Can the image of God increase or decrease?

God did not created humans to be frozen, static, immobile beings. Rather, He formed us as beings whose nature is that of continuous dynamic movement, that He might pour upon us the reflections of divine light. Thus, when St. Mary says, “My soul magnifies the Lord,” (Luke 1:46) she does not mean that she is somehow adding some new magnificence to God, but that when she receives God’s magnificence, her soul is exalted and ascends from glory unto glory. In praising God, she is herself lifted up. This is what we are requesting from God when we say “Hallowed be Your name,” for the holy name of God needs no hallowing (or sanctification); rather, the one who prays these words is sanctified by God’s name, and God’s holiness transfigures the life of the worshipper of God.

On these words of St. Mary, the scholar Origen comments that although God is unchangeable, His image in us is capable of either progressing or regressing: “Therefore, when I make the image of the Image — that is, my soul — large, and magnify it by work, thought, and speech, then the Lord himself is magnified in my soul, because it is an image of him. And, just as the Lord is thus magnified in our image of him, so too, if we are sinners, he diminishes and decreases.”⁴⁷⁷