A 00 CHAPTER I. Creation of Man

CHAPTER I. CREATION OF MAN FIRST DIVISION. ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN I.

WE now enter upon the second of the main divisions of our subject, ANTHROPOLOGY, or THE DOCTRINE CONCERNING MAN.

Man is the creature of God; and the Bible not only affirms this, but in its earlier chapters gives a detailed account of the original formation of man, and the condition in which he was placed when he entered on the stage of being. Having first arranged the earth, and called into being the various plants and animals which occupy its surface, and having prepared for man a fitting and pleasant habitation, God brought man into existence. In doing this He proceeded with more of form and solemnity than He had used in the preceding steps of His work. Instead of merely giving the command to exist, instead of merely summoning into being by an almighty fiat, or calling on the earth to bring forth the creature He was about to frame, God, as if to mark the singular importance of the act He was about to perform, stirs up Himself, as it were, to a higher exercise of His creative energy, and marks this as in a peculiar sense the work of His hands. " And God said," we read, " Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness" (Genesis 1:26); and in a subsequent record we are told that "formed man" that is, shaped, fashioned, elaborated him with care, as a potter does a vessel, or an artist a statue, the verb used being "fl, which is the word used of the working of the potter (Isaiah 64:7) and of the artist (Isaiah 44:9; Isaiah 44:12; Isaiah 54:17). The material of which man was thus formed is described as " of the dust of the earth; " and when thus formed, God " breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul " (Genesis 2:7).

All this indicates deliberation and care on the part of the Creator in the formation of man, as if He gave special con sideration to this, and took special pains to make His work perfect, doing it with His own hand, and proceeding in it step by step until it was complete. i. When it is said that God formed man from the dust of the earth, it is not necessarily implied that the Creator took of the moistened dust or clay of the earth and formed out of it a statue in the form of man. This may have been; but all that the words oblige us to believe is that the body of man is composed of the same elements as the dust of the ground.

Man’s body is thus, as the apostle expresses it, " of the earth earthy" (1 Corinthians 15:47). The constituent elements of the human body are the four principal gases, with lime, potash, and a little iron, sodium, and phosphorus, the commonest elements in the inorganic kingdom. As respects his body, man is thus part and parcel of the material creation, differing from the lower animals and the vegetable world only in form, position, and capacity. The material of his body is not different in kind nor finer in nature than that of theirs. The same structure of bone and tissue and nerve which anatomy discloses in man it unfolds in the lower animals: the different processes by which the animal body is preserved, and by which it decays, are the same in both; and with an almost endless diversity of outward form, there is yet such an analogy between the parts of the bodily frame in man and in the lower animals, that we are conducted by an exact process of observation and induction to the conclusion that all animal forms are but variations of one primitive type, from which the Creator has in each instance departed only in so far as was necessary to fit the animal for the place it had to occupy and the functions it had to discharge, a generalization which has been proclaimed as one of the achievements of modern science, but which was not unknown to the ancients, as the following sentence of Augustine shows: " Nullum est creaturoe genus quod non in homine possit agnosci." ] But though man is thus associated by his material structure with the lower animals, he is yet, even in respect of this part of his nature, the greatest of God’s terrestrial works. In the erectness of his posture, in the sublimity of his look, in the symmetry of his form, in the delicacy of his organs, in the beauty of his complexion, in the refinement of his senses, and in the sensibility which is diffused over his whole frame, he possesses advantages to which none of the lower animals can lay claim. Nor are these advantages the result of culture and progressive development. Even those who would trace man back to the ape are compelled to admit that the oldest specimens of human beings which have been discovered not only exhibit no approach to the ape type, but are physically as perfect as any which the most advanced age of civilisation can furnish. Even Mr. Huxley says of one of the oldest fossil skeletons that has been brought to light, that the brain might have been that of a philosopher; and Professor Dana, an eminent American geologist, says: " No remains of fossil man bear evidence to less perfect erectness of structure than in civilised man, or to any nearer approach to the man-ape in essential characteristics. The existing man-apes," he continues, " belong to lines that reached up to them as their ultimatum; but of that time which is supposed to have reached upward to man, not the first link below the lowest level of existing man has been found." 2 The absence of all intermediate links between the anthropoid ape and the lowest type of man is pronounced by Mr. Darwin to be amazing; and doubtless it is to him and his fellow-evolutionists as perplexing as it is amazing, for it is fatal to their whole theory of the origin of man. ii. After the formation of man from the dust of the earth, the next step in the creation process was the infusing into his frame of life: " The Lord God," we are told, " formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul " (Genesis 2:7). By some this last expression has been taken to mean that 1 Ad Oros., quoted by Klee, Katholische Dogmatik, 2:282.

Geology, p. 603, 2nd cd. quoted by Rev. Joseph Cook in Monday Lectures, 2:5. man was then endowed with his highest and most distinctive quality, that of mind or spirit. The phrase, however, rvn ^33, cannot be taken as referring to the mind or spiritual part of man. It is the same phrase which in Genesis 1:20 is rendered " the creature that hath life;" in Genesis 1:24, and Genesis 2:19; Genesis 9:12, Genesis 9:15-16, " living creature ;" and Genesis 1:30, " the breath of life," in all which passages it is used of the lower animals, or of the animal creation as such in the general. " The expression, therefore," to use the words of Dr. Pye Smith, " sets before us the organic life of the animal frame, that mysterious something which man cannot create nor restore, which baffles the most acute philosophers to search out its nature, and which reason combines with Scripture to refer to the immediate agency of the Almighty." It is thus something common to man and the lower animals. There is, however, this to be noted, that whilst the lower animals had their life, like the plants, from the earth by the divine word of power (Genesis 1:20), the life of man was conveyed into him by a special act of the divine inbreathing. Life in man is thus something higher than life in the lower animals; it is something divine, and is given to and sustained in man by the direct agency of God: " in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

It is further to be noted here that life is something distinct from organization something that is neither identical with it nor flows directly out of it. When God had formed man, his organization was perfect; nothing more needed to be added to it; nothing more was added to it. But there his body lay inert, senseless, motionless, in nothing differing from the inorganic masses around it save in its greater symmetry.

Something more was required ere that body could live; and that was supplied by God when He breathed into that sense less organism the breath of life. Life, therefore, is the immediate gift of God, a boon which He bestows, withholds, or resumes as He sees meet. iii. When God purposed to create man, He purposed to form him in His own image according to His likeness: " Let us make man," said He, " in our image, after our likeness " (Genesis 1:26), and accordingly in the image of God man was created. This is what constitutes man’s supreme dignity, gives him his chief worth, and raises him far above all the rest of the animal creation. This is affirmed of man alone of all God’s creatures. The physical universe is spoken of as God’s thought (Psalms 92:5), as founded by His wisdom (Proverbs 3:19), as illustrat ing His perfections and declaring His glory (Psalms 8:1-9, Psalms 19:1-5), and as evidencing to the intelligent mind of man the invisible things of God (TO. aopara avrou), " even His eternal power and Godhead " (Romans 1:20). We find the sun also set forth as the emblem of God, and light as the emblem of His intelligence, purity, and glory (Psalms 84:11, Psalms 104:2; 1 Timothy 6:16 ; 1 John 1:5); but the sun is nowhere said to have been formed in His image, nor is His likeness to be found in the light. It is not even of angels said that they have been formed in the image and likeness of God; though, as they are called " sons of God," they must to a certain extent at least bear the image and likeness of Him whose sons they are. The special ascription of this to man may indicate that in him the divine image, and by consequence the divine sonship, inheres in a higher degree than even in angels; and this falls in with what other intimations lead us to conclude that man, as respects his original constitution, possesses a nature higher than the angelic, even as in his regenerated and glorified state he is destined to a higher position and dignity than theirs. This much at any rate we are justified in drawing from this consideration, that in the possession by man in his creation of God’s image and likeness lies his supreme distinction and glory.

Man, it is said, was made in the image of God. But when God purposed to create him, He said, " Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness," ttrKDls pi>y2. A twofold model was thus proposed for man’s formation. There is a &$tinction here which it is important to observe. The distinction lies not in the nouns O? and rfiOT, for these two are quite synonymous; it lies in the prepositions prefixed to them, the one of which indicates that there is a certain form in which man was actually made, the other that there is a model or norm according to which he was made. The latter expres sion is not merely, as Oehler suggests, intended " to fix and strengthen the meaning " of the former, nor merely to " express that the divine image which man bears is really one corre sponding to the original pattern." ] It rather, as Dorner 1 Theology of the Old Testament, 1:211.

VOL. I. L remarks, " points to the future " to what man was destined to become in the full development of his higher nature. " In reference to what he possesses already " (to quote again fronc, Dorner), " he is created in the divine image as his model; but in reference to the chief matter his destination he has in God a norm and ideal." l

Keeping this in view, we can understand how man, even after the fall, is described as being in the image of God, as he is in Genesis 9:6. Notwithstanding his sin and fall, man still retained that in which he had been formed, though he had fallen away from that normal perfection for which he was originally destined. We can see also why nowhere in Scripture is the state in which Adam was in Paradise presented as that to which man is to aspire, and to which redeemed man shall be raised. Adam never attained to that likeness after which he was created. In Christ alone, the second Adam, was the perfect image of God realized; and it is to Christ, therefore, we are taught to look as the realized ideal of perfect humanity, and to conformity to Him that we are called to aspire. When Adam begat a son, he begat him in his own image and likeness; and so all men, descended from him, who was of the earth earthy, bear the image of the earthy. Only through Christ can we be brought to bear the image of the heavenly; only through Him can we attain to God-likeness, and so reach the grand end for which man was originally destined. The divine image in which and after which man was formed was thus, as Dorner remarks, " partly original endow ment, partly destination." 2 But let us now inquire more particularly what is to be understood by the divine image in which man was made? It may help us to a satisfactory decision on this point if we look at the way in which the word " image " is used in the Bible. In the Hebrew Scriptures the word so rendered is D.^f, and in the Greek of the N. T. it is iK(i)i>, Both are generally used in the sense of a representa tion of some object by means of that which resembles it, 01 is supposed to resemble it; but both also occur in the sense of a model or archetype according to which something else ii formed. Thus Adam is said to have begotten " a son in his;

1 System of Christian Doctrine, 2:77:2 Ibid., p. 78. own likeness, after his image " (to?3Q in^. 3, Genesis 5:3), that is, according to the model of himself. So the apostle speaks of believers being " conformed to the image " of the Son of God (Horn. 8:9), i.e. to Him as the model of all excellence; of their beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, and beingchanged into the same image (2 Corinthians 3:18), and of the new man which believers are to put on as being renewed after the image of Him that created him (Colossians 3:10). This last passage indicates the sense in which the word " image " is used when man is said to have been created in the image of God; in God Himself was found the model or archetype after which man was formed. Man is not the image of God in the sense in which Jesus Christ is who is " the brightness of the Father s glory and the express image of His Person " (Hebrews 1:3); but being made after or according to God’s image, man is in a sense the image of God, and is called by the apostle His image and glory (1 Corinthians 11:7). But it still remains to inquire, In what sense was man formed after the model of God? In other words, what was that archetype of which man was made to be the ectype or representation? Now, there are three ways in which one intel ligent being may be the model of another: he may be so as respects substance or nature; he may be so by analogy of constitution; he may be so by moral resemblance. Of these the first is excluded in the case before us by the nature of the case; no mere creature ever can be either consubstantial with God or of like substance with Him; this belongs only to a Being who could say, as Christ says, " I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). But neither of the other two is incom patible with the conditions of creature-being; and it is in the combination of them that we find the just and full explanation of the statement we are considering. Man was made after the image of God, inasmuch as in constitution he was made analogous to God, and as in character he resembled God.

" God is a Spirit." This is our highest conception of God, so far at least as He may be conceived by us. Positively we may not be able to say what spirit properly and absolutely is; but negatively and by way of comparison we can arrive at a just and clear thought on this point, and hence may form a representation in our minds of the Most High. We are taught, moreover, to regard Him as possessing certain attributes, both intellectual and moral, and, further, as a Being who has revealed Himself to us we ascribe to Him a certain character, and think of Him as exhibiting certain qualities appropriate to a perfect moral and spiritual nature. This is the represen tation we form of God when we think of Him aright, and after this, as a model and archetype, man was originally formed. He was constituted an intelligent and moral agent, possessing a spiritual nature distinct from his material organi zation analogous to the spirituality of God, and exhibiting a character, mental and moral, resembling that of God. Man received from his Maker a spiritual nature which constitutes properly himself his proper personality; he was endowed with capacities of intelligence and moral judgment; his mind was pure and his affections holy; and his character was wholly in accordance with that of God. God made man upright.

There was no flaw, no defect, no blot on any part of his nature. As he stood before his Creator, perfect in every limb, fair in every feature, with the light of intelligence beaming from his countenance, and the beauty of perfect innocence and the crown of unsullied purity shining upon him, the eye of God rested on him with complacency, and the voice of God pronounced him " good." By some of the ancient Fathers it was held that by man s being made after the image of God nothing more is meant than that as God is over all, so man is like Him set over all things here below; as God is the Lord of the universe, so man is the lord of that part of the universe in which he has been placed; and this view has been adopted by not a few in more recent times. But in the narrative of Moses the placing of man over the lower creation is represented as a different thing from his being made in the image of God; the one is the consequent of the other; man has authority over the creatures around him, because he was made after the image of God. To make these two identical is to confound man s title to sovereignty with the grounds on which it rests.

Others of the Fathers took the more comprehensive view of the import of this phrase; they place the divine image in which man was created in the intelligent and self-govern ing nature with which man has been endowed (TO voepbv teal avTi~oicriov\ as comprehending, therefore, intelligence as well as moral purity. It has been too common with evangelical divines to restrict it to the latter of these. That conformity to the divine character and holiness forms an essential part of that image in which man was formed, cannot be doubted. The Apostle Paul, in describing the restoration of man as fallen to the image of God, describes it as a being created anew in righteousness and true holiness (Ephesians 4:24). But to restrict the phrase to this meaning is a mistake. The apostle in another passage speaks of the new man in believers being renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him (Colossians 3:10), so that he regarded intelligence as well as moral purity as included in the image of God in which man was framed. And as Scripture continues to speak of man as still retaining the divine image after the fall, as when, for instance, murder is forbidden on the ground that man is in the image of God, and calumny is on the same ground denounced as a heinous sin, and man is on this ground represented as still holding dominion over the lower creation; and as we know that by the fall man lost his moral resemblance to God, we can understand such state ments only by regarding the image of God after which man was formed as relating to both moral character and mental constitution. The former of these man lost by the fall; the latter he retains, and with it his authority over the lower creation and all the responsibility which such an endowment entails. Sin, indeed, has tarnished and enfeebled this part of man’s nature also, but not to such an extent as to require his being created anew before this part of the divine image is restored to him.

(i.) Man being thus formed after the image and in the likeness of God, has in him the element and principle of an endless life. " Since life in fellowship with God is by its nature an imperishable and eternal life, and since man was formed for this, and this was from the beginning funda mentally existent in him, it follows that immortality is some thing belonging to the original nature of man. It is true that it is said that God alone hath immortality (1 Timothy 6:16); but this does not contradict the above. For though God alone bears in Himself the power of endless life, He yet bestows this on man inasmuch as He originally communicated to man the basis of immortality, and made him for an end less life. Hence we may truly say that immortality belongs to the nature of man." 1 Man has not immortality absolutely as his; but he has it so in the constitution God has given him that it is against his nature to cease to be.

(ii.) Man being made after the image and likeness of God, it is not surprising that God, in revealing Himself to him, should represent Himself anthropomorphically. It is not merely in accommodation to human modes of thought that God thus represents Himself. This may be the case with such representations as ascribe to God parts and passions, or as present Him as sitting on a throne, or walking, or handling, and such like. But it is not so with those representations which ascribe to Him the acts and affections of our spiritual nature. These are not mere figures. There is a sense in which God does think and feel; not, indeed, exactly as we do, but in a manner analogous to ours. As thought is to us, so is what is called thought in God to Him; and so of anger, joy, love, and other mental affections ascribed to Him; these all indicate something in Him analogous to, though not identical with, what they are in us. Now, this analogy rests for its basis on the fact that man was made, as respects his spiritual nature, in the likeness and after the image of God, The analogy holds good, is a reality and not a mere rhetorical figure, because in God Himself is that according to which man was originally made. God speaks to us of Himself after the manner of man, because man was originally made after the manner of God.

(iii.) Man being made originally after the image of God, has in him the natural fitness to become a son of God. So Adam is called in Scripture (Luke 3:38) in virtue of his creation; and correspondent to this God, because He has created man, stands to him in the relation of a Father (Malachi 2:10; comp. Acts 17:28). This relation has been put in abeyance by man’s sin. But it has not been annihilated.

Man still retains the natural capacity to become a child of God; he has but to return to his allegiance and be at peace with God to find himself restored to his primordial place among 1 Hahn, ThcoL d. N. T., p. 389. the sons of God. When by faith in Christ he becomes united to Him, he enters with and through Him into a state of sonship: to as many as receive Him, God gives the right (egovaia, that which e^ecrrt, is allowed, permitted, authorized) or privilege to become the sons of God (John 1:12). No new faculties, no new capacities, are given to them; they are simply restored to their proper place by that which deprived them of their privileges and that which hindered their return to God being taken away.