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Joseph, the Image of God the Father

In previous articles that I have written on Saint Joseph, I have noted the merits and demerits of certain ways of describing the fatherhood of the great patriarch, namely, the titles of Putative and Legal Father,[1] Foster Father and Virginal Father,[2] and lastly Spiritual Father.[3] But in this article, I would like to suggest a title for describing Saint Joseph’s fatherhood that so sublimely and eminently surpasses them all — which is the title that Saint John Eudes uses to praise Saint Joseph in his prayer called the Praises of St. Joseph; this title is that of “image of God the Father.”[4] But what does this title mean? What is its significance? Why is it a most excellent — indeed the most excellent — title for capturing the person of Saint Joseph and the essence of his paternity? Well, I shall tell you why, and this is best understood when one understands four things: 1) the essence of paternity; 2) the meaning of the term image; 3) Saint Joseph as a New Adam, or as the antitype of Adam; 4) the significance of Matthew’s Gospel and of the Blessing of Jacob or Israel.

First, it is necessary to understand what fatherhood is as to its essence. Aristotle points out that the essence of paternity is to be the first principle or first cause of the existence or life of one’s children.[5] When we look at the paternity of God the Father, we notice the same thing because God the Father is the first principle of God the Son’s procession and He is also the first cause of the entire human race.[6] This is true of all created paternity, which Saint Paul the Apostle refers to in his letter to the Ephesians;[7] for both the earthly paternity of natural fathers — namely, the paternity “on earth” spoken of by the Apostle in Ephesians 3:14-15 — and the heavenly paternity of all priests, bishops, and of the Holy Father the Pope himself — which is the paternity “in heaven” referred to by Saint Paul in Ephesians 3:14-15 — both exhibit this characteristic of being a first principle of existence or life, and thus Saint Paul is telling us in this passage of the Ephesians that all created fatherhood participates in the Fatherhood of God the Father Himself.

Further, Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae notes that Adam possessed “a certain dignity” from God the Father, which stemmed from the fact that “as God [the Father] is the principle of the whole universe, so the first man [Adam], in likeness to God, was the principle of the whole human race.”[8] Thus, God intended for Adam to be the first cause or first principle of the entire human race as regards to its physical existence, its knowledge and education,[9] and its inheritance of grace.[10] This is because Adam possessed the essence of paternity, which is to be a first principle or first cause. Furthermore, Thomas describes Adam as being made “in likeness [similitudinem] to God [the Father],” and this is important because this better helps us to understand the connection between the essence of paternity and being made in the image of God the Father. For in the next question in the Summa Theologiae, Thomas notes that the reason that man is said to be made in the image of God is because the kind of likeness — or similitudo in the Latin — required in being the image of something “requires likeness in species”[11] — species in Latin being the same term that is used in the history of scholastic philosophy to refer to the being, substance, form, nature, or essence of something.[12] Thus, when Thomas says that Adam was made in the image of God the Father, this means that Adam was the principle of the entire human race for the precise reason that the First Man as to his essence possessed the essence of God’s paternity, which is to be a first principle of another thing in some way or ways.

Praise the Lord

Read the Whole Article at https://catholicinsight.com/