A Created God: The Anthropology of the Image in Gregory of Nyssa and Meister Eckhart

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore Eckhart’s possible reception of Gregory of Nyssa’s anthropology, whose radical theory of the divine image reached the West probably since the times of Ambrose of Milan. Subsequently, Gregory’s De opificio hominis became widely known by means of two different Latin versions, one by the great canonist Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century and another by the Carolingian philosopher Eriugena in the 9th century, who quoted his version extensively in the Periphyseon. But since there seem to be no obvious direct links between Gregory of Nyssa’s De opificio hominis and Eckhart’s texts, I will be analysing and comparing some of the main elements in their respective interpretations of the divine image in humanity, trying to identify and account for some of their notorious philosophical and terminological parallels. We will begin with the idea of an unmediated relationship between the divine archetype and the human image, which hence implies for both authors a sort of self-portrait of God, of his own form and activity. Next, I will point out their associations of the divine image with the intellect and their uses of the dynamic metaphor of the mirror. Finally, I will compare their understandings of the ratio imaginis, that is, the true significance of the biblical dictum of the ‘image of God’, to what extent the image is equal to its divine model and in what sense it differs from it. However indirect Gregory’s influence might have been, I believe it could help us understand some of the most intriguing aspects of Eckhart’s concept of bild or imago.