From Image to Likeness: The Christian Journey into God

By William A. Simpson

Under the influence of Augustine, many Christian spiritualities dwell on human weakness and recommend a passive response to grace. According to such spiritualities, the most important fact about human beings is that we are sinners in need of salvation. In From Image to Likeness, William Simpson suggests that our human natures are unfinished and that the Christian spiritual journey finds its fullest expression when one's life reflects God's creative and sustaining activity. We are already bearers of the divine image because we are God's creatures, and we resemble that from which we came. We grow into the divine likeness as we cooperate with grace and begin to manifest God's presence in the world.By emphasizing the incarnational aspects of the Christian message, Simpson offers a traditionally rooted alternative to these Augustinian spiritualities. Here, the spiritual journey emerges not as a flight from one's wounded and corrupt nature, but as the ongoing discovery of one's true nature as a child of God.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826410162
• ISBN13: 9780826410160
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.4" x 0.7" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

A Guide for the Christian Journey

This book is for Christians who have a hunger for God, for deep prayer, for working on improving themselves and who seek God's face. It explained and described so well the movements of the soul that those who search for God experience. He describes with examples and stories the various stages along the way of the Christian's journey: from original conversion and growth, to the "dark night of the soul" all the way to the practice of the presence of God, to life itself becoming a prayer. I found this book to be enlightening as well as enjoyable to read.