Prototype

Prototype is a term used in theology to designate the original type (q.v.) or form of anything, and especially in the following dogma: The prototypal form in which Adam was created was the image of God; in Christ that image is restored; and it is the hope of the Christian that this form will be his also when he wakes up after God's likeness and is satisfied (Ps 15:5). It is a term, therefore, that has an anthropological, Christological, and an eschatological character, as referring to Adam, to the Redeemer, and to the redeemed. Now, in what does that likeness consist? Not surely in outward form, but in spiritual attributes, for God is Spirit. But those attributes pertain to the soul invested in body, which God has not; therefore the likeness of God must be restricted to such divine attributes as are reflected in man independently of his material nature, such as a love for all that is good and holy, right, reason, and free-will, which constitute in him the "likeness and glory" of God (1Co 11:7; SEE GLORY ), and exclusive of other attributes that serve only to mark the imperfection of the creature. When Irenaeus, therefore (c. Hoer. v, 6); speaks of the image of God as being sua natura of a bodily character, he may express correctly the philosophical notion of the Deity, and therefore of the divine likeness, as derived from ancient schools, but he hardly speaks with the authority of Catholic antiquity on a point which had as yet received but little consideration. Our only safe guide is the apostle, who expresses himself with sufficient explicitness. With him Christ is the very "image of God" (2Co 4:4), "in the form of God" (Php 2:6), and "the express image of his Person," as well as "the brightness of his glory" (Heb 1:3), "the image of the invisible God" (Col 1:15). He is now to us as the prototypal form in which Adam was created full of grace and truth; and man's hope of having that form restored in him hereafter depends on the genuineness with which some few rays of that glory are reflected in his soul now. So it has been decreed from everlasting that all who are called according to God's sanctifying purpose should be "conformed to the image of his Son" (Ro 8:29); that "as we have borne the image of the earthy," we may also "bear the image of the heavenly" (1Co 15:49); that having his high exemplar before us, and "beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord," by a continually progressive, sanctifying process, we "may be changed into the same image from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2Co 3:18). It is of this "renewing in the spirit of our minds," according to the prototypal likeness of Christ, that the apostle speaks when he exhorts his charge to "put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image" of the Creator (Col 3:10), and "after God (כרמות) is created in righteousness and in the holiness of truth" (Eph 4:24). According to Roman Catholic doctrine, original righteousness was not this prototypal likeness, but a superadded gift conferred after the act of creation was complete. So the Tridentine Catechism says, "Quod ad animam pertinet, eam ad imaginem et similitudinem suam formavit I)eus, liberumque ei tribuit arbitrium; omnes praeterea motus animi atque appetitiones ita in eo temperavit, ut rationis imperio nunquam non parerent. 'Tum originalis justitiae admirabile donum addidit," etc. (ed. Colon. 1565, p. 63). The council purposed, in the first instance, to express its meaning as "justitiam et sanctitatem in qua Adam conditus fuerat," but accepted the correction of Paceco, and wrote "constitutus fuerat" (Pallavicini, Hist. Conc. Trid. 7:9). For the teaching of the schools on this point, SEE SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY; for the whimsical noutions of Judaism, SEE CABALA.