The Lake of Fire

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

Lol. I just realized we have the same hair.

Would you care to address the significance of the two different terms, "image" and "splinter"?

Haha, that's fantastic.

But yes, sounds good.

When it comes to the image of God, the patristics understood the image of God to be the defining characteristics of God imprinted upon humanity, and this has remained the general definition ever since.

During the patristic era, this was chiefly defined in Platonistic terms. God was the Ultimate Being, and thus 'being' was very much the human ideal. The Orthodox conception of theosis springs from this- as the image is healed in humanity and we beomce united to God, we share in the divine essence and ourselves grow into divinity.

During the scholastic period, Aristotelianism came to characterize much thinking on the subject. When God became defined as the Aristotelian 'Thought Thinking Itself,' human rationality became to be seen as the image of God. There was a mirror of this in many of the reformers, especially among the Calvinists, who saw the image as broken by the fall. Thus humans had a deep and unfortunate capacity for irrationality.

In modern times, questions of the metaphysics of the divine have almost dissapeared. But in the last two decades thinkers like Jean-Luc Marion and Luke Timothy Johnson, and even some Lutherans, have emphasized the "God is love" statement. And that love is self-giving, self-oblating, self-sacrificing, self-donating love. God pours himself out in the Trinity, throws himself into the project of creation, lets himself characterize the apex of his creation (humanity), pours himself into the incarnation, donates himself to the people of Israel in his ministry, sacrifices himself in the crucifixion, and still pours himself into his church through word and sacrament. Then, too, those he saves are able to pour out themselves (they who would lose their life will save it) into Christ, who raises them up in his resurrection and ascension. The mirror of this, then, is that humans are meant to live in a community of love, and that the primary effect of sin and brokenness is pride and egotism.

As for splinter- the problem there is that it was a gnostic term which replaced an independent human source with spark of divine essence implanted in a human body which can be repeatedly incarnated. And thus the idea of gnosticism was removal of the flesh and reunion of your individal spark or shard with the divine (these, say the Platonists, flew off in a major primordial battle).

Sorry if my thoughts arent coherent. Sleeping meds kicking in. Gnight!