Chapter II: The Original State Of Man (1)

In determining man’s original state, we are wholly dependent upon Scripture. This represents human nature as coming from God’s hand, and therefore “very good” (Gen. 1:31). It moreover draws a parallel between man’s first state and that of his restoration (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24). In interpreting these passages, however, we are to remember the twofold danger, on the one hand of putting man so high that no progress is conceivable, on the other hand of putting him so low that he could not fall. We shall the more easily avoid these dangers by distinguishing between the essentials and the incidents of man’s original state.

_Gen. 1:31_—“_And God saw everything that he had made, and,
behold, it was very good_”; _Col. 3:10_—“_the new man, that is
being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created
him_”; _Eph. 4:24_—“_the new man that after God hath been created
in righteousness and holiness of truth._”

Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:337-399—“The original state must be (1)
a contrast to sin; (2) a parallel to the state of restoration.
Difficulties in the way of understanding it: (1) What lives in
regeneration is something foreign to our present nature (‘_it is
no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me_’—_Gal. 2:20_); but
the original state was something native. (2) It was a state of
childhood. We cannot fully enter into childhood, though we see it
about us, and have ourselves been through it. The original state
is yet more difficult to reproduce to reason. (3) Man’s external
circumstances and his organization have suffered great changes, so
that the present is no sign of the past. We must recur to the
Scriptures, therefore, as well-nigh our only guide.” John Caird,
Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:164-195, points out that ideal
perfection is to be looked for, not at the outset, but at the
final stage of the spiritual life. If man were wholly finite, he
would not know his finitude.

Lord Bacon: “The sparkle of the purity of man’s first estate.”
Calvin: “It was monstrous impiety that a son of the earth should
not be satisfied with being made after the similitude of God,
unless he could also be equal with him.” Prof. Hastings: “The
truly natural is not the real, but the ideal. Made in the image of
God—between that beginning and the end stands God made in the
image of man.” On the general subject of man’s original state, see
Zöckler, 3:283-290; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:215-243;
Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:267-276; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 374-375;
Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:92-116.

I. Essentials of Man’s Original State.

These are summed up in the phrase “the image of God.” In God’s image man is said to have been created (Gen. 1:26, 27). In what did this image of God consist? We reply that it consisted in 1. Natural likeness to God, or personality; 2. Moral likeness to God, or holiness.

_Gen. 1:26, 27_—“_And God said, Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness.... And God created man in his own image, in
the image of God created he him._” It is of great importance to
distinguish clearly between the two elements embraced in this
image of God, the natural and the moral. By virtue of the first,
man possessed certain _faculties_ (intellect, affection, will); by
virtue of the second, he had _right tendencies_ (bent, proclivity,
disposition). By virtue of the first, he was invested with certain
_powers_; by virtue of the second, a certain _direction_ was
imparted to these powers. As created in the natural image of God,
man had a moral _nature_; as created in the moral image of God,
man had a holy _character_. The first gave him _natural_ ability;
the second gave him _moral_ ability. The Greek Fathers emphasized
the first element, or _personality_; the Latin Fathers emphasized
the second element, or _holiness_. See Orr, God’s Image in Man.

As the Logos, or divine Reason, Christ Jesus, dwells in humanity
and constitutes the principle of its being, humanity shares with
Christ in the image of God. That image is never wholly lost. It is
completely restored in sinners when the Spirit of Christ gains
control of their wills and they merge their life in his. To those
who accused Jesus of blasphemy, he replied by quoting the words of
_Psalm 82:6_—“_I said, Ye are gods_”—words spoken of imperfect
earthly rulers. Thus, in _John 10:34-36_, Jesus, who constitutes
the very essence of humanity, justifies his own claim to divinity
by showing that even men who represent God are also in a minor
sense “_partakers of the divine nature_” (_2 Pet. 1:4_). Hence the
many legends, in heathen religions, of the divine descent of man.
_1 Cor. 11:3_—“_the head of every man is Christ._” In every man,
even the most degraded, there is an image of God to be brought
out, as Michael Angelo saw the angel in the rough block of marble.
This natural _worth_ does not imply _worthiness_; it implies only
capacity for redemption. “The abysmal depths of personality,”
which Tennyson speaks of, are sounded, as man goes down in thought
successively from individual sins to sin of the heart and to
race-sin. But “the deeper depth is out of reach To all, O God, but
thee.” From this deeper depth, where man is rooted and grounded in
God, rise aspirations for a better life. These are not due to the
man himself, but to Christ, the immanent God, who ever works
within him. Fanny J. Crosby: “Rescue the perishing, Care for the
dying.... Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter,
Feelings lie buried that grace can restore; Touched by a loving
heart, wakened by kindness, Chords that were broken will vibrate
once more.”

1. Natural likeness to God, or personality.

Man was created a personal being, and was by this personality distinguished from the brute. By personality we mean the twofold power to know self as related to the world and to God, and to determine self in view of moral ends. By virtue of this personality, man could at his creation choose which of the objects of his knowledge—self, the world, or God—should be the norm and centre of his development. This natural likeness to God is inalienable, and as constituting a capacity for redemption gives value to the life even of the unregenerate (Gen. 9:6; 1 Cor. 11:7; James 3:9).

For definitions of personality, see notes on the Anthropological
Argument, page 82; on Pantheism, pages 104, 105; on the
Attributes, pages 252-254; and on the Person of Christ, in Part
VI. Here we may content ourselves with the formula: Personality =
self-consciousness + self-determination. _Self_-consciousness and
_self_-determination, as distinguished from the consciousness and
determination of the brute, involve all the higher mental and
moral powers which constitute us men. Conscience is but a mode of
their activity. Notice that the term “image” does not, in man,
imply _perfect_ representation. Only Christ is the “_very image_”
of God (_Heb. 1:3_), the “_image of the invisible God_” (_Col.
1:15_—on which see Lightfoot). Christ is the image of God
absolutely and archetypally; man, only relatively and
derivatively. But notice also that, since God is Spirit, man made
in God’s image cannot be a material thing. By virtue of his
possession of this first element of the image of God, namely,
personality, materialism is excluded.

This first element of the divine image man can never lose until he
ceases to be man. Even insanity can only obscure this natural
image,—it cannot destroy it. St. Bernard well said that it could
not be burned out, even in hell. The lost piece of money (_Luke
15:8_) still bore the image and superscription of the king, even
though it did not know it, and did not even know that it was lost.
Human nature is therefore to be reverenced, and he who destroys
human life is to be put to death: _Gen. 9:6_—“_for in the image of
God made he man_”; _1 Cor. 11:7_—“_a man indeed ought not to have
his head veiled, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God_”;
_James 3:9_—even men whom we curse “_are made after the likeness
of God_”; _cf._ _Ps. 8:5_—“_thou hast made him but little lower
than God_”; _1 Pet. 2:17_—“_Honor all men._” In the being of every
man are continents which no Columbus has ever yet discovered,
depths of possible joy or sorrow which no plummet has ever yet
sounded. A whole heaven, a whole hell, may lie within the compass
of his single soul. If we could see the meanest real Christian as
he will be in the great hereafter, we should bow before him as
John bowed before the angel in the Apocalypse, for we should not
be able to distinguish him from God (_Rev. 22:8, 9_).

Sir William Hamilton: “On earth there is nothing great but man; In
man there is nothing great but mind.” We accept this dictum only
if “mind” can be understood to include man’s moral powers together
with the right direction of those powers. Shakespeare, Hamlet,
2:2—“What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how
infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable!
in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!”
Pascal: “Man is greater than the universe; the universe may crush
him, but it does not know that it crushes him.” Whiton, Gloria
Patri, 94—“God is not only the Giver but the Sharer of my life. My
natural powers are that part of God’s power which is lodged with
me in trust to keep and use.” Man can be an _instrument_ of God,
without being an _agent_ of God. “Each man has his place and value
as a reflection of God and of Christ. Like a letter in a word, or
a word in a sentence, he gets his meaning from his context; but
the sentence is meaningless without him; rays from the whole
universe converge in him.” John Howe’s Living Temple shows the
greatness of human nature in its first construction and even in
its ruin. Only a noble ship could make so great a wreck.
Aristotle, Problem, sec. 30—“No excellent soul is exempt from a
mixture of madness.” Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi, 15—“There is
no great genius without a tincture of madness.”

Kant: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or
in that of any other, in every case as an _end_, and never as a
_means_ only.” If there is a divine element in every man, then we
have no right to _use_ a human being merely for our own pleasure
or profit. In receiving him we receive Christ, and in receiving
Christ we receive him who sent Christ (_Mat. 10:40_). Christ is
the vine and all men are his natural branches, cutting themselves
off only when they refuse to bear fruit, and condemning themselves
to the burning only because they destroy, so far as they can
destroy, God’s image in them, all that makes them worth preserving
(_John 15:1-6_). Cicero: “Homo mortalis deus.” This possession of
natural likeness to God, or personality, involves boundless
possibilities of good or ill, and it constitutes the natural
foundation of the love for man which is required of us by the law.
Indeed it constitutes the reason why Christ should die. Man was
worth redeeming. The woman whose ring slipped from her finger and
fell into the heap of mud in the gutter, bared her white arm and
thrust her hand into the slimy mass until she found her ring; but
she would not have done this if the ring had not contained a
costly diamond. The lost piece of money, the lost sheep, the lost
son, were worth effort to seek and to save (_Luke 15_). But, on
the other hand, it is folly when man, made in the image of God,
“blinds himself with clay.” The man on shipboard, who playfully
tossed up the diamond ring which contained his whole fortune, at
last to his distress tossed it overboard. There is a “_merchandise
of souls_” (_Rev. 18:13_) and we must not juggle with them.

Christ’s death for man, by showing the worth of humanity, has
recreated ethics. “Plato defended infanticide as under certain
circumstances permissible. Aristotle viewed slavery as founded in
the nature of things. The reason assigned was the essential
inferiority of nature on the part of the enslaved.” But the divine
image in man makes these barbarities no longer possible to us.
Christ sometimes looked upon men with anger, but he never looked
upon them with contempt. He taught the woman, he blessed the
child, he cleansed the leper, he raised the dead. His own death
revealed the infinite worth of the meanest human soul, and taught
us to count all men as brethren for whose salvation we may well
lay down our lives. George Washington answered the salute of his
slave. Abraham Lincoln took off his hat to a negro who gave him
his blessing as he entered Richmond; but a lady who had been
brought up under the old regime looked from a window upon the
scene with unspeakable horror. Robert Burns, walking with a
nobleman in Edinburgh, met an old townsfellow from Ayr and stopped
to talk with him. The nobleman, kept waiting, grew restive, and
afterward reproved Burns for talking to a man with so bad a coat.
Burns replied: “I was not talking to the coat,—I was talking to
the man.” Jean Ingelow: “The street and market place Grow holy
ground: each face—Pale faces marked with care, Dark, toilworn
brows—grows fair. King’s children are all these, though want and
sin Have marred their beauty, glorious within. We may not pass
them but with reverent eye.” See Porter, Human Intellect, 393,
394, 401; Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 2:42; Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
2:343.

2. Moral likeness to God, or holiness.

In addition to the powers of self-consciousness and self-determination just mentioned, man was created with such a direction of the affections and the will, as constituted God the supreme end of man’s being, and constituted man a finite reflection of God’s moral attributes. Since holiness is the fundamental attribute of God, this must of necessity be the chief attribute of his image in the moral beings whom he creates. That original righteousness was essential to this image, is also distinctly taught in Scripture (Eccl. 7:29; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10).

Besides the possession of natural powers, the image of God
involves the possession of right moral tendencies. It is not
enough to say that man was created in a state of innocence. The
Scripture asserts that man had a righteousness like God’s: _Eccl.
7:29_—“_God made man upright_”; _Eph. 4:24_—“_the new man, that
after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of
truth_”—here Meyer says: “κατὰ Θεόν, ‘_after God_,’ _i. e._, _ad
exemplum Dei_, after the pattern of God (_Gal. 4:28_—κατὰ Ἰσαάκ,
‘after Isaac’ = as Isaac was). This phrase makes the creation of
the new man a parallel to that of our first parents, who were
created after God’s image; they too, before sin came into
existence through Adam, were sinless—‘_in righteousness and
holiness of truth_.’ ” On N. T. “truth” = rectitude, see Wendt,
Teaching of Jesus, 1:257-260.

Meyer refers also, as a parallel passage, to _Col. 3:10_—“_the new
man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him
that created him._” Here the “_knowledge_” referred to is that
knowledge of God which is the source of all virtue, and which is
inseparable from holiness of heart. “Holiness has two sides or
phases: (1) it is perception and knowledge; (2) it is inclination
and feeling” (Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:97). On _Eph. 4:24_ and _Col.
3:10_, the classical passages with regard to man’s original state,
see also the Commentaries of DeWette, Rückert, Ellicott, and
compare _Gen. 5:3_—“_And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years,
and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image,_” _i. e._,
in his own sinful likeness, which is evidently contrasted with the
“_likeness of God_” (_verse 1_) in which he himself had been
created (An. Par. Bible). _2 Cor. 4:4_—“_Christ, who is the image
of God_”—where the phrase “_image of God_” is not simply the
_natural_, but also the _moral_, image. Since Christ is the image
of God primarily in his holiness, man’s creation in the image of
God must have involved a holiness like Christ’s, so far as such
holiness could belong to a being yet untried, that is, so far as
respects man’s tastes and dispositions prior to moral action.

“Couldst thou in vision see Thyself the man God meant, Thou
nevermore couldst be The man thou art—content.” Newly created man
had right moral tendencies, as well as freedom from actual fault.
Otherwise the communion with God described in Genesis would not
have been possible. Goethe: “Unless the eye were sunlike, how
could it see the sun?” Because a holy disposition accompanied
man’s innocence, he was capable of obedience, and was guilty when
he sinned. The loss of this moral likeness to God was the chief
calamity of the Fall. Man is now “the glory and the scandal of the
universe.” He has defaced the image of God in his nature, even
though that image, in its natural aspect, is ineffaceable (E. H.
Johnson).

The dignity of human nature consists, not so much in what man is,
as in what God meant him to be, and in what God means him yet to
become, when the lost image of God is restored by the union of
man’s soul with Christ. Because of his future possibilities, the
meanest of mankind is sacred. The great sin of the second table of
the decalogue is the sin of despising our fellow man. To cherish
contempt for others can have its root only in idolatry of self and
rebellion against God. Abraham Lincoln said well that “God must
have liked common people,—else he would not have made so many of
them.” Regard for the image of God in man leads also to kind and
reverent treatment even of those lower animals in which so many
human characteristics are foreshadowed. Bradford, Heredity and
Christian Problems, 166—“The current philosophy says: The fittest
will survive; let the rest die. The religion of Christ says: That
maxim as applied to men is just, only as regards their
characteristics, of which indeed only the fittest should survive.
It does not and cannot apply to the men themselves, since all men,
being children of God, are supremely fit. The very fact that a
human being is sick, weak, poor, an outcast, and a vagabond, is
the strongest possible appeal for effort toward his salvation. Let
individuals look upon humanity from the point of view of Christ,
and they will not be long in finding ways in which environment can
be caused to work for righteousness.”

This original righteousness, in which the image of God chiefly consisted, is to be viewed:

(_a_) Not as constituting the substance or essence of human nature,—for in this case human nature would have ceased to exist as soon as man sinned.

Men every day change their tastes and loves, without changing the
essence or substance of their being. When sin is called a
“nature,” therefore (as by Shedd, in his Essay on “Sin a Nature,
and that Nature Guilt”), it is only in the sense of being
something inborn (_natura_, from _nascor_). Hereditary tastes may
just as properly be denominated a “nature” as may the substance of
one’s being. Moehler, the greatest modern Roman Catholic critic of
Protestant doctrine, in his Symbolism, 58, 59, absurdly holds
Luther to have taught that by the Fall man lost his essential
nature, and that another essence was substituted in its room.
Luther, however, is only rhetorical when he says: “It is the
nature of man to sin; sin constitutes the essence of man; the
nature of man since the Fall has become quite changed; original
sin is that very thing which is born of father and mother; the
clay out of which we are formed is damnable; the fœtus in the
maternal womb is sin; man as born of his father and mother,
together with his whole essence and nature, is not only a sinner
but sin itself.”

(_b_) Nor as a _gift_ from without, foreign to human nature, and added to it after man’s creation,—for man is said to have possessed the divine image by the fact of creation, and not by subsequent bestowal.

As men, since Adam, are born with a sinful nature, that is, with
tendencies away from God, so Adam was created with a holy nature,
that is, with tendencies toward God. Moehler says: “God cannot
give a man actions.” We reply: “No, but God can give man
dispositions; and he does this at the first creation, as well as
at the new creation (regeneration).”

(_c_) But rather, as an original direction or tendency of man’s affections and will, still accompanied by the power of evil choice, and so, differing from the perfected holiness of the saints, as instinctive affection and child-like innocence differ from the holiness that has been developed and confirmed by experience of temptation.

Man’s original righteousness was not immutable or indefectible;
there was still the possibility of sinning. Though the first man
was fundamentally good, he still had the power of choosing evil.
There was a bent of the affections and will toward God, but man
was not yet confirmed in holiness. Man’s love for God was like the
germinal filial affection in the child, not developed, yet
sincere—“caritas puerilis, non virilis.”

(_d_) As a moral disposition, moreover, which was propagable to Adam’s descendants, if it continued, and which, though lost to him and to them, if Adam sinned, would still leave man possessed of a natural likeness to God which made him susceptible of God’s redeeming grace.

Hooker (Works, ed. Keble, 2:683) distinguishes between aptness and
ableness. The latter, men have lost; the former, they retain,—else
grace could not work in us, more than in the brutes. Hase: “Only
enough likeness to God remained to remind man of what he had lost,
and enable him to feel the hell of God’s forsaking.” The moral
likeness to God can be restored, but only by God himself. God
secures this to men by making “_the light of the gospel of the
glory of Christ, who is the image of God, ... dawn upon them_” (_2
Cor. 4:4_). Pusey made _Ps. 72:6_—“_He will come down like rain
upon the mown grass_”—the image of a world hopelessly dead, but
with a hidden capacity for receiving life. Dr. Daggett: “Man is a
‘_son of the morning_’ (_Is. 14:12_), fallen, yet arrested midway
between heaven and hell, a prize between the powers of light and
darkness.” See Edwards, Works, 2:19, 20, 381-390; Hopkins, Works,
1:162; Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:50-66; Augustine, De Civitate Dei,
14:11.

In the light of the preceding investigation, we may properly estimate two theories of man’s original state which claim to be more Scriptural and reasonable:

A. The image of God as including only personality.

This theory denies that any positive determination to virtue inhered originally in man’s nature, and regards man at the beginning as simply possessed of spiritual powers, perfectly adjusted to each other. This is the view of Schleiermacher, who is followed by Nitzsch, Julius Müller, and Hofmann.

For the view here combated, see Schleiermacher, Christl. Glaube,
sec. 60; Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine, 201; Julius
Müller, Doct. of Sin, 2:113-133, 350-357; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis,
1:287-291; Bib. Sac., 7:409-425. Julius Müller’s theory of the
Fall in a preëxistent state makes it impossible for him to hold
here that Adam was possessed of moral likeness to God. The origin
of his view of the image of God renders it liable to suspicion.
Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 113—“The original state of man was that of
child-like innocence or morally indifferent naturalness, which had
in itself indeed the possibility (_Anlage_) of ideal development,
but in such a way that its realization could be reached only by
struggle with its natural opposite. The image of God was already
present in the original state, but only as the possibility
(_Anlage_) of real likeness to God—the endowment of reason which
belonged to human personality. The _reality_ of a spirit like that
of God has appeared first in the _second_ Adam, and has become the
principle of the kingdom of God.”

Raymond (Theology, 2:43, 132) is an American representative of the
view that the image of God consists in mere personality: “The
image of God in which man was created did not consist in an
inclination and determination of the will to holiness.” This is
maintained upon the ground that such a moral likeness to God would
have rendered it impossible for man to fall,—to which we reply
that Adam’s righteousness was not immutable, and the bias of his
will toward God did not render it impossible for him to sin.
Motives do not compel the will, and Adam at least had a certain
power of contrary choice. E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology,
119-122, also maintains that the image of God signified only that
personality which distinguished man from the brute. Christ, he
says, carries forward human nature to a higher point, instead of
merely restoring what is lost. “_Very good_” (_Gen. 1:31_) does
not imply moral perfection,—this cannot be the result of creation,
but only of discipline and will. Man’s original state was only one
of untried innocence. Dr. Robinson is combating the view that the
first man was at his creation possessed of a developed character.
He distinguishes between character and the germs of character.
These germs he grants that man possessed. And so he defines the
image of God as a constitutional predisposition toward a course of
right conduct. This is all the perfection which we claim for the
first man. We hold that this predisposition toward the good can
properly be called character, since it is the germ from which all
holy action springs.

In addition to what has already been said in support of the opposite view, we may urge against this theory the following objections:

(_a_) It is contrary to analogy, in making man the author of his own holiness; our sinful condition is not the product of our individual wills, nor is our subsequent condition of holiness the product of anything but God’s regenerating power.

To hold that Adam was created undecided, would make man, as
Philippi says, in the highest sense his own creator. But morally,
as well as physically, man is God’s creature. In regeneration it
is not sufficient for God to give _power_ to decide for good; God
must give new _love_ also. If this be so in the new creation, God
could give love in the first creation also. Holiness therefore is
creatable. “_Underived_ holiness is possible only in God; in its
origin, it is _given_ both to angels and men.” Therefore we pray:
“_Create in me a clean heart_” (_Ps. 51:10_); “_Incline my heart
unto thy testimonies_” (_Ps. 119:36_). See Edwards, Eff. Grace,
sec. 43-51; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 290—“If Adam’s perfection was not a
moral perfection, then his sin was no real moral corruption.” The
_animus_ of the theory we are combating seems to be an
unwillingness to grant that man, either in his first creation or
in his new creation, owes his holiness to God.

(_b_) The knowledge of God in which man was originally created logically presupposes a direction toward God of man’s affections and will, since only the holy heart can have any proper understanding of the God of holiness.

“Ubi caritas, ibi claritas.” Man’s heart was originally filled
with divine love, and out of this came the knowledge of God. We
know God only as we love him, and this love comes not from our own
single volition. No one loves by command, because no one can give
himself love. In Adam love was an inborn impulse, which he could
affirm or deny. Compare _1 Cor. 8:3_—“_if any man loveth God, the
same_ [God] _is known by him_”; _1 John 4:8_—“_He that loveth not
knoweth not God._” See other Scripture references on pages 3, 4.

(_c_) A likeness to God in mere personality, such as Satan also possesses, comes far short of answering the demands of the Scripture, in which the ethical conception of the divine nature so overshadows the merely natural. The image of God must be, not simply ability to be like God, but actual likeness.

God could never create an intelligent being evenly balanced
between good and evil—“on the razor’s edge”—“on the fence.” The
preacher who took for his text “_Adam, where art thou?_” had for
his first head: “It is every man’s business to be somewhere;” for
his second: “Some of you are where you ought not to be;” and for
his third: “Get where you ought to be, as soon as possible.” A
simple capacity for good or evil is, as Augustine says, already
sinful. A man who is neutral between good and evil is already a
violator of that law, which requires likeness to God in the bent
of his nature. Delitzsch, Bib. Psychol., 45-84—“Personality is
only the basis of the divine image,—it is not the image itself.”
Bledsoe says there can be no created virtue or viciousness. Whedon
(On the Will, 388) objects to this, and says rather: “There can be
no created moral desert, good or evil. Adam’s nature as created
was pure and excellent, but there was nothing meritorious until he
had freely and rightly exercised his will with full power to the
contrary.” We add: There was nothing meritorious even then. For
substance of these objections, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:346.
Lessing said that the character of the Germans was to have no
character. Goethe partook of this cosmopolitan characterlessness
(Prof. Seely). Tennyson had Goethe in view when he wrote in The
Palace of Art: “I sit apart, holding no form of creed, but
contemplating all.” And Goethe is probably still alluded to in the
words: “A glorious devil, large in heart and brain, That did love
beauty only, Or if good, good only for its beauty”; see A. H.
Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 331; Robert Browning,
Christmas Eve: “The truth in God’s breast Lies trace for trace
upon ours impressed: Though he is so bright, and we so dim, We are
made in his image to witness him.”

B. The image of God as consisting simply in man’s natural capacity for religion.

This view, first elaborated by the scholastics, is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. It distinguishes between the image and the likeness of God. The former (צלם—Gen. 1:26) alone belonged to man’s nature at its creation. The latter (דמות) was the product of his own acts of obedience. In order that this obedience might be made easier and the consequent likeness to God more sure, a third element was added—an element not belonging to man’s nature—namely, a supernatural gift of special grace, which acted as a curb upon the sensuous impulses, and brought them under the control of reason. Original righteousness was therefore not a natural endowment, but a joint product of man’s obedience and of God’s supernatural grace.

Roman Catholicism holds that the white paper of man’s soul
received two impressions instead of one. Protestantism sees no
reason why both impressions should not have been given at the
beginning. Kaftan, in Am. Jour. Theology, 4:708, gives a good
statement of the Roman Catholic view. It holds that the supreme
good transcends the finite mind and its powers of comprehension.
Even at the first it was beyond man’s created nature. The _donum
superadditum_ did not inwardly and personally belong to him. Now
that he has lost it, he is entirely dependent on the church for
truth and grace. He does not receive the truth because it is this
and no other, but because the church tells him that it is the
truth.

The Roman Catholic doctrine may be roughly and pictorially stated
as follows: As created, man was morally naked, or devoid of
positive righteousness (_pura naturalia_, or _in puris
naturalibus_). By obedience he obtained as a reward from God
(_donum supernaturale_, or _superadditum_) a suit of clothes or
robe of righteousness to protect him, so that he became clothed
(_vestitus_). This suit of clothes, however, was a sort of magic
spell of which he could be divested. The adversary attacked him
and stripped him of his suit. After his sin he was one despoiled
(_spoliatus_). But his condition after differed from his condition
before this attack, only as a stripped man differs from a naked
man (_spoliatus a nudo_). He was now only in the same state in
which he was created, with the single exception of the weakness he
might feel as the result of losing his customary clothing. He
could still earn himself another suit,—in fact, he could earn two
or more, so as to sell, or give away, what he did not need for
himself. The phrase _in puris naturalibus_ describes the original
state, as the phrase _spoliatus a nudo_ describes the difference
resulting from man’s sin.

Many of the considerations already adduced apply equally as arguments against this view. We may say, however, with reference to certain features peculiar to the theory:

(_a_) No such distinction can justly be drawn between the words צלם and דםות. The addition of the synonym simply strengthens the expression, and both together signify “the very image.”

(_b_) Whatever is denoted by either or both of these words was bestowed upon man in and by the fact of creation, and the additional hypothesis of a supernatural gift not originally belonging to man’s nature, but subsequently conferred, has no foundation either here or elsewhere in Scripture. Man is said to have been created in the image and likeness of God, not to have been afterwards endowed with either of them.

(_c_) The concreated opposition between sense and reason which this theory supposes is inconsistent with the Scripture declaration that the work of God’s hands “was very good” (Gen. 1:31), and transfers the blame of temptation and sin from man to God. To hold to a merely negative innocence, in which evil desire was only slumbering, is to make God author of sin by making him author of the constitution which rendered sin inevitable.

(_d_) This theory directly contradicts Scripture by making the effect of the first sin to have been a weakening but not a perversion of human nature, and the work of regeneration to be not a renewal of the affections but merely a strengthening of the natural powers. The theory regards that first sin as simply despoiling man of a special gift of grace and as putting him where he was when first created—still able to obey God and to coöperate with God for his own salvation,—whereas the Scripture represents man since the fall as “dead through ... trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1), as incapable of true obedience (Rom. 8:7—“not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be”), and as needing to be “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph. 2:10).

At few points in Christian doctrine do we see more clearly than
here the large results of error which may ultimately spring from
what might at first sight seem to be only a slight divergence from
the truth. Augustine had rightly taught that in Adam the _posse
non peccare_ was accompanied by a _posse peccare_, and that for
this reason man’s holy disposition needed the help of divine grace
to preserve its integrity. But the scholastics wrongly added that
this original disposition to righteousness was not the outflow of
man’s nature as originally created, but was the gift of grace. As
this later teaching, however, was by some disputed, the Council of
Trent (sess. 5, cap. 1) left the matter more indefinite, simply
declaring man: “Sanctitatem et justitiam in qua _constitutus
fuerat_, amisisse.” The Roman Catechism, however (1:2:19),
explained the phrase “constitutus fuerat” by the words: “Tum
originalis justitiæ admirabile donum _addidit_.” And Bellarmine
(De Gratia, 2) says plainly: “Imago, quæ est ipsa natura mentis et
voluntatis, a solo Deo fieri potuit; similitudo autem, quæ in
virtute et probitate consistit, _a nobis quoque_ Deo adjuvante
perficitur.”... (5) “Integritas illa ... non fuit naturalis ejus
conditio, sed supernaturalis evectio.... Addidisse homini donum
quoddam insigne, justitiam videlicet originalem, qua veluti aureo
quodam fræno pars inferior parti superiori subjecta contineretur.”

Moehler (Symbolism, 21-35) holds that the religious faculty—the
“image of God”; the pious exertion of this faculty—the “likeness
of God.” He seems to favor the view that Adam received “this
supernatural gift of a holy and blessed communion with God at a
later period than his creation, _i. e._, only when he had prepared
himself for its reception and by his own efforts had rendered
himself worthy of it.” He was created “just” and acceptable to
God, even without communion with God or help from God. He became
“holy” and enjoyed communion with God, only when God rewarded his
obedience and bestowed the _supernaturale donum_. Although Moehler
favors this view and claims that it is permitted by the standards,
he also says that it is not definitely taught. The quotations from
Bellarmine and the Roman Catechism above make it clear that it is
the prevailing doctrine of the Roman Catholic church.

So, to quote the words of Shedd, “the Tridentine theology starts
with Pelagianism and ends with Augustinianism. Created without
character, God subsequently endows man with character.... The
Papal idea of creation differs from the Augustinian in that it
involves imperfection. There is a disease and languor which
require a subsequent and supernatural act to remedy.” The
Augustinian and Protestant conception of man’s original state is
far nobler than this. The ethical element is not a later addition,
but is man’s true nature—essential to God’s idea of him. The
normal and original condition of man (_pura naturalia_) is one of
grace and of the Spirit’s indwelling—hence, of direction toward
God.

From this original difference between Roman Catholic and
Protestant doctrine with regard to man’s original state result
diverging views as to sin and as to regeneration. The Protestant
holds that, as man was possessed by creation of moral likeness to
God, or holiness, so his sin robbed his nature of its integrity,
deprived it of essential and concreated advantages and powers, and
substituted for these a positive corruption and tendency to evil.
Unpremeditated evil desire, or concupiscence, is original sin; as
concreated love for God constituted man’s original righteousness.
No man since the fall has original righteousness, and it is man’s
sin that he has it not. Since without love to God no act, emotion,
or thought of man can answer the demands of God’s law, the
Scripture denies to fallen man all power of himself to know,
think, feel, or do aright. His nature therefore needs a
new-creation, a resurrection from death, such as God only, by his
mighty Spirit, can work; and to this work of God man can
contribute nothing, except as power is first given him by God
himself.

According to the Roman Catholic view, however, since the image of
God in which man was created included only man’s religious
faculty, his sin can rob him only of what became subsequently and
adventitiously his. Fallen man differs from unfallen only as
_spoliatus a nudo_. He loses only a sort of magic spell, which
leaves him still in possession of all his essential powers.
Unpremeditated evil desire, or concupiscence, is not sin; for this
belonged to his nature even before he fell. His sin has therefore
only put him back into the natural state of conflict and
concupiscence, ordered by God in the concreated opposition of
sense and reason. The sole qualification is this, that, having
made an evil decision, his will is weakened. “Man does not need
resurrection from death, but rather a crutch to help his lameness,
a tonic to reinforce his feebleness, a medicine to cure his
sickness.” He is still able to turn to God; and in regeneration
the Holy Spirit simply awakens and strengthens the natural ability
slumbering in the natural man. But even here, man must yield to
the influence of the Holy Spirit; and regeneration is effected by
uniting his power to the divine. In baptism the guilt of original
sin is remitted, and everything called sin is taken away. No
baptized person has any further process of regeneration to
undergo. Man has not only strength to coöperate with God for his
own salvation, but he may even go beyond the demands of the law
and perform works of supererogation. And the whole sacramental
system of the Roman Catholic Church, with its salvation by works,
its purgatorial fires, and its invocation of the saints, connects
itself logically with this erroneous theory of man’s original
state.

See Dorner’s Augustinus, 116; Perrone, Prælectiones Theologicæ,
1:737-748; Winer, Confessions, 79, 80; Dorner, History Protestant
Theology, 38, 39, and Glaubenslehre, 1:51; Van Oosterzee,
Dogmatics, 376; Cunningham, Historical Theology, 1:516-586; Shedd,
Hist. Doctrine, 2:140-149.

II. Incidents of Man’s Original State.

1. Results of man’s possession of the divine image.

(_a_) Reflection of this divine image in man’s physical form.—Even in man’s body were typified those higher attributes which chiefly constituted his likeness to God. A gross perversion of this truth, however, is the view which holds, upon the ground of Gen. 2:7, and 3:8, that the image of God consists in bodily resemblance to the Creator. In the first of these passages, it is not the divine image, but the body, that is formed of dust, and into this body the soul that possesses the divine image is breathed. The second of these passages is to be interpreted by those other portions of the Pentateuch in which God is represented as free from all limitations of matter (Gen. 11:5; 18:15).

The spirit presents the divine image immediately: the body,
mediately. The scholastics called the soul the image of God
_proprie_; the body they called the image of God _significative_.
Soul is the direct reflection of God; body is the reflection of
that reflection. The _os sublime_ manifests the dignity of the
endowments within. Hence the word “upright,” as applied to moral
condition; one of the first impulses of the renewed man is to
physical purity. Compare Ovid, Metaph., bk. 1, Dryden’s transl.:
“Thus while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to
their earthly mother tend, Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.” (Ἄνθρωπος, from ἀνά, ἄνω,
suffix _tra_, and ὢψ, with reference to the upright posture.)
Milton speaks of “the human face divine.” S. S. Times, July 28,
1900—“Man is the only erect being among living creatures. He alone
looks up naturally and without effort. He foregoes his birthright
when he looks only at what is on a level with his eyes and
occupies himself only with what lies in the plane of his own
existence.”

Bretschneider (Dogmatik, 1:682) regards the Scripture as teaching
that the image of God consists in bodily resemblance to the
Creator, but considers this as only the imperfect method of
representation belonging to an early age. So Strauss,
Glaubenslehre, 1:687. They refer to _Gen. 2:7_—“_And Jehovah God
formed man of the dust of the ground_”; _3:8_—“_Jehovah God
walking in the garden._” But see _Gen. 11:5_—“_And Jehovah came
down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men
builded_”; _Is. 66:1_—“_Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my
footstool_”; _1 K. 8:27_—“_behold, heaven and the heaven of
heavens cannot contain thee._” On the Anthropomorphites, see
Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 1:103, 308, 491. For answers to
Bretschneider and Strauss, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:364.

(_b_) Subjection of the sensuous impulses to the control of the spirit.—Here we are to hold a middle ground between two extremes. On the one hand, the first man possessed a body and a spirit so fitted to each other that no conflict was felt between their several claims. On the other hand, this physical perfection was not final and absolute, but relative and provisional. There was still room for progress to a higher state of being (Gen. 3:22).

Sir Henry Watton’s Happy Life: “That man was free from servile
bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall, Lord of himself if not of
lands, And having nothing yet had all.” Here we hold to the
_æquale temperamentum_. There was no disease, but rather the joy
of abounding health. Labor was only a happy activity. God’s
infinite creatorship and fountainhead of being was typified in
man’s powers of generation. But there was no concreated opposition
of sense and reason, nor an imperfect physical nature with whose
impulses reason was at war. With this moderate Scriptural
doctrine, contrast the exaggerations of the Fathers and of the
scholastics. Augustine says that Adam’s reason was to ours what
the bird’s is to that of the tortoise; propagation in the unfallen
state would have been without concupiscence, and the new-born
child would have attained perfection at birth. Albertus Magnus
thought the first man would have felt no pain, even though he had
been stoned with heavy stones. Scotus Erigena held that the male
and female elements were yet undistinguished. Others called
sexuality the first sin. Jacob Boehme regarded the intestinal
canal, and all connected with it, as the consequence of the Fall;
he had the fancy that the earth was transparent at the first and
cast no shadow,—sin, he thought, had made it opaque and dark;
redemption would restore it to its first estate and make night a
thing of the past. South, Sermons, 1:24, 25—“Man came into the
world a philosopher.... Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam.”
Lyman Abbott tells us of a minister who assured his congregation
that Adam was acquainted with the telephone. But God educates his
children, as chemists educate their pupils, by putting them into
the laboratory and letting them work. Scripture does not represent
Adam as a walking encyclopædia, but as a being yet inexperienced;
see _Gen. 3:22_—“_Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know
good and evil_”; _1 Cor. 15:46_—“_that is not first which is
spiritual, but that which is natural; then that which is
spiritual._” On this last text, see Expositor’s Greek Testament.

(_c_) Dominion over the lower creation.—Adam possessed an insight into nature analogous to that of susceptible childhood, and therefore was able to name and to rule the brute creation (Gen. 2:19). Yet this native insight was capable of development into the higher knowledge of culture and science. From Gen. 1:26 (_cf._ Ps. 8:5-8), it has been erroneously inferred that the image of God in man consists in dominion over the brute creation and the natural world. But, in this verse, the words “let them have dominion” do not define the image of God, but indicate the result of possessing that image. To make the image of God consist in this dominion, would imply that only the divine omnipotence was shadowed forth in man.

_Gen. 2:19_—“_Jehovah God formed every beast of the field, and
every bird of the heavens; and brought them unto the man to see
what he would call them_”; _20_—“_And the man gave names to all
cattle_”; _Gen. 1:26_—“_Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and
over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle_”; _cf._ _Ps.
8:5-8_—“_thou hast made him but little lower than God, And
crownest him with glory and honor. Thou makest him to have
dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all things
under his feet: All sheep and oxen, Yea, and the beasts of the
field._” Adam’s naming the animals implied insight into their
nature; see Porter, Hum. Intellect, 393, 394, 401. On man’s
original dominion over (1) self, (2) nature, (3) fellow-man, see
Hopkins, Scriptural Idea of Man, 105.

Courage and a good conscience have a power over the brute
creation, and unfallen man can well be supposed to have dominated
creatures which had no experience of human cruelty. Rarey tamed
the wildest horses by his steadfast and fearless eye. In Paris a
young woman was hypnotized and put into a den of lions. She had no
fear of the lions and the lions paid not the slightest attention
to her. The little daughter of an English officer in South Africa
wandered away from camp and spent the night among lions.
“Katrina,” her father said when he found her, “were you not afraid
to be alone here?” “No, papa,” she replied, “the big dogs played
with me and one of them lay here and kept me warm.” MacLaren, in
S. S. Times, Dec. 23, 1893—“The dominion over all creatures
results from likeness to God. It is not then a mere right to use
them for one’s own material advantage, but a viceroy’s authority,
which the holder is bound to employ for the honor of the true
King.” This principle gives the warrant and the limit to
vivisection and to the killing of the lower animals for food
(_Gen. 9:2, 3._).

Socinian writers generally hold the view that the image of God
consisted simply in this dominion. Holding a low view of the
nature of sin, they are naturally disinclined to believe that the
fall has wrought any profound change in human nature. See their
view stated in the Racovian Catechism, 21. It is held also by the
Arminian Limborch, Theol. Christ., ii, 24:2, 3, 11. Upon the basis
of this interpretation of Scripture, the Encratites held, with
Peter Martyr, that women do not possess the divine image at all.

(_d_) Communion with God.—Our first parents enjoyed the divine presence and teaching (Gen. 2:16). It would seem that God manifested himself to them in visible form (Gen. 3:8). This companionship was both in kind and degree suited to their spiritual capacity, and by no means necessarily involved that perfected vision of God which is possible to beings of confirmed and unchangeable holiness (Mat. 5:8; 1 John 3:2).

_Gen. 2:16_—“_And Jehovah God commanded the man_”; _3:8_—“_And
they heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden in the
cool of the day_”; _Mat. 5:8_—“_Blessed are the pure in heart: for
they shall see God_”; _1 John 3:2_—“_We know that, if he shall be
manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he
is_”; _Rev. 22:4_—“_and they shall see his his face._”

2. Concomitants of man’s possession of the divine image.

(_a_) Surroundings and society fitted to yield happiness and to assist a holy development of human nature (Eden and Eve). We append some recent theories with regard to the creation of Eve and the nature of Eden.

Eden—pleasure, delight. Tennyson: “When high in Paradise By the
four rivers the first roses blew.” Streams were necessary to the
very existence of an oriental garden. Hopkins, Script. Idea of
Man, 107—“Man includes woman. Creation of _a_ man without a woman
would not have been the creation of man. Adam called her name Eve
but God called their name Adam.” Mat. Henry: “Not out of his head
to top him, nor out of his feet to be trampled on by him; but out
of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by
him, and near his heart to be beloved.” Robert Burns says of
nature: “Her ’prentice hand she tried on man, And then she made
the lasses, O!” Stevens, Pauline Theology, 329—“In the natural
relations of the sexes there is a certain reciprocal dependence,
since it is not only true that woman was made from man, but that
man is born of woman (_1 Cor. 11:11, 12_).” Of the Elgin marbles
Boswell asked: “Don’t you think them indecent?” Dr. Johnson
replied: “No, sir; but your question is.” Man, who in the adult
state possesses twelve pairs of ribs, is found in the embryonic
state to have thirteen or fourteen. Dawson, Modern Ideas of
Evolution, 148—“Why does not the male man lack one rib? Because
only the individual skeleton of Adam was affected by the taking of
the rib.... The unfinished vertebral arches of the skin-fibrous
layer may have produced a new individual by a process of budding
or gemmation.”

H. H. Bawden suggests that the account of Eve’s creation may be
the “pictorial summary” of an actual phylogenetic evolutionary
process by which the sexes were separated or isolated from a
common hermaphroditic ancestor or ancestry. The mesodermic portion
of the organism in which the urinogenital system has its origin
develops later than the ectodermic or the endodermic portions. The
word “rib” may designate this mesodermic portion. Bayard Taylor,
John Godfrey’s Fortunes, 392, suggests that a genius is
hermaphroditic, adding a male element to the woman, and a female
element to the man. Professor Loeb, Am. Journ. Physiology, Vol.
III, no. 3, has found that in certain chemical solutions prepared
in the laboratory, approximately the concentration of sea-water,
the unfertilized eggs of the sea-urchin will mature without the
intervention of the spermatozoön. Perfect embryos and normal
individuals are produced under these conditions. He thinks it
probable that similar parthenogenesis may be produced in higher
types of being. In 1900 he achieved successful results on
Annelids, though it is doubtful whether he produced anything more
than normal _larvæ_. These results have been criticized by a
European investigator who is also a Roman priest. Prof. Loeb wrote
a rejoinder in which he expressed surprise that a representative
of the Roman church did not heartily endorse his conclusions,
since they afford a vindication of the doctrine of the immaculate
conception.