblical tradition. Different ways to think about exemplarity are considered, particularly the theological distinction between likeness, image, and vestige, and between a likeness to a divine idea and a likeness to a divine perfection. Attention is given to the idea of the imago dei.
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- Participation in GodA Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics, pp. 84 - 112Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019