The Angelic Doctor Against the Errors of the Greeks - Chapter 22

How the likeness of the first parent is to be understood as erased in Christ.

Dubious also is what Athanasius in the aforesaid letter says speaking in the person of Christ after the resurrection: “Having erased in myself the likeness of the first parent, destroying it in the victory of the cross, I being now immortal make you the adopted sons of the Father.”

Now, it is to be observed that a person may possess a likeness to the first parent in three ways. First, in terms of likeness in nature, as in Genesis (5: 3): When Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness. Second, in terms of sin, as in 1 Cor. 15: Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall bear also the image of the man in heaven. Third, in terms of punishment, as in Zechariah (13:5): I am a tiller of the soil, for Adam has been my model from my youth. Christ assumed the first likeness to Adam in assuming our nature and he has never laid it aside; the second likeness he never had; and the third he did assume, but laid it aside at the resurrection, and it is of this third likeness that Athanasius speaks.