Journal
of the American Scientific Affiliation 28.4 (Dec. 1976) 145-51.
[American
Scientific Affiliation, Copyright © 1976; cited with permission]
God's Perspective on Man
Philosophy and science are both bafflingly
inclusive
in their
subject-matter. Yet each of these disciplines is
essentially
an attempt to answer a simple question.
Taken in its
broadest sense, science is dedicated to
the task of
answering that question which perpetually
haunts our
minds, "How?" A simple
question indeed!
But to
explain how grass grows on our earth or how a
machine
functions or how galaxies zoom through the
vast
emptiness of space has been one of the great enter-
prises of
modern civilization, perhaps its greatest.
On
the other
hand, philosophy, taken in its broadest sense,
is also
dedicated to the task of answering a simple
question
which never quits plaguing us, "Why?"
Though the
why-question like the how-question is de-
ceptively
simple, it often teases us nearly out of
thought. So, for example, a child asks innocently,
"Why
was anything
at all?"--and the sages are reduced to
silence.
We who are amateurs in the philosophical
enterprise
find
ourselves bewildered as we glance at its profusion
of rival
schools and listen to their in-group jargon.
Fortunately,
though, one of its most illustrious prac-
titioners,
Immanuel Kant, provides us with helpful
orientation. In the Handbook which he prepared for
the students
who studied with him at the University
of
Koenigsburg a century and a half ago, Kant points
out that
philosophy, a disciplined attempt to explain
why,
concerns itself with four key-problems.l First,
what can we
know? Second, what ought we do? Third,
what may we
hope? Fourth, what is man? In a way
that last
question, "What is man?", the problem of an-
thropology
or the nature of human nature, includes
the other
three. For man is that curious creature
who
GOD'S PERSPECTIVE ON MAN 145b
insists on
asking questions. Man is that unique
animal
who
tirelessly cross examines himself about himself.
Man is that
relentless interrogator who probingly won-
ders what he
can know and what he ought to do and
what he may
hope. Philosophy, therefore, twists and
turns around
the person and the philosopher. Every
question he
raises is inescapably enmeshed with the
question concerning
himself as the questioner, "What
is
man?"
The fourth key-problem in Kant's succinct
outline of
philosophy
echoes a recurrent Biblical theme. In
Job 7:17
that very question appears. In Psalm 8:4
that
question re-emerges,
and Hebrews 2:5 repeats that
same
question. Thus we are not surprised that
philos-
ophy, which
like theology is a why discipline, puts
anthropology
or the problem of man front and center.
But whether
we label ourselves philosophers or theo-
logians or
scientists, every one of us is a human being
who grapples
with the issue of self-identity, Hence
the
question, "What is man?", concerns us individually
at the
deepest levels of our existence; for that question
is really
the haunting question, "Who am I?"
Man as
Garbage
Before proceeding to present God's
perspective on
man, which
can be done only because we presuppose
that the
Bible is God's Word spoken to us through
human words,
let me remind you of some competing
models of
man that are widely accepted today.
There
is of course
the purely materialistic concept which holds
that man is
nothing but, as Bertrand Russell elegantly
phrased it,
an accidental collocation of atoms. This
concept,
though advanced with the blessing of con-
temporary science,
is by no means excitingly novel. In
the 18th
century self-styled illuminati scoffed that man
is nothing
but an ingenious system of portable plumb-
ing. In pre-Hitler
of Homo
sapiens was jokingly circulated: "The human
body
contains enough fat to make 7 bars of soap,
enough iron
to make a medium sized nail, enough
phosphorus
for 2000 matchheads, and enough sulphur
to rid
oneself of fleas." When human
bodies were later
turned into
soap in the extermination camps, the grim
logic of
that joke was probably being worked out to
its ultimate
conclusion.
Today, tragically, that concept,
apparently certified
by science,
is articulated by a celebrated novelist like
Joseph
Heller. In Catch 22 he describes
a battle. Yos-
sarian, the
book's hero, discovers that Snowden, one of
his
comrades, has been mortally wounded.
Hoping that
none of us
will be unduly nauseated by it, I quote this
vivid
passage.
Yossarian ripped open the snaps of Snowden's
flack suit
and heard himself scream wildly as
Snowden's insides
slithered down to the floor in a soggy
pile and just kept
dripping out. A chunk of flack more than three inches
big had shot into his other side just underneath
the arm
and blasted all the way through, drawing
whole mottled
quarts of Snowden along with it through
the gigantic
hole it made in his ribs as it blasted
out. Yossarian
screamed a second time and squeezed both
hands over
his
eyes. His teeth were chattering in horror.
He forced
himself to look again. Here was God's plenty all right,
he thought bitterly as he stared-liver,
lungs, kidneys,
ribs, stomach and bits of the stewed
tomatoes Snowden
had eaten that day for lunch. Yossarian . . . turned
away dizzily and began to vomit, clutching
his burning
throat. . .
"I'm cold," Snowden
whimpered. "I'm cold."
"There, there," Yossarian
mumbled mechanically in a
voice too low to be heard. "There, there."
Yossarian was cold too, and shivering
uncontrollably.
He felt goose pimples clacking all over
him as he gazed
down despondently at the grim secret
Snowden had
spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the
message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snow-
den's secret. Drop him out a window and he'd fall. Set
fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot like
other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage.
That was Snowden's secret.2
Man is
garbage. That, crudely stated, is a
common view
of human
nature today. In the end, man is
garbage-
an
accidental collocation of atoms, destined, sooner
or later, to
rot and decay. To guard against any mis-
understanding,
let me say emphatically that from one
perspective
man is indeed garbage or will be. That
appraisal is
incontestably valid, provided man is not
viewed as
garbage and nothing but that. Man has
other
dimensions
to his being which no full-orbed anthro-
pology can
ignore.
Man as
Machine
A second concept, apparently endorsed by
science,
holds that
man is essentially a machine, an incredibly
complicated
machine, no doubt, yet in the end nothing
but a sort
of mechanism. Typical is the opinion of
Nature of
the Universe:
Only the biological processes of mutation
and natural
selection are needed to produce living
creatures as we
know them.
Such creatures are no more than ingenious
machines that have evolved as strange
by-products in
an odd corner of the universe. . . Most
people object
to this argument for the not very good
reason that they
do not like to think of themselves as
machines.3
Like it or
not, however, Hoyle insists, that is the fact.
What is
man? An ingenious machine-well, a whole
complex of
machines. R. Buckminster Fuller, whose
genius seems
to belie the truth of reductive mechanism,
pictures man
as
a self-balancing, 28 jointed,
adapter-based biped, an
electro-chemical reduction plant, integral
with the segre-
gated storages of special energy extracts
in storage bat-
teries, for the subsequent actuation of
thousands of hy-
draulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors
attached;
62,000 miles of capillaries, millions of
warning signals,
railroad and conveyor systems; crushers
and cranes. . .
and a universally distributed telephone
system needing
no
service for seventy years if well managed; the whole
extraordinary complex mechanism guided
with exquisite
precision from a turret in which are
located telescopic
and microscopic self-registering and
recording range
finders, a spectroscope, et cetera.4
That man from one perspective is a complex
of
exquisitely
synchronized machines cannot be denied
and need not
be, provided human beings are not ex-
haustively
reduced to that, and nothing but that.
Man
has other dimensions
to his being which no full-orbed
anthropology
can ignore.
Man as
Animal
Still another current concept of man holds
that he
is
essentially an animal. Loren Eiseley, a
distinguished
scientist
whose prose often reads like poetry, eloquent-
ly sets
forth this model of humanity in his 1974 Ency-
clopedia
Brittanica article,
"The Cosmic Orphan." What
is man? He is a cosmic orphan, a primate which has
evolved into
a self-conscious, reflective, symbol-using
animal. Man is a cosmic orphan, a person aware that
he has been
produced, unawares and unintentionally,
by an
impersonal process. Thus when this
cosmic
orphan
inquires, "Who am I?", science gives him its
definitive
answer.
You are a changeling. You are linked by a genetic chain
to all the vertebrates. The thing that is you bears the
still-aching wounds of evolution in body
and in brain.
Your hands are made-over fins, your lungs
come from a
swamp, your femur has been twisted
upright. Your foot
is a re-worked climbing pad. You are a rag doll resewn
from the skins of extinct animals. Long ago, 2 million
GOD'S
PERSPECTIVE ON MAN 147a
years perhaps, you were smaller; your
brain was not so
large.
We are not confident that you could speak. Seven-
ty million years before that you were an
even smaller
climbing creature known as a tupaiid. You were the
size of a rat. You ate insects. Now you fly to the moon.
Science,
when pressed, admits that its explanation is a
fairy
tale. But immediately science adds:
That is what makes it true. Life is indefinite departure.
That is why we are all orphans. That is why you must
find your own way. Life is not
stable. Everything alive
is slipping through cracks and crevices in
time, chang-
ing as it goes. Other creatures, however, have instincts
that provide for them, holes in which to
hide. They
cannot ask questions. A fox is a fox, a wolf is a wolf,
even if this, too, is illusion. You have learned to ask
questions.
That is why you are an orphan.
You are the
only creation in the universe who knows
what it has
been.
Now you must go on asking questions while all
the time you are changing. You will ask what you are
to become.
The world will no longer satisfy you.
You
must find your way, your own true
self. "But how can
I?" wept the Orphan, hiding his
head. "This is magic.
I do not know what I am. I have been too many things."
"You have indeed," said all the
scientists together.
Something still more must be appended,
though,
science
insists as it explains man to himself.
Your body and your nerves have been
dragged about
and twisted in the long effort of your
ancestors to stay
alive, but now, small orphan that you are,
you must
know a secret, a secret magic that nature
has given you.
No other creature on the planet possesses
it. You use
language.
You are a symbol-shifter. All
this is hidden in
your brain and transmitted from one
generation to an-
other.
You are a time-binder; in your head the symbols
GOD'S PERSPECTIVE ON MAN 147b
that mean things in the world outside can
fly about un-
trammeled.
You can combine them differently into a
new world of thought, or you can also hold
them ten-
aciously throughout a life-time and pass
them on to
others.5
Expressed in Eiseley's semi-poetic prose,
this concept,
while
confessedly a fairy tale, has about it an aura of
not only
plausibility but nobility as well.
Sadly, how-
ever, when
man is reduced to an animal and nothing
but an
animal, the aura of nobility vanishes and
bestiality
starts to push humanity into the background.
Think of man
as portrayed in contemporary art and
literature
and drama. Take, illustratively, the
anthro-
pology which
underlies the work of a popular play-
wright like
Tennessee Williams. What is the Good
News preached
by this evangelist, as he calls himself?
His Gospel,
interpreted by Robert Fitch, is this:
Man is a beast. The only difference between man and
the other beasts is that man is a beast
that knows he
will die.
The only honest man is the unabashed egotist.
This honest man pours contempt upon the
mendacity,
the lies, the hypocrisy of those who will
not acknowledge
their egotism. The one irreducible value is life, which
you must cling to as you can and use for
the pursuit
of pleasure and of power. The specific ends of life are
sex and money. The great passions are lust and rapacity.
So the human comedy is an outrageous
medley of lech-
ery, alcoholism, homosexuality, blasphemy,
greed, bru-
tality, hatred, obscenity. It is not a tragedy because it
has not the dignity of a tragedy. The man who plays
his role in it has on himself the marks of
a total deprav-
ity.
And as for the ultimate and irreducible value, life,
that in the end is also a lie.6
These, then, are three contemporary models
of man,
GOD'S PERSPECTIVE ON MAN 147c
all of them
rooted in a philosophy of reductive natural-
ism. First, man is nothing but matter en route to
be-
coming
garbage. Second, man is nothing but a
complex
of
exquisitely synchronized machines.
Third, man is
nothing but
an animal, a mutation aware that, as a
cosmic
orphan, it lives and dies in melancholy loneli-
ness.
Man as God's
Creature
Now over against these views let us look
at man
from God's
perspective, unabashedly drawing our
anthropology
from the Bible. As we do so, please bear
in mind that
we are not disputing those valid insights
into the
nature of human nature which are derived
from
philosophy, no less than science.
Suppose, too, we
take for
granted that psychology and sociology are
properly
included within the scientific orbit. In
other
words, we
are assuming that man is multidimensional
and that
anthropology therefore requires God's input if
it is to give
us a full-orbed picture of its subject.
To begin
with, then, the Bible asserts that man is
God's
creature. So in Genesis 2:1 this
statement is
made:
"The Lord God formed man of dust from the
ground and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life and man
became a living soul." Exactly how
God
formed man
Genesis does not tell us; it does tell us,
though, that
man is not an accident, a happenstance, a
personal
mutation ground out by an impersonal process.
On the
contrary, Genesis tells us explicitly that man
owes his
existence to God's limitless power, wisdom,
and
love. It tells us explicitly that
man-dust inbreathed
by
deity-cannot be explained except in terms of crea-
turehood. Which means what? As creature, man is
qualitatively
different from God, utterly dependent
upon God,
and ultimately determined by His creator.
It is God
Who determines man's nature and determines,
likewise,
the laws and limits of human existence.
Obviously,
the implications of this Creator-creature
GOD'S PERSPECTIVE ON MAN 147d
relationship
are enormous. Few reductive naturalists
have
perceived them as penetratingly as Jean-Paul
Sartre, the
foremost spokesman for atheistic existential-
ism now
living. Realizing what follows if indeed
man
has been
made by God, Sartre repudiates the very
notion of
creation. Understandably so! If there is no
Creator,
then there is no fixed human nature, and
man has
unbounded freedom. He can decide who he
will be and
what he will do. That is why Sartre
postu-
lates atheism
without stopping to argue for it.
Atheistic existentialism, which I
represent, states that if
God does not exist, there is at least one
being in whom
existence precedes essence, a being who
exists before he
can be defined by any concept, and that
this being is
man, or, as Heidegger says, human
reality. What is
meant here by saying that existence
precedes essence?
It means that, first of all, man exists,
turns up, appears
on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines
himself. If
man, as the existentialist conceives him,
is indefinable,
it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will
he be something, and he himself will have
made what
he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there
is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he con-
ceives himself to be, but he is also only
what he wills
himself to be after this thrust toward
existence. . . . If
existence really does precede essence,
there is no ex-
plaining things away by reference to a
fixed and given
human nature. In other words, there is no determinism,
man is free, man is freedom. On the other hand, if God
does not exist, we find no values or commands
to turn
to which legitimize our conduct. So, in the bright realm
of values, we have no excuse behind us,
nor justifica-
tion before us. We are alone, with no excuses.7
Thus in
Sartre's opinion only if man is not a creature
can he be
genuinely free, free to shape his own nature,
free to run
his own life, free to pick and choose his
own
values. And Sartre is right. Grant that man is a
creature,
and you must grant that he can never sign
a
declaration of independence, cutting himself free
from
God. He is inseparably related to God,
finding
fulfillment
and obedience to his Maker's will. Hence
Paul
Tillich, in tacit agreement with Sartre, argues that
the modern
repudiation of God springs from man's
fierce desire
to renounce his creaturely status. In
Tillich's
own words:
God as a subject makes me into an object
which is
nothing more than an object. He deprives me of my sub-
jectivity because he is all-powerful and
all-knowing. I
revolt and try to make him into an object,
but the revolt
fails and becomes desperate. God appears as the invinci-
ble tyrant, the being in contrast with
whom all other
beings are without freedom and
subjectivity. He is
equated with the recent tyrants who with
the help of
terror try to transform everything into a
mere object, a
thing among things, a cog in the machine
they control.
He becomes the model of every thing
against which
Existentialism revolted. This is the God Nietzsche said
had to be killed because nobody can
tolerate being made
into a mere object of absolute knowledge
and absolute
control.
This is the deepest root of atheism.8
VERNON C. GROUNDS 148b
Tillich,
alas, grossly misconceives the Creator-creature
relationship;
but one thing he profoundly apprehends.
Man as God's
creature can never sign a declaration of
independence
from his Creator. That is the basic fact
of human
existence.
Man as God's
Image
In the next place, the Bible asserts that
man is God's
image.
Genesis 1:26 announces this second momentous
fact of
human existence rather undramatically.
"And
God said,
Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness." To interpret the full significance of the in-
triguing
phase, the image of God, is plainly beyond my
competence. But its central thrust is undebatable. Man
was created
not only by God and for God but also
like
God. He was created a finite person
reflecting the
being of
infinite Personhood. Qualitatively
different
from God and
absolutely dependent upon his Creator,
man was
endowed with the capacity of responding to
the divine
Person in love and obedience and trust, en-
joying a
fellowship of unimaginable beatitude.
My purpose is not to defend the audacious
claim that
the
unimpressive biped whom Desmond Morris labels
the naked
ape is indeed God's image. But that
auda-
cious claim
loses at least some of its initial incredibility
when one
takes into account man's extraordinary char-
acteristics. These have been succinctly summarized by
Mortimer J.
Adler in that study, The Difference of Man
and the
Difference It Makes,
which challenges reduc-
tive
naturalism to rethink its inadequate anthropology.
1. Only man employs a propositional
language, only man
uses verbal symbols, only man makes
sentences; i.e.,
only man is a discursive animal.
2. Only man makes tools, builds fires,
erects shelters,
fabricates clothings; i.e., only man is a
technological
animal.
VERNON C. GROUNDS 148c
3. Only man enacts laws or sets up his own
rules of
behavior and thereby constitutes his
social life, organiz-
ing his association with his fellows in a
variety of dif-
ferent ways; i.e., only man is a political,
not just a
gregarious, animal.
4. Only man has developed, in the course
of genera-
tions, a cumulative cultural tradition,
the transmission
of which constitutes human history; i.e.,
only man is a
historical animal.
5. Only man engages in magical and
ritualistic prac-
tices; i.e., only man is a religious
animal.
6. Only man has a moral conscience, a
sense of right
and wrong, and of values; i.e., only man
is an ethical
animal.
7. Only man decorates or adorns himself or
his artifacts,
and makes pictures or statues for the
non-utilitarian pur-
pose of enjoyment; i.e., only man is an
aesthetic animal.9
Man, the animal who is discursive,
technological,
political,
historical, religious, ethical, and aesthetic, cer-
tainly seems
unique enough to lend some plausibility to
the Biblical
claim that he was created in God's image.
That
audacious claim, which does not impress Adler
as
preposterous, also receives powerful endorsement
from the well-known
physicist, William G. Pollard. How
better, he
inquires, can man be designated than the
image of
God? His cogent argument for this
position
cannot now
be rehearsed; but his conclusion, it seems
to me,
deserves to be heard even by those of us who are
anti-evolutionists:
Starting from the perspective of the
mid-twentieth cen-
tury, we are able to see two very
fundamental aspects
of the phenomenon of man which would not
have been
evident before. One of these is the conversion of the
biosphere into the noosphere. The other is the miraculous
correspondence between the fabrications of
man's mind
VERNON C. GROUNDS 148d
and the inner design of nature, as
evidenced by the
applicability of abstract mathematical
systems to the
laws of nature in physics. Both of these quite new per-
spectives strongly support the contention
that man is
after all made in the image of God. What we have come
to realize is that there is no scientific
reason why God
cannot create an element of nature from
other elements
of nature by working within the chances
and accidents
which provide nature with her
indeterminism and her
freedom.
We also see in a new way that the fact that
man is indeed an integral part of nature
in no way pre-
cludes his bearing the image of the
designer of nature.
Or to put it another way, there is nothing
to prevent
God from making in His image an entity
which is at
the same time an integral part of nature.10
Regardless of how persuasive or
unpersuasive we
may judge
Pollard's argument to be, the belief that man
is God's
image supplies the only solid ground for that
much-praised,
much-prized value of Western civiliza-
tion-man's
inherent dignity. For what is it that
imbues
man with
dignity? If he is nothing but garbage or
a
complex
mechanism or an over-specialized animal, why
ascribe to
him a worth that is literally incalculable?
Why follow
the teaching of Jesus Christ and impute
to human
beings a dignity which is best articulated by
the phrase,
the sacredness of personality? That
Jesus
Christ does
impute so high a dignity to human beings
is
indisputable in the light of the Gospel.
Indeed, He
imputes to
human beings a dignity so high as to dichot-
omize
nature. On the one side, Jesus Christ
puts the
whole of
created reality; on the other, He puts man;
and
axiologically, or in terms of his worth, man out-
weighs
nature. Thus in Matthew 6:28-30 our Lord
as-
GOD'S PERSPECTIVE ON MAN 149a
signs to man
a worth above and beyond the whole
botanical
order. "Consider the lilies of the field, how
they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin: And
yet
I say unto
you, That even Solomon in all his glory was
not arrayed
like one of these. Wherefore, if God so
clothe the
grass of the field, which today is, and tomor-
row is cast
into the oven, shall he not much more
clothe you,
O ye of little faith?" But why is
man, if
merely one
more emergent in the evolutionary process,
valued above
and beyond rarest roses or exotic orchids?
Again, in
Matthew 10:29-31 our Lord imputes to
man a worth
above and beyond the whole avian order.
"Are
not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of
them shall
not fall on the ground without your Father.
But the very
hairs of your head are all numbered.
Fear
ye not
therefore, ye are of more value than many spar-
rows." But why is man valued above and beyond para-
keets and
falcons?
Once more, in Matthew 12:12 our Lord
imputes to
man a worth
above and beyond the whole zoological
order as He
exclaims, "How much more valuable is a
person than
a sheep!" Come to Denver for the
National
Western
Stock Show held annually in January, and you
will be
astonished at the fabulous prices paid for
champion
steers, as much as $52,000. Remember by
contrast
that an average person even in today's inflated
economy is
worth about one dollar chemically. Then
why is man
valued above and beyond blue-ribbon
steers?
Furthermore, in Matthew 16:26 our Lord imputes
to man a
worth above and beyond the whole sweep
of created
reality. "What shall it profit a
man if he
gains the
whole world and loses his own soul? Or
what
shall a man
give in exchange for his soul?" Why
does
Jesus Christ
value man above the entire planet and be-
yond all the
cosmos? Why? Man is unique because he
alone is
God's image-bearer; and as such he possesses
GOD'S PERSPECTIVE ON MAN 149b
inherent
dignity and incalculable worth. As
finite per-
son
reflecting the inexhaustible realities and mysteries
of infinite
Personhood, he cannot be valued too highly.
Yet of what
practical significance is this evaluation
of man,
grounded in his dignity as the image of God?
Is not this
belief just one more element in an outmoded
theology? Let Leslie Newbigin answer.
During World War II, Hitler sent men to
the famous
Bethel Hospital to inform Pastor
Bodelschwingh, its
director, that the State could no longer
afford to main-
tain hundreds of epileptics who were
useless to society
and only constituted a drain on scarce
resources, and
that orders were being issued to have them
destroyed.
Bodelschwingh confronted them in his room
at the en-
trance to the Hospital and fought a
spiritual battle which
eventually sent them away without having
done what
they were sent to do. He had no other weapon for the
battle than the simple affirmation that
these were men
and women made in the image of God and
that to de-
stroy them was to commit a sin against God
which would
surely be punished. What other argument could he have
used?11
Yes, and
what other argument was needed? Abandon
belief in
man as God's image, and in the long run you
abandon
belief in human dignity.
Man as God's
Prodigal
In the third place, the Bible asserts that
man is
God's
prodigal. Plants, birds, animals are instinctually
programmed. They move in a predictable course from
birth to
death. But man is that peculiar creature
who,
possessing
intelligence and freedom, may choose to be-
have in ways
that are self-frustrating and self-destruc-
tive. The Spanish philosopher, Ortega Y. Gassett,
re-
marks that,
"While the tiger cannot cease being a tiger,
GOD'S PERSPECTIVE ON MAN 149c
cannot be
detigered, man lives in a perpetual risk of
being
dehumanized."12 Why,
though, is man always in
danger of
failing to become what he potentially could
be? Why does he, as a matter of fact, live in a
state of
ambivalence
and contradiction, the animal whose na-
ture it is
to act contrary to his nature? Back in
1962
Dr. Paul
MacLean suggested, some of you may recall,
the theory
of schizophysiology, speculating that man is
radically
self-divided because he has inherited three
brains which
are now required to function in unity.
The
oldest of
these is reptilian; the second is derived from
the lower
animals; the third and most recent is the
source of
man's higher mental characteristics.
Hence
the brain of
Homo sapiens is the scene of unceasing
tension. Why wonder, therefore, if unlike other
animals
he is
erratically unpredictable?
Arthur Koestler, too, has indulged in
speculation as
to why man
finds himself in a constant state of self-
contradiction. In his 1968 book, The Ghost in the
Machine, he advances a novel theory.
When one contemplates the streak of
insanity running
through human history, it appears highly
probably that
homo sapiens is a biological freak.
. . the result of some
remarkable mistake in the evolutionary
process. . .
Somewhere along the line of his ascent,
something has
gone wrong.13
I will not stop to consider Koestler's
suggestion that
with the
help of psychopharmocology the evolutionary
mistake
which is man may hopefully be corrected.
I
simply inquire
as to what has gone wrong. Koestler has
his own
conjecture, but I prefer to accept the explana-
tion
advanced in Scripture. Man, instead of
living in
a
self-fulfilling fellowship with God, a fellowship of
trust and
obedience and love, misused his freedom.
He
did as the
younger brother did in our Lord's parable of
GOD'S PERSPECTIVE ON MAN 149d
the prodigal
son: he turned away from his Father in the
name of
freedom. Man chose in an aboriginal
catastro-
phe to
transgress the laws and limits established by his
Creator. He became a rebel. Thus God cries out in
Isaiah 1:2,
"I have brought up children and they have
rebelled
against me," a lament which echoes beyond
the Jewish
nation and reverberates over the whole
human
family. A planetary prodigal, man is
thus in
self-willed
alienation from God, an exile wandering
East of
Eden, squandering his patrimony (think of our
problems of
pollution and starvation), living in misery
and
frustration, unable to be what he ought to be and
to do what
he ought to do, self-divided and self-
destructive. The Biblical view of man as God's image
who is now
God's prodigal, a rebel and a sinner, im-
presses many
of our contemporaries as incredibly
mythological. Yet it impresses some of us as more
congruent
with the realities of history, psychology, and
sociology,
that any of its secular rivals.
Man as God's
Problem
In the fourth place, the Bible, which we
believe gives
us God's
perspective on man, asserts that man, God's
creature, God's
image, God's prodigal, has become
God's
problem through the aboriginal catastrophe of
VERNON C. GROUNDS 150a
self-chosen
alienation. Joseph Wood Krutch, a noted
student of
literature who retired to Arizona and there
devoted
himself to the study of nature, sat one day
on a
mountain pondering a wild idea. What if
in the
creative
process God has stopped after the fifth day?
What if
there had been no sixth day which saw the
advent of
man? Would that have been a wiser course
for infinite
wisdom to follow? After all, we read in
Genesis 6:5,
6 that God indulged in some sober second
thoughts
about man, His own image turned into a
prodigal. "And God saw that the wickedness of man
was great in
the earth, and that every imagination of
the thoughts
of his heart was only evil continually.
And it
repented the Lord that he had made man on the
earth, and
it grieved him at his heart." One
might
interpret
the judgment of the flood as a sort of huge
eraser which
God used to rub out His mistake!
Moreover,
the Bible does not hesitate to say that
man, God's
image and God's prodigal, has become
God's
heartache. Yes, unhesitatingly, the
Bible describes
the divine
reaction to human sin as a reaction of in-
tensest
grief. So in the prophecy of Hosea 11 we
come
across a
text which, granting that the language is
anthropopathic
or attributing human emotions to God,
portrays a
heartbroken Creator:
When Israel was a child I loved him as a
son and
brought him out of Egypt. But the more I called to him,
the more he rebelled, sacrificing to Baal
and burning
incense to idols. I trained him from infancy, I taught
him to walk, I held him in my arms. But he doesn't
know or even care that it was I who raised
him. As a
man would lead his favorite ox, so I led
Israel with my
ropes of love. I loosened his muzzle so he could eat. I
myself have stopped and fed him. . . . Oh,
how can I
give you up, my Ephraim? How can I let you go? How
can I forsake you like Adam and
Zeboiim? My heart
cries out within me; how I long to help
you!
VERNON C. GROUNDS 150b
Listening to that pathetic outpouring over
the people
of Israel
and by extension over people everywhere, we
turn back in
memory to the day in the first century
when God
incarnate looked upon the city of Jerusalem
and wept.
God's creature and God's image,
self-constituted as
God's
prodigal, man is not only God's heartache but
also God's
problem. What can the Creator do with
the
creature who
has rebelliously prostituted his God-
bestowed
capacities? Should God admit
failure? Should
God destroy
man as a tragic blunder? Should He send
this sinful
creature into eternal exile? God, if I
may be
allowed an
anthropomorphism no more crude than
those the
Bible uses, has a God-sized problem on His
hands. In His holiness He cannot wink at sin, pre-
tending it
does not matter. He cannot lightly
pardon
man's guilty
disobedience. No, His justice requires
that
the sinner
be punished; and yet to send man into
eternal
exile would mean the frustration of God's very
purpose in
creating this creature. For as best we
can
infer from
the Bible, God Who is love was motivated
by love to
expand the orbit of beatitude by sharing His
own joyful
experience of love with finite persons who
could
respond to His love with their love. So
what
can God
do? Blot out His blunder and stand
forever
baffled in
the fulfillment of His desire by the will of a
mere
creature? God's dilemma is brought to a
sharp
focus in
Romans 3:25, where the apostle Paul writes
that God
must be just while at the same time somehow
justifying
the sinner. God must remain loyal to the
demands of
His holiness and justice, yet forgive man,
cleanse him,
transform him, and only then welcome him
into the eternal
fellowship of holy love. This is cer-
tainly a
God-sized problem, a dilemma which might
seem to
baffle even the resources of Deity.
But the Gospel is Good News precisely
because of
the amazing
strategy by which God resolves His own
VERNON C. GROUNDS 150c
God-sized
dilemma. And that strategy is the
amazing
strategy of
the Cross. Incarnate in Jesus Christ, a
Man
at once
truly divine and truly human, God dies on the
cross
bearing the full burden of the punishment human
sin
deserves. But in His Easter victory He
breaks the
power of the
grave. And now He offers forgiveness,
cleansing,
transformation, and eternal fellowship with
Himself to
any man, who magnetized by Calvary love,
will respond
to the Gospel in repentance and faith.
This, most
hastily sketched, is God's solution to the
problem of
man. What a costly solution! Its cost, not
even a
sextillion of computers could ever compute!
I am one of those rather weakminded people
who
find chess
too exhausting for their feeble brains.
But I
admire those
intelligences of higher order who can play
that
intricate game with ease and pleasure.
Paul Mor-
phy, in his
day a world champion chessman, stopped
at an art
gallery in England to inspect a painting of
which he had
often heard, "Checkmate!" The
title ex-
plained the
picture. On one side of the chessboard
sat
a leering
devil; opposite him was a young man in de-
spair. For the artist had so arranged the pieces
that the
young man's
king was trapped. "Checkmate!" Intrigued
and challenged,
Morphy carefully studied the location
of the
pieces. Finally he exclaimed,
"Bring me a chess
board. I can still save him." He had hit on one adroit
move which
changed the situation and rescued the
young man
from his predicament. That is what God
has
done for all
of us in Jesus Christ. By the
mind-stunning
maneuver of
the Christ-event He has provided salva-
tion from
the consequences of our sin. He has
opened
up the way
for His prodigals in their self-imposed exile
to return
home, forgiven, restored, welcomed uncon-
ditionally
into the Father's loving fellowship.
Man's
Possibility
Having discussed man's origin, and
nature--man as
VERNON C. GROUNDS 150d
God's
creature, image, prodigal, and problem--may I
merely
mention man's possibility as Biblically disclosed?
For
Scripture asserts that by repentance and faith man
may enter
into a new relationship with God, becoming
God's child,
God's friend, God's colaborer, and so being
God's glory in this world and the world beyond time
and space.
Instead of existing as Eiseley's cosmic
orphan, man
can enter
into a filial relationship of obedient love with
the Heavenly
Father. Instead of existing in hostile es-
trangement
from God, man can enter into a relation-
ship with his
Creator which is akin to the intimacy of
mature
friendship on its highest plane. Instead
of exist-
ing in
frustration, feeling that all his labor is a futile
business of
drawing water in a sieve, man can enter
into a
relationship of cooperative creativity with God;
he can find
fulfillment as he develops the potentials of
our planet
and eventually perhaps those of outer space.
He can find
fulfillment, too, functioning in his society
as salt and
light and yeast. He can also find
fulfillment
as he follows
the law of neighbor love, sharing what-
GOD'S
PERSPECTIVE ON MAN 151a
ever good he
may have, and sharing especially the
Good News
that God in love longs for the human
family to be
coextensive with His divine family.
Instead
of
anticipating blank nonentity after he has died, man
can enter
into a relationship with God which will last
through
death and on through eternity as a conscious
union of
finite persons with infinite Person.
What a magnificent model of man this
is! What a
gulf
stretches between it and those models of man
proposed by
reductive naturalism! So I close by
voicing
my agreement
with that perceptive Jewish scholar,
Abraham
Heschel,
It is an accepted fact that the Bible has
given the world
a new concept of God. What is not realized is the fact
that the Bible has given the world a new
vision of man.
The Bible is not a book about God; it is a
book about
man.
From the perspective of the Bible:
Who is man? A being in travail with God's
dreams and
designs, with God's dream of a world
redeemed, of rec-
onciliation of heaven and earth, of a
mankind which is
truly His image, reflecting His wisdom,
justice and com-
passion.
God's dream is not to be alone, to have man-
kind as a partner in the drama of
continuous creation.14
I agree with
that enthusiastically--except that in my
opinion the
Gospel of Jesus Christ adds to Heschel's
statement
heights and depths which Old Testament
anthropology
only intimates.
In all of our work, then, whether in
science or any
any other
vocation, may we strive to see man from God's
perspective,
remembering that God's model of authentic
personhood
is Jesus Christ. May our anthropology be
more than a
theoretical conviction. May it serve as
a
dynamic
which shapes our own lives.
GOD'S PERSPECTIVE ON MAN 151b
REFERENCES
lCf. Martin
Buber, Between Man and Man (London: Kegan
Paul, 1947), p. 119.
2Joseph
Heller, Catch 22 (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1961), pp. 429-430.
3Quoted in Denis
Alexander, Beyond Science (Philadelphia: A.
J. Holman Co., 1972), p. 108.
4Quoted in
Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine (New
York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1970), p. 56.
5Loren
Eiseley, "The Cosmic Orphan: Reflections on Man's
Uncompleted Journey Through Time," SRI World, February
23, 1974, pp. 16-19.
6Robert E.
Fitch, "Secular Images of Man in Contemporary
Literature," Religious
Education, LIII, p. 87.
7Quoted in
Norbert O. Schedler, Philosophy of Religion (New
York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.,
1974), pp. 125-129.
8Quoted in ibid.,
pp. 183-184.
9Mortimer J.
Adler, The Difference in Man and the Difference
It Makes (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston,
1967),
p.286.
10William
Pollard, Man on a Spaceship (The Claremont Col-
leges, Claremont, California, 1967), pp. 50-51.
11Quoted in
Cohn Chapman, Christianity on Trial (Wheaton,
Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 1975),
p. 226.
12Quoted in
Raymond Van Over, Unfinished Man (New York:
World Publishing, 1972), p. 25.
13Quoted in
Denis Alexander, op. cit., p. 129.
14Abraham J.
Hechel, Who Is Man? (Stanford, California:
Stanford University Press, 1973), p.
119.
This material is cited with gracious permission from:
ASA
http://www.asa3.org/
Please report any errors to Ted Hildebrandt at: thildebrandt@gordon.edu