David's Daily Diversions

Restoring Icons

I was flipping through Athanasius' On the Incarnation this evening and paused upon this passage in section 13 and pondered:

Even an earthly king, though he is only a man, does not allow lands that he has colonised to pass into other hands or to desert to other rulers, but sends letter and friends and even visits them himself to recall them to their allegiance, rather than allow his work to be undone. How much more, then, will God be patient and painstaking with his creatures, that they be not led astray from Him to the service of those who are not, and that all the more because such error for them means sheer ruin, and because it is not right that those who had once shared His image should be destroyed.

What then was God to do? What else could he possibly do, being God, but renew His image in mankind, so that through it men might once more come to know Him? And how could this be done save by the coming of the very Image Himself, our Saviour Jesus Christ? Men could not have done it, for they are only made after the Image; nor could angels have done it, because they are not the images of God. The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father, Who could recreate man after the Image.