140 Apokatastasis: Four Meditations
Humanity, Gregory reads Genesis 1:26-7-the first account of
the creation of the race, where humanity is described as being
made "in God's image" -as referring not to the making of
Adam as such, but to the conception within the eternal divine
counsels of this full community of all of humanity: the whole
of the race, comprehended by God's "foresight" as "in a single
body," which only in its totality truly reflects the divine like-
ness and the divine beauty. As for the two individuals Adam
and Eve, whose making is described in the second creation
narrative, they may have been superlatively endowed with
the gifts of grace at their origin, but they were themselves still
merely the first members of that concrete community that only
as a whole can truly reflect the glory of its creator. For now, it is
only in the purity of the divine wisdom that this human totality
subsists "altogether" (a0pows, athroos) in its own fullness. It
will emerge into historical actuality, in the concrete fullness
of its beauty, only at the end of a long temporal "unfolding" or
"succession" (aKolwv0£a, akolouthia). Only then, when time
and times are done, will a truly redeemed humanity, one that
has passed beyond all ages, be recapitulated in Christ. Only
then also, in the ultimate solidarity of all humankind, will a
being made in the image and likeness of God have truly been
created: "Thus 'Humanity according to the image' came into
being," writes Gregory, "the entire nature [ or race], the Godlike
thing. And what thus came into being was, through omnipo-
tent wisdom, not part of the whole, but the entire plenitude of
the nature altogether." It is precisely and solely this full com-
munity of persons throughout time that God has elected as his
image, truth, glory, and delight. And God will bring this good
creation he desires to pass in spite of sin, both within human
history and yet over against it. He will never cease to bring the
story he intends in creation to pass, despite our apostasy from