How do you interpret Genesis 1:26-27
I take it to mean that God created us with attributes that He himself has. Love, intelligence, thought, etc. and not that we were made “little gods” though I don’t know if that was the point you were trying to make.
I would have to read the underlying Hebrew to see though. Sometimes the English is not so good.
The same way the Fathers did: an image and likeness is “like” its prototype only in an improper way. An icon of a saint is an image and likeness of its prototype, but is wood and paint, not living body and soul vivified by the grace of the Holy Spirit. The ontological gap between Man and God is even greater than that between the depiction in colors of a saint and the saint. (And for that reason the Divine condescension in Christ’s Incarnation for our salvation is completely incomprehensible—not only to us poor fallen men— but even, according to the Church’s hymnography, to the minds of angels.)