God's Many-Splendored Image: Theological Anthropology for Christian Formation - Paperback

by Nonna Verna Harrison (Author)

What does it mean to be a human being made in the image of God? This book makes the case that the divine image can be seen in not just one or two aspects of human identity but in all of them. The author, a specialist in early Christianity, reveals the light that leading theologians of the early church shed on contemporary discussions of what it means to be human. Each chapter explores a different facet of the divine image and likeness and maps out a path that can lead toward wholeness and holiness. This fresh approach to theological anthropology brings Greek patristic theology to students in a readable fashion.

Back Jacket

Early Christian Insights Concerning What It Means to Be Human

"Sister Nonna writes as an expert in the early Christian world and its literature, but she presents the fruits of her learning in a form that is readily accessible to every reader. Her style is simple yet profound, vivid yet never overstated. . . . Here truly is a work that I can recommend with all my heart."--Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia (from the foreword)

"A straightforward account of ancient Greek anthropology and spirituality that shows other, non-Augustinian methods for understanding the human condition before God. This side of patristic theological development deserves to be heard."--D. H. Williams, Baylor University

"Clarity, simplicity, beauty, and depth--these are the gifts offered to the reader in this distillation of all that the Christian tradition has signified by claiming that humanity is created in the image of God and may grow into God-likeness. This book is a model of how to appropriate the church fathers for Christians today."--Frances Young, University of Birmingham, England

"This book is a gift, written in a voice that is inviting, deeply personal, and generous. Yet the lucidity and accessibility of Harrison's presentation never compromises the profundity and genuineness of its content, which is always true to the early Christian sources on which she draws. This book is also a rarity: comprehensible, practical, embodied theology. It is founded upon the author's decades of study but also reflects a life lived in alertness to the Word of God spoken in a painfully broken world. It deserves, and will richly repay, the wide audience to which it is addressed."--Peter C. Bouteneff, St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary

"This is a wonderful book. Sister Nonna Harrison provides a masterful guide for Christian formation that is based on God's love and care from the very act of creation to the eschaton. She opens for us the Eastern part of early Christianity, providing an alternative to the expected--for Western readers--understanding of postlapsarian 'human nature' as inherently 'bad, ' and shows how early Christians, from theologians to desert mothers and fathers, understood the divine image as inherent in who we are."--George Kalantzis, The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies, Wheaton College

Author Biography

Nonna Verna Harrison (PhD, Graduate Theological Union), an experienced patristics scholar, is the author of Grace and Human Freedom according to St. Gregory of Nyssa and numerous articles and translations.