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99 R ebir th Böhme maintains that the key to winning the faith struggle is the will. One must truly want to be free of one’s “own images,” that is, the selfish ego. In freely choosing to trust in God’s will and give up worldly desires, human beings mirror the original movement of the divine Will out of the dark realm of “Nothingness,” the abyss that preceded the emer- gence of God. Böhme views it as a parallel act of will, when people let go of materialistic and profane things so that God can enter their hearts. Only then is rebirth possible. One of the most basic tenets of Christianity is that humans were created in the image of God. Yet Böhme also grounds humanity’s divine form in philosophy. In his view, everything that exists in the macrocosm must also be present in the microcosm. Humans contain the “essence of all Being” within themselves, a share of all substances and principles in the cosmos: “What is then the body of a human being? […] It is the visible world, an image and essence of all that the world is; and the visible world is a revelation of the inner spiritual world […]” ( Way to Christ , I.44). 86 Such anthropological theories have long fasci- nated Böhme’s readers, above all in the generations after his death. The idea of a religious renovatio or “new birth” is anchored in the Bible and has a long history in Christianity, but Böhme combined these traditions with speculation from the realm of natural philosophy to transform older understandings. In Böhme’s thought, God encompasses all substances and aspects of the cosmos, including the male and female principles. To help explain this philosophical perspective, Böhme revives the belief held by some within the Early Church that the Godhead contains a female person, alongside God the Father, Christ and the Holy Ghost. This tradition harks back to Scripture about the “Wisdom of God,” in which the 3 Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert after Maarten van Heemskerck, Jacob’s Ladder, from the Series “The Story of Jacob,” 1549, Etching, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Inv. no. A 35400 you, unless someone has been reborn, he will not be able to see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Traditionally, this verse has been taken to mean that only the righteous can enter heaven, but Böhme reads it to also mean that only the reborn can com- prehend God’s Creation – the nature and workings of the cosmos. This is how Böhme understands the statement of the biblical patriarch Jacob when he says, “I have seen God face to face” (Gen 32:31).