Gudbilledlighed og syndefald: Aspekter af Grundtvigs og Kierkegaards menneskesyn på baggrund af Irenæus

Gudbilledlighed og syndefald. - Aspekter af Grundtvigs og Kierkegaards menneskesyn på baggrund af Irenæus.[The Image and Likeness of God and the Fall of the Human Being. - Aspects of Grundtvig's and Kierkegaard's Conceptions of the Human Being in light of Irenaeus]By Niels Jørgen CappelørnIn his account of the human being, the early church father Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon (in the second century, C.E.), makes a distinction between imago dei and similitudo dei based on the Genesis account of the creation of human beings in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26-27). It is the thesis of this article that this distinction can be traced in the works of N. F. S. Grundtvig and Soren Kierkegaard and that this distinction opens possibilities for finding and demonstrating new and parallel elements in Grundvig’s and Kierkegaard’s respective conceptions of the human person, particularly concerning the relationship between the image and likeness of God in human beings and the Fall.Grundtvig studied Irenaeus for the first time in 1823 and produced a translation of the fifth and final book of his apologetic work, Adversus haereses, in 1827. Kierkegaard seems not to have studied Irenaeus’ own texts, but a good ten years after Grundtvig’s translation he read about the theology of Irenaeus in Johannes Adam Mohler’s Athanasius der Große und die Kirche seiner Zeit from 1827.Irenaeus’ conception of the human being with regard to both the Fall and the rebirth in Christ can be summarized as follows: The human being consists of body and soul, which is its substance, and this substance must become united with the Spirit of God if the individual is to become a complete spiritual person. What was lost in Adam is won in Christ. But not all was lost with the Fall. The image of God is still within the human soul while the likeness of God, which resides in the human spirit, has been lost and must be reborn of the Holy Spirit.The image of God in the soul is freedom, and this remains with human beings. At times, this freedom assents to the ...