The Image Made, Exchanged, and Renewed
Old Testament: Genesis 1:26-27
And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.
Old Testament, also: Psalms 105:20
And they changed their glory into the likeness of a calf that eateth grass.
New Testament: Colossians 3:10; Romans 1:23
And putting on the new, him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of him that created him... And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things.
The connection
Man is made to God's image and likeness and set over the fowls of the air, the beasts and every creeping creature (Genesis 1:26). Paul tells the same list, in the same order, with the rule turned upside down. Those who would not glorify God "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things" (Romans 1:23): the one made to rule the creeping things bows to their image. Israel had done it once already at Horeb: "they changed their glory into the likeness of a calf that eateth grass" (Psalms 105:20). The image is not left defaced. Paul's word for its renewal reaches straight back to the sixth day: the new man "is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of him that created him" (Colossians 3:10). Irenaeus reads Genesis 1:26 as spoken again over Christ: God's hands, to whom the Father said "Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness", in the last times "formed a living man, in order that Adam might be created [again] after the image and likeness of God" (Against Heresies V.1.3). Athanasius pictures it as a painter's work: "when the likeness painted on a panel has been effaced by stains from without, he whose likeness it is must needs come once more to enable the portrait to be renewed on the same wood... in the same way also the most holy Son of the Father, being the Image of the Father, came to our region to renew man once made in His likeness" (On the Incarnation 14).
Moral sense
The fall Paul describes is not only the ancient idolater's. Whatever a man sets in God's place, he comes to resemble, and the likeness he was made for is traded for the likeness of what he serves. Athanasius sets the exchange and its remedy side by side: "the man-loving Word, who came for this very reason, that He might seek and find that which was lost", came to those who had "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the corruptible image of man, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things" (Festal Letter 2). The wood is not thrown away. Augustine names the way back: "Thus is man renewed in the knowledge of God, after the image of Him that created him" (Confessions XIII.22.32), and Paul says how it happens, by looking: "we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory" (2 Corinthians 3:18). We become like what we gaze on, and so the remedy for a false likeness is a truer sight.
Anagogical sense
The renewal ends in likeness made perfect: "it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, that, when he shall appear, we shall be like to him: because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). The Catechism tells the whole history in a sentence: in making man in His image and likeness, God "crowned him with glory and honor," but by sinning, man fell "short of the glory of God," and God acts "in order to restore man to the image of his Creator" (CCC 2809), until the Son restores the image "in the Father's 'likeness' by giving it again its Glory, the Spirit" (CCC 705). The glory exchanged in Romans is the glory given back.
The Fathers
Irenaeus, Against Heresies V.1.3: "in order that Adam might be created [again] after the image and likeness of God." Athanasius, On the Incarnation 14: "when the likeness painted on a panel has been effaced by stains from without, he whose likeness it is must needs come once more to enable the portrait to be renewed on the same wood... in the same way also the most holy Son of the Father, being the Image of the Father, came to our region to renew man once made in His likeness." Athanasius, Festal Letter 2: "the man-loving Word, who came for this very reason, that He might seek and find that which was lost." St Augustine, Confessions XIII.22.32: "Thus is man renewed in the knowledge of God, after the image of Him that created him." Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh 6: "after the image of God (in other words, of Christ) did He make him." And: "Thus, that clay which was even then putting on the image of Christ, who was to come in the flesh, was not only the work, but also the pledge and surety, of God."
Warrant
Paul echoes Genesis in his wording without calling it a figure, so the badge is patristic. Colossians 3:10 has secundum imaginem ejus qui creavit illum where Genesis 1:27 has creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam, image and creating together. Romans 1:23 follows the order of Genesis 1:26, man, birds, beasts, creeping things, and borrows its exchange from Psalms 105:20; the same list stands in Deuteronomy 4:16-18, the law against images. The reading is drawn by Irenaeus, Athanasius and Augustine.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2809.
The verses
Genesis 1:26 · Genesis 1:27 · Psalms 105:20 · Colossians 3:10 · Romans 1:23
