The Complete Image of God in Man

In a bold move in theology, John Paul II affirmed that the image and likeness in man is not reflected not so much by the fact that man is a being endowed with intelligence and free will. The Holy Father boldly affirms that it is rather in the communion of persons constituted by man and woman that God's image in man becomes complete. He writes: "man became the 'image and likeness' of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons which man and woman form right from the beginning. The function of the image is to reflect the one who is the model, to reproduce its own prototype. Right 'from the beginning,' he is not only an image in which the solitude of a person who rules the world is reflected, but also, and essentially, an image of an inscrutable divine communion of persons."