A Phenomenology of the Divine Image: Gregory of Nyssa and the Veil of Flesh (Explorations in Philosophy and Theology)

What does it mean to speak of humans as the image of God when apophatic theology speaks of an infinite God who transcends naming, comprehension, and worldly appearance?Bringing Church Father Gregory of Nyssa into dialogue with French phenomenology in Michel Henry, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Louis Chretien, Thomas Breedlove answers this question and explores the importance of embodiment to the doctrine of imago Dei. Divided into three parts, this book presents the divine image not as merely one aspect of the human creature but rather as that which constitutes human creatureliness itself.So constituted, human nature is shaped by likeness and difference to God.Breedlove investigates this relationship between human and divine through three successive approaches.The first, in conversation with Merleau-Ponty, analyses the existential and phenomenological aspects of fleshly finitude as the paradigmatic site of the creature’s difference from God.The second takes up Henry’s philosophy of l