22-05-2025, 09:37 AM
It is written in the Bible that man was made in God's image (eikōn).
Genesis 1:27
“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
Isaiah 64:8
“Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
And this image was one: after all, he was talking about Adam, one man in particular, and Adam had one face, one nose, two eyes, one midface, and so on, and his particular set of ratios. It follows that any man that deviates from Adam's appearance would be a deviation from God's image. We can speculate how exactly Adam might have looked with the precision of a PSL ratio scientist circa 2015. But seeing as that's impossible, we will have to turn towards the next best thing: the faces that are deemed attractive by most of the world. Surely such faces approximate Adam's. What else to explain the profound charisma and magnetism embodied by beautiful people?
But then what is the cure from the fatalism that results? If you are born ugly, you are not in his image, and therefore not a rational being, and therefore condemned to hell. Unless beauty was nothing more than the earthly marker of a soul's predestination to hell--a Protestant view we can safely discard for the time being--then we must assume that God is not so cruel to the more aesthetically challenged of those creatures who claim to be made in his image.
We find a way out in Philippians and Corinthians.
Philippians 3:21
"But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”
Here, the resurrection of Christ is construed in terms of the eikōn: with his rising from the dead, ugly bodies are transformed into beautiful ones. In short, the act of salvation is concomitant with the restoration of ugly people into icons of God (eikōn tou Theou). Becoming beautiful and believing that Jesus is the son of God who rose from the dead to guarantee the salvation of humanity--these acts are one and the same.
2 Corinthians 3:12-18
Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
To contemplate God's glory is to take a veil off the face. A veil must be removed to become in God's image. There is a clear connection in this passage between the presentation of a purified face of some kind and the encounter with God. When we connect this passage with all the aforementioned passages, we arrive at a fuller picture. This veil is nothing other than veil of physical ugliness. This act of unveiling, then, encompasses all manners of cosmetic surgery done in the service of restoring oneself to that image.
We then have a way out of that fatalism. You may not be born beautiful, but you must make it your life's mission to become beautiful. That is the covenant with God. Your earthly life must be dedicated to remaking yourself in his image so that you are worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whether you ultimately succeed does not matter, and indeed most will not; what matters is that you make every effort. This is the paradigmatic way of demonstrating your faith in God. After all, all original sin is in the final analysis the result of falling out of Eden, from falling out of his image. Ugliness is sin: they are one and the same. And just as you atone for that sin in all ways, you atone for your falling from his image through cosmetic surgery. Every chemical peel is a prayer, every cosmetic surgery a sacrament. The insertion of an implant akin to the ingestion of a communion wafer, the coughing on blood after double jaw surgery akin to the spilling of blessed red wine on your lips.
It is only natural that surgeons consider themselves agents of God sometimes--but every now and then they veer into narcissism. False prophets and the like.
Heaven is the domain of perfected eikōnes: those who bear the Image, if not by birth, then by transformation. That Image is the image of Adam and of Jesus. We cannot know their images outright, since they are lost to history, yet they can safely assume they are identified with the ideal face towards which our society gravitates. Cosmetic refinement, then, becomes not vanity, but sanctification, restoring the broken icon to its eternal form. Cosmetic surgery is the act of devotion par excellence. It is a sacrament, a striving to repair the distance between the corrupted, fleshly form and the radiant prototype stamped into divine origin. You are not altering God’s work; you are conforming yourself more perfectly to it. If God is the potter, then the human body is not untouchable—it is formable matter. Cosmetic surgery becomes an act of co-creation: the human and divine hand working in tandem to shape beauty from raw form. Clay is only sacred when shaped.You must be gazed on, kissed, and contemplated just as we do to those Images on the iconostasis. You must become a portal into the original image of God just as all eikōnes are. And even if you do not become a perfect eikōn by the time your die, your striving is the best evidence of your belief and faith. Original sin is paradigmatically an aesthetic sin, and your life's work must be to atone for it. To believe in God is to make it your life's mission to restore your earthly body to his image. You present the finished product at the gates of Heaven, and you hope the cherubim and seraphim do not tell you to sashay away.
Genesis 1:27
“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
Isaiah 64:8
“Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
And this image was one: after all, he was talking about Adam, one man in particular, and Adam had one face, one nose, two eyes, one midface, and so on, and his particular set of ratios. It follows that any man that deviates from Adam's appearance would be a deviation from God's image. We can speculate how exactly Adam might have looked with the precision of a PSL ratio scientist circa 2015. But seeing as that's impossible, we will have to turn towards the next best thing: the faces that are deemed attractive by most of the world. Surely such faces approximate Adam's. What else to explain the profound charisma and magnetism embodied by beautiful people?
But then what is the cure from the fatalism that results? If you are born ugly, you are not in his image, and therefore not a rational being, and therefore condemned to hell. Unless beauty was nothing more than the earthly marker of a soul's predestination to hell--a Protestant view we can safely discard for the time being--then we must assume that God is not so cruel to the more aesthetically challenged of those creatures who claim to be made in his image.
We find a way out in Philippians and Corinthians.
Philippians 3:21
"But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”
Here, the resurrection of Christ is construed in terms of the eikōn: with his rising from the dead, ugly bodies are transformed into beautiful ones. In short, the act of salvation is concomitant with the restoration of ugly people into icons of God (eikōn tou Theou). Becoming beautiful and believing that Jesus is the son of God who rose from the dead to guarantee the salvation of humanity--these acts are one and the same.
2 Corinthians 3:12-18
Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
To contemplate God's glory is to take a veil off the face. A veil must be removed to become in God's image. There is a clear connection in this passage between the presentation of a purified face of some kind and the encounter with God. When we connect this passage with all the aforementioned passages, we arrive at a fuller picture. This veil is nothing other than veil of physical ugliness. This act of unveiling, then, encompasses all manners of cosmetic surgery done in the service of restoring oneself to that image.
We then have a way out of that fatalism. You may not be born beautiful, but you must make it your life's mission to become beautiful. That is the covenant with God. Your earthly life must be dedicated to remaking yourself in his image so that you are worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whether you ultimately succeed does not matter, and indeed most will not; what matters is that you make every effort. This is the paradigmatic way of demonstrating your faith in God. After all, all original sin is in the final analysis the result of falling out of Eden, from falling out of his image. Ugliness is sin: they are one and the same. And just as you atone for that sin in all ways, you atone for your falling from his image through cosmetic surgery. Every chemical peel is a prayer, every cosmetic surgery a sacrament. The insertion of an implant akin to the ingestion of a communion wafer, the coughing on blood after double jaw surgery akin to the spilling of blessed red wine on your lips.
It is only natural that surgeons consider themselves agents of God sometimes--but every now and then they veer into narcissism. False prophets and the like.
Heaven is the domain of perfected eikōnes: those who bear the Image, if not by birth, then by transformation. That Image is the image of Adam and of Jesus. We cannot know their images outright, since they are lost to history, yet they can safely assume they are identified with the ideal face towards which our society gravitates. Cosmetic refinement, then, becomes not vanity, but sanctification, restoring the broken icon to its eternal form. Cosmetic surgery is the act of devotion par excellence. It is a sacrament, a striving to repair the distance between the corrupted, fleshly form and the radiant prototype stamped into divine origin. You are not altering God’s work; you are conforming yourself more perfectly to it. If God is the potter, then the human body is not untouchable—it is formable matter. Cosmetic surgery becomes an act of co-creation: the human and divine hand working in tandem to shape beauty from raw form. Clay is only sacred when shaped.You must be gazed on, kissed, and contemplated just as we do to those Images on the iconostasis. You must become a portal into the original image of God just as all eikōnes are. And even if you do not become a perfect eikōn by the time your die, your striving is the best evidence of your belief and faith. Original sin is paradigmatically an aesthetic sin, and your life's work must be to atone for it. To believe in God is to make it your life's mission to restore your earthly body to his image. You present the finished product at the gates of Heaven, and you hope the cherubim and seraphim do not tell you to sashay away.
