So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
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Basil the Great
AD 379
It is not They made. Here Scripture avoids the plurality of the Persons. After having enlightened the Jew, it dissipates the error of the Gentiles in putting itself under the shelter of unity, to make you understand that the Son is with the Father, and guarding you from the danger of polytheism. He created him in the image of God. God still shows us His co-operator, because He does not say, in His image, but in the image of God.
If God permits, we will say later in what way man was created in the image of God, and how he shares this resemblance. Today we say but only one word. If there is one image, from whence comes the intolerable blasphemy of pretending that the Son is unlike the Father? What ingratitude! You have yourself received this likeness and you refuse it to your Benefactor! You pretend to keep personally that which is in you a gift of grace, and you do not wish that the Son should keep His natural likeness to Him who begot Him.
But evening, which long ago sent the sun...
It is not They made. Here Scripture avoids the plurality of the Persons. After having enlightened the Jew, it dissipates the error of the Gentiles in putting itself under the shelter of unity, to make you understand that the Son is with the Father, and guarding you from the danger of polytheism. He created him in the image of God. God still shows us His co-operator, because He does not say, in His image, but in the image of God.
If God permits, we will say later in what way man was created in the image of God, and how he shares this resemblance. Today we say but only one word. If there is one image, from whence comes the intolerable blasphemy of pretending that the Son is unlike the Father? What ingratitude! You have yourself received this likeness and you refuse it to your Benefactor! You pretend to keep personally that which is in you a gift of grace, and you do not wish that the Son should keep His natural likeness to Him who begot Him.
But evening, which long ago sent the sun to ...
Then Moses said, "male and female He created them," (Gen1:27) to make known that Eve was inside Adam, in the rib that was drawn out from him. Although she was not in his mind she was in his flesh, she was in his flesh with him, and she was also in soul and spirit with him, for God added nothing to that rib that He took out except the structure and the adornment. If everything that was suitable for Eve, who came to be from the rib, was complete from the rib alone, it is well said that "male and female He created them."
Then Moses said, “Male and female he created them,” to make known that Eve was already inside Adam, in the rib that was drawn out from him. Although she was not in his mind she was in his body, and she was not only in his body with him but also in soul and spirit with him, for God added nothing to that rib that he took out except the structure and the adornment. If everything that was suitable for Eve, who came to be from the rib, was complete in and from that rib, it is rightly said that “male and female he created them.” .
Male and female. Eve was taken from Adam's side on this same day, though it be related in the following chapter. Adam was not an hermaphrodite as some have foolishly asserted. (Calmet)
Adam means the likeness, or red earth, that in one word we may behold our nobility and meanness. (Haydock)
Let us carefully examine these expressions. We shall discover this: what is in the image is one thing, what we see now in our unhappiness is another. “God made man,” says Scripture. “He made him in the image of God.” One who is made in the image of God has the task of becoming who he is. Then Scripture takes up the account of creation and says, “God made them male and female.” Everyone knows, I think, that this aspect is excluded from the archetype: “In Christ Jesus,” as the apostle says, “there is neither male nor female.” And yet Scripture affirms that man has been divided sexually. Thus the creation of our nature must in some way have been double; that which renders us like God and that which establishes the division of the sexes. And indeed such an interpretation is suggested by the very order of the account. Scripture says in the first place, “God made man; in the image of God, he made him.” Only after that is it added, “He made them male and female,” a division foreign to the div...
I think that by these words Holy Scripture conveys to us a great and lofty doctrine, and the doctrine is this. While two natures—the divine and incorporeal nature, and the irrational life of brutes—are separated from each other as extremes, human nature is the mean between them. For in the compound nature of man we may behold a part of each of the natures I have mentioned—of the divine, the rational and intelligent element, which does not admit the distinction of male and female; of the irrational, our bodily form and structure, divided into male and female—for each of these elements is certainly to be found in all that partakes of human life. That the intellectual element, however, precedes the other we learn as from one who gives in order an account of the making of man; and we learn also that his community and kindred with the irrational is for man a provision for reproduction…. He formed for our nature that contrivance for increase which befits those who had fallen into sin, implan...
Consider when this happened. After their disobedience, after their loss of the garden, then it was that the practice of intercourse had its beginning. You see, before their disobedience they followed a life like that of the angels, and there was no mention of intercourse. How could there be when they were not subject to the needs of the body? So at the outset and from the beginning the practice of virginity was in force, but when through their indifference disobedience came on the scene and the ways of sin were opened, virginity took its leave for the reason that they had proved unworthy of such a degree of good things, and in its place the practice of intercourse took over for the future.
He distinguishes among the Persons: "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him." Genesis 1:27 Why say "image of God?" Why not "His own image" merely, if He was only one who was the Maker, and if there was not also One in whose image He made man? But there was One in whose image God was making man, that is to say, Christ's image, who, being one day about to become Man (more surely and more truly so), had already caused the man to be called His image, who was then going to be formed of clay—the image and similitude of the true and perfect Man. [Against Praxeas 12]
God created man to His own image: But man is like to God in his soul. Therefore the soul was created. The image of God, in its principal signification, namely the intellectual nature, is found both in man and in woman. Hence after the words, "To the image of God He created him," it is added, "Male and female He created them" (Genesis 1:27). Moreover it is said "them" in the plural, as Augustine (Gen. ad lit. iii, 22) remarks, lest it should be thought that both sexes were united in one individual. But in a secondary sense the image of God is found in man, and not in woman: for man is the beginning and end of woman; as God is the beginning and end of every creature. So when the Apostle had said that "man is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man"(1 Corinthians 11:7) he adds his reason for saying this: "For man is not of woman, but woman of man; and man was not created for woman, but woman for man."
