For God to redeem something, for God to restore humanity, it seems to me that something in humanity needed to be reclaimed and salvaged. If fallen mankind is completely and totally wicked/vile/worthless, then what is God saving? It seems he's starting all over again, which isn't exactly what he does. He redeems people who already exist, he didn't destroy the human race and start all over. Also, or more importantly, if human beings are created in God's image, then the essentially good image of God rests in them, is part of them somehow.
All being is derived from God, because God is the only being who truly exists completely of himself, by himself, and in himself. That being said, human beings are borrowers of existence. Existence, being an attribute of God, is good in itself. God is the manifold of all perfections. He is perfect holiness, perfect love, perfect power, perfect existence. God is also perfectly good. Everything about him is good. His love is good, his holiness is good, his power is good, his existence is good. God created the world, and the people in it, and called it good. To be a created thing, to be a creature, is to have been made good by a perfectly good being. Wickedness, sin, evil, is a corruption of the good. Someone being sinful perhaps doesn't mean that they are totally depraved without one spark of good in them at all. Why? Because they exist still, and in existence is goodness. Where is the good in humanity? Well, there isn't much, but there is some, and it is all derived. It comes from being created, from being given existence, from being created to reflect the divine likeness. If humans are, by definition, created in God's image, then to lose that image is to lose one's very existence. Thus, when man fell, he didn't lose God's image, he tarnished it. Dragged it through the dirt, dishonored it. So why do I believe there is goodness in man? Because to be human is to borrow God's very image. And God's image is good.
Here is an image that may help explain my ideas. It's from St. Athanasius' On the Incarnation.
Athanasius says:
You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and seek out His lost sheep, even as He says in the Gospel: "I came to seek and to save that which was lost. This also explains His saying to the Jews: "Except a man be born anew . . ." He was not referring to a man's natural birth from his mother, as they thought, but to the re-birth and re-creation of the soul in the Image of God.
Think about that for a while.
Here is something I wrote out 3 years ago, while studying fairy tale literature in Oxford:
MY CURRENT THOUGHTS ON THE DOCTRINE OF TOTAL DEPRAVITY, courtesy of George MacDonald
DOES GOD REDEEM men of a certain mettle? Something in them is worthy already (I think this works for The Lost Princess too). How could someone redeem a slag heap, if there were no diamonds buried in it? To make a slag heap beautiful is to recreate it utterly. To find and brighten the gold specks in a slag heap is to redeem what is worthy and destroy what is unbeautiful. But this thought must make men proud. Calvinism is good at making men humble, because otherwise the slag heap can say, "How fine my gold must really be, for God to dig for me!" Forgetting immediately how a clean, holy, and beautiful God must put his pure fingers into putrid dung to find us. Instead, the slagheap must feel the weight of the awesome love of God, who counts us valuable enough to be worth getting his hands dirty and his heart--and body--broken. The response can only ever be gratitude, humble wonder, and praise. It is this counting us worth the trouble, that renders us with any value at all. We have worth because God says so, and because the light shining in us is one of His borrowed rays.
Perhaps this pokes holes in my own argument, but. . .
*logical conclusion: the devil and demons must have good in them somewhere, since they are created beings.
***BUT: the devil and fallen angels are not create in God's image, perhaps this makes a difference? Also, I'm not a dualist. So, the devil can't be "perfectly" evil, or he would be an opposing equal power to God, which isn't the case. God is the sole divine power and creator, who is blessed forever, amen.
*I think a lot of this might hinge on the idea that evil has no existence, that evil is, instead, a loss of existence.
What do you think?
