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The biblical concept of man and its implications for christian religious instruction.

Helmut Ott , Andrews University

Date of Award

Document type.

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary

Religious Education, PhD

First Advisor

George H. Akers

Second Advisor

Norman Miles

Third Advisor

Werner K. Vyhmeister

A reliable understanding of the nature of man is essential for the formulation of the theoretical framework and for the actual practice of religious education. The purpose of this dissertation is to make an in-depth study of the biblical concept of man and to elaborate on some of its most significant implications for Christian religious instruction.

The study is divided into two major sections. The first one (chs. 2-4) analyzes the biblical concept of man from three different perspectives; man as he was initially created by God; man in his present condition as a sinner; and man as redeemed in Christ. The second section (ch. 5) deals with the implications of the biblical concept of man to Christian religious instruction. The methodology has four general aspects: exegesis, to establish what a scriptural passage says; interpretation, to determine what a passage means; elaboration, to integrate the various passages into a cohesive whole; and implications, to clarify the relationship that exists between man's present condition as a sinner, the redemption God provided in Christ, and the task of Christian religious instruction.

As a being created in God's image, original man was holy, righteous and good. He lived in perfect spiritual union with God, had no inclination toward evil, and was willing and able to always do only what is true, right and loving. Man sinned when he endeavored to transcend his dependent creatureliness and attempted to be like God. As a result, all humans are born into a state of lostness, spiritually destitute, and totally incapable of righting the wrongs introduced by sin. Thanks to the redemption God provided in Christ, those who accept the Gospel in repentance and faith are reconciled to God and will be restored to sinless perfection at the second advent.

Since man can be restored to the initial state of righteousness only through Christ's redemptive work, it was concluded that the basic objective for Christian religious instruction must be to help the learner establish and maintain an enlightened, meaningful and growing faith-relationship with Christ as his personal Saviour and only source of saving righteousness.

Subject Area

Theological anthropology, Man (Christian theology).

Recommended Citation

Ott, Helmut, "The Biblical Concept of Man and its Implications for Christian Religious Instruction" (1983). Dissertations . 615. https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations/615 https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dissertations/615/

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https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dissertations/615/

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The Christian Understanding of the Human Person

The eternal Son of God, who “for us and our salvation was made man,” is the prototype of man for others. Likewise the Church, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer stated, “is the Church insofar as she is the Church for others.” The Council Fathers, after explaining in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium the origin, essence, and mission of the Church, speak in Gaudium et Spes of the salvific service of the Church for the integral development of the human person.

“The human person deserves to be preserved; human society deserves to be renewed. Hence the focal point of our presentation will be man himself, whole and entire, body and soul, heart and conscience, mind and will” (§ 3). The focus of the council is thus “on the world of men; . . . that world which is the theater of man’s history, and the heir of his energies, his tragedies and his triumphs; that world which the Christian sees as created and sustained by its Maker’s love, fallen indeed into the bondage of sin, yet emancipated now by Christ, Who was crucified and rose again to break the strangle hold of personified evil, so that the world might be fashioned anew according to God’s design and reach its fulfilment” (§ 2).

The Most Urgent Questions of the Day

This is the theme for the dialogue among persons in the modern world. The Church offers herself to all humanity of good will to collaborate in finding resolutions to the most urgent questions of the day: the inviolable dignity of every human life, social justice, peace among the families of nations, and the fight against destructive forces and powers and the enemies of humankind.

Whoever proposes an end must also know the means to reach that end. If the means are immoral, then the end is compromised and discredited. If the sense of existence and the end of history are understood in a communistic way (the creation of a paradise on earth), or in a utilitarian manner (the highest level of happiness for the greatest number of people), or  as in social Darwinism (the realization of the survival of the fittest), or imperialism (the dominion of a nation over other peoples), or unbridled capitalism (the law of the exploitation of the resources of the world and of the dignity of the worker for the sake of wealth), then the means used will violate the dignity of man and impede integral human development.

History shows that the nucleus of human existence and of human development is in the recognition of God as the first origin and end of all of creation. The entire scope of human history is the Reign of God on heaven and on earth.

We cannot conceptualize in a speculative manner the Kingdom of God or produce it with our hands, by our own strength. The Kingdom of God is grace, and grace brings the Holy Spirit into the world, the Spirit of charity that sanctifies and assists, the Spirit of understanding and of love, that changes our hearts and introduces in all human relations a movement of freedom. The Spirit gives the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, as well as all of the other gifts and charisms, given to us for the sake of the other, that make us collaborators of God in the bringing about of his Kingdom. The Kingdom of God has already begun in this time and in this world, when the Church, with the arrival of the Messiah, carries out her mission in the Holy Spirit, “to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord” (Lk 4: 18–19). In the spirit of the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, we must serve, with the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, our suffering brothers and sisters, recognizing in them Christ himself.

Integral Christianity

Christianity cannot be reduced to a bourgeois adaptation of Christ’s message consisting merely of interiority, love of neighbour, and individual philanthropy. The Kingdom of God is not merely above and outside of this world, nor is salvation for this world alone, in the sense of a social and purely humanitarian NGO.

Reverence toward God and responsibility for the world are inseparably connected in Christ, who did not come into this world to free us from it, but to lead man and the world to their authentic destiny in the salvific plan of God. Indeed, man, insofar as he is a creature, in all of his existence, stands before God his creator, redeemer, and fulfiller. Yet it is clear that the human person, with all of his mortal limitations, is capable of losing the gifts, of morally failing, and is unable to save himself. All of the fleeting goods and riches of this world are not able to satisfy the infinite desire for happiness in the heart of the human person. All of the knowledge and thought emanating from our limited reason will never be able to reveal the mystery of being. Even the most altruistic of works come to nothing “if they do not have charity” (1 Cor 13:1) and if their end is not in the love that God has “poured into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5).

Our human reason, therefore, must always be considered in the context of the supernatural faith that illumines, so that we have a proper understanding of freedom.

The Limits of Ideology and Modernity

The political ideologies that we have suffered and endured in the twentieth century and that, under disguise, continue today are concerned only with the growth of their totalitarianism, with the absolute power of men over persons. Behind totalitarianism is the attempt to seize, in thought and action, the foundational aspects of being human, of the human person in the world, and to substitute a new man-made creation for God’s creation. Totalitarian rulers consider themselves wiser and more capable than God. The program of totalitarianism is a humanism without and against God. It is a project contrary to the integral human development that the Church offers the world with the Gospel of Christ. The Church’s vision is founded in a synthesis of creation and redemption, of faith and reason, of grace and freedom, of the fullness of the divine efficacy and the authentic human collaboration in the realization of the universal and salvific will of God.

We also see new forms of colonialism, which aim at modernization but in reality only aggressively import a deformed image of the human person, that of the so-called society of well-being (see Populorum Progressio § 52).

The criteria for such a society of well-being must take into consideration the countries of the developing world and not only Europe and North America. Otherwise there would be the problem of the negation of other cultures as inauthentic and illegitimate.

The difference between integral development from a point of view which is social, material, economic, and political and a totalitarian development with its programs of self-redemption rests in the image of the human person, in anthropology.

The human person is fundamentally a creature of God and not a casual product of blind and arbitrary matter or the construction of social engineers.

In essence, the human person proceeds from the idea that God has for him and develops in the context of time and history. In knowledge and will, he reflects and represents in the world the truth and the goodness of God. The human person thus grows through thought and work, through spiritual attitudes and moral conviction. So man, from the beginning, is a being of culture, of the sciences, and of the theoretical and practical arts. Without original sin, there would have been only integral development; after, however, and according to our redemption in Christ, remains the continuing battle against destructive power and sin.

From Revelation we know that God created man in the state of integrity. It would be a misunderstanding to see the original state of integral nature either as a fairy tale or as empirically demonstrable, at the chronological beginning of the history of humanity. Creation rather signifies the origin and the essence of the created in the idea of God as the beginning and the end of all humanity. God therefore is the measure and the norm for being truly human. The human person, created in the image and likeness of God, participates in and represents the essential truth and goodness of God. “God saw what he had made, and saw that it was good” (Gn 1:31).

Whoever does the good—even if he does not yet recognize God explicitly—is a mediator of the goodness of God. Man glorifies God and renders visible the goodness of God in good works. Therefore, we can collaborate with all people of good will for the good of humanity; we can learn from philosophy, from science, from those who are not Christian. If, for example, we take Aristotle and Mahatma Gandhi, it would appear wrong to divide in an exaggerated manner Christians from the rest of humanity, as if to assert that “all of the pagans’ virtues are vices, and all of their knowledge is only error and fallacy.” Grace and nature, faith and reason, must be distinct but not separate, so that the relation between the Church and the State, between religion and society, is determined by the cooperation for the common good, and not by mutual confrontation. Hence, Gaudium et Spes speaks to the assistance that the Church herself has received from the contemporary world (§ 44), after explaining what the Church offers to the world.

Facing Evil Constructively

However, from Revelation we also know the origin of evil. The malum does not derive from a deficiency in the work of creation or from a malignant God, but from a negative action of man in his relationship with God. With the original sin of Adam and its consequences, disintegration entered into the relationship between God and man, into the relationship between human persons, into man’s relation with the animal world and the environment, and into his role in lived history. The multiplication of physical evils is only a manifestation of moral evil. We cannot separate ourselves from this valley of tears. Nobody may himself decide to become the redeemer of his neighbour. All of the experimentation to produce an ideal state through philosophical systems and means of political power has failed miserably and has left only disasters in their wake.

Neither does an infinite process for the optimization of humanity exist, because the possibility of abuse goes hand in hand with scientific progress. Social networks may be used in either a constructive or destructive manner. Organ transplants, which save lives, also offer new possibilities for crimes against humanity through the commercial sale of organs. Technical progress remains ethically ambivalent. The alternative between the good and the bad is no longer valued, all in the name of, and for the sake of, progress. As long as the human spirit asks the question of the truth of being and of the moral value of an act, it will not be able to avoid taking a position—with this choice set on a firm foundation: referring to God as the origin and the end of the human person.

Only the Creator is also able to be the Redeemer. Rather than a utopia of humanity, Christ brought the world the Kingdom of God. Only where God reigns through love can the human person be truly free. In Baptism we become a new creation, equipped to cooperate in the work of God, with all of our strength, talents, and spiritual and corporal charisms, so that in the end the project of the salvific will of God is fulfilled in the new heaven and the new earth. “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them” (Eph 2:10). The justification of the sinner brings about the integral restitution of the human person, now adopted as a son or daughter of God. We are then called to overcome the old world of sin, of egoism, and of the enmities both within oneself and within the world.

Instead of working in a destructive manner, we desire to contribute to the growth of the Reign of God in a constructive manner, despite falls and disappointments. Christ has already established the Reign of God, though it remains hidden; the Church, if it remains faithful to him, is mandated to announce the Gospel, to mediate the grace of the Holy Spirit through the sacraments, and to support the project of the integral salvation of God, through her participation in the integral development of the human person. Each human person is an end in himself, and one must never make another person a means for an end that is lower than the lofty end of the realization of the will of God for that particular person.

The Christian battles against physical and moral evils and contributes constructively to the conditions of life pertaining to the dignity of the human person. At the foundation of this dignity are the rights to lodging, food, and clothing, as well as the right to earn a living for himself and for the well-being of his family, and in his work to grow and develop in capacity and in turn contribute to the deepening of the awareness of his proper identity. As the human person is a spiritual being and totally endowed with freedom, he enters the challenge of participation in political life, in society, and in all of mundane reality, and his relative autonomy there is recognized by the Church and its Magisterium.

The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World is given to all—even to atheists—with the purpose of offering to all men and women of good will a sincere dialogue on the most important topics with regard to peace and war, to the development of modern weapons and their capacity to destroy all of humanity, and to the incredible possibilities of science and technology that make possible for the human family a future of dignity.

We may not divert our gaze, while more and more people go hungry, are deprived of their rights, and are reduced to slavery; while the drama of the refugees arriving on European shores and at the American border intensifies; and while the risks and challenges of globalization are ever present.

The Church participates in the contemporary world not as a “lobby,” concerned only with its own particular interests. All of Gaudium et Spes is oriented toward the dignity of the human person, the human community, and the ultimate sense of being and of human action; it “lays the foundation for the relationship between the Church and the world, and provides the basis for dialogue between them” (§ 40). It offers not only dialogue, but also collaboration, “until the brotherhood of all men is accomplished” (§ 3). To quote from its concluding section:

“By holding faithfully to the Gospel and benefiting from its resources, by joining with every man who loves and practices justice, Christians have shouldered a gigantic task for fulfilment in this world, a task concerning which they must give a reckoning to Him who will judge every man on the last of days. Not everyone who cries, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the Father’s will by taking a strong grip on the work at hand. Now, the Father wills that in all men we recognize Christ our brother and love Him effectively, in word and in deed. By thus giving witness to the truth, we will share with others the mystery of the heavenly Father’s love. As a consequence, men throughout the world will be aroused to a lively hope—the gift of the Holy Spirit—that someday at last they will be caught up in peace and utter happiness in that fatherland radiant with the glory of the Lord” (§ 93).

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What Does It Mean to Be Human? Exploring the Christian Doctrine of Humanity

• jeremy-bouma
• November 7, 2018
• Share Twitter Facebook

But what does the Bible say about what it means to be human? What can the Bible and Christian doctrine show us about humanity's importance in context of God's full creation? To answer these questions we can turn to the task of theological anthropology, and a new book collecting essays from the January 2018  Los Angeles Theology Conference  offers guidance for our task.

Representing the proceedings of the sixth annual conference, the book The Christian Doctrine of Humanity (edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders) constructively and comprehensively engages the task of theological anthropology by offering a slate of voices. These voices give shape to the important contours of theological anthropology. The book includes the following twelve essays by renowned scholars across the ecclesial spectrum:

• Nature, Grace, and the Christological Ground of Humanity (Marc Cortez)
• Human Superiority, Divine Providence, and the Animal Good: A Thomistic Defense of Creaturely Hierarchy (Faith Glavey Pawl)
• The Relevance of Biblical Eschatology for Philosophical Anthropology (Richard J. Mouw)
• From Sin to the Soul: A Dogmatic Argument for Dualism (Hans Madueme)
• Human Cognition and the Image of God (Aku Visala)
• “Vulnerable, Yet Divine”: Retrieving Gregory Nazianzen’s Account of the Imago Dei (Gabrielle R.Thomas)
• Created and Constructed Identities in Theological Anthropology (Ryan S. Peterson)
• Adam and Christ: Human Solidarity before God (Frances M.Young)
• Life in the Spirit: Christ’s and Ours (Lucy Peppiatt)
• Flourishing in the Spirit: Distinguishing Incarnation and Indwelling for Theological Anthropology (Joanna Leidenhag and R.T. Mullins)
• Mapping Anthropological Metaphysics with a Descensus Key: How Christ’s Descent to the Dead Informs the Body-Mind Conversation (Matthew Y. Emerson)
• “The Upward Call”: The Category of Vocation and the Oddness of Human Nature (Ian A. McFarland)

Below is the complete introduction to The Christian Doctrine of Humanity . In it you will find an overview of the essential issues involved in answering our questions about humanity; you will learn about key aspects of theological anthropology; you will also understand the scope of the book, and how it will enable you to join the conversation about the Christian doctrine of humanity.

What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Psalm 8:4

The question the psalmist asks God is primarily about the relative importance of humanity in the midst of the rest of God’s creation, especially the vastness of the heavenly realms. But it is also phrased as a straightforward question of definition: What are human beings? Precisely what is the thing that a human being is? The task of theological anthropology is to answer that question.

In offering answers along the lines of “constructive dogmatics,” as all the essays in this volume do, theologians can take a direct or indirect approach. The direct approach is to consult the Bible for the terms, categories, and schemas found in the layers of its manifold witness. The same sacred volume that asks, “What are human beings?” also answers the question: human beings are a single unified race of creatures, each one in the image of God, created male and female, given life by the divine breath, and so on. Any one of these categories offered by the biblical witness could be the subject of an expansive study in its own right; each has received such treatment in the history of doctrine, and each is taken up by the authors of this volume.

Often these biblical accounts have been subsumed in theological categories for the divine image so that today there are at least three broad approaches to which one can point. The first is the structural account of the divine image, represented in this volume by Aku Visala’s chapter and that of Faith Pawl, as well as (to some extent) in the essays by Hans Madueme and Marc Cortez. On this way of thinking, the divine image found in Scripture is to be understood as something substantive in human beings that sets them apart from other creatures. Often this is identified with human reason or possession of a soul. Then there are those who think that the imago Dei is more of a function of human beings, giving rise to functional accounts of the divine image. On this way of thinking human beings bear the divine image in virtue of acting in a particular way—that is, as God’s viceroys on earth, imaging the deity in virtue of a benevolent caretaking role over creation. A third approach to the divine image thinks of it relationally, as something that human beings bear together as a community of creatures. There is something of this view in the contribution from Ryan Peterson, as well as in the chapters by Frances Young and Ian McFarland. Another ancient approach to the divine image is to identify it with Christ as the archetypal image, and human beings as ectypes. We image God as we image Christ. This way of thinking about the matter is prominent in Cortez’s work. Christological considerations also make an appearance in the chapters by Lucy Peppiatt, Gabrielle Thomas, and Joanna Leidenhag and R. T. Mullins.

In addition to the more direct approach to thinking about humanity dogmatically, there is an indirect approach to answering the question about human beings. This involves considering the implications of other doctrines and approaching theological anthropology through them. Each tract of systematic theology has implications for the Christian doctrine of humanity, and the indirect route takes its bearings from doctrines nearby (creation, sin, salvation) and doctrines farther afield (Christology, pneumatology, eschatology). The indirect approach to theological anthropology has the advantage of tracing the many connections that unite the doctrinal system, ensuring that the resulting doctrine of humanity is explicitly Christian. In this regard, one interesting subtheme that runs through several chapters has to do with how attending to a particular aspect of traditional Christology may help us understand some aspect of divine action in human beings better. For example, Peppiatt examines how Spirit Christology bears upon the work of the Holy Spirit indwelling human beings, while Leidenhag and Mullins seek to demarcate the difference between the indwelling of the Spirit in human beings and the manner in which God the Son is said to be incarnate in Christ. By contrast, Ian McFarland’s essay presses in a rather different and more apophatic direction with a more skeptical account of what we can say about the image in human beings in light of wider theological considerations. Another broader theological concern on display in this volume is the current debate about the constitution of human beings. Do we have souls distinct from our bodies? If we do, how should we think of such things? If we do not, what important implications follow from such a claim? The essays by Rich Mouw, Hans Madueme, and Matthew Emerson all touch on these matters in important ways.

There is also an interesting interplay in these essays between the retrieval of ancient doctrine for contemporary dogmatics and the correlation between contemporary philosophy, science, and theological construction. This creative tension is quite evident in, say, Young’s desire to recapture Athanasius for moderns or in the ways Mouw, Madueme, and Visala worry about the relationship of theology to wider intellectual concerns of a more philosophical nature.

Ideally, a satisfying theological anthropology will be engaged in all these things at once: direct and indirect accounts of human beings in relation to God, the careful plotting of a route through the various accounts of the divine image, and attention to the development of doctrine in this area as well as the pressing need for correlation with our current state of knowledge about our relation to the wider created world—including our place in a creation full of many other creatures that are also subject to God’s divine care. The chapters of this volume delve into all these areas, providing the reader with a rich smorgasbord of dogmatic explorations on theological anthropology. Whilst not a systematic account of the doctrine of humanity, these are rich and rewarding studies that repay careful reading towards a more systematic-theological understanding of humanity’s place in God’s creation.

Overview of the Chapters

Marc Cortez has written much on christological anthropology, and his chapter opens this volume by pressing for clarity on Irenaeus’s teaching that “the image of God is the Son, after whose image man was made.” Cortez puts several questions to Irenaeus: Is it the embodied humanity of Christ that makes him the image, or is it his eternal identity as the Son? In what sense can one of Adam’s descendants be the prototype of Adam’s being? In a wide-ranging discussion that in many ways sets the scope of the whole volume programmatically, Cortez argues for an ontological and epistemological priority of Christ over Adam, as well as pneumatological considerations that keep nature and grace from being merely bifurcated.

In chapter 2, Faith Glavey Pawl locates the human creature among the other animals with whom we share the world and does so by defending an admittedly unfashionable notion: hierarchy. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas, Pawl argues that we can affirm that humans are superior to nonhuman animals and that in fact creation is ordered toward the good of humans. Yet we can do this without relegating nonhuman animals to the status of irrelevance for either humans or, more significantly, for God. Where conventional accounts of the good of animals tend to discard hierarchy as early as possible, Pawl argues that hierarchy can serve as a valuable metaphysical tool for ecological theology.

In chapter 3, Richard J. Mouw considers the implications of Christian belief in the afterlife for a Christian account of human composition. Must Christians who believe in an afterlife believe that humans are composed of bodies and souls? It is not quite that simple, according to Mouw. Cognizant of neuroscientific findings and alert to the reasons why moderns are skittish about any Platonist dualisms, Mouw nevertheless insists that our affirmations about human composition should comport with our control beliefs about eschatology. A judicious use of theological imagination, he counsels, will also consider pastoral implications such as speaking about the intermediate state, or of failing to do so.

Hans Madueme, in chapter 4, likewise considers the way our view of human composition should be determined by outlying control beliefs. The beliefs he has in mind are Christian affirmations about sin, which require that we be morally responsible for our actions before God. “Dualism makes better sense of human sinning than physicalism,” he says, because mere physicalism enmeshes human agents too completely in chains of physical causation. What Scripture presupposes is moral accountability that is most consistent with body-soul dualism. While physical determinism crowds out moral accountability, Madueme argues for a form of divine determinism that is compatible with human responsibility and thus comports with Scripture’s presuppositions about sin.

In chapter 5, Aku Visala considers the challenge that recent cognitive science poses for any doctrine of the image of God that locates the image in human cognitive abilities. Visala believes that modern cognitive scientific findings, far from erecting insurmountable obstacles, actually point to human uniqueness in a new and helpful way for theology. Humans have several unique cognitive capabilities: flexible reasoning, the ability to adopt moral norms and to follow them behaviorally, and the most flexible social cognition of any animal. Visala argues that there is much to be gained from developing an account of the imago Dei that is informed by current cognitive sciences.

Gabrielle Thomas, in chapter 6, considers the imago Dei from another perspective, arguing that human nature is open to influence from two directions: contact with God on the one hand and contact with spiritual enemies on the other. For her project, Thomas appeals to Gregory of Nazianzus, whose theology, spirituality, and poetry set forth a classic Christian conception of humanity in terms considerably more holistic and dynamic than most modern theologies have been interested in. One of the advantages of this retrieval of a patristic witness is, perhaps unexpectedly, greater attention to the actual lived experience of being in the image of God. This contrasts with merely structural or even merely relational accounts of the imago Dei , which are more concerned with identifying the image than illuminating the experience of being in the image. To be human, on this account, is to stand between the cosmos and God in an active and dynamic relationship with both. The imago Dei is not only vulnerable to God because of its intended purpose of union with God, says Thomas, but also vulnerable to “the world, the flesh, and the devil” as it moves toward its destiny.

In chapter 7, Ryan Peterson examines humanity’s use of the category of identity, which has in recent decades become a pervasive and important way of talking. Peterson is interested in the relation between constructed identities—racial, ethnic, national, religious, and sexual identities, for example—and what he calls biblical-theological identities, such as creaturely, covenantal, redeemed, and eschatological identities. As he points out, the novel category of identity has entered contemporary usage without much clarity or definition, so it is ripe for some theologically guided conceptual scrutiny. Extending his earlier work in this field, Peterson argues that biblical-theological identities have a certain priority. They should constrain and shape constructed identities, keeping them from some evident idolatrous tendencies. But within proper boundaries, a range of constructed identities can serve human flourishing by enabling people and communities to find and name their distinct places in the world. Peterson recommends using identity talk alongside of, but not in place of, more traditional categories like nature, ends, faculties, and habits.

Chapter 8, by Frances Young, is an ambitious project of considerable scope. Young opens up the world of patristic Christology, tracing the thought of Athanasius of Alexandria with special attention to the way he could build arguments about redemption on the presupposition that there is such a thing as humanity. Strong patristic notions of human solidarity, whether they drew on a Platonic conceptual background (a world-soul) or some other ancient metaphysical schema (any sort of realism about universals), enabled thinkers like Athanasius to make sense of biblical language about Adam and Christ as the locus of an old and a new humanity, respectively. If we as moderns do not share these ancient underlying metaphysical assumptions, Young says, we nevertheless have the same need to make sense of the biblical way of speaking about humanity as a coherent entity. In pursuit of a contemporary appropriation of patristic anthropological holism, Young offers a catalog of thick collectivities: slime mold, an oceanic feeling, a collective unconscious, interlaced narratives, emergent unity, and social forms of solidarity such as the shared life produced by the stresses of a labor camp. Young announces an agenda for theological anthropology: since we need to make good sense of shared sin, shared guilt, and shared judgment, we need to articulate in contemporary terms an account of real human unity.

In chapter 9, “Life in the Spirit: Christ’s and Ours,” Lucy Peppiatt puts some hard questions to the proponents of Spirit Christology, particularly those who emphasize the role of the Spirit in the life of Christ in order to show that Christ’s life is enough like our life to serve as a model for Christian experience. Peppiatt shows how these accounts of Christology tend to run aground on questions of agency in the incarnation and especially on the question of how to manage the difference between our willing and doing and Jesus’s willing and doing. Deeply informed by the theology of John Owen and (to a lesser extent) Thomas Aquinas, her constructive account is more attentive to the analogical difference between Christ and us in this regard. The result is not an entire rejection of Spirit Christology’s contribution to theological anthropology but an account of how a pneumatic christological model, with its attention to the empowering, guidance, and comfort of the Holy Spirit for Christ and for us, is the most promising matrix for a view of human development and spiritual formation.

In chapter 10, “Flourishing in the Spirit: Distinguishing Incarnation and Indwelling for Theological Anthropology,” Joanna Leidenhag and R. T. Mullins consider the biblical portrayal of human flourishing as being somehow related to the incarnation but also as being filled with the Spirit. They are especially concerned to offer a clear conceptual distinction between incarnation and indwelling because they want to account for how Christ’s humanity unlocks flourishing for the rest of humanity. By distinguishing the work of the Son from the work of the Spirit, they show that the special, divine, and personal presence of the Holy Spirit is what brings about transformative sanctification, and thus it provides the best model for understanding indwelling and the necessary condition for the flourishing of humanity.

In chapter 11, Matthew Emerson looks to Christ’s descent to the dead as a crucial testing ground for both the Christian understanding of the afterlife and its distinction between body and soul. In Emerson’s retrieval of the traditional theology of the descent, Christ’s body went into the earth as his human soul went to the place of the dead. Christ, in other words, experienced an intermediate state between his death and resurrection. Because Christ’s humanity is paradigmatic, human beings must also be capable of experiencing an intermediate state between their deaths and the final day, and one of the key conclusions to be drawn from this is that we should confess humanity as being composed of body plus soul.

Ian McFarland’s chapter closes the volume by directing our attention to a very large question in theological anthropology: the relation between nature and grace. In some classic ways of describing the relation, it seems that humanity can only have one or the other but not both. If humans were created to reach the end of union with God in glory by grace, then grace seems to be built into the nature or definition of what it is to be human—but then it is not a matter of grace. On the other hand, if we preserve the gratuitous character of union with God, then we have to define human nature as being complete in itself without such an end, in which case grace is supplemental and in no way a natural end of humanity. McFarland proposes the category of vocation as a solution to this problem of “the oddness of human nature.” To be called by God is to be summoned to an end that is compatible with human nature but is beyond it and not intrinsic to it. With this account of human nature as open-ended, McFarland is undertaking to resolve a theological conundrum that has usually been posed in updated Thomist categories by the judicious application of a Lutheran category.

May these essays extend discussion of the task of dogmatics, ad maiorem dei gloriam .

— Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders, April 2018

The Christian Doctrine of Humanity  explains and explores this vital, complex doctrine through twelve engaging essays. Read them yourself to enter a constructive and comprehensive conversation that engages the task of theological anthropology with insight and care.

Also, sign up to attend the 7th annual LA Theology conference January 18-19, 2019 . The theme of LATC 2019 will be divine action and providence and feature these plenary speakers: William J. Abraham, Oliver Crisp, Christine Helmer, Brenda Deen Schildgen, and Philip Ziegler.

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A Biblical Model of Personhood

At the heart of a biblical notion of personhood is the belief that humans beings are the  imago dei,  the image of God   (Gen 1:26-27 ,  James 3:9 ).  Christians have differed over where to locate this imaging of God in humans. It has been placed in the will, consciousness, reason, intuition, imagination, embodiment, an openness to future, and in a composite unity of these.  It is this last option that I am most convinced by (Rom 12:1-2, I Cor 15:45). Our full humanity is what, in differing ways, images God. The biblical conception of the heart is useful here (Prov 4:23, 27:9, Deut 6:5, Rom 2:29, II Cor 3:3, Rom 1:32, II Cor 9:7, Heb 4:12). The "heart" (whether the Hebrew  Leb  or the Greek  kardia ) implies the full person of a human being—the intellect, emotion, volition, even body. As Karl Barth affirmed: "[T]he heart is not merely  a  but  the  reality of man, both wholly of soul and wholly of body" (436). As such, to know with our heart is to employ our whole person. Being the image of God implies the following:

• Dignity, glory, and honor are essential aspects of our personhood. We are each valuable. (Psalm 8)
• Human beings have a specific  telos , purpose and end--"to glorify God and enjoy him forever," as the Westminister Confession says. The human self cannot be conceived without an awareness of a dependence upon and ultimate union with God
• Likewise, we have an intermediate goal and purpose in this world--the furthering of God's  shalom --his reign of perfect peace and justice over all humanity.
• Humans are relational beings created for mutuality and joint service (Gen 1:28, Gen 2). One can see this pattern of relationality beginning in the very nature of God, ala' the Trinity. It can also be seen in the biblical practice of covenant, as well as in the community of Israel and the Church. We are individuals, but never conceived of as existing alone or for ourselves alone.
• Humans are created for diversity (Gen 1, Rev 7). God is a lover of difference, complexity, and mutuality. We are not to be the same either as individuals or as cultures.
• On the Earth, human beings have stewardship, a limited authority given by God, what Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen calls an "accountable dominion." As such, it is characterized by  agape  love and service. Interestingly, the Hebrew words for "to till" ( amhad ) and "to serve" ( ebed ) are closely related.
• Human beings have free will, an openness to the future, with significant real moral choices to make.
• Humans have certain God-given rights, even if we are also capable of voluntarily giving those rights up. By "rights," I do not mean a selfish insistence upon getting one's own way, rather a recognition of how God has designed humans to interact. For example, the 10 Commandments, the wisdom tradition of scripture, the prophetic witness, the two Great Commandments (Mt 22:34-40, Gal 5:14, James 2:8), and the Sermon on the Mount, all suggest aspects of how humans should treat and expect to be treated.
• We are embodied beings with a focus on the particular and  the local (Gen 2:6-7, Rom 12:1-2, Mk 12:30).
• We are also fallen beings with a capacity for self-interest and self-deception. We cannot ignore the impact of sin on our total person, both within ourselves and within the larger social system where we reside..
• Likewise, we are called to renewal in Christ. By him do we fully image God again (Col 1:15, 3:10). Our personhood is developed and renewed by the work of the Holy Spirit upon us.
• The fullest expression of our personhood will be revealed in the  eschaton , the final eternal state of things.  We look toward that full sanctity and glory that is promised us (I Cor 15:50-57, I Jn 3:2-3).

A biblical model of personhood will find certain aspects of the traditional, modernist, and postmodern models (following  MacIntyre's formulation ) congenial, while being deeply suspicious of others. In many ways, the biblical view has the most in common with the traditional, though the biblical view (especially, the New Testament) would affirm the personhood of all humans. The biblical model rejects the radical self-serving and autonomy of the modernist notion, as well as its stress on personal fulfillment, liberation, and subjectivism.  Yet the Bible would agree with the stress on individual value and basic human rights. Likewise, the biblical view recognizes the importance of local truth and identity, yet would ultimately contextualize these within those universals found in God. A biblical model would see a reality for the individual who is created for and within community. Such an understanding of personhood offers us a vision of human dignity, community, freedom, responsible stewardship, human rights, and redemptive renewal, as well as a warning against human self-deception, corruption, dehumanization, and claims of autonomy.

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"All manner of thing shall be well/ When the tongues of flame are in-folded/ Into the crowned knot of fire/ And the fire and the rose are one." -- T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

What Does 'Imago Dei' Mean? The Image of God in the Bible

The Image of God: 'Imago Dei'

“Imago Dei” comes from the Latin version of the Bible, translated to English as “image of God.”

"Image of God" is defined as the metaphysical expression, associated uniquely to humans, which signifies the symbolical connection between God and humanity. The phrase has its origins in Genesis 1:27 , wherein "God created man in his own image..." This biblical passage does not imply that God is in human form, but that humans are in the image of God in their moral, spiritual, and intellectual essence. Thus, humans reflect God's divine nature in their ability to achieve the unique characteristics with which they have been endowed. These unique qualities make humans different than all other creatures: rational understanding, creative liberty, the capacity for self-actualization, and the potential for self-transcendence.

Imago Dei Definition

This is a longer definition of “Imago Dei” as provided by pbs.org : 

The term imago Dei refers most fundamentally to two things: first, God's own self-actualization through humankind; and second, God's care for humankind. To say that humans are in the image of God is to recognize the special qualities of human nature which allow God to be made manifest in humans. In other words, for humans to have the conscious recognition of their being in the image of God means that they are the creature through whom God's plans and purposes can be made known and actualized; humans, in this way, can be seen as co-creators with God. The moral implications of the doctrine of imago Dei are apparent in the fact that if humans are to love God, then humans must love other humans, as each is an expression of God. The human's likeness to God can also be understood by contrasting it with that which does not image God, i.e., beings who, as far as we know, are without self-consciousness and the capacity for spiritual/ moral reflection and growth. Humans differ from all other creatures because of their rational structure - their capacity for deliberation and free decision-making. This freedom gives the human-centeredness and completeness which allows the possibility for self-actualization and participation in a sacred reality. However, the freedom which makes the human in God's image is the same freedom which manifests itself in estrangement from God... the Fall (Adam and Eve) exemplifies. [,,,] humans can, in their freedom, choose to deny or repress their spiritual and moral likeness to God. The ability and desire to love one's self and others, and therefore, God, can become neglected and even opposed. Striving to bring about the imago Dei in one's life can be seen as the quest for wholeness, or one's "essential" self, as pointed to in Christ's life and teachings.

Meaning and Significance

Imago Dei, or Image of God, means in likeness, or similarity, to God. Humans are created with unique abilities, absent in all other creatures of the earth, that mirror the divine nature of God.

3 Ways God's Rainbow Represents His Loving Grace

The significance of humans being created “in the image of God” is our responsibility to recognize and understand rationality and ability to create abstract conceptions from the natural world. This gives us the capacity to create a glorious peaceful world or a fallen chaotic environment, depending upon our motives and understanding. Just as Satan fell from God, we are capable of falling from God and suffering the consequences. We must realize our dual potential (good vs evil) and act in accordance with God’s will and law to create prosperous and benevolent communities and nations.

Imago Dei (Image of God) in the Bible

Then God said, “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 livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. ( Genesis 1:26-27 )

And have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. ( Colossians 3:10 )

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. ( Genesis 9:6 )

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. ( 2 Corinthians 4:4 )

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, ( Hebrews 1:3 )

Photo Credit: Wikimedia/Creation of Adam (Michelangelo) Detail

This article is part of our Christian Terms catalog, exploring words and phrases of Christian theology and history. Here are some of our most popular articles covering Christian terms to help your journey of knowledge and faith:

The Full Armor of God The Meaning of "Selah" What Is Grace? Bible Definition and Christian Quotes What is Discernment? Bible Meaning and Importance What Is Prophecy? Bible Meaning and Examples

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The Concept of Imago Dei as a Symbol of Religious Inclusion and Human Dignity

2020, Forum Philosophicum 25

This article aims to examine how the concept of Imago Dei can serve as a symbol for the broadly understood idea of religious inclusion and human dignity. The article explores the concept of Imago Dei primarily from a protologi-cal perspective, analyzing its usage in biblical writings, theological tradition and modern philosophy. The substantial, relational and functional-which three usages of the concept can be found in the inclusive theology of Gregory of Nyssa-are analyzed in this article. Arguably, in the context of religious inclusion, the rela-tional angle of Imago Dei seems to be the most important. Similarly contemporary Protestant theologian, Jürgen Moltmann states in his book, God in the Creation, that the "relational" concept of Imago Dei underscores the fundamental dignity of every person. In his book, God for Secular Society, Moltmann states that properly understood human rights should include democratic relationships between people, cooperation between societies, concern for the environment in which people live, and responsibility for future generations. From these perspectives, the concept of Imago Dei can be utilized as a symbol indicating the dignity of every person and human community, but also a symbol against any types of racism, nationalism or xenophobia.

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jolley peter

David K Tarus

The doctrine of the image of God has received a lot of attention throughout the history of Christianity. Though the texts which affirm this doctrine are very minimal, and the exact meaning of the phrase " image and likeness of God " is often obscure, this affirmation is central to crucial anthropological affirmations. The purpose of this paper is to trace the interpretation of the imago Dei in Christian theology, looking first at the three dominant approaches (the substantialist, the relational, and the royal functional approaches), then the other noteworthy interpretations as a way of introducing the reader to the various approaches to this doctrine. Thus, the intention is not to interpret the imago texts but to highlight the various proposals given. Therefore, this paper is exploratory in nature. It does not critique the various views but presents them as they are for purposes of references for readers who are looking for relevant literature or key figures of each view. The presentation is not chronological but thematic. The paper explores seven views of the image of God that have been proposed.

Brigid Curtin

This thesis explores the evolution of the biblical concept of imago Dei. Written from the perspective of Christian theology, the thesis engages select Jewish and Christian voices in analysis of the shared theological premise that the human person is created in the image of God The discussion will begin with the scriptural origins of the concept, drawing upon exegetical interpretations as well as the early perspectives of the Rabbinic and Patristic period. It will then offer a comparative account of the contributions of Maimonides and Aquinas, in their intellectualist conceptions of human distinctiveness. From there, the discussion will turn to the Christological appropriation of the concept in work of Karl Barth and then to the covenantal, dialogical interpretation of David Novak. In both of these thinkers, we will observe a rejection of the intellectualism of Aquinas and Maimonides in favour of relational interpretations which are, in their integrative understanding of the person a...

Studies in Christian Ethics

Matthew Petrusek

Riccardo Saccenti

In the last years, starting from the study of the foundatins of the human rights, Pier Cesare Bori has focused his research on the exegesis of "Genesis" 1, 26-28, according to which man is created in the image of God. In the Christian framework the "imago Dei" has led to different interpretations: a charismatic and eschatological, an ontological and a functional one. To solve the contradictionsbetween these different exegesis of "imago Dei" Bori has suggested to consider a larger context, looking not only at the Christian tradition, but also at the other monotheisms, cultures and religions. The proceedings here presentend are the result of this attempt to develop new approaches to the study of the topic of "imago Dei". It has been undertaken by an international group of scholars from different research fields (history, theology, hermeneutics, philosophy, exegesis) during a few days of scientific exchange and dialogue.

Jozef Jančovič

The godlikeness of human beings remains a theologoumenon of primary importance from the first page of the Bible, especially now in our post-human age with its strong tendency to embrace promising technologies (artificial intelligence and robotics) even at the expense of our own humanity. This state of affairs calls for a clearer understanding of human identity and a sound ethical response through the retelling of the normative biblical concept of the 'image of God'. The thesis of this article consists in a consideration of the entire phrase 'God created man in his image' in Genesis 1:26-28 as a metaphorical and theocentric phrase with demonstratively meaningful content. It employs the relational concept of an extended human reality. In light of recent exegesis, the 'image of God' in Gen 1:26-27 should be seen as a signifier of human life under God, rather than a single determining characteristic or essential attribute. After exegetical and contextual readings of Gen 1:27 I will evaluate three major interpretative approaches to the 'image of God in human-ity'. In this evaluation we will see that theologians have preferred substantialist (e.g., image as soul or mind) or relational interpretations (e.g., image as relational personhood) and Old Testament scholars have preferred functional interpretations (e.g., image as kingly dominion). I outline their respective (in)consistencies in light of the meaning of the ancient text and its extended biblical context. At the end, I offer some suggestions for applying a more complete conceptualization of the 'image of God' to ethical practice.

Evangelical Review of Theology and Politics

Geoffrey Butler

Despite all the diversity in the Christian tradition over exactly how the image of God ought to be defined, there has existed a broad consensus throughout the church's history that human beings are indeed divine imagebearers, as per the clear teaching of Scripture in the opening chapter of Genesis and elsewhere. Given the impact this doctrine has exerted on past generations of Christians in their social and cultural engagement-such as the abolitionist and civil rights movements, for example-this paper makes the case that contemporary Christians, particularly in the increasingly post-Christian West, would be well served to recover this ancient doctrine as a catalyst for biblically informed cultural engagement in the modern era. It will argue that this doctrine is well positioned to inform such matters as bioethics and poverty, and that even in a rapidly secularizing culture, it is a doctrine that allows the Christian church to offer a unique perspective on social and cultural issues grounded in the inherent dignity of every human being.

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Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society 6/1

Sigrid Müller

This paper investigates the extent to which Christian tradition can be used to support human dignity and human rights in contemporary society. It explores the Christian tradition for ideas that correspond to the four main dimensions of human dignity: anthropological, moral, legal, and practical. It examines how these dimensions relate to the two main Christian perspectives that define human dignity, namely the imago Dei paradigm and dignity of the human soul or person. Concluding observations demonstrate that the corresponding Christian ideas offer a solid foundation for developing a strong Christian narrative and engagement in support of human dignity and human rights. However, an analysis of the two dominating concepts also indicates that a reception that excludes the universal aspect of the imago Dei paradigm can endanger a full acceptance of human dignity and human rights. Therefore, it is necessary to continue existing ecumenical efforts to create a complementary reading of the two traditions. Keywords human dignity-human person-God's image and likeness-Christianity

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Reflections on Mormonism

Judaeo-christian parallels, truman g. madsen , editor, imago dei: man in the image of god, ernst w. benz.

Ernst W. Benz, “Imago Dei: Man in the Image of God,” in  Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels , ed. Truman G. Madsen (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1978), 201–22.

What is the meaning of the Genesis phrase that man is in the image of God? Traditionally one is told: Man is free, man is moral, man has reason. There is too the Hebraic idea that there are divine sparks within man. And there are the related theories that make man a portion—usually a finite and degenerate portion—of some cosmic totality.

Mormonism cannot say a wholehearted yes to any of these traditions. Its vision is more than that man is a little lower than the angels; he is a little lower than the gods. He has the potential to be crowned with glory and honor—or to degenerate to the condition of Satan. The “adding upon” of a body is a step which Christ himself took, not downward, but upward. For the Mormon, man may fall into two debilitating errors: the prideful claim that he is not at present in a fallen and needful state, or the blasphemous humility of considering himself a worm.

Yet in the wake of the Vatican Council more than one Catholic writer has acknowledged that the Mormon understanding of man is in “the small print” of the early Fathers. And though Protestant writers, much inclined to speak of man’s finitude and pride and depravity, tend to find the Mormon hope excessive, even Bonhoeffer, the patron saint of those who speak of the “post-Christian age,” has in his Cost of Discipleship stunning statements that refuse to see man as anything less than a potential Christ. Through such eyes, and the recent Nag Hammadi literature, theologians are looking anew at the New Testament.

Professor Benz brings Mormonism into comparison and contrast with mysticism and ends by showing that the sacred Mormon vision “as God now is, man may become” can be found in Athanasius in the second century—"God became man so that we may become God.”

He then addresses himself to how this view revolutionizes the perceptions and misperceptions of Augustine, of Schelling, and of the mystics, and traces the burden and self-sacrifice, as well as the joy, that arise from accepting fully the heritage and promises of Christ.

Our understanding of Imago Dei— Man in the Image of God—begins with Augustine, who laid the groundwork for the Christian view of man in all occidental theology through his work about the Trinity.

Augustine poses the question of how one can in an understandable manner depict the mystery of the Divine Trinity; then, after many futile attempts, discovers the following (and in his opinion only) way: Man is created in the image of God; God is triune; therefore, traces of divine trinity— ”Vestigia Trinitatis”— must be found in man as the image of God. Augustine now asks a further question: In which aspect of man can such traces be found? As a former Manichean it is obvious that for him such traces are to be found not in the realm of the body but only in the human intellect. He begins with an analysis of the human epistemological process and ascertains that even in the simple act of sensory perception there exists a trinity composed of the viewer (the “mens” ), the viewed object, and the impulse of the will which focuses the “acies mentis” on the object and triggers the act of recognition. He then sees the same trinitarian principle again in a higher form involving spiritual understanding, where the object of understanding is not a tangible object in the superficial world anymore but an abstracted idea stored in the “belly of the memory”— “venter memoriae.” The final stage, then, is the act of self-recognition in which the viewer, the mens , takes itself as its own object of understanding and discovers itself as the “Imago Dei.” And lastly, in the highest spiritual act, the mens , driven by its love of God, turns toward the divine Archetype itself.

It is not necessary to dwell here on further details; the important thing is that for this context Augustine’s entire perception of the relationship of God’s image to man’s image is based on the symbol of the mirror. The Imago Dei is a reflection of the Archetype in the human spirit. The symbol of the mirror provides many graphic possibilities: For one thing, the Archetype is only fully mirrored in the reflected likeness when the mirror is fully turned toward that Archetype, when the reflection is completely attuned to the Archetype. Further, the correlation between Archetype and reflection is extinguished or disturbed when the mirror turns from the Archetype toward other objects or when the mirror itself is darkened.

The symbol of the mirror clearly brings forth yet another thought, namely, that for Augustine there exists no essential cohesion between Archetype and reflected image. The reflected image is “a symbol, but alas, only a symbol.” It has nothing of the nature of the Archetype: it mirrors the Archetype on a fundamentally different ontological basis: it is a reflected creatura which has nothing in common with the Being of the Archetype. Ontologically there exists a total discontinuity between Archetype and reflected image. The Augustinian opinion even suggests the thought that the relationship between Archetype and reflection is totally one-sided: reflected man is dependent on the Archetype; he exists only as long as the Archetype cares to mirror itself in him. The Archetype, on the contrary, is not dependent on its reflection. Its freedom—one is even tempted to say its moods—dictates whether it reflects itself or not. Its Being is not impaired whether it is reflected.

Thus the doctrine of Imago Dei has given rise to many different theoretical reflections on the relationship between God and man. Indeed, this concept of man has accompanied the whole history of Christian theology and has been a traditional component of scholarly dogmatics.

It appears to me that the words of the Christian mystics contain reference to new questions which have suddenly made the topic of Imago Dei pertinent again, and they seem to be important to a new religious anthropology which would do justice to our modern feeling about and consciousness of the world. For the mystics are able to overcome precisely the two weaknesses which adhere to the Augustinian comprehension of Imago and his orientation toward the mirror symbol, namely, the limitation of Imago to the purely intellectual sphere, and the absence of any substantial connection between Archetype and reflected image.

The mystics’ view of man is immediately and profoundly determined by their own religious experience, by their personal encounter with the transcendental. Their view of man itself is not an abstract model based on theological premises but is an attempt to think through, to mentally order their own experiences, their overpowering, stirring, and transforming encounter with the transcendental, and to ask: “How is it possible that this kind of experience could take place within me?” Only after this point is reached can the more general reflections begin about the question: “How must man be, how must God be, so that this kind of encounter can take place? What are the spiritual and psychic presuppositions for this in the structure of man that such an outpouring of the transcendental can occur?”

Mystical theology, therefore, whose major component is a certain view of man, is the a posteriori generalization of and the subsequent attempt to logically understand an overpowering experience which was at first incomprehensible. The differences in the interpretations of the mystics depends not so much on differences in the a priori spiritual bias of each mystic given by his religious training and theological instruction, but primarily on differences in the experiences themselves. In the case of one mystic the central sphere of experience is a God mysticism, in which a unification with God is attained; in the case of another, the central experience is an experience with Christ, in which a unification with Christ, the divine Logos , the resurrected Lord, is experienced. Neither type of experience in any way excludes the other.

In the same way contact with the transcendental differs, depending on the spiritual sphere in which the encounter itself occurs. There is a characteristically intellectual mysticism, in which the encounter with the transcendental is perceived as an illumination of the mind, as a brightening of the intellect; and again there is a mysticism in which the encounter with the transcendental is perceived as a unification of the divine and the human will, as a breakthrough of a new divine impulse, as an affective harmony with the divine will, as the ecstasy of the heart, transported into divine rapture. This diversity of mystical experience (intellectual, volitional, and affective mysticism) naturally affects the intellectual interpretation of the experience itself and the conceptual exposition of each individual mystic’s view of man.

Modern theology is widely opposed to every kind of mysticism because it interprets mystical experiences from a purely psychological point of view as mere interior processes which have nothing to do with the transcendental and which, in the last analysis, simply amount to the psychological experiencing of mystical conditions of happiness. But it is simple to see that one cannot explain away the phenomenon of Christian mysticism by means of a certain psychological interpretation. The fact is that mystical experiences exist, and the fact is that these experiences have a powerful effect—in the form of a creative transformation—on the lives of the mystics. The whole history of the Christian Church shows that its very backbone is composed of such personalities, in whom the content of historical Christian revelation—transmitted through documents and mediated through the sacraments and symbols of the Church—was realized and actualized by direct personal encounter with God by having Christ dwell within and by experiencing the outpouring of the Holy Ghost. Thus they became the ones who proclaimed the gospel in the most convincing manner.

When one interprets individually these basic concepts, however, certain thoughts become noticeable in Christian mysticism which overstep the bounds of a traditional dogmatic exegesis of fundamental Christian teachings. For this reason, in the Middle Ages mystics were almost always in conflict with the Inquisition, and Protestant circles led regular disputes with Church authorities.

Of course, even the starting point for the mystical interpretation of the relationship of man to God is boldly presumptuous. The great mystics, who themselves had experienced the “unio mystica” with God, see their experience in a whole new light; they recognize with bewilderment in the encounter with the Divine Thou that God and man are dependent upon each other, that they need each other to fulfill their being. This is perhaps the most radical interpretation of the thought that man is created in the image of God.

Man finds his fulfillment in God, but on the other hand, also, God finds fulfillment for his being only in man, in the unio mystica . The longing of man for his Archetype, God, is fulfilled, as well as the longing of God for his image, man. Here the symbol of the mirror is not prime, but rather is that of God’s “self-portrayal” in man through procreation and birth. God’s “self-portrayal” ensues in the form of his self-realization in the sphere of corporeality. God as “mens manifestativum sui” actualizes himself in his highest form in his image as man by procreating and bearing his own image in man. Long before the historical birth of Jesus Christ, the creation of man already prefigures the “mysterium incarnationis.” Angelius Silesius, who gathered the most important experiences and thoughts of medieval mysticism into aphorisms of the most linguistically perfected kind—made possible no doubt by his own mystical experiences—expresses this ardent mutuality of the God-man relationship in the following epigrams from his Cherubinischen Wandersmann (“The Cherubic Pilgrim”):

God is as much on me, as I on him, dependent, His Being I help be, mine he helps be, resplendent. I know that without me, God cannot live a minute. If I should come to harm, He must give up the spirit. [1]

No mystic perceived this dual relationship between God and man more strongly than Master Eckhart. His perception can be expressed in the following simple thought: God does not want to be alone. His innermost Being is love. Love, however, can only be fulfilled in the presence of love, freely given in return. God created man in His image and gave him therewith the freedom to turn his full love toward Him and to respond to His love in return, but with this freedom also came the possibility of turning from Him. Indeed, man has misused his freedom; he has loved himself instead of directing his love toward God. But God cannot stop loving man and expecting from him the fulfillment of His love through love freely given in return. He awakens divine love in man by procreating and bearing His Son in human form. The divine, aboriginal fundus is an abyss, out of which divine love wafts before pouring into the human soul to fulfill itself therein.

In one point of the Christian mystic’s view of man, traits are found which were neglected or forgotten in traditional church teachings. These touch mainly on the Christian understanding of man in his relationship to the universe and to nature. The Reformation of the sixteenth century led to the emphasis of all religious and theological concern being shifted to the question about the nature of faith, or, as Luther formulated it, to the question, “How do I acquire a merciful God?” When the theology was confronted with this, the relationship between man and the universe was relegated more and more to the background. The fact that theology ceased to concern itself with the problem of a Christian understanding of the universe did much to emancipate the natural sciences from a theology which had lost its view. Only in the area of mystical anthropology was the old knowledge retained—that in the Creation, the Fall, and in salvation there is a real, eternal connection between man and the universe. This connection was still expressed by mystics like Master Eckhart, who treats it as clearly self-evident, and it is expressed in three ideas which occur again and again in later mysticism, as for example in Johann Arndt, the author of the Four Books on True Christianity . [2] But it is prominent also in the natural theology of Jacob Bohme and his heirs, right down to Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, until it achieved its last universal audience in the nature philosophy of Hegel and Schelling. [3]

The first idea is that there exists an inner connection between man and the universe even so far as the Creation is concerned, since man was created as the “epitome” and “quintessence” of the universe. This is the old Neoplatonic idea of man as the microcosm being resurrected within the framework of Christian Anthropology, naturally in a substantially altered form, not anymore the reflection but the quintessence, the epitome, the “extract” of the universe. In man, all the powers and forms of the universe are brought together; he is the point of intersection and the point of aggregation of all forms and developments of the universe; he is the “final creation” in an almost evolutionary sense. These are ideas that are found again in the Christian mystics among modern anthropologists and paleoanthropologists like Edgar Dacque, for whom the figure of man has always stood as an inner model and key image behind the whole range of forms of life in the plant and animal kingdoms; and, recently, Teilhard de Chardin, who also sees the evolution of life determined by a “hominization” that strives toward its future fulfillment in a greater cosmic Christ. [4]

The second idea is intimated and expressed in the words of the apostle Paul: “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the [revelation] [5] of the sons of God . . . because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. . . . For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain [with us] [6] together until now” (Romans 8:19, 21, 22.) Expressed here is the idea that by the revolt of man against God and by sin, not only man fell to the status of captive, but also the entire creation was pulled downward by man in the Fall and now awaits with man the day of its liberation through God. The idea in its completely natural sense is not so far removed from our thinking today, when we contemplate the devastation of t h e animal kingdom, the pollution of the waters and the atmosphere, and the destruction of nature by industrial and commercial plundering.

The third idea, however, is that God’s work of salvation is not limited to man but encompasses the whole universe. In the renewal of man, and with the restoration of the original divine image in mart, the universe is also brought back into the original order. These thoughts were expressed most clearly and powerfully by Johann Arndt in his Four Books on True Christianity . [7] Behind the title “Four Books on True Christianity” lies the idea of the fourfold self-revelation of God:

God revealed himself in man, whom he created in his image. He revealed himself in Jesus Christ, in whose person he returns to man the divine promise of salvation which man himself betrayed. God revealed himself in the holy scriptures, which expound the saving desire of God and awaken faith which leads to salvation. And he revealed himself in nature, which itself is a self-revelation of God.

The fourth book of Johann Arndt, which treats the self-revelation of God in nature, became the basis for all subsequent drafts of a theology of Nature. Nowhere else in mysticism is the unique nobility of man on the one hand, and the inner connection between the salvation of man and the salvation of the universe on the other, so clearly expressed as in Johann Arndt.

The mystical comprehension of the idea of Imago Dei , of the self-portrayal of God in man through the procreation and birth of the Son in man, leads directly, in the last analysis, to the concept of the apotheosis of man. This concept disappeared from church doctrine in the fifth and sixth centuries and never spread to the Roman Catholic Occident, even in the period of the Ancient Church, but it always remained alive in the tradition of Christian mysticism by virtue of the continuity of the mystical experience. Yet European believers who dared to speak about apotheosis in the Christian sense of the renewal of God’s image in man are not to be discussed here, but rather the representatives of an American Church, which—based on the experiences and doctrines of its visionary founder—has made the idea of deification the very foundation of its anthropology, its concept of the community, even its social structure: the Mormon Church. In examining this, of course, I break a European taboo, namely, the rule which is still widespread in European theology even after half a century of ecumenical movements— “Americana non Leguntur,” and the specific prejudice of German theology that Germans somehow have a hereditary right to theology and that American theology does not even exist.

That American theology which bases itself on a continuation of Old and New Testament revelation in the form of a further, definitive one, especially intended for America, is comprised of the teachings of the Mormons, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [8] A unique transformation of the concept of God is the basis for the teachings of Mormonism; that is to say, in the last analysis, the teachings of the Book of Mormon, which Joseph Smith, the founder of this church, maintained, was written on golden plates brought to him by an angel and translated by himself into English with the aid of the Urim and Thummim. This unique transformation of the idea of God led to the astounding achievements which this church has accomplished, achievements that can be demonstrated by the fact that the Church has established Zion anew in a unique cooperative effort in the middle of the Great Salt Lake Desert in the territory of the modern states of Utah, Idaho, Arizona, and California, after enduring persecutions of all kinds and overcoming obstacle after obstacle in first attempting to establish this new Zion in the state of Ohio and later in Missouri. [9]

It is unknown what spiritual tradition provided Joseph Smith (who as the son of a simple settler in Sharon, Vermont, grew up under the difficult conditions of colonization) with his new understanding of God. As a boy he heard the revival sermons of various preachers from various sects who came among the settlers. But what is characteristic about his religious development is precisely that he obeyed the angelic warning to join none of the existing sects, but to prepare himself for the imminent revelation of the eternal gospel whose herald he himself was to be. Today, historians of Christian theology might presume that he picked up by accident some half-understood bits of Schelling’s idea on theogony, the idea of a God who evolves himself in his creation, who grows with it and in it becomes more and more aware of himself—but among the settlers of the Wild West there was no such possibility.

And so the complete reinterpretation which the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints makes of the orthodox Christian view of God is all the more surprising. To be sure, the holy books of Mormon revelation—the Book of Mormon itself, as well as the Doctrine and Covenants—also speak in an apparently completely orthodox manner about the omnipotence and omniscience of God; they testify that he is the Lord of Creation and of salvation. But what is decisively new about Joseph Smith’s view of God is the idea that God himself participates in the fundamental law of the universe, namely, the law of eternal progression. God himself develops himself with his creations and participates in eternal progression.

Connected to this is, in Joseph Smith, the idea that God did not create the earth out of nothing—the elements of the earth are eternal and uncreated. In this eternal universe there is no dead matter. Matter is full of power and energy; even spirit is matter; spirit and energy belong to the eternal nature of the universe. The activity of God does not consist, then, of creating the universe out of nothing, but of bringing the existing universe of matter, spirit, and energy into a progressive order, to form this given universe more purely and more perfectly, to bring forth order out of chaos. In this activity he himself grows in power and glory as God. The Mormon view of God is a theology of progression and evolution.

But what was God in the beginning? The Mormons’ startling answer to this question is that in the beginning God was man. His relationship to the universe is the same as man’s relationship to the universe. He attempts to rationally form the given universe and make it useful to him. Since he is subject like man to the law of progression, this has to mean that

God must have been engaged from the beginning, and must now be engaged, in progressive development, and infinite as God is, he must have been less powerful in the past than he is today. . . . It is clear also that, as with every other being, the power of God has resulted from the exercise of his will. . . . As knowledge grew into greater knowledge, by persistent efforts of will, his recognition of universal laws became greater until he attained at last a conquest over the universe, which to our finite understanding seems absolutely complete. . . . We may be certain that, through self-effort, the inherent and innate powers of God have been developed to a God-like degree. Thus, he has become God. [10]

This naive formulation of that which Schelling made the basis of his natural theology—the doctrine of theogony—presupposes that the form in which God undertook the progressive organization of the earth was the human form.

Universally accepted among the Mormons is the idea that God has attained his present state of Godhood through his own efforts to organize the universe. In place of the God of conventional orthodox churches, who has always been complete, Mormonism knows of a God who has attained by his own activity, by progressive creative organization of the eternal, material, power-laden universe, a relative dominion over the world—a task which in no wise is complete and which needs further refining by means of more eternal progression. The universe is not yet complete; God has not yet attained the highest degree of his “Godhood.” He has accomplished a great deal since he engaged as an exalted man in the organization of the universe, but he has yet much to do. Progression is infinite.

In our age of space travel it is astonishing to see that this farm boy Joseph Smith, with his violently opposed visions, built his view of the world into a system of plurality of worlds which opens up all the possibilities of a macrocosmic theology. Each system of worlds has its God, who advances with it, who—one is tempted to say—tinkers with it, perfects it, and attempts to organize into higher forms its reluctant powers of spirit and matter, intelligence and energy. Parley P. Pratt, the great first-generation Mormon leader, said in 1855: “Gods, angels and man are all of the same species, they comprise a great family which is distributed over the whole solar system in the form of colonies, kingdoms, nations, etc. The great decisive difference between one part of this race and the other consists in the differing degrees of intelligence and purity and also in the difference of the spheres, which each of them inhabit, in a series of progressive Being.” [11]

There is, therefore, a great number of spirit beings who are all engaged in the climb toward godhood. In “worlds without number” (Moses 1:33) numerous gods, who are all subject to a “Supreme Head,” are still involved in eternal progression.

This idea has also been retained in modern Mormon theology. Apostle John A. Widtsoe writes in his book, A Rational Theology , which appeared in 1937:

Some may be approaching God in power, others may be immeasurably far from the Lord in power, nevertheless immeasurably far above us mortal men of the earth. Such intelligent beings may be as gods to us for they possess to a greater or less degree the quality of Godhood. [12]

Thus, the image of God and man join in the image of the Eternal Man. Man is an image of God because he progressively becomes more and more a god and approaches godhood. The anthropology of the Mormons is expressed in the colossal statement of Lorenzo Snow which became proverbial even in the early days of Mormonism: “As man now is, God once was: as God now is, man may become.” Again, it is clear that the image of the Divine Man stands behind this concept. “Man was also in the beginning with God” (D&C 93:29). Man and God are eternal intelligences, members of a great society of eternal beings. In a certain sense, future progression is therefore inherent in the Eternal Man. “We were begotten spirits by God, who thus became our Father, and we his sons and daughters.” [13]

But this eternal man does not enter the world in a completed form; he himself has grown in the Creation of the world, has become that which he is by a gradual progression, and he is not finished by any means. Through endless ages man has risen by slow degrees to his present state. Here begins the eschatology of the Mormons: only in the kingdom of God on earth will human progress attain its highest degree. The goal of the progressive development of man is the divine man. Man is eternal and as such the possessor of “Godlike attributes,” but these must first be formed, improved, developed and perfected in a series of progressive changes, in order to arrive at the fountainhead, the standard, the climax of Divine Humanity. Man is of the same family as God and the Gods, but like God himself he must first unfold his being in an act of self-creation through eternal progression.

How is the step taken, however, from heavenly man who was with God from the beginning, or from the heavenly spirit beings, rather, the heavenly intelligences, to a concrete man of this earth? In the answer to this question, the Mormons’ decisive fundamental anthropological attitude and religious feeling for life is clearly revealed: the heavenly spirits can only develop and perfect themselves in this world of matter, energy, space and time. The spirits press for incarnation in this world of time, space, power, and matter. They receive permission from God himself to take this decisive step which directs their progressive realization of self into the sphere of the body and makes it possible.

Of course, this presupposes one thing: an insistence on the ultimacy of human freedom. The Book of Mormon states: “Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way to eternal life.” (2 Nephi 10:23.) In 1830, Joseph Smith proclaimed that the Lord has said of man: “Behold, I gave unto him that he should be an agent unto himself “ (D&C 29:35.)

Hence the single human individual lived free and unembodied in his heavenly homeland as a rational spirit being—"intelligence,” “acting upon its own agency”—and independent in its own sphere as all rational beings are. (See D&C 30.) On the basis of its own free choice, the heavenly spirit being comes down to this earth to test its abilities in dealing with “coarse” matter and to develop itself in the realm of the body and in mortal time and space. Heavenly man did not ignorantly throw himself into this world, driven by sheer lust—as the Gnostic myth of redemption teaches—but came in full knowledge of the difficulties awaiting him here.

For the descent of the heavenly man into this world was preceded by the “great council in heaven,” in which God taught man that it is possible to develop his power and knowledge with a full consciousness of the difficulties, including death, awaiting him here. The spirit beings who press for incarnation know that death is a condition of corporeal life in time and space, and that suffering death is one of the tasks they have to perform in this world. This great plan was laid before the free spirits for their decision. In a decision of the free will, man continues on the path of eternal progression, under that great law of increasing complexity, “the law of endless development of all the powers of man in the midst of a universe becoming increasingly complex.” [14]

Especially revealing in context with this anthropology is the reinterpretation of the devil. Satan participated in “the great council in heaven.” He proposed to God that in view of the difficulties of man’s test in this new condition of terrestrial existence his agency, his freedom of choice, be taken away, and in its place that he, Satan, be allowed to lead the human family by the “Fuhrer principle” in order to bring each and every one to perfection without allowing anyone’s wrong decisions to endanger him. But God forbade Satan to encroach upon man’s freedom and to make him subject to his will. Rebellion at this refusal of God is the reason for Satan’s fall from the presence of God (Moses 4:1–6). As a result of his expulsion from heaven Satan now attempts to thwart the great plan of God on the earth and rob man of his free will. (See D&C 93:39.) Thus man comes to this earth to continue his development in a universe which is itself still in development.

A lessening or stealing of freedom is evil. This explains why Mormons refuse all stimulants like alcohol, tea, and coffee, as well as sedatives, in most instances, so that they will not be in a condition in which their free-thinking and decision-making processes are hindered.

This anthropology represents the most radical counter-pole to the Calvinistic doctrine of original sin. Mormons do not deny the existence of sin, but they stress that sin often means the choice of wrong means of self-actualization and self-progression. Consequently there is no original sin and therefore no punishment for original sin: “We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.” (Second Article of Faith.) The reality of death belongs to the earthly process of the perfection of man. The heavenly spirits already know in advance that death awaits them as a condition of being in the earth in space, time and corporeality, but they choose this form of progression in the full consciousness that overcoming these difficulties is a means of progression; at this point salvation through Christ begins to acquire meaning.

For this progression of man does not end in death, but continues on in life after death. This further progression, too, is dependent upon the fulfillment of God’s commandments in full freedom and clear understanding. In a revelation of the Lord to Joseph Smith we read: “For if you will that I give unto you a place in the celestial world, you must prepare yourselves by doing the things which I have commanded you and required of you.” (D&C 78:7.) Earthly life is a preparation for future life, a preparation which consists of keeping the commandments of God as they have been given through the revelations of the Bible and of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

The mode of existence after death is also of a corporeal character. Mormons do not hold with a pure , that is, bodiless existence. “There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes.” (D&C 131:7.) An immaterial being is a contradiction in terms. Immaterialness is just another word for nothingness and is the negation of all existence. Spirit is just as much matter as oxygen or hydrogen. Likewise the concept of the resurrection of the body plays an important role in Mormonism and determines in a decisive way a Mormon’s expectation of the coming kingdom of God. [15]

Mormon marriage practices are of two types—marriage for time, and marriage for time and eternity. Marriage for time binds the marriage partners until “death do you part”; this is the less desirable form of marriage. The second and preferred form of marriage is “marriage for time and all eternity.” It is based on a sacramental ordinance performed in the temple, the “sealing” of the marriage partners and their children to each other for eternity.

Historically Mormons have practiced a third form of marriage, “marriage for eternity.” This form of marriage is performed for men or women who have already died, in instances where the woman either was not married in life or had only been married “until death” and is hence marriageable again after death, that is, eligible for “marriage for eternity.”

These marriages “for time and eternity,” as well as those “for eternity,” will be continued in the next life. Marriage for eternity, therefore, provides the basis for the mutual cooperation of the partners in the infinite progression of the universe. The fathers and mothers of great families will find their fullest exaltation in the life to come and “. . . they shall pass by the angels, and the gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things. . . . ” (D&C 132:19.) Thus marriage, by which a husband is sealed into an eternal family unit, is the true path to godhood, and the way of eternal progression which best leads man above.

The theory and practice of birth control naturally finds many vigorous opponents among Latter-day Saints. “There are multitudes of pure and holy spirits waiting to take tabernacles. Now, what is our duty? To prepare tabernacles for them; to take a course that will not tend to drive those spirits into the families of the wicked, where they will be trained in wickedness, debauchery, and every species of crime. It is the duty of every righteous man and woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can.” [16]

In no other Christian doctrine is the connection between God and man so closely conceived, the idea of man as the image of God so concretely and literally interpreted, man brought into such close proximity to God, and God, on the other hand, so strongly directed to man, as in Mormonism. The thought of apotheosis in mysticism, which expresses itself there in the idea of the spiritual divine birth in man and in the spiritual procreation of the Son in man and in the progressive deification of man, has been translated here into a theology of evolution and progression, where the path that man travels from his prehistoric to his earthly form of existence to his future corporeal mode of existence in the kingdom of heaven is understood as the path of eternal progression determined by the “Great Plan” of God, which makes possible man’s ascent to godhood. It is not the path, however, of the lonely, celibate mystic, but the way of a great and ever-growing family of Saints in whom the creative, conscious organization of the universe is perfected.

One can think what one wants of this doctrine of progressive deification, but one thing is certain: with this anthropology Joseph Smith is closer to the view of man held by the Ancient Church than the precursors of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin were, who considered the thought of such a substantial connection between God and man as the heresy, par excellence. We must remember here that for the Ancient Church salvation stood in direct correlation to embodiment. Athanasius, the great Bishop of Alexandria, the head of the Church in all Egypt, summarized the Christian doctrine of salvation in the words, “God became man so that we may become God.” The goal of salvation is deification, and Athanasius invokes in this context the words of Jesus: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48.)

A study of the Bible interpretations of the Greek fathers, on which their dogmatic doctrines were based, leads to the surprising discovery that a passage of holy scripture which plays an outstanding role in the biblical foundation of anthropology has totally disappeared from occidental sermon and liturgy, namely Psalm 82:6: “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.” (“Ego dixi, Dii estis et filii excelsi.”)

In the Gospel according to John, this concept plays a decisive role in the understanding of man and the portrayal of the messianic self-consciousness of Jesus. In John 10:22, the discussion between Jesus and the scribes is depicted. There Jesus speaks the colossal phrase which comprises the key to his messianic self-consciousness: “I and my Father are one.” (John 10:30.) This phrase appears to the assembled orthodox Jews to be such a great blasphemy that they raise stones to extract—right on the spot—the punishment prescribed by the law to the party guilty of such blasphemy:

For blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? (John 10:33–36.)

Jesus takes the passage from Psalms literally as a promise spoken about mankind generally: “Ye are gods,” with a view to the fact that the Word of God came to man, to which thing Jesus clearly attributes the power of deification. Jesus specifically insists that this promise made by God to man—"ye are gods”—has and will retain its validity. The further thought process of Jesus is a conclusion which is common to rabbinic exegesis, “a minori ad Maius”: If God calls all those “god” to whom he has directed his promise, how much more then is that true for me! Jesus interprets the promise, “Ye are gods,” in the sense of salvation for everyone, a divine promise to all men. He does not dispute the universal validity of this phrase but intentionally emphasizes it and brings it out in order to then draw the conclusion about his own divine Sonship.

The theologians of the Ancient Church were not afraid of making the phrase “Dii estis et filii excelsi” the basis of their theological anthropology, nor of connecting it with their doctrine of man as the image of God. Thus Clement of Alexandria, the teacher of the Alexandrian School of Catechism, writes about the perfection of the true Gnostic:

The same occurs with us, whose archetype the Lord was: By baptism we are illuminated By illumination we receive the Sonship By Sonship we attain perfection By perfection we gain immortality. [17]

He states: “I have said: Ye are gods, and all together are sons of the most high.” The same Clement of Alexandria writes in another part of his “Miscellanies”: “This Gnosticism leads to an infinite and perfect goal.” He describes the life which is attained in this goal as a life which

is given unto us according to the will of God, in the community of the “Gods,” after we are freed of all chastisement and punishment which because of our sins, we have to endure, for the sake of our betterment, which brings salvation. After this release from punishment, praise and honor are granted us, for we shall attain perfection. . . . If we have become “of pure heart” then renewal awaits us in the form of our Lord throughout an eternal present, and such people then receive the name of “Gods,” since they are enthroned together with other “Gods” who have received the first place under their Saviour. [18]

Now, this idea of deification could give rise to a misunderstanding, namely, that it leads to a blasphemous self-aggrandizement of man. If that were the case, then mysticism would, in fact, be the most sublime, most spiritualized form of egoism. But the concept of Imago Dei , in the Christian understanding of the term, precisely does not aspire to awaken in man a consciousness of his own divinity but attempts to have him recognize the image of God in his neighbor. Here the powerful words of Jesus (Matthew 25), which the church fathers connected to Imago Dei , are appropriate. Jesus speaks here about the last judgment and describes the great surprise of those who are being judged. The judgment of the ruling Son of Man will be either acceptance into the kingdom of God or expulsion from the kingdom of God, depending on the attitude of each individual toward the Son of Man. The Son of Man says to those on his right hand:

Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

The blessed ones on his right hand are astounded by this communication, and ask:

Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

Thereupon they receive the answer:

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

And the corresponding answer is repeated for the damned at his left hand:

Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. (Matthew 25:34–40, 45.)

Hence, the concept of Imago Dei does not lead toward self-aggrandizement but toward charity as the true and actual form of God’s love, for the simple reason that in one’s neighbor the image of God, the Lord himself, confronts us, and that the love of God should be fufilled in the love towards him in whom God himself is mirrored, that is, in one’s neighbor. Thus, in the last analysis, the concept of Imago Dei is the key to the fundamental law of the gospel: “Thou shalt love God and thy neighbor as thyself,” since thou shouldst view thy neighbor with an eye to the image which God has engraven upon him and to the promise that he has given about him. This comprehension of one’s neighbor as the image of God is contained best in a phrase upon which Ernesto Buonaiuti bases one of his Eranos Lectures, the words of the Lord, not contained in the canonized Gospels but passed on to the Latin fathers of the second century, especially Tertullian. It is certainly authentic, for it represents a summary of the Lord’s words just cited from the Gospel of Matthew: “Vidisti fratrem, vidisti dominum tuum”— ”If thou hast seen thy brother, then thou hast also seen thy Lord.” [19]

[1] W. Bölsche, ed., Des Angelus Silesius Cherubinischer Wandersmann , 1675 authorized edition (Jena and Leipzig, 1905). Includes an essay: “Uber den Wert der Mystik für unsere Zeit” (“On the Worth of Mysticism for Our Time”).

[2] J. Arndt, Vier Bucher vom Wahren Christentum , 4th ed. (Berlin: Evangelischer Bücher-Verein, 1853).

[3] Ernst Benz, Schellings Theologische Geistesahnen (Wiesbaden, 1955). See also Ernst Benz, Les Sources Mystiques de la Philosophic Romantique Allemande (Paris, 1968).

[4] Ernst Benz, Schöpfungsglaube und Endzeiterwartung (Munich, 1965).

[5] Translator’s note: Here the King James and Luther Bibles differ. Luther translates Offenbarung (revelation), but the King James has manifestation.

[6] Translator’s note: Here Luther adds “mit uns,” which can only be inferred from the Greek.

[7] J. Arndt, op. cat.

[8] The Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1961).

[9] Thomas F. O’Dea, The Mormons (Chicago, 1966); Nels Anderson, Desert Saints: The Mormon Frontier in Utah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966); and R. Mullen, Die Mormonen: Geschichte einer Glaubensbewegung (Weilheim, 1968).

[10] John A. Widtsoe, A Rational Theology , 5th ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1946), pp. 24–25.

[11] Parley P. Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology , 7th ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1915), p.39.

[12] Widtsoe, op. tit., p. 26.

[13] Ibid., p. 32.

[14] Ibid., p. 23.

[15] Directly connected to the concept of these heavenly intelligences desiring a body out of free will and in order to be tested and perfected here on this earth, is a doctrine which was of the greatest significance to the preservation of the Mormon community but which is so strange to others that they would hardly make the connection, namely, the teaching and practicing of polygamy. Spirits press forward to earth and desire a body. The ruling system of monogamy in nowise does justice to the population pressure of the heavenly world of spirits. The problem of overpopulation is a problem for heaven, not a problem for the earth. Earth has room for all, but the process proceeds too slowly; the spirits who press for incarnation are getting impatient. Monogamy offers only modest possibilities, with the help of only one spouse, of doing justice to the spirits who desire bodies. So the establishment of polygamy makes room here, shortens the queue for those spirits waiting for incarnation. Joseph Smith had exactly the opposite concern as his contemporary, Pastor Malthus, who died in 1834, four years after the publication of the Book of Mormon, and who in his alarming treatise, “Essay on the Principle of Population,” which first appeared anonymously in 1798, depicted the menacing danger of the overpopulation of the earth. Joseph Smith’s optimistic doctrine of the eternal progression and development of life in the universe would have made Malthus’s fears seem laughable to the Prophet Joseph—in the event he knew about them—because he was concerned about the overpopulation of heaven, the population pressure of the heavenly spirit beings who wished to come down to this earth to get the chance to perfect themselves, but who were hindered in their arrival on this earth by laws requiring monogamy which had been passed by apostate Christians of the first centuries in contrast to the order of polygamy of the Old Testament.

Mormon polygamy, which later was repealed under the pressure of United States legislation and after a highly brutal campaign of federal police against Mormon polygamist families, was taken from the earth but kept intact by Mormons for the coming paradise in heaven—one can today as a Mormon take more than one wife from among those who are deceased. Mormon polygamy has nothing to do with sexual debauchery but is tied to a strict patriarchal system of family order and demonstrates in the relationship of the husband to his individual wives all the ethical traits of a Christian, monogamous marriage. It is completely focused on bearing children and rearing them in the bosom of the family and the Mormon community. Actually, it has a very great measure of selflessness, willingness to sacrifice, and sense of duty.

The purpose of polygamous marriages is not fulfilled only on this earth. Polygamous marriage is an essential part of the process of perfection and eternal progress and reaches beyond this earth into eternity; at least the true, religious marriage does.

[16] Brigham Young in Journal of Discourses , vol. 4, p. 56.

[17] Clemens von Alexandrien, Werke , ed. O. Stählin, in the series Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte (1905–1936).

[19] E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher, Neutestamentliche Apokryphen in Deutscher Ubersetzung. Vol. 1, Evangelien (Tübingen, 1959); Vol. 2, Apostolisches, Apokalypsen und Verwandtes (Tübingen, 1964).

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Christianity and Humanism

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Delivered at The University of Iowa in 1937

The world of scientific thought and speculation presents today a remarkable spectacle. After four hundred years of vaunted promising to bring in the kingdom of man through the knowledge that is power, we now find that the sovereignty of man that lieth hid in knowledge, to use a phrase of Francis Bacon, is being threatened by the relentless and brutal application of sheer racial and national power. The blind Samson of power has stalked into the temple of man and is now recklessly tumbling it to the ground. In the face of impending disaster, heresy hunters are rising on all sides and attempting to identify the demon that is taking us down the Gadarene slope. Mr. Mortimer Adler says it is the professors who are to blame, and especially the scientists; Mr. Archibald MacLeish blames the irresponsibles among the novelists and poets; John Haynes Holmes blames governmental leaders who do not carry out the wishes of the populace; Mr. Earl Browder says it is the capitalists; M. Ortega y Gasset says it is the revolt of the masses; and the Pope says it is the refusal of modern man to accept the guidance of Rome.

Whatever the cause for the present debacle, we are all rapidly coming to fear that civilization today possesses more of memory than of promise. As we approach the abyss, the feared eclipse of all that is dear to civilized man, we echo the words of the prophet, “Watchman, tell us of the night.” But whatever the outcome, we are all being forced to ask the question as to what it is that we would have. Like Macbeth we appreciate the dignity of man only when we have become aware that we are losing it, only when we realize that we are in the twilight that may precede death’s dateless night.

In such a situation as this, a discussion of the subject “Christianity and Humanism” acquires a more than academic significance, for there are not a few people who, like Abraham pleading for Sodom, will say that if only two good things, Christianity and humanism, can be shown to be still alive among us, our modern Sodom is still worth saving. Even the news commentators of the radio, men who run as they read, are occasionally to be heard appealing to the enduring values of both Christianity and humanism. And yet, it is doubtful if these two concepts represent anything very definite for a large proportion of those who appeal to them. They are merely blessed words for anyone who wants a prayer-wheel. What it is that would be saved if our civilization were, in the outcome, to be able to transmit Christianity or humanism to another generation is not very clear. Moreover, it is equally unclear what elements in Christianity or humanism would be able to help save civilization. There is something pathetic about the tardy discovery that Christianity is not something for the masses alone and that humanism is not merely an optional luxury for the cultivated few. Indeed, it is difficult to avoid also the impression that there is a note of condescension in the voices of those who in passing give lip service to either Christianity or humanism. We detect the unstated presupposition that if we can only get out of our present predicament with the aid of Christianity and humanism, we shall in good time be able to return to the condition in which we shall not have to be disturbed either by Christianity or by humanism.

The cause of the vagueness that attaches to the average educated man’s references to Christianity and humanism is not mere indolence or the love of catchwords. Christianity and humanism are not easy to identify. Their supporters are themselves divided. Moreover, both movements have had a long history in which a great variety of ideas and activities have appeared. The result is that there are as many types of Christianity or of humanism as there are of anti-Christianity or of anti-humanism. Yet it is not necessary to delineate all of the types of Christianity or of humanism in order to arrive at a working definition of either Christianity or humanism. To delineate adequately all of the types of Christianity or of humanism would be tantamount to classifying most of the types of religion that have appeared in the West within the past thousand years, and to delineate the types of humanism would require that we take into our purview movements of thought that are entirely beyond the boundaries of Western civilization. At all events, we shall assume that neither of these tasks is necessary for our present purpose, and we shall instead attempt to bring into relief only the basic characteristics of these two movements.

First, let us attempt a general definition of Christianity. Christianity is a religion of salvation from sin and death, a salvation ultimately effected by a loving Creator-Redeemer God as the result of the response of man, the child of God, to divine historical revelation. This response takes the form of repentance and conversion, of faith and charity, all of which are signs of the breaking of the kingdom of God into history. Hence, it may be said that thinking in Christian terms means thinking in terms of creation, revelation, and redemption. In other words, all of the categories of Christian theology are theonomous: they point to an Other that is the Beginning and End of all being. Salvation is of the grace of God, not of man. Here, then, we find the leitmotifs of the Christian religion. This religion has come into contact with many other tendencies, religious and secular; it has adjusted itself to the supposed needs of different times and places. As a result, it has successively (and) even simultaneously manifested itself in a great variety of ways. But in spite of this variety it has always aimed to take the primitive Christian faith with its Jewish praeparatio evangelica as in some sense or other normative. It is, therefore, a religion oriented not only to the transcendent but also to events in history. Hence, its character cannot be properly dealt with without reference to a salvatory history.

Humanism is not a religion, nor is it, like Christianity, a unique historical movement with a historical figure at its center. Like generic religion it possesses certain general features, but it is always conditioned more by the environing culture than by any particular and decisive historical event. There is no such thing as humanism in general. There is the humanism of Confucius, conditioned by the special historical circumstances and world-views which surrounded it. There is the humanism of Greece and of Rome, colored by the general world-view and religious outlook of paganism. There is a Christian humanism that was not only conditioned by the fact that it developed on Christian soil but also by the fact that it has been openly allied with Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic. The Christian elements within the various types of humanism that are to be found in modern Western civilization are in some cases difficult to isolate, but all forms of modern humanism depend upon Christianity as well as upon Hellenism. This is equally true for Christian humanism, for the revolutionary humanism of the seventeenth century and of the late eighteenth century, for the romantic humanism of the twentieth century. Now, although there are Christian elements in all of these types of humanism, there is also in every humanism something that distinguishes it from Christianity. What are these distinguishing features of humanism? That is, what is the essence of humanism? It is the tendency to view human existence without reference to the religious transcendent, that is, as self-sufficient and self-enclosed. In place of salvation as a goal, humanism aims to achieve the development of the self toward human maturity and proportionateness. It seeks to achieve these qualities by means of methodical self-reflection, by taking direct cognizance of the self-enclosed human situation, by maintaining through pedagogy a creative, intuitive relation to the past. Whereas the distinguishing feature of the Christian ethos is humility or creatureliness, the distinguishing feature of the humanist ethos is the poise of mature humaneness. Hence, whereas Christianity aims through the power of God and through fellowship in the church of Christ to effect man’s overcoming of his fallen condition of “living well.” In both Christianity and humanism the necessity of pedagogy is, to be sure, recognized, but in Christianity this pedagogy is theonomous; that is, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in and out of the church, whereas in humanism this pedagogy is from man to man under the guidance of intuition. Moreover, the pedagogy of Christianity has for its material content Christ’s revelation of God’s purpose for man, whereas the pedagogy of humanism gives instruction to man concerning himself, that is, concerning his essence and the perfecting of this essence.

Although modern humanism, as distinguished from ancient humanism, is largely dependent upon Christianity, we may identify certain elements as common to Christianity and ancient humanism. An example is belief in the dignity of man, though Christianity emphasizes the dignity of each individual, and ancient humanism emphasizes the dignity of the rational human essence in general. One may also recognize a certain similarity between Christianity and ancient humanism as, for example, in the Christian concept of conversion, the Platonic concept of becoming like God, and the Aristotelian concept of the divine life in man. But we cannot dwell on these similarities here. Indeed, to do so might give the erroneous impression that the ethos of Greek humanism and of Christianity are more nearly similar than they actually are. It must suffice here to say that there is a fundamental difference between the decisive concepts of the Greek ethos and of the Christian ethos, a difference that is usually symbolized by the terms Eros and Agape.

We must turn our attention to the similarities between the modern forms of humanism and Christianity. This procedure finds its justification in the fact that even when the modern humanist appeals to ancient humanism, he tends to select elements that are compatible with his own conscious or unconscious adherence to certain Christian presuppositions. Indeed, the similarities between modern humanism and Christianity are for the most part the consequence of the dependence of modern humanism upon Christianity, due to the fact that the humanists of the Middle Ages and of the modern era were nurtured on Christian soil.

SIMILARITIES BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND HUMANISM

Let us now turn to a consideration of those elements of the Christian world-view that are shared in varying ways by all major forms of modem humanism, but here confining our attention to the Christian humanism in the Renaissance and the type of modern humanism represented by Irving Babbitt. What are the principal similarities between Christianity and this tradition of modern humanism deriving primarily from the so-called Christian humanism of the Renaissance?

1. First, there is the similarity of attitude towards nature, an attitude that is either implicit or explicit in modern humanism. The Christian attitude towards nature may most succinctly be characterized by reference to the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, a doctrine that depends ultimately upon an attitude characteristic of the Old Testament. The Christian attitude towards nature grows out of the view that God is the Creator of nature, as well as of man, that the heavens and the hills declare the Glory of God. In substance this view implies a repudiation of the pagan view that the world of nature is demonically hostile to man or basically resistant to the power of God. Here we discover immediately a difference between modern humanism and pagan humanism. The latter, for example in the thought of Plato and Aristotle, views nature or matter as resistant. In their view God in nature has to deal with a recalcitrant material, a material that must be subjected to form. In the Christian view of creatio ex nihilo, on the other hand, matter is itself the result of God’s creative act. Hence, it is asserted in the book of Genesis that God looked upon his creation and saw that it was good. This same view is, of course, to be found also in the New Testament. It is true that nature in the Jewish-Christian view is believed to exist now in a fallen state. Yet, matter is not in itself evil. For this reason the Christian contrast between flesh and spirit does not imply a derogatory judgment of flesh as such. As Augustine and Luther point out, flesh in the Christian view is a perversion of spirit due to man’s corrupt will. Now, it is largely because modern humanism adopted this general attitude towards nature that it must be distinguished from paganism. And that is also the reason why it eschews asceticism. Modern humanism, no less than Christianity, is thus opposed to Manichaeanism and to any view that considers the body the prison of the soul. Hence, we may say that modern humanism accepts the this-worldly implications of the Christian view of the resurrection of the body. Indeed, it is likely that it was largely because of Christianity’s positive estimate of nature that Christians, both Protestant and Catholic—aside from fundamentalists—have so readily adjusted themselves to the scientific method of the investigation of nature. For the Christian as well as the modern humanist, there is no fundamental taboo with regard to nature. Here we find, then, the basis for a certain optimism shared by Christianity and humanism in contrast to a pessimism and melancholy so common in pagan humanism. For in Christianity and humanism there is no fear of nature.

2. The second similarity between Christianity and humanism arises from the fact that modern humanism has taken over the Jewish-Christian idea of monotheism. The basic significance of this idea, a significance that is implicitly recognized today far beyond the confines of the Christian Church, is that it asserts the unity of meaning of all existing things. On this basis, and only on this basis, can the unity of the knowledge of the natural order and the unity of ethical activity directed towards changing the world be maintained. In Christianity and in Christian humanism, all attempts to divide the world up into various spheres that confront each other with absolute claims is rejected. Both the humanist and the Christian reject any interpretation of existence that involves a conflict or a dualism between divine powers. They deny that there is any ultimate demonic enemy. The demonic is subordinated to the ultimate unity of meaning. Hence, the spiritual and social idea of unity as held in the Occident derives from the Christian doctrine of the unity of God. Here, again, we find a motif in modern humanism that weights the balance on the side of optimism and that resists the pessimism and melancholy of pagan humanism.

3. And yet, though nature is not a demonic power for either Christianity or humanism, it is also not worthy of man’s highest interest if he is to be saved or if he is to achieve his human maturity. This brings us to a third similarity between Christianity and humanism. We may characterize this similarity as a common acceptance of a sort of doctrine of incarnation. Whereas the Christian’s salvation involves his becoming a member of the body of Christ and sharing in the new being that comes from living en Christo, humane maturity requires that man shall enter into his inheritance through considering mankind as the proper study of man, and through submitting himself to the general norm derived from this study. Through acquiring the habits that will turn him from triviality to seriousness, from the preponderance of single elements to proportionedness, from eccentricity to highly serious normality, he will ascend to meet his fellow men in the common sharing of the humanly significant. In opposition to Burckhardt’s emphasis upon individualism as the central characteristic of Renaissance humanism, we must recognize that in the Christian humanism of the Renaissance, in the tradition of the courtier and the gentleman, and in the methods of literary and artistic production, a large place was given to the idea of imitation. Thus the Christian idea of the imitation of Christ finds a parallel in the humanist idea of imitation of models. Consequently both humanism and Christianity are opposed to naturism, and they are also opposed to ethical relativism. This means that human destiny is from the humanist and the Christian points of view not to be fulfilled through any immediate coming to terms with the environing reality, as is the case with scientism and naturism. Both views aim to transcend the present moment and to bring about an experience of “filled” or “enriched” or “interpenetrative” time. The past is consciously and selectively carried over from moment to moment in the collective consciousness of the church or of the humanist society. All of these ideas are implicit in varying ways in both the Christian doctrine of the incarnation and in the modern humanist doctrine of imitation.

4. The fourth similarity between Christianity and humanism is an aspect of the attitude toward history that they share. It is also an implication of their common antipathy for naturism. Ultimately the source of this attitude must be traced back to Hebrew prophetic and Persian eschatological thought. It constitutes one of the basic differences between Greek and Christian ways of thinking, as Augustine so clearly points out in the twelfth book of The City of God. In paganism, reality is viewed unhistorically. Its decisive concept is physics and not history. The conception of nature as eternally repeating itself in cycles is viewed by Augustine as characteristic of this pagan attitude towards the world. In contrast to this attitude, Christianity views the world as historical, as involved in a process of directed time rather than of cyclic time. Man is moving towards a goal. Thus the idea of fate in paganism is replaced by the ideas of the fall, of providence and of the Eschaton in Christianity. Howard R. Patch’s study of the goddess Fortuna in medieval literature provides an instructive account of the gradual subordination of Fate to Providence. It must be conceded that the Christian idea of Providence and of directed time has been carried to an extreme in the pre-millenarian sects of evangelical Protestantism. And likewise we may concede that this sense of the significance of the directedness and meaningfulness of history has received naïve expression in the secular idea of progress. Yet in large measure the optimistic attitude towards human history found in modern humanism is an inheritance from the Christian view of history as the theater of salvation. This element in modern humanism and in Christianity along with the first idea mentioned—namely the idea that creation is fundamentally good rather than demonic or resistant—goes far to explain the world-affirming character of Western civilization, a feature that is a constant source of surprise to the Orient.

5. The fifth similarity between Christianity and humanism is in their estimate of human nature. On this point the various types of humanism differ. Revolutionary humanism possesses an undialectical concept of human nature which is bound up with the idea of human perfectibility. Romantic humanism, as represented by German idealism, overstresses the likeness between the structure of the human mind and that of the absolute mind. It tends thus to minimize the difference between man’s essence and his existence. Christian and modern classical humanism, on the other hand, restates the Christian doctrine of the Fall by asserting and emphasizing a fundamental and enduring difference between man’s essence and his existence. Man has two natures, a higher and a lower, and never the twain shall meet. Thus both classical and Christian humanism are on principle opposed to all forms of Utopianism. The vision of the greatness of man never blurs the vision of the littleness of man. As Professor Douglas Bush says, “It is that simultaneous double vision of man which gives the literature of the English Renaissance its ethical strength and centrality, its heights and its depths of tragic emotion. The Christian religion exalted man’s sense of his divinity and deepened his sense of bestiality; the distance between the two extremes is greater than it is in the most religious and philosophic of the classical authors.”

Consequently, Christianity and Christian humanism place great emphasis upon the need for discipline and upon the primacy of the will over the intellect. For the same reason, they both favor an aristocratic view of human nature. For the humanist, this natural aristocracy depends upon the ethically disciplined will. For the Christian, it depends upon the redemptive love of Christ. Hence, rank, class, vocation, inheritance, race are all deprived of decisive significance. The distinction between the Greek and the barbarian is transcended in this modern humanism as well as in Christianity. Even the formal equality of all men with regard to rationality, as asserted by Stoicism, is transcended. In their place we find in humanism the concept of humanity and in Christianity the distinction between the regenerate and the unregenerate. Here we have another implication of the idea of monotheism. The criterion of meaningfulness cuts across all artificial or natural boundaries that separate human beings. The basic frame of reference or definition of value is valid for all. And no man is justified except through the grace of God or through the exercise of will.

In this connection, we must mention one other aspect of the Christian-humanist conception of human nature, namely, the assertion of the infinite value of the individual personality. This attitude is expressed in the distinction between man’s external possessions or situation and the quality of his inner life. Hellenism tended to neglect this opposition between inwardness and external situation. And even Roman Catholic Christianity has blunted this distinction by replacing the Jewish law with a church law and a demand for external works (in the sense of ritual). Radically Protestant Christianity and Christian humanism both aim to transcend legalism, the one by asserting the supremacy of the Gospel of love over law, the other by relying upon intuition rather than upon mere convention or external decorum. Something of this attitude is to be discerned in Confucian humanism, with its emphasis upon inner propriety. This general attitude involves the affirmation of the dignity of the individual soul. In radical Protestantism it takes the form of respect for individual conscience (in the fellowship of believers), of denial of the necessity for hierarchical intermediaries, and of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. This radical laicism passes over into modern classical humanism and assumes the form of an individualism, disciplined according to a universal norm. In the Christian scheme this individualism is subordinated to charity and in humanism it is checked by the ideal of proportionateness or of complete humanity.

It should be clear from this analysis that all forms of modern humanism share in varying degrees and ways in the Christian heritage. It is definitely inaccurate, therefore, to associate Christianity in a narrow way with Hebraism or to associate humanism exclusively with Hellenism. In Christian and in modern classical humanism the Hellenic elements are transformed into something non-pagan, and where there is no transformation there is at least subordination to a Christian ethos. It may be added in this connection that it is misleading to speak of the spirit of religion and the spirit of the gentleman as if they were entirely distinguishable. We see also that the familiar characterization of naturism, humanism, and religion as representing three different levels of experience may also conceal as much as it reveals. If not in accomplishment, at least in attitude, modern culture—and especially modern humanism—have absorbed certain important features of the Christian world-view and ethos. Indeed, so deeply have Christian ideas affected modern humanist society that it would require a miraculous self-conscious atavism for it to return to Hellenism. The Christian attitude toward nature, toward the unity of meaning, toward interpenetrative time and directed time, and toward personality, seem rather to be on the verge of destruction at the hands of a post-humanist and post-Christian barbarism of blood and class. Of this we shall speak in our conclusion.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND HUMANISM

Autonomy vs. Theonomy

Let us turn now to the differences between Christianity and modern classical humanism. The fundamental difference between Christianity and humanism is in their attitude toward the transcendent, toward what might be called the vertical dimension of existence. In the parlance of theology, Christianity is fundamentally theonomous, and humanism is autonomous. As we have already indicated, Christianity with its goal of the salvation of man, relies ultimately upon grace, whereas humanism with its goal of human maturity relies ultimately upon the intuition and ethical will of self-sufficient and independent human nature. It has often been asserted that Christianity is heteronomous and that the humanism that accepts Christianity must also become heteronomous by submitting to an authority “anterior, superior and exterior” to itself. In this connection, a very important distinction must be made, a distinction often overlooked by Roman Catholics and orthodox Protestants and also by many exponents of humanism. The Christian movement arose as a protest against heteronomy, i.e., as a protest against rabbinical legalism and the heteronomy of the Jewish law. It did not call men to the absolute obedience of any earthly authority, any institution, or any man. It confronted men with the necessity of recognizing the inbreaking kingdom of God through its herald, Jesus Christ, and also with the demand for a change of heart in order that this kingdom might be fulfilled. Both the heteronomy of Jewish legalism and the autonomy of the self-sufficient creature were replaced by a relation to the dynamic transcendent action of God in history through His herald, Jesus Christ. The history of Catholicism and of orthodox Protestantism represents a deflection from primitive Christianity through the revival of legalism and heteronomy, through the incursion of the heteronomy of the church in Catholicism and of the church and the Scriptures in orthodox Protestantism. Primitive Christianity with its orientation to the suprahistorical kingdom of God had again cast the light of the divine upon all things finite, breaking them in their self-enclosed power, and revealing their inevitable ambiguity in the existential order. The theonomous view of man and nature thus locates the absolute beyond time rather than in time, and consequently it denies all absolute claims that may be attached to nature, man, institutions, books, and even to events in history. Jesus himself asks a disciple to call no man good, not even Jesus himself.

In the light of these distinctions, we must say that both Christian theologians and humanists have erred in characterizing Christianity as essentially heteronomous. Heteronomous Christianity is a perverted Christianity. It is a form of idolatry in the sense that it presupposes that something finite can exhaust reality. It gives to a finite object the status that belongs only to the transcendent, to God. Hence, any humanist that says he cannot accept Christianity because he cannot surrender his autonomy needs to learn that the real battlefront between himself and Christianity is at another point. In refusing to accept heteronomy, he is actually refusing to accept a perversion of Christianity. The fundamental line of the cleavage between strict humanism and Christianity is thus the difference between autonomy and theonomy. This does not mean, however, that Christianity denies autonomy to man. Rather it only denies absolute autonomy to human nature. It asserts that whether he recognizes it or not, man’s basic power to exist and to fulfill his essence is something given. And it asserts also that this power to exist and to fulfill the human essence is infected with a perversion, a contradiction, that permeates all existence and separates it from its essence. On the other hand, so long as man or anything exists, it manifests in some degree the divine power of being and of integration. If this divine power were not present, existence would itself come to an end. And, conversely, existence can be brought nearer to its essence only through the meaningful incursion of the creative and re-creative power of the transcendent.

Hence, the human essence is not the ultimate and creative ground of temporal existence. Man is a creature, and in all meaningful activity he manifests the divine tendency toward integration or re-integration. In other words, man is the Schauplatz of cosmic forces, and not a self-contained, self-sufficient essence. Hence, it would be erroneous to suppose that there obtains a simple opposition between theonomy and autonomy. It is true that formerly this concept of theonomy was used to express divine determination in contrast to self-determination, but this usage presupposes a radical dualism between the divine and the human. In contrast to this usage, we employ the term only to express a transcendent qualification of self-determination. Theonomy is, in opposition to heteronomy, the fulfillment of self-determined forms with transcendent import. Theonomy does not involve the renunciation of autonomy, as does heteronomy in the Catholic theory of authority; it involves, rather, the deepening of autonomy in itself to the point where it goes beyond itself. In other words, theonomy involves the transcending of the autonomous forms of culture and society. It reorientates these autonomous forms to a religious principle that both supports them with the power of being and breaks into them, opening them to transcendent judgment and fulfillment. It does not repudiate autonomy, but it does assert that human nature is not self-sufficient and independent of the creative powers of the cosmos and, also, that the independence or self-sufficiency of humanism eventually brings about the loss of its own creative power and suffers the nemesis of emptiness and blindness. In both of these aspects of theonomy, we find, then, a corrective for humanistic pride.

We must remember, of course, that if the besetting sin of humanism is a pride in humanistic possessions and a consequent tendency to be terribly at ease in Zion, the besetting sin of Christianity is a pride in divine possessions that leads either to fanaticism or to heteronomy. Therefore, the Christian, or at least the radical Protestant, would assert that the only cure for either of these besetting sins is the spirit of penitence which is elicited by a vital theonomous relationship. Although there is a similarity between the besetting sins of Christianity and humanism, the humanist tries to find the cure within himself, but the Christian finds salvation in the new being emanating by grace through Jesus Christ.

There is also another besetting sin of historical Christianity and of humanism which should be mentioned, for it will serve to bring into relief another aspect of the fundamental difference between Christianity and humanism. We have already spoken of the history of Catholicism and orthodox Protestantism as a history of heteronomy overcoming theonomy in religion. This same tendency is to be found in humanism. In its denial of the transcendent, our modern civilization has been largely influenced by secular humanism, but it must be noted that modern civilization, like modern humanism, has not been able to remain strictly secular. Many humanists, recognizing the need for a transcendent relationship, have, instead of accepting a theonomous view, surrendered to Roman Catholic heteronomy. But a still larger number of modern secularists and even of nominal Christians have surrendered autonomy through accepting still other heteronomous authorities. They have become idolators of imperialism, capitalism, Marxian socialism, racism, nationalism. The emptiness of a humanistic society has become intolerable, and as a compensation, there has emerged a frantic attack upon autonomy and an attempt at demonic fulfillment through heteronomy. These repudiations of a humanistic society, then, are to be explained at least in part as deriving from an inadequacy, a besetting sin, of humanism, namely, the tendency to develop first into a state of emptiness and then into a disguised religion of a heteronomous character. We are suggesting that the corrective for this tendency of both Christianity and humanism to become heteronomous is the conception of theonomy, a conception that transcends both heteronomy and autonomy.

Humanist and Christian Views of Institutions

We have characterized a fundamental difference between Christianity and humanism as a difference between theonomy and autonomy, yet, we must make reference to three other major differences between Christianity and humanism.

The second major difference is the difference between the Christian and the humanist attitudes toward the role of institutions in human life. In general, we may say that humanism, because of its academic character, tends either to interpret the institutional problem in a narrow way or to give it only slight emphasis. It interprets the role of institutions in a narrow way by confining its attention primarily to the school. This means that although humanism has emphasized the necessity of both doctrine and discipline, its disciplines are specific only for the youth who are in school and at best very vague and individualistic for the adult section of the community. Growth in grace for the Christian is not possible apart from the fellowship of believers, a fellowship that aims to establish standards and practices that will nourish the individual (and the group) from childhood to old age. These standards and disciplines touch the domestic vocational, political, and social life. The disciplines aim to educate and nourish all sorts and conditions of men, both youth and age, both educated and uneducated, both privileged and underprivileged. And they aim not only to affect the mind but also the ethical will. Not that humanistic education does not affect the will. The point is rather that Christian nurture provides a close-knit community in which ideals and conduct are regularly brought under scrutiny by the group, and in which the disciplines of prayer, worship, and social action offer channels for the exercise of the will. Since humanism, apart from the church, does not possess this close-knit community with its disciplines, its adherents have only a furtive relation to each other and are thus deprived of the constant mutual support that alone can make reason and the will of God prevail. In this respect, humanism possesses a tendency similar to that of pietism: it emphasizes the “tending” of the individual soul to the neglect of communally supported social interests. It would be a gross exaggeration to assert that Christianity has achieved an adequate equilibrium between doctrine and discipline, but we are justified in saying at least that organized Christianity has more fully recognized the problem and more adequately dealt with it than has secular humanism.

Attitudes Toward the Psyche

The third difference between Christianity and humanism is a difference of attitude concerning the nature of the human psyche. It is a difference that is closely related to the one that we have just been discussing. Humanism, and with it much of Liberal Protestantism, has tended to attach great significance to the conscious intellectual life. This is a consequence of the humanist and the liberal Christian concept of personality, a concept that neglects the large role of emotion, association, and imagination in individual and social life. Indeed, the phenomenal rise of the new heteronomies of communism and national socialism, not to speak of the power of nationalism (“man’s other religion”), is partly due to the imaginative and symbolic power of these movements. So great has been this symbolic power that many people from both the humanist and the Christian traditions have been won over. One reason for this mass conversion is to be found in the appeal of these movements to deeper levels of the human psyche. There is a limit to the weight of the burden that can be placed on the human consciousness.

Christianity has not failed to recognize this fact, and it has from the beginning been rooted in something deeper than the human consciousness. Indeed, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit may be cited as an integral part of the significance of the forces beneath and beyond the human consciousness. This is only one example. Christianity in both doctrine and discipline has utilized the symbols and institutions—for example, the ideas of the kingdom of God, the doctrine of the body of Christ and the practice of the Lord’s Supper, not to mention the power of song and the regular discipline of public worship, as well as the symbols and disciplines that enlist the whole man rather than only the mind. In this connection, Irving Babbitt emphasized the large role of the imagination in the human psyche, but it seems to me that the problem of the imagination was left by him to be solved by the individual. At all events, we may assert that secular humanism has not developed imaginative symbols that are generally recognized by humanists to be decisive or constitutive for the transmission or practice of humanism. It might be argued, of course, that the ideal of the gentleman, or of the honnete homme, represents an appeal to the imagination, but this is obviously the sort of symbol that is powerfully effective for only one group in society. Moreover, it has even among gentlemen lost its former spontaneous and decisive force.

Humanist and Christian Attitudes Toward Culture

This brings us to the final difference between Christianity and humanism to be given special mention, the difference between their attitudes toward culture. Here again the relationship is not a simple one. Just as theonomy does not represent an orientation which replaces or exists alongside that of autonomy but rather one which goes through and beyond it, so Christianity does not demand a repudiation of culture but rather a deepening and transcending of it. Christianity does not essentially oppose culture, it only radically disputes its self-sufficiency. Hence, there is no basic feud between Christian theology and culture as such. Christianity is not ascetic, and it does not despise the forms and meanings that are associated with culture. Its quarrel with culture is the same as its quarrel with autonomy: culture in a humanist society is viewed as self-contained, self-sufficient, and at best an expression of man’s orientation toward particular, finite, meaningful objects. It fails to see the transcendent meaning of the finite and thus becomes unaware of the transcendent threat that confronts every self-enclosed entity, the threat to overweening security and self-assurance. It is because of this tendency in humanism that we may say that urbanity kills Christianity.

The disastrous consequence of humanist self-sufficiency may be better observed if we turn to the sociological area. The general effect of autonomous humanism in modern civilization has been to shunt religion into an area by itself. The religious group has become a separated sociological group in which something different is at stake than in the other sociological groups. Religion is associated with its socological bearers: the institution of the church, the priesthood, the officers and members of the church, the sacraments, and the special disciplines of the church. Then these sociological bearers of religion are repudiated and the humanists make the claim to offer a more palatable substitute. The heteronomous churches have only assisted in encouraging this attitude by claiming to have in their possession peculiar and exclusive media for the dispensing of grace or for approaching the transcendent.

The theonomous point of view that has been suggested in this paper represents a radical denial of both of these views. It denies that religion is one thing alongside others, that the transcendent is accessible only in certain areas of life and that the other areas of life may maintain independence. More than that, the theonomous point of view carries with it a denial that God himself is merely one Being alongside other entities; it is a qualification of the conditioned and finite objects of the world of nature and man. The world and all finite objects point beyond themselves to some unconditioned aspect of reality in which they participate and from which they are at the same time separated. The theonomous consciousness does not hold that there is a separate transcendent world, but rather that all finite objects possess a transcending character, and that when they have entirely lost this character they have also lost their power to exist or to fulfill their essence.

This loss of the sense of the transcending character of all things is the precise cause of the atomism of modern civilization and of the defeatism and emptiness that is in our day making a desperate attempt, through the surrender of autonomy to heteronomy, to regain a vivid and dynamic sense of meaningfulness.

Professor Douglas Bush, in his book on The Renaissance and English Humanism, indicates that he believes “it will be impossible for us to bring back a general belief in a supernatural world,” but he does suggest that something like it will have to be appealed to if we are to avoid the loss of the values of Christianity and humanism incident to the rise of the new religions of nationalism, capitalism, communism, national socialism, and the vitalistic psychology of the unconscious. It would seem that man is incurably religious in a much more ominous fashion than M. Sabatier originally meant to suggest. The choice that lies before man is not Christianity or humanism, but rather Christianity or paganism. The power of humanism derives in the long run from the transcendent orientation of Christianity, and when this power is weakened, one form or other of idolatry will take its place, the idolatry of academic isolationism, or erotic or material possessions, of class, race, or nation.

I recall a conversation I had a few years ago with the famous German philosopher, Karl Jaspers in Heidelberg. I ventured to ask him his view concerning the significance today of humanism and liberalism. I asked the question partly because of the general assumption that he thinks of himself as a humanist and a liberal. His reply was shockingly emphatic for a man of poise and vision. He replied, “Humanism and liberalism have no longer any significance. The only group that in our world has the positive courage of its convictions is that of the orthodox Christians. My advice to any young man is that he return to orthodox Catholicism or Protestantism. Only in these groups is there to be found the Zwang that can resist the rising tide of barbarism in the world.” But it is worthy of note that Dr. Jaspers has not himself returned to orthodox Christianity. I pointed this out to him, and he replied that he was speaking as a sociologist and not giving a confession of his personal faith.

There are many such men of good will around us today who see that the values cherished in common by humanism and Christianity are not eliciting the loyalty needed for their survival, and yet they cannot accept Christian supernaturalism. It is my conviction that they are justified in making this refusal, but they are themselves partially to blame for the stalemate. They have supinely accepted the statements of the supernaturalists and of the authoritarian churches as to the nature of religion and even of God. Having done this, they labor under the erroneous impression that the only alternative to a secular humanism is a heteronomous supernaturalism. What is actually needed is a group of Christians and of humanists who will humbly take up the task of working out a religious conception of life that will at the outset repudiate the projection of an objective divine world behind and alongside the objective natural-human order, who will together take up the hints in this direction that have been thrown out by Christian theologians from the early Middle Ages down through Nicholas of Cusa, Schelling, and Friedrich von Huegel and thus make possible the overcoming of those modern idolatries, political, ecclesiastical, and academic, that are attempting either to bring in the kingdom of heaven by violence or are pining away with anemia. The power of God is not to be despaired. Our sin is that old devil Accidie. Dark night and chaos are upon us only because we cannot hear the summons: Repent ye! The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

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The Christian Understanding of the Human Person

by Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller

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This essay is adapted from Cardinal Müller’s Commencement Address delivered at Christendom College, Front Royal, Virginia, on May 13, 2017.

Publisher & Date

Christendom College, October 2017

With the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes , the Second Vatican Council formulated the “Magna Carta” for integral human development. The Church sees herself as a part of humanity, intimately connected to the “joys and the hopes, the sadness and the anguish of the human person today” (GS § 1). By no means can you separate “questions about the current trend of the world, about the place and role of man in the Universe, about the meaning of individual and collective strivings, and about the ultimate destiny of reality and humanity” (§ 3).

The eternal Son of God, who “for us and our salvation was made man,” is the prototype of man for others. Likewise the Church, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer stated, “is the Church insofar as she is the Church for others.” The Council Fathers, after explaining in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium the origin, essence, and mission of the Church, speak in Gaudium et Spes of the salvific service of the Church for the integral development of the human person.

“The human person deserves to be preserved; human society deserves to be renewed. Hence the focal point of our presentation will be man himself, whole and entire, body and soul, heart and conscience, mind and will” (§ 3). The focus of the council is thus “on the world of men; . . . that world which is the theater of man’s history, and the heir of his energies, his tragedies and his triumphs; that world which the Christian sees as created and sustained by its Maker’s love, fallen indeed into the bondage of sin, yet emancipated now by Christ, Who was crucified and rose again to break the strangle hold of personified evil, so that the world might be fashioned anew according to God’s design and reach its fulfilment” (§ 2).

The Most Urgent Questions of the Day

This is the theme for the dialogue among persons in the modern world. The Church offers herself to all humanity of good will to collaborate in finding resolutions to the most urgent questions of the day: the inviolable dignity of every human life, social justice, peace among the families of nations, and the fight against destructive forces and powers and the enemies of humankind.

Whoever proposes an end must also know the means to reach that end. If the means are immoral, then the end is compromised and discredited. If the sense of existence and the end of history are understood in a communistic way (the creation of a paradise on earth), or in a utilitarian manner (the highest level of happiness for the greatest number of people), or as in social Darwinism (the realization of the survival of the fittest), or imperialism (the dominion of a nation over other peoples), or unbridled capitalism (the law of the exploitation of the resources of the world and of the dignity of the worker for the sake of wealth), then the means used will violate the dignity of man and impede integral human development.

History shows that the nucleus of human existence and of human development is in the recognition of God as the first origin and end of all of creation. The entire scope of human history is the Reign of God on heaven and on earth.

We cannot conceptualize in a speculative manner the Kingdom of God or produce it with our hands, by our own strength. The Kingdom of God is grace, and grace brings the Holy Spirit into the world, the Spirit of charity that sanctifies and assists, the Spirit of understanding and of love, that changes our hearts and introduces in all human relations a movement of freedom. The Spirit gives the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, as well as all of the other gifts and charisms, given to us for the sake of the other, that make us collaborators of God in the bringing about of his Kingdom. The Kingdom of God has already begun in this time and in this world, when the Church, with the arrival of the Messiah, carries out her mission in the Holy Spirit, “to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord” (Lk 4: 18–19). In the spirit of the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, we must serve, with the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, our suffering brothers and sisters, recognizing in them Christ himself.

Integral Christianity

Christianity cannot be reduced to a bourgeois adaptation of Christ’s message consisting merely of interiority, love of neighbour, and individual philanthropy. The Kingdom of God is not merely above and outside of this world, nor is salvation for this world alone, in the sense of a social and purely humanitarian NGO.

Reverence toward God and responsibility for the world are inseparably connected in Christ, who did not come into this world to free us from it, but to lead man and the world to their authentic destiny in the salvific plan of God. Indeed, man, insofar as he is a creature, in all of his existence, stands before God his creator, redeemer, and fulfiller. Yet it is clear that the human person, with all of his mortal limitations, is capable of losing the gifts, of morally failing, and is unable to save himself. All of the fleeting goods and riches of this world are not able to satisfy the infinite desire for happiness in the heart of the human person. All of the knowledge and thought emanating from our limited reason will never be able to reveal the mystery of being. Even the most altruistic of works come to nothing “if they do not have charity” (1 Cor 13:1) and if their end is not in the love that God has “poured into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5).

Our human reason, therefore, must always be considered in the context of the supernatural faith that illumines, so that we have a proper understanding of freedom.

The Limits of Ideology and Modernity

The political ideologies that we have suffered and endured in the twentieth century and that, under disguise, continue today are concerned only with the growth of their totalitarianism, with the absolute power of men over persons. Behind totalitarianism is the attempt to seize, in thought and action, the foundational aspects of being human, of the human person in the world, and to substitute a new man-made creation for God’s creation. Totalitarian rulers consider themselves wiser and more capable than God. The program of totalitarianism is a humanism without and against God. It is a project contrary to the integral human development that the Church offers the world with the Gospel of Christ. The Church’s vision is founded in a synthesis of creation and redemption, of faith and reason, of grace and freedom, of the fullness of the divine efficacy and the authentic human collaboration in the realization of the universal and salvific will of God.

We also see new forms of colonialism, which aim at modernization but in reality only aggressively import a deformed image of the human person, that of the so-called society of well-being (see Populorum Progressio § 52).

The criteria for such a society of well-being must take into consideration the countries of the developing world and not only Europe and North America. Otherwise there would be the problem of the negation of other cultures as inauthentic and illegitimate.

The Image of the Human Person

The difference between integral development from a point of view which is social, material, economic, and political and a totalitarian development with its programs of self-redemption rests in the image of the human person, in anthropology.

The human person is fundamentally a creature of God and not a casual product of blind and arbitrary matter or the construction of social engineers.

In essence, the human person proceeds from the idea that God has for him and develops in the context of time and history. In knowledge and will, he reflects and represents in the world the truth and the goodness of God. The human person thus grows through thought and work, through spiritual attitudes and moral conviction. So man, from the beginning, is a being of culture, of the sciences, and of the theoretical and practical arts. Without original sin, there would have been only integral development; after, however, and according to our redemption in Christ, remains the continuing battle against destructive power and sin.

From Revelation we know that God created man in the state of integrity. It would be a misunderstanding to see the original state of integral nature either as a fairy tale or as empirically demonstrable, at the chronological beginning of the history of humanity. Creation rather signifies the origin and the essence of the created in the idea of God as the beginning and the end of all humanity. God therefore is the measure and the norm for being truly human. The human person, created in the image and likeness of God, participates in and represents the essential truth and goodness of God. “God saw what he had made, and saw that it was good” (Gn 1:31).

Whoever does the good—even if he does not yet recognize God explicitly—is a mediator of the goodness of God. Man glorifies God and renders visible the goodness of God in good works. Therefore, we can collaborate with all people of good will for the good of humanity; we can learn from philosophy, from science, from those who are not Christian. If, for example, we take Aristotle and Mahatma Gandhi, it would appear wrong to divide in an exaggerated manner Christians from the rest of humanity, as if to assert that “all of the pagans’ virtues are vices, and all of their knowledge is only error and fallacy.” Grace and nature, faith and reason, must be distinct but not separate, so that the relation between the Church and the State, between religion and society, is determined by the cooperation for the common good, and not by mutual confrontation. Hence, Gaudium et Spes speaks to the assistance that the Church herself has received from the contemporary world (§ 44), after explaining what the Church offers to the world.

Facing Evil Constructively

However, from Revelation we also know the origin of evil. The malum does not derive from a deficiency in the work of creation or from a malignant God, but from a negative action of man in his relationship with God. With the original sin of Adam and its consequences, disintegration entered into the relationship between God and man, into the relationship between human persons, into man’s relation with the animal world and the environment, and into his role in lived history. The multiplication of physical evils is only a manifestation of moral evil. We cannot separate ourselves from this valley of tears. Nobody may himself decide to become the redeemer of his neighbour. All of the experimentation to produce an ideal state through philosophical systems and means of political power has failed miserably and has left only disasters in their wake.

Neither does an infinite process for the optimization of humanity exist, because the possibility of abuse goes hand in hand with scientific progress. Social networks may be used in either a constructive or destructive manner. Organ transplants, which save lives, also offer new possibilities for crimes against humanity through the commercial sale of organs. Technical progress remains ethically ambivalent. The alternative between the good and the bad is no longer valued, all in the name of, and for the sake of, progress. As long as the human spirit asks the question of the truth of being and of the moral value of an act, it will not be able to avoid taking a position—with this choice set on a firm foundation: referring to God as the origin and the end of the human person.

Only the Creator is also able to be the Redeemer. Rather than a utopia of humanity, Christ brought the world the Kingdom of God. Only where God reigns through love can the human person be truly free. In Baptism we become a new creation, equipped to cooperate in the work of God, with all of our strength, talents, and spiritual and corporal charisms, so that in the end the project of the salvific will of God is fulfilled in the new heaven and the new earth. “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them” (Eph 2:10). The justification of the sinner brings about the integral restitution of the human person, now adopted as a son or daughter of God. We are then called to overcome the old world of sin, of egoism, and of the enmities both within oneself and within the world.

Instead of working in a destructive manner, we desire to contribute to the growth of the Reign of God in a constructive manner, despite falls and disappointments. Christ has already established the Reign of God, though it remains hidden; the Church, if it remains faithful to him, is mandated to announce the Gospel, to mediate the grace of the Holy Spirit through the sacraments, and to support the project of the integral salvation of God, through her participation in the integral development of the human person. Each human person is an end in himself, and one must never make another person a means for an end that is lower than the lofty end of the realization of the will of God for that particular person.

The Christian battles against physical and moral evils and contributes constructively to the conditions of life pertaining to the dignity of the human person. At the foundation of this dignity are the rights to lodging, food, and clothing, as well as the right to earn a living for himself and for the well-being of his family, and in his work to grow and develop in capacity and in turn contribute to the deepening of the awareness of his proper identity. As the human person is a spiritual being and totally endowed with freedom, he enters the challenge of participation in political life, in society, and in all of mundane reality, and his relative autonomy there is recognized by the Church and its Magisterium.

The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World is given to all—even to atheists—with the purpose of offering to all men and women of good will a sincere dialogue on the most important topics with regard to peace and war, to the development of modern weapons and their capacity to destroy all of humanity, and to the incredible possibilities of science and technology that make possible for the human family a future of dignity.

We may not divert our gaze, while more and more people go hungry, are deprived of their rights, and are reduced to slavery; while the drama of the refugees arriving on European shores and at the American border intensifies; and while the risks and challenges of globalization are ever present.

The Church participates in the contemporary world not as a “lobby,” concerned only with its own particular interests. All of Gaudium et Spes is oriented toward the dignity of the human person, the human community, and the ultimate sense of being and of human action; it “lays the foundation for the relationship between the Church and the world, and provides the basis for dialogue between them” (§ 40). It offers not only dialogue, but also collaboration, “until the brotherhood of all men is accomplished” (§ 3). To quote from its concluding section:

“By holding faithfully to the Gospel and benefiting from its resources, by joining with every man who loves and practices justice, Christians have shouldered a gigantic task for fulfilment in this world, a task concerning which they must give a reckoning to Him who will judge every man on the last of days. Not everyone who cries, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the Father’s will by taking a strong grip on the work at hand. Now, the Father wills that in all men we recognize Christ our brother and love Him effectively, in word and in deed. By thus giving witness to the truth, we will share with others the mystery of the heavenly Father’s love. As a consequence, men throughout the world will be aroused to a lively hope—the gift of the Holy Spirit—that someday at last they will be caught up in peace and utter happiness in that fatherland radiant with the glory of the Lord” (§ 93).

Gerhard Cardinal Müller was appointed cardinal by Pope Francis in 2014 and served as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 2012 to 2017. He has been actively involved in education throughout his life, serving as the Chair of Dogmatic Theology at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich from 1986 to 2002. He was appointed Bishop of Regensburg in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, and he became a member of the Congregation for Catholic Education and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity in 2012. He founded the Pope Benedict XVI Institute in 2008, in order to collect and publish the works of Joseph Ratzinger in their entirety. To date, he has more than 500 academic publications.

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The Human Person as an Embodied Spirit

One of the dominant themes in the course Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person is the idea that the human person is an embodied spirit. But first of all, we need to define terms here because, as it appears, the meaning of the concept “ embodied spirit ” is not directly clear to students who do not have a strong background and orientation in philosophy. So, what do we exactly mean by “embodied spirit”?

The most direct connotation that comes to mind when we say something is “embodied” is that it is being materialized or incarnated. Hence, when we say “embodied spirit”, we normally thought of a spirit being incarnated. However, the idea of the human person as an “embodied spirit” does not necessarily refer to the incarnation or materialization of spirit as an immaterial entity. The embodiment of the spirit in the context of Christian philosophy (as is well known, the concept of the embodied spirit is specific to Christian philosophy) specifically refers to the inseparable union of body and soul. Thus, when we say “embodied spirit” we mean that the body is not separate from the soul, just as the soul is not separate from the body.

So, when we say that the human person is an embodied spirit , we specifically mean that the human person is the point of convergence between the material and spiritual entities, that is, between the body and soul. We cannot talk, therefore, of the human person without the union of body and soul, just as we cannot talk of anything without the union of (as Aristotle would have us believe) matter and form.

Now, to understand the specificity of the human person as an embodied spirit is important because aside from the fact that it enables us to know our potentialities and limitations, it also exposes us to a thorough and deeper understanding of ourselves as a unique creature united by body and soul. With this caveat in mind, let us now proceed to an engagement with one of the most famous philosophers in this particular scholarship, namely, Aristotle.

Aristotle on the Human Person as an Embodied Spirit

Before we engage Aristotle’s account on the human person as an embodied spirit, that is, again, as a union of body and soul, it is important at this point to provide the theoretical context of this issue. As we may already know, Aristotle’s account of the human person as an embodied spirit is in large part a reaction against Plato’s take on the nature of the human person.

For Plato, the nature of the human person is seen in the metaphysical dichotomy between body and soul. This dichotomy implies that there is an inherent contradiction between the body and the soul. On the one hand, the body, according to Plato, is material; hence, it is mutable and destructible. On the other hand, the soul is immaterial; hence, it is immutable and indestructible.

Inasmuch as the body is material, mutable, and destructible, while the soul is immaterial, immutable, and indestructible, Plato contends that in the context of the nature of the human person, the body’s existence is dependent on the soul while the soul’s existence is independent of the body. In fact, in the Timaeus , Plato argues that the soul existed prior to the body. Plato writes: “…the gods made the soul prior to the body and more venerable in birth and excellence to the body’s mistress and governor”. Interestingly then, as Eddie Babor claims, the contention above made Plato conclude that the human person is just a soul using a body.

According to Plato, there are three parts of the soul, namely, the rational , the spiritual , and the appetitive . Plato tells The Myth of the Charioteer to comprehend the complex nature of the soul, but we will not discuss this topic here since our task here is just to provide an overview of Plato’s account of the human person, which serves as a background to Aristotle’s account of the human person as an embodied spirit.

For Plato, the rational soul is located in the head, the spiritual soul in the chest, and the appetitive in the abdomen. According to Plato, the spiritual and appetitive souls contribute to the motion and activity of the whole person, while the rational soul’s function is to guide the spiritual and appetitive souls.

According to Plato, the appetitive part of the soul drives the human person to experience thirst, hunger, and other physical wants, while the spiritual soul drives the human person to experience abomination, anger, and other emotional feelings. Lastly, it is the rational part of the soul that enables the human person to think, reflect, analyze, comprehend, draw conclusions, and the like.

As we can see, the rational soul, which is the highest of all parts of the soul, guides the other two parts, namely, the appetitive and the spiritual. “What else could perform this guiding function, from Plato’s point of view, than the rational part of the soul? Think of a desperately thirsty man in the desert. He sees a pool of water and approaches it with all the eagerness that deprivation is able to create. But when he reaches the pool, he sees a sign: ‘Danger. Do not drink. Polluted.’ He experiences conflict within. His desire urges him to drink. But reason tells him that such signs usually indicate the truth, that polluted water will make him very ill or may kill him, and that if he drinks he will probably be worse off than he doesn’t. He decides not to drink. In this case, it is the rational part of the soul that opposes his desire. His reason guides him away from the water.”

The principle then that drives the person to drink is called “appetite”, while the principle that forbids the person to drink the water because it is polluted is called “reason”.

“Another example could be that of a man who is angry with another person who insulted him. Out of anger, he may desire to kill his mocker but does not actually kill the culprit because he knows that if he does he will be imprisoned. With the same thread of reasoning, Plato argues that it is the spirit in man that makes the person angry with his derider, yet his anger is curbed by reason , that is, by the rational soul.”

Hence, again, for Plato, desire, spirit, and reason make up the soul. Desire motivates , spirit animates , and reason guides . And for Plato, if reason can successfully guide desire and spirit, then the human person will attain a well-balanced personality.

If we recall, for Plato, the soul exists prior to the body; hence, the soul is an entity distinct from the body. Now, it is important to note that if we talk about the human person, we talk about the body and soul and that they are inseparable. But this is not the case for Plato. Plato believes that the body and soul are separable. In fact, for Plato, as already mentioned, the human person is just a soul using a body. And Plato believes that the soul is imprisoned in the body and that the soul survives the death of the body because it is immaterial, immutable, and indestructible. This means that for Plato, when the person dies, the body decomposes (because it is material, mutable, and destructible) while the soul leaves the body and goes back to the World of Forms. It must be noted that in Plato’s doctrine of form, there are two kinds of worlds, namely, the World of Forms and the World of Matter. And for Plato, everything comes from the World of Forms and everything that exists (World of Matter) will go back to the World of Forms after it perishes. Again, when the human person dies, the body decomposes and the soul will go back to the World of Forms and lives there eternally. It is here where Aristotle’s notion of the human person as an embodied spirit comes in.

Indeed, Aristotle disagrees with Plato’s dualism which implies the concept of “otherworldliness”. Aristotle believes that there is no dichotomy between the person’s body and soul. The body and soul for Aristotle are in a state of unity. They are inseparable. Hence, unlike Plato, Aristotle believes that we cannot talk about the soul apart from the body and vice versa. Now, how does Aristotle view the human person as an embodied spirit?

First, we need to understand that the term soul is the English translation of the Greek word psyche . And for Aristotle, the general definition of the soul involves the concept of life. Thus, the soul for Aristotle is the principle of life. This suggests, therefore, that anything that has life has a soul.

As the principle of life, the soul causes the body to live; indeed, it is the soul that animates the body. If the soul is the animator of the body, the body acts as the matter to the soul. Hence, Aristotle believes that the soul is the form to the body, while the body is the matter to the soul. For Aristotle, everything that exists is composed of matter and form, and matter and form are indeed inseparable. Hence, we cannot talk about any object if either of these entities is not present. In the context of the human person, Aristotle believes that body and soul are inseparable. Body and soul, therefore, constitute the human person as a whole.

Because for Aristotle anything that has life has a soul, then it follows that plants and animals (in addition to humans) have souls. Thus, Aristotle distinguishes three levels of soul, namely, that of plants, that of animals, and that of humans.

The kind of soul that is found in plants, according to Aristotle, is called vegetative , while those found in animals and humans are called sensitive and rational souls respectively.

According to Aristotle, plants have souls because they possess the three basic requirements for something to be called a “living being”, that is, the capacity to grow, reproduce, and feed itself. However, plants do not share the higher levels of soul; although they grow, reproduce, and feed themselves, plants are not capable of feeling and thinking.

Sensitive souls also grow, reproduce, and feed themselves; but unlike vegetative souls, sensitive souls are capable of sensation. As Aristotle writes:

Plants possess only the nutritive faculty, but other beings possess both it and the sensitive faculty; and if they possess the sensitive faculty, they must also possess the appetitive; for appetite consists of desire, anger, and will. All animals possess at least one sense, that of touch; anything that has a sense is acquainted with pleasure and pain, with what is pleasant and what is painful; and anything that is acquainted with these has desire, since desire is an appetite for pleasant.

Finally, rational souls grow, reproduce, feed themselves, and feel; but unlike the sensitive souls, rational souls are capable of thinking. According to Aristotle, this highest level of soul is present only in humans.

Now, since humans possess all the characteristics of animals, that is, the capacity to grow, reproduce, feed itself, and feel, in addition to being rational, Aristotle concludes that the human person is just an animal that thinks. As Aristotle’s famous dictum on the human person goes, “Man is a rational animal.”

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A Biblical Theology of Creation

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A biblical theology of creation helps us to see the patterns of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation that are repeated throughout the creation story; though the chaos of sin leads to judgment, God will ultimately redeem and renew his creation.

To trace a biblical theology of creation, we must begin with God’s rule and intent in his creation. Though sin brings chaos into the creation order that ultimately leads to judgment, God is committed to redeeming his creation. Throughout the story of redemption, we see a series of “new creation” events following the judgments of the flood, the Tower of Babel, the exodus, and the exile. In the commission of Noah, the covenant with Abraham, the Mosaic law, and the promises of the new covenant, God begins his creative work anew. However, except for the new covenant, all of these new creation events are followed by another “fall.” In the new covenant, the decisive new creation begins with the person and work of Jesus. Though it is not yet complete, at the end of the age, God himself will make all things new and come again to dwell among his people in the new creation.

The Beginning

It is important to begin a biblical theology of creation with God’s original intent in his creative work. In Genesis 1, we see God forming and filling the creation, and at the end of his work, he pronounces that this ordered creation is “very good.” This very good creation is the place that God has always intended to dwell with his people. Contrary to some views of the created order, the creation itself is intrinsically good and should be regarded as such. In spite of the judgments that sin has brought on God’s creation, God is committed to making it new and redeeming a people who will live in it forever.

Moreover, while Christians may disagree about some of the details and timing of the creation week, all can agree that the biblical account of the creation week in Genesis 1 clearly teaches that God made all things and orders all things. As a result of this, he is sovereign over his creation. That is to say, he is in charge of his good creation.

Yet it is clear to us that something happened to mar this good creation. In Genesis 3, we discover that sin has entered the world through the rebellion of Adam and Eve. They were entrusted as the stewards of God’s good creation, but instead they turned away from him and sought to establish themselves as the true kings (Gen. 3:6-7).

Alongside of the consequences of sin that human beings personally experience, sin has cosmic effects. In Genesis 3, we learn that the creation itself is transformed by sin. The ground itself is cursed (Gen. 3:17). No longer do human beings have a harmonious and peaceful relationship with the creation. Instead, we have to fight with the ground in order to cultivate it.

However, God did not leave human beings without hope of redemption, and the creation itself shares that hope. Romans tells us that the creation itself “waits in eager expectation” for God to redeem his people, for when we are redeemed it too will be (Rom. 8:19). But right now, we are waiting for that hope to be fulfilled. As we wait, God has given us tastes of that new creation to come. He has revealed his plan to redeem the world through a series of “new creations,” and these new-creation type events are preparing us for the ultimate new creation yet to come.

Adam and Eve were waiting for God to act to renew his creation, but in the generations that followed, the sin of the human race continued to increase. Instead of renewal, the creation was moving toward greater chaos as humans ran headlong into greater sin (Gen. 6:1). As a result, God looked at the chaos that sin had brought to his creation and condemned it to judgment. Through the waters of the flood, he judged the rebellious human beings and even the fallen creation itself.

But even in the chaos of that judgment, God remained committed to his creation. Almost all of humanity had turned against him, but one man was righteous in God’s eyes. God rescued that man, Noah, along with his family, through the waters of the flood. From these eight people, God’s creation began anew, and he pronounced the same blessing on Noah that he did on Adam and Eve (Gen. 9:7). Yet like Adam and Eve, Noah and his sons turned away from God. Again, God’s creation work was soon followed by the chaos of sin, and the rebellion of the human race continued unabated until the tower of Babel.

At Babel, humans were again attempting to establish their own authority and power. They wanted to “make a name” for themselves (Gen. 11:4). Again, God came down to judge his people, this time by confusing their language so they could no longer communicate with each other clearly.

In the midst of this chaos, God again chose a single human through whom he would continue his commitment to the creation. The covenant with Abraham is a type of new creation in which God began anew, calling his people to remain faithful to him, and giving them a commission to fill the earth (Gen. 12:3). With the family of Abraham, we have another new creation. But as we observe the life of Abraham, his sons, and his grandsons, the corruption of the old creation remains. Abraham lied about his wife being his sister to preserve himself (Gen. 12:10–17). His son Isaac did something similar (Gen. 26:1–11). His grandson Jacob deceived his own father to get a greater inheritance (Gen. 27:1–29) and his great-grandsons sold their own brother into slavery (Gen. 37:18–36). Yet God did not abandon this new creation people, even when they ended up in the chaos of slavery in Egypt.

After judgments of the flood and the Tower of Babel, God remained committed to his people and his creation. As we’ve seen, following these judgments, there is a kind of new creation; however, this is more evident in the exodus from Egypt. As God worked to bring the Hebrews, the descendants of Abraham, out of slavery, we see judgment on Egypt that brings chaos to that nation while the rescue of the Hebrews echoes God’s work in the creation itself.

Through the plagues he brought to Egypt, God was bringing judgment in the form of chaos. Instead of water being sent to its proper order, water is turning to blood (Exod. 7:17–18). Instead of animals coming to life, you have animals dying (Exod. 9:1–4). Rather than light appearing, the ninth plague shrouds the land in darkness (Exod. 10:21–22). And then, at the crossing of the Red Sea, the waters are divided so that dry land appears (Exod. 14:21) after a wind (Spirit) from God blew over the sea (Exod. 15:12).

The new creation language continues after Israel emerged from the Red Sea. The tabernacle that God commanded his people to build reminds us a little of the Garden of Eden. When it was finished, everything was done just as the LORD had commanded—just as the first creation was just had God had intended it to be. Some scholars even argue that the seven speeches in Exodus 25-31 point us back to the seven days of creation! Whether that is true or not, the imagery is pretty clear—when God called his people out of Egypt, he was pointing us back to the new creation, reminding us that he is bringing order out of chaos for the salvation of his people. 1

However, the pattern of creation followed by a fall continues in the history of Israel. Shortly after emerging from the Red Sea, Israel came to Mount Sinai. While Moses met with God and received the law on the mountain, Israel again began to doubt God’s care for them, and wanted to create a god that they could see and manage for themselves. Once again, God’s “new creational” people failed to trust his care for them, and the result was judgment and chaos; the pattern of creation followed by fall continues.

This pattern continues throughout Israel’s history. God graciously brought them into the land he had promised (another kind of new creation), but they continued to turn away from him. While there were periods of more or less faithfulness, the overall trajectory of the nation’s history was away from the Lord and toward idolatry. And this pattern ultimately led to the judgment of the exile.

Exile and Return

If the exodus and settlement in the Promised Land is the clearest picture of new creation, then the judgment of exile is perhaps the clearest picture of the fall and its consequent chaos. For centuries, the prophets in Israel warned God’s people to turn away from their idolatry or else the Lord would send foreign invaders to conquer the land and take the people captive. In fact, before they even entered the land, Moses himself warned of exile for ongoing unfaithfulness (Deut. 28–30).

The prophets sometimes use language that seems to reverse the original creation when anticipating the judgment of the exile. For example, when envisioning the land after the exile, Jeremiah echoes Genesis 1:2 before God ordered the creation: “I looked on the land, and behold, it was without form and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light” (Jer. 4:23). Yet the promise of restoration and return from exile points forward to a new creation. When Isaiah looked forward to the return from exile and the restoration of God’s people, he often used creation language (Isa. 40:28; 42:5; 43:15; 45:18; 57:19; 65:17; 66:18). In fact, the return from exile is nothing short of a new heaven and a new earth (Isa. 65:17).

The New Creation

As the people of God were waiting for God to act and decisively end the exile, they were in reality waiting for the new creation, when God would make all things new. However, when we come to the New Testament, something surprising happens. The new creation arrives in the person and work of Jesus, but the chaos of the fallen creation is still present with us. As with many other parts of God’s saving plan, the new creation is both already and not yet.

The greatest judgment for sin was found at the cross. There, the sin of God’s people was placed on the Messiah, Jesus, who suffered in their place (Isa. 53:6). Yet the decisive work of new creation began with the resurrection of Jesus. He is the firstborn from the dead, the beginning of God’s final new creation work (Col. 1:18). Though he is the firstborn from the dead, everyone who is united with him can look forward to sharing in his creation in the new creation  (1 Cor. 15:20–23).

The new creation is a way of talking about God’s new work in redemption. But with the coming of Christ, it is not simply a step toward the promised new creation. The new creation is in some sense already present. This is why Paul could write, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor. 5:17, NIV). The work of Christ is the beginning of this new creation. Through his death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and present reign, Christ has brought the long-promised new creation into existence. We are truly living in the age of the new creation.

But when we look around at the world as we experience it now, it does not feel like we are living in the new creation. As we noted above, the Scriptures also teach us about the ongoing longing of the creation itself to be set free of its corruption. We look forward to the day when “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay” (Rom. 8:21, NIV).

The new creation has come, but the creation itself continues to wait with eager longing. Living in this overlap of the ages should affect the way we see creation both now and in the future. Now, we can remember that God has remained committed to his creation through many judgments, both of individuals and whole nations (and, in the flood, the entire world). We ought to remember that the created world is not an afterthought. God is committed to removing its “bondage to decay.”

Consequently, we ought to care for God’s good world and seek to steward it well, just as he commanded Adam and Eve so many years ago. God intends not only to redeem disembodied people, but also the world itself.  However, we should guard against an ecological idealism in which we equate the good work of environmentalism with gospel ministry or the idea that our creation care will somehow usher in the new heavens and the new earth. The restoration of the creation is ultimately God’s work alone.

The New Heavens and New Earth

In Revelation 21, John paints a picture of the final consummation of the new creation. Heaven comes to earth, and the dwelling place of God in heaven and the dwelling place of his people on earth become one. It is a total transformation of the universe. There is no threat of another fall, for every sorrow and pain will be removed (Rev. 21:4). All of the dangers and threats of the old creation will be wiped away, because no sinful things are admitted to this new creation (v. 8). The creation will once again reflect the glory of God and be full of beauty that all people can enjoy (vv. 22–26). Death itself will be finally defeated, and God’s resurrected people will live forever, enjoying his good creation.

But of all the glories of the new creation, the greatest is God’s very presence among his people (vv. 3, 22–23). This very good creation is the place that God has always intended to dwell with his people. At the end of the story of redemption, God’s resurrected people will enjoy his presence once again to the fullest degree. The goal of God’s creation and new creation has always been the same: to glorify himself by providing a place where his people can enjoy him forever. And in the new creation, this goal will be accomplished for all of eternity.

Further Reading

• Alexander, T. Desmond. The City of God and the Goal of Creation . Short Studies in Biblical Theology. Crossway, 2018.
• Bruno, Chris, “ Why Is Creation So Important for Understanding the Bible? ” Crossway Articles. May 23, 2017.
• Bruno, Chris, “ Creation and New Creation: How should our Understanding of the End Influence our Understanding of the Beginning? ” Bulletin of Ecclesial Theology 1 (2017): 49–64.
• Carson, D. A. “ Theology of Creation in 12 Points .” Desiring God. March 11, 2016.
• “ Creation: A Song-Based Resource on the Doctrine of Creation for Children .” TGC Courses.
• Davidson, Richard M. “ A Biblical Theology of Creation .” Seminar on the Integration of Faith and Learning, July 18, 2000.
• Greidnas, Sidney. From Chaos to Cosmos: Creation to New Creation . Short Studies in Biblical Theology. Crossway, 2018.
• Lawrence, Michael. “ A Biblical Theology of Creation .” Sermon at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, July 9, 2006.
• McDonough, Sean M. Creation and New Creation: Understanding God’s Creation Project . Hendrickson, 2017.
• Terry, Thomas and Ryan Lister. “ Why the New Creation Matters to Your Creativity .” The Gospel Coalition. October 6, 2018.
• Tripp, Paul. “ The Doctrine of Creation .” Paul Tripp Ministries. July 13, 2018.

This essay is part of the Concise Theology series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material. If you are interested in translating our content or are interested in joining our community of translators,  please reach out to us .