Genesis 2

PART TEN: THE ASSUMPTIONS OF SCIENTISM

The word science is from the Latin scientia, which means knowledge; the Greek equivalent is episteme, hence epistemology, the study of the ways of knowing, of the criteria of truth. I have already made it clear in this text that I have only profound respect for true science and its achievements, the blessings it has conferred on mankind. I would be the last to seek to deter in any way the progress of the human race in the understanding of its environment and in the task of overcoming those factors which prevent adaptation to this environment. But let me emphasize the fact anew that in making these statements I have in mind true sciencethe science, especially the scientific attitude, that is seasoned with a proper measure of both humility and faith: that is, with the awareness of man’s creaturehood and his necessity of depending on faith, in the main, to guide his activity and his progress, rather than on absolute certitude. For absolute certitude man does not have in any great measure: even the laws of the physical, chemical, biological, psychological, and sociological sciences are, after all, but statements of very great probability.For example, two atoms of hydrogen unite with one atom of oxygen to form a molecule of water: thus far no exception to this law has ever been noted. But this does not mean there never will be an exception: and for any man to put forward such a claim is to arrogate unto himself omniscience; and omniscience, or the potentiality of omniscience, man does not have. We think we live in this present world by sight, but careful analysis of human experience will soon make it obvious to all honest and good hearts that we live, for the most part, by faith.Very great probability is itself a measure of faith. What is usually designated knowledge is simply inference. Butis this inference necessary inference? (Necessary inference is rightly defined as that view, the opposite of which is inconceivable.)

1. Science versus Scientism. While I have all the respect in the world for true science and the scientists who pursue it, I have none whatever for what has come to be called scientism. By scientism we mean the deification of science, and, naturally, of man himself as the originator of science. (Devotees of scientism are prone to forget that their science is purely descriptive of what lies out there; that truth is written into the structure of the universe, and that all they can do is to discover it.) Scientism, writes Trueblood, is so naive as to be almost unbelievable. God is a fiction because He cannot be discovered by laboratory technique. Prayer is futile because it cannot be proved by scientific method. Religion is unworthy of serious attention because it arose in the prescientific age. He concludes: What we have here, of course, is not merely science, but a particularly unsophisticated philosophy of science, which deserves the epithet scientism.1Scientism is, of course, the product of a closed mind, or in the final analysis, a form of wilful ignorance. It feeds on assumptions (as premises) which cannot be proved to be valid.

This distinction between science and scientism must certainly be kept in mind in the study of the book of Genesis. It is in this area especially, in which we deal with such problems as those of the Creation, of the beginnings of human society, of the origin of evil, of the institution of religion, that discrepancies between Biblical teaching and scientific thinking have been alleged by extremists on both sides of the controversy. It is our purpose, in this resume, to show that these alleged discrepancies or contradictions are in the main straw men which have been set up by the zealots of these conflicting schools of thought with their contrary methodologies. On the one side of this controversy, we have the die-hard preachers who refuse to entertain anything but an ultra-literal interpretation of Scripture, whether it makes sense or not (that is, in the relation of the particular text to its context, and to the context of the Bible as a whole), and who flatly reject all possible alternatives which do make sense. We still have these gentlemen with us, and in this writer’s opinion they often contribute to the destruction of faith, on the part of young people of high school and college age, as truly as do their ultrascientific antagonists. This should not be. God knows that the one excellence needed perhaps more than any other by the confused youth of our time is faith, especially faith in the integrity of Scripture as the record of God’s revelation to man. They need to realize, once and for all, that nothing, absolutely nothing, has been discovered by the so-called modern mind that downgrades in any way this integrity and reliability. As a matter of fact the modern mind is itself pretty largely a myth of the so-called modern mind.

However, in my opinion, the worst offenders are the materialistic scientists and philosophers: those who, in their desire to exclude God from the cosmos and to reduce what they call religion to an innocuous, indefinable convictionless religiosity, deliberately seek out alleged discrepancies between Biblical and scientific teaching, and seem bent on conjuring up discrepancies where they do not exist at all. These seminarians never seek harmonies; they are out looking only for contradictions; they cannot see the forest for the trees. Believe me, the will not to believe motivates many of the intellectuals of our modern world. I have encountered students, from time to time, who have been sold on the claims of positivism, naturalism, humanism, existentialism (the contemporary fad among the ultra-sophisticates), and in most cases I have found them utterly impervious to any view which may be in conflict with their pet notions. It is this class of collegians who have completely closed minds: they will not even give an honest hearing to contrary views. They are right, and anyone who suggests the contrary is an old fogy. These personsboth instructors and studentswho take advantage of every opportunity to throw paper-wads at the Almighty simply demonstrate their utter ignorance of much of Biblical teaching. Unfortunately there are so many young people who do not know that these are just paper-wads and not golden nuggets of truth, paper-wads saturated with human speculative saliva (if a mixed metaphor be permitted), because these are young people who have never had any opportunity to hear the other side of the case. And unfortunately young men and women are too prone to take as law and gospel what their instructors hand out, no matter how fallacious, and oftentimes utterly absurd, these professorial pronouncements may be. (I am willing, of course, for any man to be sure, so long as he is not cocksure, about what he believes.) The result of much of this confusion, not only in state institutions of learning, but in theological seminaries as well, is what the humorist Mr. Dooley must have had in mind when he remarked that the trouble with so many people is that they know so many things that aint so.

I want not to be misunderstood here. College instructors who manifest this bias, and who go out of their way to cast innuendo on Biblical teaching and on anyone so credulous as to accept it at face value, and on religion in general, are the exception and not the rule. At least I have found it to be so. Unfortunately, however, only three or four professors committed to this type of thinking, are sufficient to confuse young impressionable minds and to brainwash them into a kind of skepticism (which is rooted in pessimism at its worst) that has but one thesis, namely, the meaninglessness of life and utter futility of living. Naturally there would be little point in living in the here and now, in a world, supposedly, of sheer chance (instead of choice), much less would there be any ground for hope of amelioration in a future life of any kind.

The tragedy of all this is that it need not be.It is the by-product of ignorance of the teaching of the Bible, and the immediate product largely of over-specialization so characteristic of modern education, that is, of specialization in a particular area of knowledge attended by misinformation or gross ignorance of what is to be accepted as valid in other areas of life and knowledge, and in particular of the area commonly described as religious, the area of the Spiritual Life. Someone has said that man is the only joker in the deck of nature, and the pitiful aspect of this fact is that he persists in playing his most tragic jokes on himself.

2. Harmonies of Science with Biblical Teaching.Let us now recapitulate what we have learned up to this point of the harmonies which prevail in our day between scientific theory and Biblical teaching, especially concerning matters introduced in the book of Genesis, as follows:

(1) According to the Bible, the first form of matter-in-motion was some kind of radiant energy (light: Genesis 1:3). This is a commonplace of present-day nuclear physics. Moreover, in our day, the line between the non-material (ideal, mental, spiritual) and the material is so thinly drawn as to be practically non-existent. As a matter of fact, energy-matter has become metaphysical, apprehensible in its primal forms by mathematical calculations only, and not by sense-perception. It is interesting to note that, according to the testimony of top-flight physicists, the as-yet-undiscovered elementary forces in matter may turn out to be new and sensational sources of energy vastly more powerful than that loosed by hydrogen bombs. No one knows what the future has in store for man’s understanding of the Mystery of Being.

(2) According to the Bible, animal life had its beginning in the water (Genesis 1:20-21). This is a commonplace of present-day biological science.

(3) According to the Hebrew Cosmogony, the order of Creation was as follows: light, atmosphere, lands and seas, plant life, water species, birds of the heavens, beasts of the field, and finally man and woman. This is precisely the order envisioned by the science of our own time, That the order (sequence) pictured in Genesisin an account known to have been written in prescientific timesshould be in exact accord with twentieth-century science, is amazing, to say the least. There is but one logical conclusion that can be derived from the fact of this correspondence, namely, that Moses was writing by inspiration of the Spirit of God. (We all know today that light and atmosphere (nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc.) had to exist before any living thing could exist, that the process of plant photosynthesis had to be in operation to support both animal and human life. But who knew anything about hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, chlorophyll, photosynthesis, etc., at the time Genesis was written? We simply cannot invoke human experience to account for these facts recorded in Genesis centuries ago, facts that have become known only as a result of the progress of science in modern times, indeed some of them as the product only of more recent discoveries.) (4) It has been pointed out previously in this text that there is no necessity for assuming conflicts between the Genesis Cosmogony and present-day geological science. On the basis of the reconstruction theory of the Mosaic Narrativethat in Genesis 1:1 we have a general statement about the absolute beginning of the physical Creation, and in Genesis 1:2 the account of the beginning of what is called an Adamic renovation, following an alleged pre-Adamic reduction of the cosmos to a state of chaosit is obvious that in the interim thus hypothesized there was ample time for all the periods envisioned by the modern earth sciences. Again, on the basis of the panoramic theory of the Hebrew Cosmogony, according to which the days of the Creation Narrative are held to be aeonic days or periods of indefinite length (the interpretation which we have chosen in this text as the preferable one), certainly sufficient time could have elapsed between the moment when God decreed, Light, Be! and the moment when He said, later, Let us make man in our image, to allow for all the terrestrial developments set forth in the text-books of geology and kindred sciences.

(5) The description of manthe human beingas a spirit-body or mind-body unity (Genesis 2:7) is in exact accord with the psychosomatic approach in medicine, and the organismic approach in psychology, to the study of man.

(6) According to the Genesis account, God decreed something at the beginning of each stage of the Creation, and that which He decreed was so (Genesis 1:1; Genesis 1:7; Genesis 1:9; Genesis 1:11; Genesis 1:15). He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast (Psalms 33:6; Psalms 33:9; Psalms 148:5-6). We have already noted that recent studies in the area of the phenomena of the Subconscious support the phenomenon of psychokinesis, the power of thought energy in man to effect different kinds of materializations and to affect the movements of ponderable objects or things. Certainly such phenomena support the Biblical doctrine that man was created in the image (likeness) of God (Genesis 1:26-27). That is to say, as the image and likeness of God, man should have within him, infinitesimally of course, the power to transmute thoughts into things, powers which the Creator exercised in bringing the cosmos into existence.

3. The Blind Spots of the Materialists.Materialists have ever been eager to seize upon theories which would reduce manincluding the life processes and thought processes characteristic of manultimately to some kind of physical energy or motion: that is, to an aggregate of protons and electrons. There are scientists and philosophers in our day whose theories are materialistic, but who shy away from being labeled materialists, preferring to be known by more sophisticated terms, such as humanists, naturalists, etc. Nevertheless, they are one with the materialists in their efforts to discredit religion in general, and the fundamentals of the Christian faith in particular. These gentlemen repeatedly seize upon theories which they mistakenly interpretlargely because of their incomplete knowledgeas supporting materialistic predilections, but which in fact do not necessarily do so. This type of half-baked know-how (scholarship?) simply adds to the already existing confusion brought about by their own kind.

For example, materialists, holding as they do that when the body dies the person perishes in toto, assume that T. H. Huxley’s theory of epiphenomenalism supports their view that all forms of being are reducible ultimately to energy-matter and so disproves any possibility of continued personal existence beyond the grave. (As stated heretofore, epiphenomenalismthe word means literally, an accompanying phenomenon, that is, a phenomenon upon a phenomenonis the theory that what is called consciousness or mind or mental process is a kind of aura (something like the electrical glow that may be seen hovering over a machine at work), a refined kind of neural energy that is thrown off by the activity of brain cells; hence, that all so-called mental events are merely incidental and cannot be causative, or cannot be thought of as having independent existence, in any sense whatever; that mind, rather, in whatever sense it may exist, is affected (determined) by body or brain, but in no way affects body or brain. Incidentally, I have already emphasized the fact that there is no correlate in the brain for meaning in thought; hence, that meaning cannot be reduced to physical energy or motion. This is the evidence of common sense and experience and needs no other empirical verification.) As far as I know, it has never been denied by informed persons, either scientists or theologians, that there is some correlation between brain and mind in the human organism. But correlation is not identity.The fact that must be emphasized here, however, is that the theory of epiphenomenalism is not necessarily to be regarded as materialistic at all. In fact it is in accord with the Christian doctrine of immortality, that the personand most assuredly the redeemed personis a body-spirit or body-mind unity, both in the here and in the hereafter, the only difference being in the transmutation of the physical body adapted to its present environment, into an ethereal (spiritual, 1 Corinthians 15:44) body adapted to the needs of the saint in his heavenly environment. Certainly, present-day physics has nothing to say against this teaching, this doctrine of the redemption of the body, or personal immortality, promised to all of God’s elect (Romans 8:18-23, Philippians 3:20-21, 1 Corinthians 15:35-58, 2 Corinthians 5:1-10). Physicists are still seeking the ultimates, the irreducibles of energy-matter. (These as yet unisolated irreducibles of physical energy are now known as quarks in the vocabulary of physics, and are thought to be even more powerful than those which have been discovered.) It is a commonplace of physical science in our day that matter can, and does, function in such attenuated forms that the possibility of an ethereal body, to replace the present earthly, body, is no less scientific than it is Scriptural. For all we know, every person may be carrying around with him, while in this terrestrial body, the elements essential to the structure of the body he will need in the next world; that death, in short, is just such a metamorphosis as is taking place throughout nature all the time. (Of course, we are not told in Scripture just what kind of bodies the wicked will inhabit in their state of separation from God.)

Unfortunately, many who have written on this subject seem to have been unaware of, or misinformed about, the Christian doctrine of immortality. For example, the late C, E. M. Joad, a distinguished teacher of philosophy and author of books on various phases of the subject, a truly scholarly gentleman whose writings are characterized by a sane and sensible approach to philosophical problems, seems to have been beset by this confusion, According to Thomas Aquinas (writes Joad), man is a combination of soul and body, the body being the substance, which owes its qualities to the imposition of the various forms upon the materia prima, and the soul being the substantial form. Conformably with his doctrine of matter and form, St. Thomas insists upon the necessity of the body to the soul, in order that there may be a soul at all. Hence, the soul could not survive the death of the mortal body, unless it were provided with a new and glorified body. But it is with precisely such a body that, he teaches, it is provided at death.2 Evidently the scholarly Joad was not aware of the fact that Aquinas was, in substance, simply repeating the doctrine which had already been clearly stated in the New Testament Scriptures by Jesus Himself and by the Apostle Paul. (John 6:38-40; John 2:19-22; John 12:24; John 11:23-26; 1 Corinthians 6:19; Romans 8:11, etc.).

The same facts apply generally to the arbitrary absorption by materialists into their cult, of the theory known as that of emergent evolution. There are various ramifications of this theory, but in the main it is the theory that in the progressive development of the cosmos with its many and varied forms of being, both non-living and living, new forms with new properties appeared from time to time, which cannot be accounted for in terms of the powers characteristic of the entities existing on lower levels, e.g., energy-matter (sometimes dealt with as space-time), life, consciousness, self-consciousness (personality), etc., in the order named. These apparently original and unpredictable realities common to human experience are called emergents by the proponents of the theory (Samuel Alexander, C. Lloyd Morgan, R. W. Sellars, et al). If one asks, What causes these emergents to emerge? the answer is that a nisus (a pull) of some kind does it. (See infra for a further critique of this theory, also the Tables at the end of this Part). However, the point with which we are concerned here is not the validity of the theory (in the view of the present writer, it is certainly questionable), but the fact that the theory is not necessarily to be regarded as grossly materialistic. Obviously, if mind or soul (self, person) is an emergent, it certainly exists in its own right, (just as water exists in its own right, and continues to do so, as a result of the fusion of hydrogen and oxygen atoms in right proportions); hence, despite the rejection, by advocates of the theory, of what they call an alien influx into nature (a special Divine act?), it seems evident that the theory does not completely close the door to the possibility of the continued existence of the mind or soul (the person) beyond the grave, that is, the possibility of personal immortality. Moreover, emergence, especially in the form of what is called a mutation, certainly bears a striking resemblance to a special creation, that is, to a Divine influx into nature, regardless of what the evolutionists may say about it.

4. The Ambiguity of the Word Evolution.We come now, in this text, to the study of the word (and its referent) which has been the cause of the most intense and sustained controversy in the entire area of the agreement (or the lack of it) between Biblical teaching and scientific thinking in our time. That word is evolution. With the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 (his contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace, had already arrived at the same general theory), this word has been seized upon, on the one hand, as a forensic watchword, by all those thinkers who would like to destroy Biblical religion; and on the other hand, as a kind of diabolical device to be resisted at all costs, by churchmen who unyieldingly adhere to the most literal interpretations of certain sections of Genesis largely because of their fear of the effect of the theory on young impressionable minds. They honestly fear the theory itself, and more particularly the doctrinaire manner in which it is often presented by its over-zealous advocates. And indeed they have real grounds for these fears: for without justification the theory has been blown up into a full-fledged dogma. It is my conviction, however, that Christians need have no fear of the truth.I propose, therefore, that we try to sift out as carefully as we can whatever measure of truth is embodied in the evolution theory, and ascertain as best we can the extent to which it is actually in conflict, if in conflict at all, with the Genesis Cosmogony. I think I should state here that my own criticism of the theory is based, not so much on theological, as on scientific and. philosophical considerations.

The word evolution is one of the most ambiguous words in our language. It means literally an unrolling, an unfolding, etc. As used originally, the term had reference only to the origin of species: its use was confined to biological science. Since Darwin’s time, however, it has become a yardstick for analyzing and tracing chonologically every cosmical, biological, sociological, and even theological, development in the history of humankind. Hence we have books with such titles, as Stellar Evolution, From Atoms to Stars, Biography of the Earth, etc., and innumerable published articles of the same general trend of thought. (Nowhere, perhaps, is this attempted universal application of the term made more obvious than in the title of a book recently published, From Molecules to Man.) Implicit in the meaning of the word evolution, as used generally, is the idea of progression or progressive development; and the basis of this idea is the a priori concept that the historical order must coincide with a certain logical order in each case; that is to say, as applied by evolutionists, all change necessarily takes place from the simple to the more and more complex. In logic textbooks, this idea is now designated the genetic fallacy. As stated in one such textbook: It is an inexcusable error to identify the temporal order in which events have actually occurred, with the logical order in which elements may be put together to constitute existing institutions. Actual recorded history shows growth in simplicity as well as in complexity.3 The fact is that in some areas change is not from the simple to the complex, but just the reversefrom complexity to greater simplicity. This is true, for example, in the field of linguistics especially: the history of language is the story of a continuous process of simplification. The same is true in the area of social organization: all one has to do to realize this fact is to contrast the long tortuous genealogical tables of the most primitive peoples with the tendency to minimize, even to disregard, genealogies altogether (cf. 1 Timothy 1:4, Titus 3:9). To quote again: Science, as well as art and certain social organizations, is sometimes deliberately changed according to some idea or pattern to which previous existence is not relevant.4

I am reminded here of Herbert Spencer’s theory of cultural evolution, namely, that all cultures have moved forward from savagery through barbarism to civilization. This idea has long been abandoned by anthropologists and sociologists alike. The evolution yardstick was, for a long time, applied to the history of religion: it was contended that animism (the belief that everything is ensouled) was the first form of religion; that in time, animism gave way generally to polytheism; that polytheism was succeeded by henotheism (a pantheon with a single sovereign deity); and then henotheism was succeeded by monotheism (these systems all having been inventions of the human imagination). It is held further that monotheism will ultimately give way to pantheism, a sophisticated religion, hence the only system which is acceptable to the intelligentsia. Again, it is doubtful that this general theory is seriously entertained in our day: there is too much evidence that monotheism has existed along these other views, somewhere and in some form, from earliest times. Moreover, a dry-as-dust intellectualized cult, such as pure pantheism, or any other cult which ignores the personal and living God will never appeal generally to the aspirations or needs of the human soul.

In common parlance, the word evolution means simply development, progression, in terms of a sequence. But progression is not always easy to define. I might line up a wheelbarrow, a gig, a buggy, a wagon, an automobile, and even an airplane, in a single row. There would be some structural resemblance, of course. But we know, in this case, that one of these vehicles is not the outgrowth (emergent) of that type which preceded it; we know, rather, that all of them were products alike of human technology, inventions of the human mind. We know also that as a sequence they spell progression; this progression, obviously, is distinct from that kind of progression which is brought about by the operation of resident forces characteristic of different levels of being. However, evolution is often used to signify a going forward, a development, a progression, that is not emergent in any sense of the term. Hence we speak of the evolution of political systems, of social organization, of the science of medicine, of technology, of ethics and law, etc.

This, however, is not what the term evolution means in biology. Here, it means, according to a well-known definition, by LeConte, continuous progressive change, according to fixed laws, by means of resident forces.(Note the full import here of the word resident.) The full-fledgedand rather pompousdefinition of biological evolution was given us in the Spencerian formula: Evolution, said Herbert Spencer, is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, that is, of structure and function, and during which the retained motion goes through a parallel transformation. (It should be noted that Spencer’s use of the word motion here leaves a great deal to be explained.) Obvious theories of this type are based on the assumption that all so-called progressive change (evolution) is fortuitous, that is, occurring by accident or chance (purposelessness); hence they are commonly designated mechanistic or materialistic theories. This writer finds it difficult to accept the notion that a movement can be progressive and at the same time fortuitous: surely we have here a semantic paradox, to say the least! (The same is true of the phrase, natural selection. Selectivity, in all human experience, presupposes deliberation and choice: how, then, can impersonal nature be rightly said to select anything? Thus we seem to have another semantic paradox.) However, it is an outstanding characteristic of the devotees of evolutionism to indulge equivocation, perhaps unwittingly, in their use of language.

Theories of what is called emergent evolution tend to the organismic, rather than the mechanistic, explanation of the various facets of the life process. Emergentism, as stated above, is the theory that in general evolution is a naturalistic process proceeding from the operation of resident, yet essentially vitalistic, force or forces; that each emergent has a different structure with additional properties, and its own different behavior patterns; that each emergent not only has subsistence per se (that is, after emerging), but also acts as a causal agency, a transmitter of effects. Moreover, it is said to be beyond the ability of human intelligence to know how many levels of emergence there may be or yet come to be. If one should ask, what is it that causes these emergents to emerge, the answer is that a nisus or pull does it. The theory of some members of this school is that the pull is exerted by whatever lies ahead. But it is difficult to understand just how whatever lies ahead actually exists in order to exert a pull, when according to the theory it is in the process of being actualized (or should we say, of actualizing itself?). If God is envisioned as the Ultimate Emergentthe Goal of the Processthen God is, in terms of the theory, in the indeterminable process of becoming God. Hence, other advocates of the theory identify the nisus with a pushan impulsionfrom within. Be that as it may, in either case, God is presented to us as engaged in the age-long business of Becoming not Himself, but Itself. Emergentism is pantheistic: its God is either nature as a whole, or an impersonal process operating in nature. (Cf. the philosophical system know as Holism. According to this system, the Creative Process (Evolution) stabilized being in successively more complex wholes (the atom, the cell, etc.), of which the most advanced and most complex is the person or personality.5 Holism is a form of Emergentism.)

On the basis of the inclusion of human intelligence in evolution, as playing, perhaps, the most important role in the process, advocates of the theory in our day take the position generally that societal (or psychological) evolution has superseded in large measure what has heretofore been known as organic (biological) evolution. (For a clear presentation of this view, see the book, Human Destiny, by Lecomte du Nouy, published in 1947 by Longmans, Green. See also the concluding Chapter s of the Mentor books, The Meaning of Evolution, by George G. Simpson, and Evolution in Action, by Julian Huxley.) In line with this general idea, the academic world has been thoroughly stirred in recent years by the serious and profound view of human evolution put forward by the late French priest-scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In his principal works, The Phenomenon of Man (1959) and The Future of Man (1964), Teilhard envisions evolution through a gradation of forms from atomic particles to human beings, in ever increasing complexity of structure, and along with it, development of consciousness. Man is the focal point in whom all facets of the evolutionary process converge, and in man reflective thought finally emerges. The unique idea in Teilhard’s system is his view that the ultimate reality of this cosmic development (that is, of Evolution) is the incarnate Christ (not the superman of Nietzsche, nor that of Samuel Butler, nor that of G. B. Shaw’s Man and Superman and his Back to Methuselah), but the God-man. Two quotations from this writer are pertinent: The only universe capable of containing the human person is an irrevocably -personalizing-’ universe. Again, In one manner or the other, it still remains true that, even in the view of the mere biologist, the human epic resembles nothing so much as a way of the Cross.6 This, to be sure, is anotherand more profound-theory of emergentism. Like that of Bergson’s creative evolution (described below), this is an honest effort to describe the modus operandi of the evolutionary process, which in the last analysis becomes an effort to describe the indescribablethe ineffable. The mystery of the life movement itself is too profound to yield its secrets to the mere human intellect.

5. Evolution and Evolutionism.One fact should be emphasized before we proceed further with this study, namely, that evolution must not be confused with evolutionism. The word evolution designates only the process itself, the process of continuous progressive change; the word evolutionism, however, designates how the process proceeds, that is, the phenomena that are said to actualize it. (Evolutionism is also properly designated the theory of evolution.)These phenomena are usually listed as follows: (1) Lamarck (1744-1829): the transmission of characteristics (modifications) acquired through the interaction of the organism and its environment.This theory is now generally rejected, except by the Russian biologist, Lysenko, who has been all but canonized by the Kremlin oligarchy for his revival of it, (2) Charles Darwin (1809-1882), getting his cue from Malthus’s Essay on Population (the thesis of which was that because population increases in geometrical proportion, whereas the earth’s resources multiply only in arithmetical proportion, the time will come when the earth will not be able to provide food for its population, unless some selective process removes the surplus), advanced the theory of evolution by natural selection.The process of struggle for existence, Darwin held, selects out and preserves only those organisms which prove to be the most capable of adapting to environment (the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, that is, the fittest to demonstrate survival quality by adaptation). Darwin’s contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) had arrived at the natural selection theory even before Darwin, but Darwin happened to beat him into print, (They were always good friends, however.) Wallace pointed out the fact to Darwin that while natural selection might account for the survival of an existing species, it did not account for the arrival of a new species.(3) August Weismann (1844-1914) contended that the explanation of evolution lies in the continuity of the germ-plasm.It seems obvious, however, that only process and form (the form being that which specifies man as man) can be transmitted from generation to generation through the germ plasm. Germ-cells are affected only by variations or mutations in themselves, and not by what goes on in the life of the parent. (Still and all, it seems incontrovertible that any modification in the parent organism is transmissible only through the chromosomes and genes. Moreover, genes are but hypothetical determiners of heredity operating beyond the world of sense-perception.) (4) Mutations, discovered by the Dutch botanist De Vries (1848-1935), are sudden big leaps to new species which per se breed true. It is commonly held that evolution might have proceeded by these abrupt and relatively permanent germinal changes. rather than by slight variations. (There are some, however, who contend that mutations might have come about through slowly accumulating changes in the genes.) To this writer’s thinking mutations are indispensable to any possible validation of the evolution theory. Moreover, mutations certainly have all the appearance of special creations. (The German philosopher Lotze, and others, have taken the position that at different stages in the Creative Process, God infused into it new increments of force, that is, new and distinct powers, by direct action, thus bringing into existence the successively higher levels characterized by matter-energy, life, consciousness, and self-consciousness, in the order named. According to this view, Creation involved new increments of power plus continuity of plan.(Cf. the title of the book by Hoernle, Matter, Life, Mind, and God.) It should be noted too that this theory accords in the main with Aristotle’s Hierarchy of Being, according to which Being is organized on successively higher levels of matter-in-motion, the vegetative psyche, the animal psyche, the rational psyche, with God over all as Pure Self-thinking Thought. (5) The laws of heredity as first formulated by the Austrian monk and botanist, Gregor Mendel (1824-1884) are believed to play a significant role also in the evolutionary process. (6) Protagonists of the theory in our day are inclined to agree that evolution may have proceeded in all these ways, with the sole exception of the Lamarckian notion of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. However, the phenomena characterizing this life movement leave the movement itself unexplained.

The following excellent summation by Patrick is in order here: When the doctrine of evolution was brought prominently before the world by Darwin in the middle of the last century, two misconceptions arose, which in our time have been largely corrected. The first was that there is some kind of conflict between evolution and religion, and the second was that evolution has explained the world. As regards the first, we have come to learn that the religious attitude has been greatly strengthened by the enlarged vision which evolution has brought us. We have become accustomed now to the idea of development, and we understand its immeasurable superiority over the old spasmodic theory of creation. The other misunderstanding that arose about evolution was almost the opposite of the first. It was that evolution had explained the world, and that no other philosophy or religion was necessary. This curious error probably came about because of a confusion between evolution as a method or law of change, and evolution as a force or power. There is a popular belief that evolution is a kind of creative force, something that can do things. On the contrary, it is a mere description of nature’s method. We see in evolution that nature behaves in a certain uniform way, or, if you choose, that God creates by a certain uniform method. The student of philosophy, who has already learned that natural laws are not forces or powers, but merely observed uniformities, is not likely to fall into the mistake of making a God of evolution.7

6. The Movement of Evolution.Under this caption, we call attention to two significant views, as follows: (1) What is called orthogenesis, that is, straight line evolution. This is the view that variation in successive generations of a succession of parents and offspring follows a specific line of development, finally undeviatingly evolving a new type. The classic example usually cited is that of the very ancient and tiny eohippus which by gradual, step-by-step change is said to have evolved into the horse that we know today. This is called the theory of determinate variation. (2) Fountainlike evolution.This is the doctrine of the late French philosopher, Henri Bergson (1859-1941).8 Bergson’s main thesis was that the phenomena envisioned bv evolutionism do not explain evolution, that is, the life movement itself; that this surge upward of what might be called the core of the Creative Process is explainable only as the Elan Vital (Life Force). In Bergson’s thought, this Elan Vital is the primordial cosmic principle, the ground of all being, that is at the very root of evolution, a vital push or impulsion pervading matter, insinuating itself into it, overcoming its inertia and resistance, determining the direction of evolution as well as evolution itself.9 This never-ceasing free activity is Life itself. Indeed Bergson speaks of it as Spirit, as a directing Consciousness as well as an actualizing Power. The unique aspect of this view is Bergson’s picture of Life Force operating like a fountain, so to speak, with a center from which worlds shoot out like rockets in a fireworks display, as a series of jets gushing out from the immense reservoir of life.10 We must be careful, however, not to think of this center or core as a thingwe must think of it only as a process. Moreover, as the core-movement pushes upward, according to Bergson’s theory, the push encounters resistance by the matter on which it works; hence there is a falling back toward gross matter by the residue that is left behind by the progressive push of Life toward fulness of being. According to this theory, the Elan Vital manifested itself in the lower animals in the form of instinct; in man, it manifests itself in the form of intelligence (intellection), the power that enables him to surge upward through learning by trial-and-error; it will ultimately push on to what Bergson calls intuition in man, which will be immediacy in man’s apprehension of truth, corresponding in a way, but on a much higher level, to the immediacy of the brute’s response to sensory stimuli. Bergson envisions nothing beyond this power of intuition. Of course, his fountainlike description of evolution, allowing for both progression and retrogression, is another theory of emergentism. (One of my science professors remarked to me once that to him evolution meant variation, and variation either upward (progression) or downward (retrogression). This is approximately Bergson’s view.)

7. Evidence for Evolutionism.The evidence usually cited to support the evolution theory includes the following factors: (1) Comparative anatomy, or structural resemblance among species. (But, to what extent does structural resemblance necessarily prove emergence? Could it not be interpreted as supporting the view that a Creative Intelligence simply used the same general pattern in creating the living species?) (2) Embryology: the embryos of different animal species tend to similar development in early stages. Those of lower animals are said to cease developing at certain points; those of higher animals move upward through additional stages of development. It has long been contended that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny; that is, that each individual organism of a certain phylum tends to recapitulate the principal stages through which its ancestors have passed in their racial history. (This idea is seriously questioned today by many biologists.) (3) Serology: the blood composition of higher animals is the same. Samples of blood from closely related higher animals can be mixed, whereas an antagonistic reaction sets in if there is wide separation between the species. (4) Vestigial remains: the presence of unused organs. Usually cited in this category are the appendix in man, degenerate eyes in cave animals, wings of the female gypsy moth, etc. (5) Geographical distribution of animals: arrested development of flora and fauna in areas cut off in prehistoric times from continental land masses. The classic example of this are the marsupials of Australia. (Yet the opossum, whose only natural habitat is America, is a marsupial,) (6) Paleontology: correlation of the ascending scale of the simple to the more complex fossil forms with successively earlier to later geological strata. (Thus geologists rely on the evidence of paleontology to support historical geology, and the paleontologists cite the evidence of geology to support their chronology of fossil remains. This, some wag, has remarked, borrowing from the comic strips of the nineteen-twenties, is a kind of Alphonse-and-Gaston act.) (7) Artificial selection.That is, changes brought about by selective breeding, by the application of human intelligence; for example, by Mendel, Burbank, and others. This, it is claimed, adds momentum to the whole process. (8) Classification of animals in phyla, classes, genera, species, orders, families, etc., in ascending order of complexity, from unicellular organisms up to man. This, it is held, gives evidence of an over-all relationship among all living organisms.

8. the Evolutionism Dogma.The chief protest by Christians with respect to evolutionism is a protest against the blowing up of the theory into a dogma. A dogma is a proposition to be accepted on the ground that it has been proclaimed by the proper authority; in this case, of course, the proper authority is human science. Evolution is presented in many high school and college textbooks as an established fact; and in others, the inference that it is factual, is expressed by innuendo, with the accompanying inference that persons who refuse to accept it are naive, childish, or just plain ignoramuses. It seems to be assumed by these devotees of the cult that they have a monopoly on the knowledge of this particular subject. The fact is that much of the material appearing in these textbooks is simply parroted by teachers who are so ignorant of Biblical teaching, they are not even remotely qualified to pass judgment on the matter. Unfortunately, too, many persons of eminence in certain highly specialized fields are prone to break into print on various aspects of Biblical doctrine only to prove by their statements -that they are completely uninformed on the subjects on which they choose to expatiate. Pernicious fallacies, - based on the authority of a great name, thus have a way of persisting from generation to generation even though they have been shown to be fallacies many times: it is the prestige of the great name or names with which they are associated which gives them apparent deathlessness. I want to make it clear at this point that whatever objections I have to evolutionism are not based so much on the view that, in certain forms, it is anti-Biblical or irreligious, but on the conviction that it is based all too frequently, not on established factthat is, by the testimony of eye-witnessesbut on inference.The important question, therefore, is this: Is the inference drawn from alleged phenomena in this field *necessary inference?*inference, that is, the opposite of which is inconceivable? Or does much of it savor of little more than conjecture?

Dr. James Jauncey states the case clearly in these words: Of course you will often hear from some enthusiastic evolutionists that evolution is now indisputable, that it has been proved beyond doubt, and that anyone who disputes this is an ignoramus or a fanatic. This is jumping the gun, to say the least. The vehemence-’ of such statements makes one suspect that the speakers are trying to convince themselves. When a scientific theory crystallizes into law, such as that of relativity, it speaks for itself. All we can say at the moment is that evolution is generally accepted, possibly because of the lack of any scientific alternative, but with serious misgivings on the adequacy of some aspects of it. As for the kind of rigorous proof that science generally demands, it still isn-’t there. Indeed, some say that because of the philosophical aspects of the theory, that proof will never be possible.11

A clear example of the blind spots which seem to characterize the devotees of evolutionism is the title of an article appearing recently in Reader’s Digest that reads Can Science Produce Life? This title is misleading, to say the least: life never was produced (created) by human agency. This fact, the author of the article in question, seems to realize. Toward the end, he writes, with reference to microspheres (proteinoids formed by the fusion of amino acids): Although these spheres are not true cellsthey have no DNA genes and they are simpler than any contemporary lifethey do possess many cellular properties. They have stability; they keep their shapes indefinitely. They stain in the same way as the present-day protein in cells, an important chemical test, But the real significance of these microspheres is that scientists do not synthesize them piece by piece; they simply set up the right conditionsand microspheres produce themselves. Thus it will be noted that the eminent scientist-author of this article flatly contradicts the import of the title, by stating that man can only set up the conditions necessary to the production of microspheres but cannot do the producing. (The title is, in fact, an excellent example of the manner in which careless use of language can spread confusion.) Man indeed sets the stage, but the God of nature alone, as the cosmic Efficient Causality, can actualize the life process.

I recommend that every reader of this textbook procure a copy of the latest issue of Everyman’s Library Edition (published by E. P. Dutton, New York) of Darwin’s Origin of Species, and read the Preface written by W. R. Thompson, F.R.S., and Director of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control, Ottawa, Canada. Thompson states expressly that the content of his Preface will not follow the tenor of previous introductions to Darwin’S, work, those written by other scientists, in particular that of Sir Arthur Keith. I could not content myself, Thompson writes, with mere variations on the hymn to Darwin and Darwinism that introduces so many textbooks on biology and evolution. I am of course well aware that my views will be regarded by many biologists as heretical and reactionary, However, I happen to believe that in science heresy is a virtue and reaction often a necessity, and that in no field of science are heresy and reaction more desirable than in evolutionary theory. After stating in no uncertain terms what he considers to be the weaknesses of the Darwinian theory (which he describes as a theory of the origin of living forms by descent with modifications), Thompson goes on to point out the fallacies involved in the argumentation used by the evolutionists. This, he declares, makes the discussion of their ideas extremely difficult. In what way? Because personal convictions, simple possibilities, are presented as if they were proofs, or at least valid arguments in favor of the theory (repeating an evaluation made by De Quatrefages). Thompson adds: As an example De Quatrefages cited Darwin’s explanation of the manner in which the titmouse might become transformed into the nutcracker, by the accumulation of small changes in structure and instinct owing to the effect of natural selection; and then proceeded to show that it is just as easy to transform the nutcracker into the titmouse. The demonstration can be modified without difficulty to fit any conceivable case. It is without scientific value since it cannot be verified; but since the imagination has free rein, it is easy to convey the impression that a concrete example of real transmutation has been given. This is the more appealing because of the extreme fundamental simplicity of the Darwinian explanation. This was certainly a major reason for the success of the Origin.Another is the elusive character of the Darwinian argument. Every characteristic of organisms is maintained in existence because it has survival value. But this value relates to the struggle for existence. Therefore we are not obliged to commit ourselves in regard to the meaning of differences between individuals or species since the possessor of a particular modification may be, in the race for life, moving up or falling behind. On the other hand, we can commit ourselves if we like, since it is impossible to disprove our statement. The plausibility of the argument eliminates the need for proof and its very nature gives it a kind of immunity to disproof. Darwin did not show in the Origin that species had, originated by natural selection; he merely showed, on the basis of certain facts and assumptions, how this might have happened, and as he had convinced himself he was able to convince others. (We are reminded here of Mark Twain’s evaluation: There is something so fascinating about science one gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such trifling investments of fact.)

On the subject of mutations, Thompson writes as follows: As Emile Guyenot has said, mutations are powerless, to explain the general adaptation which is the basis of organization. -It is impossible to produce the world of life where the dominant note is functional organization, correlated variation and progression, from a series of random events.-’ Again, from the same author: An important point in Darwin’s doctrine, as set out in the Origin, was the conviction that evolution is a progressive process. The Victorians accepted this idea with enthusiasm. Here I need only say on this point Darwin was inconsistent since, in his view, natural selection acts not only by the survival of the fittest but also by the extermination of the less fit and may produce anatomical degradation as well as improvement. Darwin himself considered that the idea of evolution is unsatisfactory unless its mechanism can be explained. I agree, but since no one has explained to my satisfaction how evolution could happen I do not feel impelled to say that it has happened. I prefer to say that on this matter our information is inadequate.

(I should like to interpolate here a few personal statements as follows: An outstanding example of the downright fanatical zeal with which early exponents seized upon Darwin’s theory and blowed it up to such fantastic extremes (notably, by means of the intellectual vacillations of the erratic T. H. Huxley, the semantic pomposity of the agnostic Herbert Spencer, etc.) is the tree of life as hypothesized by the arrogant German, Haeckel (1834-1919). Haeckel presumed to arrange existing forms in an ascending scale from the simple to the complex, by arbitrarily inserting imaginary names to identify all the necessarily numerous missing links. Today Haeckel’s famous tree is largely famous, even in the scientific world, for its absurdities.) Dr. Thompson concludes his Preface with what is obviously the most telling objection of all to evolutionism. A long-enduring and regrettable effect of the Origin, he writes, was the addiction of biologists to unverifiable speculation, the net result of which was that the success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity. This, he adds, is already evident in the reckless statements of Haeckel, and in the shifting, devious, and histrionic argumentation of T. H. Huxley. Finally, his conclusion: It may be said, and the most orthodox theologians indeed hold, that God controls and guides even the events due to chance; but this proposition the Darwinians emphatically reject, and it is clear that in the Origin evolution is presented as an essentially undirected process. For the majority of readers, therefore, the Origin effectively dissipated the evidence of providential control. It might be said that this was their own fault. Nevertheless, the failure of Darwin and his successors to attempt an equitable assessment of the religious issues at stake indicates a regrettable obtuseness and lack of responsibility. Furthermore, on the purely philosophical plane. the Darwinian doctrine of evolution involves some difficulties which Darwin and Huxley were unable to appreciate, (I might well add that their devoted disciples in our day seem to have closed minds on the same matters). Between the organism that simply lives, the organism that lives and feels, and the organism that lives, feels, and reasons, there are in the opinion of respectable philosophers, abrupt transitions corresponding to an ascent in the scale of being, and they hold that the agencies of the material world cannot produce transitions of this kind. Again, Biologists still agree on the separation of plants and animals, but the idea that man and animals differ only in degree is now so general among them, that even psychologists no longer attempt to use words like -reason-’ or -intelligence-’ in an exact sense. This general tendency to eliminate, by means of unverifiable speculations, the limits of the categories Nature presents to us, is an inheritance of biology from the Origin of Species.

(I urge every student to procure a copy of this book and read Dr. Thompson’s Preface in its entirety. Another book I recommend, one which deals with the evolution theory in terms of biology itself, is that by Douglas Dewar, entitled The Transformist Illusion; this book may be purchased from DeHoff Publications, 749 N.W. Broad Street, Murfreesboro, Tennessee.)

Space is not available here for a review of the conjectural absurdities which have been put forward at different times by over-zealous evolutionists: they are far too numerous to be catalogued anyway. Darwin himself set the fashion of conjecture. It is amazing to note the number of times such words as apparently and probably occur in his writings. One reliable authority may be quoted for the information that the phrase, we may well suppose, occurs over eight hundred times in his two principal works, The Origin of Species, and The Descent of Man.12This would seem to indicate that in all such instances the eminent scientist was guessing. Indeed, is not hypothesis after all the academic term for what is to be taken only as a fairly good guess?

(For a review of some of the absurdities advanced by evolutionists in days gone by, the student is referred to the little book, In His Image, a collection of lectures and addresses by William Jennings Bryan, published by Revell, New York, in 1922. Mr. Bryan’s name recalls, of course, the role which he played in the widely publicized Scopes trial in Tennessee, at which his antagonist was the Chicago attorney, Clarence Darrow. The underlying issue in this trial was the contention of the prosecution that money contributed by taxpayers for the support of public schools could not be used legitimately by teachers to destroy the faith of young people in their classes, and that the teaching of evolution was in a special sense destructive of Christian faith. Hence evolutionism, by indirection, became the real issue that was debated by the two antagonists. I know of no event in my lifetime about which more sheer nonsense has appeared in magazines and newspapers than in the publicity which has been given the Scopes trial, in particular the Bryan-Darrow debate over the theory of evolution. I doubt that any debate was ever held in which both antagonists were as incompletely informed on the subject they were debating as were Bryan and Darrow in this particular case. Darrow’s questions were for the most part puerile and irrelevant in the manner in which they were stated: he simply rehashed questions which have been heard again and again in the history of Christianity, from as far back as the time of Celsus and Porphyry. Bryan’s answers were often childish, largely because he allowed himself to be on the defensive: he should have kept the offensive, which he could have done easily, which any informed Christian can do in exposing the shallowness of atheism or agnosticism. The fact is, however, that Bryan was not the nit-wit that uninformed science teachers and popular writers have tried to make him appear to be. And I know of no more interesting collection of the genuine absurdities which have been advanced by over-zealous evolutionists than those which are presented in Bryan’s book, In His Image.It is interesting to note, too, that Darrow was flabbergasted in two debates with the late P. H. Welshimer (for some fifty-five years Minister of the First Christian Church, Canton, Ohio), the first at Canton, the second at Akron, Ohio. In the Canton debate Welshimer stressed the marvelous unity of the Bible, dwelling especially on the Messianic prophecies and their fulfilment; and just before the debate at Akron, Darrow sought him out privately and asked for the source of his information, admitting that he himself had never encountered such arguments. Welshimer gave him the titles of some important books of Biblical prophecy. But Darrow died just two weeks after the Akron debate. Of course, these facts never get into print in popular news media13).

9.* A Critique of Evolutionism*.I shall now list the more common, and what I consider to be the most valid criticisms of, and objections to, the evolution theory in general, as follows:

(1) Mention has already been made of the attempt to extend the general concept of continuous progressive change (the fundamental thesis of evolutionism) to every aspect of the world man lives in and of his life in it. As Patrick has written The fact is that evolution is a very much overworked word. As the close of the last century and in the beginning of this one, the idea of evolution held almost undisputed sway. It was extended far beyond its original application and applied quite universally. We began to hear of inorganic, cosmic, astral, geologic and atomic evolution. Even the -delirious electrons-’ evolved into atoms and matter itself was the product of a process of development, Social evolution had already made its appearance. nothing is fixed or final; nothing is created; everything just grew and is growing,14 This, as has been stated previously, is what is now recognised as the genetic fallacy.There are areas in which this notion of continuous progressive change simply is not in accord with the facts.

(2) In addition to the genetic fallacy, evolutionists commit another common fallacy of the inductive method, namely, that of over-simplification, also known as the nothing but fallacy. This they do in making no effort to account for the modus operandi of the many leaps occurring in the alleged evolutionary process (as Thompson has stated it, leaps from the organism that simply lives to the organism that lives and feels to the organism that lives and feels and reasons). They simply take it for granted that these are only matters of degree.(Even in one’s personal life, one simply cannot explain how the psychical takes hold of and moves the physical: how a person moves his body if and when he makes up his mind to do so.) In simple truth, they have no explanation of the leap from an existing species to a new species, except by mutations, and these, of course, themselves need to be explained. As Chesterton writes: Far away in some strange constellation in skies infinitely remote, there is a small star, which astronomers may some day discover. It is a star that brings forth out of itself very strange plants and very strange animals and none stranger than the men of science. Again: Most modern histories of mankind begin with the word evolution, and with a rather wordy exposition of evolution. There is something slow and soothing and gradual about the word and even about the idea. As a matter of fact, it is not, touching primary things, a very practical, word or a very profitable idea. Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn. into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying, -In the beginning God created heaven and earth-’ even if you only mean -In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.-’ For God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could create one. But evolution really is mistaken for explanation. It has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand it and everything else; just as many of them live under a sort of illusion that they have read the Origin of Species.. What we know, in a sense in which we know nothing else, is that the trees and the grass did grow and that a number of other extraordinary things do in fact happen; that queer creatures support themselves in the empty air by beating it with fans of various fantastic shapes; that other queer creatures steer themselves about alive under a load of mighty waters; that other queer creatures walk about on four legs, and that the queerest creature of all walks about on two. These are things and not theories; and compared with them evolution and the atom and even the solar system are merely theories. The matter here is one of history and not of philosophy; so that it need only be noted that no philosopher denies that a mystery still attaches to the two great transitions: the origin of the universe itself and the origin of the principle of life itself. Most philosophers have the enlightenment to add that a third mystery attaches to the origin of man himself. In other words, a third bridge was built across a third abyss of the unthinkable when there came into the world what we call reason and what we call will. Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution. the more we look at man as an animal, the less he will look like one.15

(3) Evolutionism has no adequate explanation of the process by which a variation in a parent organism becomes embodied in the parental reproductive cells (the fertilized ovum), obviously a change necessary to the transmission of the variation to the offspring. (4) Evolutionism does not give us any satisfactory account of the origin of the life process itself. (Spontaneous generation is now theoretically considered to have been a possibility, but as yet no direct evidence of its actual occurrence in nature has been brought to light.) (5) Evolutionism does not afford any explanation of the life process itself, that is, of the mysterious movement of life; rather, it simply starts with this movement as a fact, apparently indifferent to the importance of the how and why of it. One may watch the division of a single cell into two cells (as, e.g., again the fertilized ovum), but no one understands why the cell divides and the process continues in geometrical proportion (one into two, two into four, four into eight, etc.), or how the daughter cell inherits the particular forms and functions of the parent cell. Why does this movement of life push upward, by differentiation of structure and specialization of function, into the vastly more and more complex forms and finally into the most complex form of all,man, There is no evidence that a potency can actualize itself. What then is the Efficient Causality which actualizes all these changes which are supposed to become stabilized into the multifarious forms that make up the living world? (Protoplasmic irritability is a high-sounding phrase which reminds us of John Locke’s definition of matter as something-I-know-not-what).

(6) Evolutionism requires an almost unlimited stretch of time to account for all the changes envisioned by its advocates. Apparently they expect us to accept without question the necessity of such an extent of time to any adequate explanation of the process; and at the same time they arbitrarily use this hypothetical extent of time to support their theory of the process. Is not this a form of begging the question? Is it not true that the stretch of time required by the theory puts it beyond any possibility of clear proof or disproof empirically, that is, by the testimony of eye-witnesses? One is reminded here of a stanza of Hilaire Belloc’s Ode to a Microbe

The Microbe is so very small You cannot make him out at all, But many sanguine people hope To see him through a microscope. His jointed tongue that lies beneath A hundred curious rows of teeth; His seven tufted tails with lots Of lovely pink and purple spots, On each of which a pattern stands, Composed of forty separate bands; His eyebrows of a tender green; All these have never yet been seen But Scientists, who ought to know, Assure us that they must be so. Oh! let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about!

From Belloc’s More Beasts for Worse Children, in Belloc’s Cautionary Verses.(Knopf, 1951).

(7) That the gap between the intelligence potential of man and that of any known animal species existent or extinct is inconceivably vast, is conceded by evolutionists today. Indeed, many eminent men in biological science are prone to accept the view that man’s appearance on the scene is explainable only in terms of a mutation. (Incidentally, it should be made clear that evolutionists do not take the view that man is nothing but an animal. On the contrary, they hold that he has evolved beyond the brute stage; that, in short, he is animal plus.However, they insist that the difference is only one of degree, not one of kind.)

(8) The theory of mutations is that new forms come into being as wholes, as the result of sudden jumps in the process, and continue to breed true from the time of their emergence. Do biologists have any explanation of the mysterious process by which a mutation is brought about? Obviously they do not. They seem to take it for granted that resident forces of some kind, or of various kinds, work effectively, either singly or collectively, to produce the mutation. Why this process occurs, or just how it occurs, no one knows. (Cosmic rays have been found to produce mutations in fruit flies, we are told). Yet it is inconceivable that evolution could ever have taken place unless the fact of mutations is granted. Many biologists, however, frown on the theory of mutations simply because they find it difficult to harmonize the theory with the mechanism of natural selection which they seek to establish. It is obvious that mutations have all the appearance of special creations. (9) Despite positive assertions in which, as a rule, the theory to be proved is taken for granted, the simple truth is that as yet no one knows just how a new species emerges or could emerge.

(10) Evolutionism is unable as yet to give us a satisfactory account of the origin of sex differences. (It is interesting to note here that the Genesis Cosmogony is silent regarding the origin of females among subhuman orders, with the sole exception of the implication in Genesis 1:22. It is the human female, Woman, to whom our attention is especially directed in Scripture: Genesis 1:27-31). (11) Evolutionism has no adequate explanation of the fact of instinct, of the almost inconceivable manifoldness of instinctive responses among subhuman creatures. Instinct has rightly been called the Great Sphinx of Nature. If complexity of instinct were to be made the criterion of the classification of living forms in ascending order, it is obvious that the lowly Insecta would stand at the head of the list, and man, poor man, would be somewhere near the bottom. Are not instinctive responses the media by means of which Divine Intelligence ensures the preservation of non-intelligent species? (12) It is doubtful that evolutionism could ever adequately account for the great variety of special organs in different species (characteristic of the entire complex of nature’s adaptation to the needs of living creatures), organs such as wings, feathers, eyes, ears; fins and electric organs of fishes, poison glands and fangs of snakes, the radar system of bats, migratory powers of homing pigeons, and many others too numerous to mention, (13) As stated heretofore, structural resemblance does not necessarily prove emergence of the higher form from the lower. It may be the product of the activity of the Divine Mind creating according to an archetypal pattern (as in the instance of man’s invention of the wheelbarrow, buggy, wagon, chariot, automobile, airplane, all of which manifest some structural resemblance). (14) Ordinarily, nature, when left to its own resources, seems to deteriorate rather than to advance. Any gardener knows that tomatoes produced by properly cultivated plants are always superior to those which are produced by seed or plant in what is called volunteer fashion. (15) The apparent non-fertility of hybrids would seem to militate against the evolution theory. (16) Apparently useless organs are not necessarily reduced or rudimentary, in many cases. Ignorance of the use or purpose of an organ is not in itself a proof that the organ has no necessary function at all. (17) Neither similarity nor gradation (nor both together) can prove emergence, that is, continuous progressive change, according to fixed laws, by means of resident forces (LeConte).

(18) Man has no known existing animal ancestors: those alleged humanoidal forms which are supposed to have existed prehistorically are now extinct, hence hypothetically identifiable only by isolated sparse skeletal remains which have been found in different parts of the world, These remains of prehistoric manprior to Cro-Magnon-are too fragmentary to allow for any reliable reconstruction of man’s ancestry from the so-called hominidae, Nor do these widely scattered skeletal remains necessarily indicate that there were different centers of the origin of homo sapiens, What Dr. Bloom has said about such finds in Southern Africa is equally applicable to all other such discoveries: When we speak of Plesianthropus as a found -missing link,-’ this does not mean that man came from even that species, We mean only that we have a member of the family from one of whom man arose.16 As far as I know, no real evidence has ever been found that would discredit the generally accepted view that the cradle of the human race was where the Bible pictures it to have been, that is, in Southwest Asia. Moreover, evolutionists must accept the fact that there had to be a space-time locus at which the transition from hominidae to homo sapiens actually occurred; and that with the appearance of homo sapiens, reason also appeared (as indicated by the Latin sapiens or sapientia), and along with reason, conscience, which is the voice of practical reason. In view of these facts, it must also be recognized that all humanoidal forms existing prior to this transition were not forms of homo sapiens.The tendency of so many scientists to pontificate about these humanoidal finds makes it necessary for us to put their significance in proper perspective in order that we may not be led astray by exaggerations.

(19) The Mendelian laws of heredity have been generally accepted in biological science. However, it must be kept in mind that these laws are simply descriptions of what evidently takes place in transmission through the media of genes; they do not tell us why these transmissions take place as they do, nor do they give us any information as to the modus operandi of the transmissions themselves. Even the genes themselves are only hypothetical determiners of heredity. This is true, of course, of practically all facets of the evolution theory: nearly all that the advocates have to tell us is descriptive in character, descriptive of whatoccurs, not of why, nor specifically of how, it occurs. Perhaps these are mysteries that lie beyond the scope of human comprehension.

(20) In the final analysis, the arrival of a new species is to be accounted for only on the ground of variations transmitted through the chromosomes and genes: as far as we know; inheritance in man takes place in no other way. If mutations be the final explanation of these genetic changes, then the mutations must have occurred in chronological sequence to have produced the continuous progressive changes (demanded by the theory) into more and more neurally complex organisms, culminating in the human organism. It is only a mark of sanity to conclude that there is reason and order back of this entire process, actualizing all such changes; and that the Cosmos is the handiwork of the Universal Mind and Will whom we call God (Psalms 19:1-6).

A word of clarification is needed at this point: I do not mean to assert that we are now in possession of all the information available with reference to the various aspects of evolutionism. Undoubtedly additional information will becoming to light, and, as is usually the case, the acquiring of this information Will gain momentum, as time goes on, information tending either to refute the various criticisms of the evolution theory as presented in the foregoing paragraphs or to give added substantial support to the Various facets of the over-all theory. We must await the discoveries that time may have in store for us in this particular area of knowledge, always keeping in mind the firm conviction that truth never contradicts itself and that it will ultimately out.

10. Materialistic evolutionism.This is the doctrine that all things have evolved by accident or chance (that is, purposelessness).Devotees of this cult simply refuse to acknowledge Efficient Causality of any kind in the origin and preservation of the cosmos (with the possible exception of some form or forms of primal physical energy): they rest their case on the eternity of matter-in-motion. (Obviously this primal physical energy is their god.) With disarming simplicity they proceed to describe all phenomena of the cosmos, including those of the life processes and of the thought processes, in terms of a fortuitous concourse of atoms (or sub-atomic forces). The creed of the materialistic evolutionists is bluntly stated in what may rightly be designated their Bible, namely, the book by George Gaylord Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution.Simpson writes: In preceding pages evidence was given, thoroughly conclusive, as I believe, that organic evolution is a process entirely materialistic in its origin and operation. It has also been shown that purpose and plan are not characteristic of organic evolution and are not a key to any of its operations. Man was certainly not the goal of evolution, which evidently had no goal, etc. He goes on to say, however, that with the entrance of the human mind into the process, purpose and plan did come into operation: this he designates the new evolution. He writes: But purpose and plan are characteristic in the new evolution, because man has purposes, and he makes plans. Here purpose and plan do definitely enter into evolution, as a result and not as a cause of the processes seen in the long history of life. The purposes and plans are ours, not those of the universe, which displays convincing evidence of their absence.17

Materialistic evolution is usually described as mechanistic. The word mechanism, however, has a-’ question-begging aspect. Machines are contrivances, but as far as human experience goes, they are contrivances of some intelligent agent to serve some function, to gain some end. Moreover, anyone who insists that the cosmos is just a great machine, is simply reading into his understanding of it the properties and powers that he himself sees in a machine.Now. it seems obvious that in an organization of any kind an organizing agency is required: some power by which elements are organized into wholes of being; some power to marshal them into a cosmos or world order. This moreover, would have to be some kind of power that is entirely different from mechanical forces and the opposite of gravitational force; gravitational force tends to drag the physical world down to a heat-death, which is technically defined as a state of maximum entropy. (The physicists tell us that the cosmic clock, so to speak, is running down as matter continues to dissolve into radiation and energy continues to be dissipated into empty space.) However, the basic thesis of evolution is progression or progressive development: and progression is precisely the aspect that is of importance to it. But progression implies a goal to which the movement is directed, toward which someone or something is striving; and thus the idea of progression belies the concept of mechanism. Obviously, mechanism and evolution are irreconcilable terms. As Butler has written, in his famous Analogy: The only distinct meaning of the word -natural-’ is stated, fixed, or settled: since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e., to effect it continually or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once. In a word, with respect to what are called the laws of nature, we. should not say, the more law, the less God, but we should say, the more law, the more God. LaPlace once declared that he had swept the heavens with his telescope and could not find a God anywhere. One of his contemporaries remarked that he might just as well have swept his kitchen with a broom. Because God is not corporeal being in any sense (John 4:24, Exodus 3:14), He is not to be apprehended by any physical or corporeal means (John 1:18). Hence the stupidity of the Russian cosmonaut who is reported to have said that in all his travels throughout the celestial realm he had searched the stratosphere in every direction to find God but had failed to do so. Of course he failedthe humblest, most uneducated student of the Bible knows why.

The Christian, of course, cannot possibly accept materialistic evolutionism, because it directly contradicts the Biblical doctrine of the sovereignty and eternal purpose of God (Isaiah 46:9-11: Acts 15:18; Acts 17:30-31; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28; Ephesians 3:8-12). Nor is there any special reason why any Christian, or any other intelligent person, should accept it, for several reasons. In the first place, any unbiased person can readily see that the phenomena of personality (perception, consciousness, and especially meaning) are not entirely reducible, if reducible at all, to matter in motion (brain cell activity). As the noted physicist, Arthur Eddington, has written: Force, energy, dimensions belong to the world of symbols: it is out of such conceptions that we have built up the external world of physics. We have to build the spiritual world out of symbols taken from our own personality, as we build the scientific world out of the symbols of the mathematician.18

In the second place, materialistic evolutionism cannot be harmonized with the empirical fact of cosmic order. This order is clearly evident (a) from the mathematical relations characteristic of the processes of the physical world and the mathematical formulae by which they are amenable to precise description; (b) from the manifold interrelationships of ends and means, as empirically discerned, prevailing throughout the totality of being; (c) from the predetermined (planned) life cycles of all living species; and (d) from the over-all adaptation of nature to human life and its needs. As stated often herein, the word cosmos means order; lacking this order, human science would not be possible, for the simple reason that science, is man’s discovery and description of the order prevailing in the various segments of the natural world. Surely this architectonic order presupposes a Supreme Orderer, a directing Mind and Will. It is inconceivable that sheer chance could have produced the order we see all around us.

To be sure, in our day evolutionists admit the introduction of purpose, now thatas they contendpsychological evolution has taken over from the biological. (We have noted this, in the excerpt quoted above from Simpson’s book) Purpose entered the cosmic picturewe are told-along with the human intellect and its power of purposeful selection and striving. It strikes me, however, that by correlating purpose with human mental activity, by analogy we are bound to conclude that the design which prevails throughout the subhuman world points irrefutably to another and superior kind of mental activity, that of the Creative Intelligence and Will. Man obviously does not create; he simply uses the material he finds at hand to be used.

11. Theistic evolutionism.This is the view, stated in simplest terms, that evolution is God’s method of creation. Under this view, the important question for us is this: Can theistic evolutionism be harmonized with Biblical teaching, in particular with the Genesis account of the Creation?

It should be emphasized here, first of all, I think, that Darwin never did deny God’s Creatorship. In the closing paragraphs of his Origin of Species he wrote as follows: Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. In the Life of Darwin, we find this statement: In my most extreme fluctuations, I have never been an atheist, in the sense of denying the existence of a God.19 Darwin was a very modest man, even to the extent of making an interesting confession; he described his own mind as having become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, with the result of producing atrophy of that part of the brain on which the higher tastes depend.20 This is a remarkable statement and one which scientists generally should treat seriously. Apparently T. H. Huxley had the same experience, albeit unwittingly; as stated in terms of May Kendall’s parody:

Primroses by the river’s brim Dicotyledons were to him, And they were nothing more.

(We are reminded here of Lord Bacon’s declaration that man cannot enter the kingdom of science, any more than he can enter the kingdom of heaven, without becoming as a little child.) It was not Darwin who developed evolutionism in such a form as to make a Creator superfluous (nor in truth was it either Huxley or Spencer); rather, it was Haeckel (whose fulminations became most embarrassing to Darwin at times) and his successors in the present century who are responsible for this development. Dr. Strong is right in saying that an atheistic and unteleological evolution is a reversion to the savage view of animals as brethren, and to the heathen idea of a sphinx-man growing out of the brute.21

Theistic evolutionists, as stated above, hold that evolution was in all likelihood God’s method of creation. There are many educated and sincerely religious persons who hold that theistic evolutionism if properly stated (that is, within certain limitations) is not necessarily in conflict with the teaching of Genesis, if the latter is also constructively interpreted. In the exposition of this general view, the student should consider the following matters of importance: (1) There is a clear correspondence between the Genesis Cosmogony and present-day scientific thought on many points. (These harmonies have been listed on preceding pages of this Part of our textbook.) (2) It must always be kept in mind that the major aim of the Genesis Cosmogony, and indeed of the whole Bible, is to tell us who made the cosmos, and not how it was made. It was what God said that was so, that is, that was done (Genesis 1:3; Genesis 1:7; Genesis 1:11; Genesis 1:15; Genesis 1:21; Genesis 1:25; Psalms 33:6; Psalms 33:9; Psalms 148:6), but the inspired writer makes no effort whatsoever to inform us as to how it was done. It is crystal clear that the narrative is intended to be a religious, and not a scientific, account of the Creation.

(3) There is nothing in the Genesis text that constrains us to accept the ultra-literal view that God spoke all living species into existence at one and the same time. On the contrary, according to the narrative itself, the activity of Creation was extended over six days and a fraction of the seventh. This is true, however we may see fit to interpret the word day. (4) Certainly the weight of all the evidence available, as explained in an earlier section of this textbook, is in support of the view that the days of the Genesis account were not solar days, but aeonic days; that is, indefinite periods of time. Thus the narrative allows for all the time the evolutionists may want to muster up theoretically in support of their theory.

(5) Evidently infinity in God has no reference to any kind of magnitude because God is Spirit (John 4:24); rather, the term designates the inexhaustible Source of Power by which the cosmos was created and is sustained in its processes. Hence the problem before us is not one of power, but one of method.What method, then, did the Creator use? Was Creation a long-drawn-out process of progressive development, or was it a process of actualization in a very brief time-span? But, after all, what difference does it make, whether it was the one or the other? Whether the Creation extended over six or seven solar days, or over six or seven aeonic days, the same measure of Creative Power would have been necessary in either case.

Because this problem is one of method, and not one of power, why do not the textbooks writers on this subject make this clear, and by so doing remove much of the ground on which their texts are resentfully criticized by Christian leaders. All that would be required would be a simple statement of the fact that the time element involved has little or nothing to do with the expenditure of Energy necessary to effect the actualization of the process. The reason seems obvious, I should say: Many of them actually want to belittle Biblical teaching and to create a thoroughgoing naturalism which would rule the Creator out of the cosmic picture altogether. I have long been convinced that this is a case in which the wish is father to the thought; that the will not to believe is the primary motivation; and that the elimination of everything superhuman or supernatural is the ultimate objective of the positivists, naturalists, humanists, and all those of like persuasion.

(6) As a matter of fact, the language of the Genesis Cosmogony allows for Divinely directed progressive develpment through the media of secondary causes, throughout the Creation. This is clearly implicit in God’s decrees, Let the earth put forth grass, etc., Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, Let the earth bring forth living creatures, etc.; and even in the earlier decrees with reference to non-living being, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, let the dry land appear, etc. The idea implicit in the original here is that of causation, as if to say, let the earth cause … let the seas cause, it to be done, etc. We see no reason for rejecting the view that God, whose Will is the constitution of the cosmos and its processes, should operate through the majesty and the sovereign power of His own established decrees.

(7) There are philosophers and theologians who take the position that at certain stages in the Creation, God, by direct action (that is, primary, as distinguished from secondary, causation) inserted new and higher powers into the Cosmic Process, the first above the inanimate world (matter-in-motion) being the life process (cellular activity),then consciousness (the product of sensitivity), and finally self-consciousness (person and personality). Obviously, these-are phenomena which mark off, and set apart, the successively more complex levels of being as we know these levels empirically. On the basis of this theory, it is held that even though variationsboth upward (progressive) and downward (retrogressive)by means of resident forces, may have occurred on the level of plant life and that of animal life, the actualization of the first form of energy-matter, first life, first consciousness, and first personality (homo sapiens) must have been of the character of special creations. It is interesting to recall the fact here that Wallace, the author with Darwin of the theory of natural selection, held that there were three breaks in the progressive continuity, namely, with the appearance of life, with the appearance of sensation and consciousness, and finally with the appearance of spirit. These breaks seem to correspond in a general way to vegetable, animal, and rational (human) life, in the order named.22

(8) Finally, it must be admitted that one of man’s most common fallacies is that of trying to project his own puny concepts of time into the sphere of God’s timelessness.God does not hurry; His timelessness is Eternity. (2 Peter 3:8, 2 Corinthians 4:18).

12. Theistic evolutionism and Genesis 2:7.The crucial problem involved here, of course, is that of the origin of homo sapiens; as stated in a nutshell, can theistic evolutionism be harmonized with the teaching of Gen 2:7? Can a Christian accept the view that man arrived on the scene through descent (or ascent?) from a brute animal species? Can such a view be harmonized in any way with the description of man as a body-spirit unity (or body-mind unity) that is explicitly given us in Genesis 2:7? Dr. A. H. Strong argues rather eloquently for an affirmative answer to these two questions, as follows: Evolution does not make the idea of a Creator superfluous, because evolution is only the method of God. It is perfectly consistent with a Scriptural doctrine of Creation that man should emerge at the proper time, governed by different laws from the brute creation yet growing out of the brute, just as the foundation of a house built of stone is perfectly consistent with the wooden structure built upon it. (Is not this, however, an irrelevant analogy?) Again: The Scriptures do not disclose the method of man’s creation. Whether man’s physical system is or is not derived by natural descent from the lower animals, the record of creation does not inform us. We are compelled, then, to believe that God’s -breathing into man’s nostrils the breath of life-’ (Genesis 2:7), though it was a mediate creation as presupposing existing material in the shape of animal forms, was yet an immediate creation in the sense that only a divine reinforcement of the process of life turned the animal into man. In other words, man came not from the brute, but through the brute, and the same immanent God who had previously created the brute created also the man.23

To me it is inconceivable that the inspired writer of Gen 2:7 could have had any such idea in mind as that suggested by Dr. Strong in the statements quoted above. Of course, it is entirely possible that the Spirit of God deliberately caused the material of the Genesis Cosmogony to be presented in a form such as to make it adaptable to man’s ever-increasing knowledge of his external environment (cf. Genesis 1:28). This seems to have been true of the over-all panoramic picture of the Creation given us in Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3, That is, having sketched in broad outlines the religious truths of the Genesis narrative, He may well have left it to man himself to spell out as best he can the essentially scientific (empirical) evidence concerning the origin of the cosmos and its manifold forms.

In relation to evolutionism, the meaning of Gen 2:7 is to be studied primarily in the light of the phrase, the dust of the ground. Surely we have here, in the verse as a whole, a portrait in what we of the modern world would call archaic language. Yet the portrait turns out to be scientific in the sense of the now-recognized fact that man is in truth a psychosomatic unity. Obviously, in terms of modern scientific thought, the writer of Gen 2:7 would have us to know that man in his present state is both body and mind (or spirit) and that he is immeasurably more than body alone; that his bodythe earthly house of our tabernacle (2 Corinthians 5:1, Wis. 9:15)like all things corporeal, shares the properties of what is commonly designated physical energy or matter; that in short he has a body akin to all earthly living bodies. This is surely the import of the verse as a whole: as Murphy tersely puts it: Man is a combination of matter and mind.24 The narrative here, writes Whitelaw, which, beginning with the construction of his body from the fine dust of the ground, designedly represents it as an evolution or development of the material universe.25 Marcus Dods writes: The discovery of the process by which the presently existing living forms have been evolved, and the perception that this process is governed by laws which have always been operating, do not make intelligence and design at all less necessary, but rather more so.26 Obviously, the writer could not have presented this thought in present-day scientific terms: he did not have the language for such a communication, and even if he could have had the proper language at his disposal, no one could have understood it.It seems, therefore, that the Spirit has left it to man’s intelligence to fathom the implications of this revelation. The passage, as it stands, appears to me to be irrelevant in respect to modern scientific explanations, even though possibly amenable to interpretation in modern scientific terms. Hence, it can hardly be said either to prove or to disprove them.

Is the breathing intoman’s nostrils the breath of life to be correctly explained (as in Strong’s language) as a reinforcement of the process of life that turned the animal into a man? The word reinforcement as used here strikes me as being exceedingly vague. What kind of reinforcement? Or, just what did this reinforcement involve? Surely the text of Gen 2:7 leaves us with only one valid interpretation, namely, that the breath of God carried with it a direct impartation from God Himself of those powers which specify man as manhis intellectual, moral and spiritual endowments, in fact the whole of his interior life: hence the declaration in Genesis 1:28 that he was created in the image of God. Surely this phrase, image of God, disallows the claim one frequently encounters that the breath of God of Gen 2:7 designates the impartation to man of the vital principle only. Genesis 1:28, if it means anything, surely means that God breathed into him, not just the life principle, but the rational principle as well. (Cf. Genesis 6:17, Acts 17:25, Ecclesiastes 12:7). These are the powers which separate man from the brute creation. Hence, because these powers are so far superior to any that are manifested by brutes, even by the highest primates, I find it impossible to accept the view that the difference of man from the brute is simply one of degree.My conviction is that the difference is, and will always be, one of kind.However Dr. Strong’s theory of reinforcement is to be explained, whether anthropomorphically (which certainly is not to be ruled out) or by mutation (in some manner biologically) it certainly was of the character of a special creation. Even though evolutionistic progression, may have occurred on the plant level, on the animal level, or on both, certainly in the vast leap from the brute to man, a special Divine operation of some kind affords the only satisfactory explanation of its occurrence. I am not convinced that the case for the evolution of man’s interior mental, moral, and spiritual propensitieshis essential being, as manfrom hypothetical primate and humanoidal forms has ever been proved. In all likelihood this is a mystery which will never become fully known to man, either by divine revelation or by scientific discovery, simply, because it lies beyond the scope of comprehension by the human intellect.

I therefore summarize as follows: I strenuously object to the manner in which the theory of evolution has been built up into what might be called a dogma.Many modern textbooks are replete with assertions of, and statements about what is designated the fact of evolution. This usually occurs when, from an author’s viewpoint, the wish is father to the thought. It is unfortunately true that when certain of the intelligentsia lose their faith in God, they avidly seek every possible device to bolster their unbelief, To say that evolution is a fact, however, is going entirely too far, especially in the attempt to establish a theory which is constructed for the most part on inference. Whether this inference is necessary inference or not, or just sheer conjecture, remains a moot question. Bold assertions do not cover lack of concrete evidence. Although I have never been able to bring myself to the point of accepting many of the exaggerated claims that are made by the evolutionists, yet after some fifteen years of dealing with college students, it has become my conviction that there is no real need for adding difficulties for them unnecessarily, or setting up and shooting at what may turn out to be straw men. Hence, the material of this section has been organized and presented with the end in view of helping the student to be strengthened in the most holy faith. If this can be accomplished without doing violence to the sacred text, on any subject that has been more or less controversial, I think it should be done. I cannot convince myself that acceptance or rejection of any theory of the method of the Creation that recognizes and allows for the operation of Divine Intelligence and Power should ever be made a test of fellowship in a church of the New Testament order.(See my Survey Course in Christian Doctrine, Vol. I, pp. 175-186. College Press, Joplin, Missouri, 1962.)

REVIEW QUESTIONS ON PART TEN

Define the word science.What is epistemology?

Why do we say that the laws of nature (of physics, chemistry, geology, biology, etc.) are statements of very great probability?

Distinguish between science and scientism.

Why do We affirm that much of the loose talk about alleged conflicts between Biblical teaching and scientific thinking in our day simply need not be?

List the harmonies between present-day science and the Genesis Cosmogony.

What is meant by the blind spots of materialists, naturalists, humanists, etc.?

Explain how the theory of epiphenomenalism is not necessarily to be regarded as antiBiblical.

Explain how present-day physics supports the Christian doctrine of immortality.

Explain how the theory of emergent evolution is not necessarily to be regarded as antiBiblical.

Explain the ambiguity of the word evolution.

Explain what is meant by the genetic fallacy.

State LeConte’s definition of evolution.

Explain the present-day theory of societal (or psychological) evolution as related to the biological.

What is the meaning of the word organismic in relation to theories of emergent evolution?

Explain the difference between evolution and evolutionism.

State the contributions of Lamarck, Darwin, Weismann, De Vries, and Mendel, respectively, to evolutionism.

What are mutations?

Explain what is meant by the movement of evolution.

Explain orthogenesis, also Bergson’s fountainlike evolutionism.

List the kinds of evidence usually cited to support the theory of evolution.

Explain what is meant by the evolution dogma.

Explain the fallacy in the title, Can Science Produce Life?

Summarize Thompson’s critique of evolutionism.

Explain how scientists have extended the notion of continuous progressive change to practically every aspect of the cosmos.

Explain what is meant by the fallacy of over-simplification.

Explain what is meant when we say that evolutionism has no adequate explanation of the transmission of variations from parents to offspring.

Does evolutionism give us any adequate explanation of the life movement itself? Explain your answer.

Explain how the unlimited stretch of time that is required by evolutionism is a form of begging the question.

How do mutations fit into the general theory of evolution? How are mutations to be accounted for?

Does structural resemblance necessarily prove emergence? Explain your answer.

List various facts of the world we live in, for which evolutionism can give no satisfactory explanation.

What is materialistic evolutionism? Explain why Christians cannot accept it, and why there is no real ground for any intelligent person to accept it.

What is the fallacy in the so-called mechanistic explanation of the origin of the cosmos?

Explain what is meant by theistic evolutionism?

What did Darwin have to say about the activity of the Creator in the origin of the biological world?

Summarize the arguments that may be offered in support of theistic evolutionism.

What is meant by the statement that the Creator may have operated through secondary causes in bringing the world into existence?

Summarize; Dr. Strong’s application of evolutionism to the account of the creation of man in Genesis 2:7. Do you consider the explanation valid? Explain your answer.

Discuss the likelihood of any correlation between the phrase, the dust of the ground, as occurring in Genesis 2:7, and the theory of evolution.

What, obviously, is the full meaning of Gen 2:7?

Summarize our general conclusions about evolutionism in relation to the Hebrew Cosmogony.

D. Elton Trueblood, Philosophy of Religion, p. 168. Harpers, 1957.

C. E. M.Joad, Guide to Philosophy, p. 309. Dover, 1936.

Cohen and Nagel, An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method, p. 389. Harcourt, Brace, 1934.

Ibid., p.390.

See J. C. Smuts, Holism and Evolution, pp.261-262. Macmillan, 1926.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, pp. 290, 311. Trans from the French by Bernard Wall. Harper Torchbook, 1961.

G. T. W. Patrick, Introduction to Philosophy, Revised Edition, pp. 122-124. Houghton Mifflin, 1935.

See Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. by Arthur Mitchell. Holt, 1911.

Patrick, op. cit., p. 115.

Arthur Kenyoh Rogers, A Student’s History of Philosophy, Third Edition, pp. 472-473. Macmillan, 1937.

James H. Jauncey, Science Returns to God, p.57. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1961.

See Herald and Presbyter, Nov. 22, 1914. Quoted by William Jennings Bryan, In His Image, p.91. Oliphants, London, and Revell, New York, 1922.

See P. H.-The Welshimer Story, by Francis M. Arant. Standard, Cincinnati, 1958.

G. T. W. Patrick, op. cit., p. 144.

G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, pp. 21-25. Doubleday Image Book, 1955.

Quoted by Douglas Dewar, The Transformist Illusion, p. 125. DeHoff, Murfreesboro, Tenn., 1957.

George Gaylord Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution, p. 143. Mentor Book Edition.

Sir Arthur Eddington, Science and the Unseen World, p. 82. Macmillan, 1930.

Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 1:274.

Quoted by A. H. Strong, Systematic Theology, One Volume Edition, p. 36. Judson Press, Philadelphia, 1907.

Strong, ibid., p. 473.

Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwinism, pp. 445-478. Quoted by Strong, ibid., p. 473.

See Strong, ibid., pp. 465-466.

Murphy on Genesis, p. 84. Estes and Lariat, Boston, 1873.

Thomas Whitelaw, Pulpit Commentary: Genesis, p. 41. Funk and Wagnalls, New York.

Marcus Dods, The Expositor’s Bible: Genesis, p. 10. Armstrong and Son, New York, 1895.

ADDENDA: COSMOLOGICAL THEORIES [Volume 1]

(Theories of the Origin and Organization of the Cosmos)

EMANATIONISM: Unity is prior to plurality. Creation is conceived as a process of the watering down of perfection, as, for example, light, in moving away from its source and thus becoming diffused, is finally lost in darkness. Darkness is non-being, and non-being is usually identified with gross matter. The most thoroughgoing emanation cults were those of the Gnostics and especially that of Plotinus, which is known as Neoplatonism.

PLOTINUS (A.D. 205-270).

(The Egyptian Neoplatonist, who derived his system largely from his teacher, Ammonius Saccas. His writings were published by Porphyry in six books, each consisting of nine sections, hence entitled the Enneads.) Origen and Augustine both were greatly influenced by Neoplatonism. The following should be read downward:

The One

Nous

one: world unity, prior to the possibility of plurality many: ideas or forms of all possible existents: (1) universals, (2) particulars

Soul

one: world soul, undivided many: individual souls, (1) unconscious, (2) conscious of ideas

Body

one: world body, as a whole many: particular bodies (1) as wholes, (2) decomposed

The Void

Gross matter: non-being

Gnosticism, in its various cults, postulated a series of emanations from the Absolute Being or Unity in the forms of psychic intermediaries, known as aeons.According to this early Christian heresy, Christ Himself was just such an emanation or aeon. It is interesting to note, in this connection, that the Deists of a later age were prone to regard the laws of nature as emanations, hence as having a kind of independent existence.

PHILOSOPHICAL HINDUISM

(or Hindu Mysticism. Very old, as set forth in the Upanishads)

Again, read downward: Brahman (perfect unity) Atman (unity that pervades plurality)

Souls (plurality that is really unity) Bodies (plurality that is mistaken for reality)

Castes (levels of social classes) Animals (levels of animal life) Plants (levels of plant life)

Matter (levels of decomposition)

Illusion (Maya)

It will be noted that emanationist systems all tend toward pantheism, the doctrine that identifies God with what we commonly call His Creation. The fallacies of pantheism are clearly pointed out in the following terse statements by C. H. Toy, Introduction to the History of Religions, p. 476: Pantheism has never commended itself to the masses of men. The demand for a deity with whom one may enter into personal relationsthe simple concept of a God who dwells apart satisfies the religious instincts of the majority of men. The ethical questions arising from pantheism seem to them perplexing: how can man be morally responsible when it is the deity who thinks and acts in him? and how can he have any sense of loyalty to a deity whom he cannot distinguish from himself?. Man demands a method of worship, and pantheism does not permit organized worship. Moreover, pantheism, by distributing the Divine essence through all cosmic existents, inanimate or animate, amoral or moral, makes God to be the author of evil as well as of good; to this fact the only alternative would be that evil is illusion, and this is the corner in which Absolutists are uniformly forced to take refuge. May I remind the student that an illusion is necessarily an illusion of something: an illusion of nothing or nothingness is inconceivable.

PLATO’S COSMOLOGY

(Plato lived 427-347 B.C. See his likely story of the Creation, in the Timaeus.)

Being:

The Forms (Ideas): The Form of the Good

Unity

Forms of all classes of existents

The Demiurgos (Craftsman, Architect)

The World: World-Soul

Becoming:

Rational Souls

Irrational Souls

Inanimate Bodies

Non-being:

Indeterminate matter

Plato can hardly be classified as an emanationist: in fact it is difficult to put his cosmology in any definite category. In the Timaeus, he pictures the Creation as having been actualized by the Demiurgos (Master Craftsman, Great Architect,) as the World-Soul, according to the archetypal Forms, out of what he calls the Receptacle. This last term seems to have been the word he used to designate the Void (empty space). It will be recalled that the Greek word chaos denoted, not disorder, but empty space; hence this was the Greek term generally used for non-being which was conceived to be what we call matter. (Cf. Plotinus, above). The Forms, in Plato’s thought, were the Principles of classification, e.g., the mustardness of a mustard seed, the horseness of a horse; that is, that which specifies the individuals of each particular kind of things. Had he put these Forms in the Mind of The DivineThe Form of the Good, that is, Unityhis system would have to be regarded as theistic; however, there seems to be no evidence in his writings that he took this step; he apparently gave the Forms an eternally separate existence in themselves. Hence, we must conclude that on the whole Plato favored a view of the Deity as immanent, and that his system was weighted in the direction of a higher pantheism. This is evident from the fact that the World-Soul (as the Prime Mover) is presented as spreading out throughout the cosmos and as directing its processes and changes from within. As a matter of fact, Plato obviously belonged to the Greek philosophical tradition (Aristotelianism alone excepted) in which the Divine Principle (God) is conceived pantheistically as That Which Is, in striking contrast to the Hebrew voluntarism in which God is revealed as He Who Is (Exodus 3:14), in a word, as pure personality.

ARISTOTLE’S HIERARCHY OF BEING

God

(defined as Pure Thought Thinking Itself: cf. John 4:24)

rational psyche (soul)

(physiochemical processes, cellular processes, sensitivity, locomotion, plus reason)

animal psyche

(physiochemical processes and cellular processes plus sensitivity and locomotion)

vegetative psyche

(physiochemical processes, plus the cellular processes)

matter-in-motion

(or in modern terms, the physiochemical processes of the inanimate world)

Aristotle, in his De Anima (On the Soul), pictures the totality of being as a hierarchy, that is, as organized on different levels in an ascending scale of complexity of powers, in which each higher order subsumes the powers of those below it. Analysis of the nature of movement (change) convinced Aristotle that in order to account for the complex of contingent causes-and-effects which is the cosmos, there must be a First Cause, a First or Prime Mover, who is self-existent (sui generis), that is, non-contingent and without beginning or end, the only alternative being that somewhere, at some time, nothing must have originated the first somethinga notion utterly absurd, of course; or, as someone has put it, the first mover must himself be unmoved, except from within, and different from the first moved. This Prime Mover, otherwise described as Pure Thought Thinking Itself, is Aristotle’s God, who is presented as affecting the universe without being a part of it. Hence, it will be seen that Aristotle’s God is transcendent, and that his system more nearly approximates theism than that of any other Greek philosopher. (Aristotle lived 384-322 B.C., and was a student at Plato’s school, the Academy, for some twenty years.)

Why does our world exist instead of any other kind of world? asked the German philosopher, Leibniz (1646-1716). Simply because (Leibniz concluded) God has chosen, not to create any kind of world at random, but to create the best of all possible worlds, that is, the best He found it possible to create for achieving His ends, the actualization of the greatest possible good and the least possible evil. (Evil, Leibniz held, is of three kinds, namely, physical evil (suffering), moral evil (sin), and metaphysical evil: this he defined in terms of the necessary imperfection of finite beings.) Therefore, because our world is the handiwork of this Perfect Being (The Absolute Monad), it must be the actualization of the fulness of created being. In such a world (reasoning a priori, of course), all possible beings must be actualized, all possible levels (grades) filled therein: there must be unbroken continuity in the form of progressive gradation of organisms from the very lowest living being up to the very highest, God Himself. Thus arose the doctrine of the Great Chain of Being, a doctrine which flourished in early modern times, and which, obviously, is largely in accord with present-day evolutionism. (For a thoroughgoing presentation of this view, see the excellent book by Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, published by the Harvard University Press, 1950. The concept is also clearly set forth in the poem by Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man.)

EMERGENTISM

(This is the view that unity is in the process of emerging out of plurality. The process is, and probably will always be, an unfinished process. The following tables are to be read upward,)

God

Mind

Mind

Society

Life

Life

Mind

Matter

Life

Matter

Space-Time

Matter

C. Lloyd Morgan, Samuel Alexander, in his book, Emer- in his book, Time gent Evolution, and Deity, 1920. 1923.

Roy Wood Sellars, in his book, Evolutionary Naturalism, 1922.

Emergentism* (discussed on preceding pages), though at times paying lip service to a God, is strictly pantheistic in character. In all cases, it rejects the theistic doctrine of God’s transcendence. It ignores uniformly the necessity of Efficient Causality in all cosmic processes.

I have presented the foregoing concepts (and diagrams) for the purpose of demonstrating the futility of all efforts to obtain complete knowledge of the origin and organization of the cosmos through unaided human reason. The ultimate mysteries are inscrutable. These various philosophical theories surely prove this to be true; that is, they prove the inherent incapacity of the human mind to explain (as Chesterton has put it) how nothing could turn into something or how something could turn into something else. How refreshing to turn away from the best that human wisdom can afford us, and to accept by faith the Biblical teaching, on these subjects! (Cf. Job 11:7; Isaiah 55:6-11; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; 1 Corinthians 3:18-20; Romans 11:33-36; Hebrews 11:3).

The following tables will serve to point up the correspondences between the empirical (commonsense) and the Biblical accounts of the origin and organization of the created world:

self-consciousness

God

(the person)

(Pure Spirit: John 4:24)

consciousness

Angels

(the brute)

(ethereal beings, ministering spirits: Hebrews 1:14)

life

(the cell)

Souls

(Genesis 2:7)

energy-matter (non-living)

Bodies

Matter

The EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT of the Dimensions of Being, based on observation and experience.

The BIBLICAL ACCOUNT of Being.

(Read upward)

(Read upward)

Day 7rest

Day 6man and woman, bara, Genesis 1:28; Genesis 2:7 land animals

Day 5water and air species, bara, Genesis 1:21

Day 4chronology (measurement of time)

GOD

Day 3plants, lands and seas

Day 2atmosphere (expanse)

Day 1energy, light, matter: bara, Genesis 1:1

THE HEBREW COSMOGONY (Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3)

(read upward)

Some hold that God, the Eternal Spirit, created without the use of pre-existing materials, inserting new increments of power into the Creative Process at successively higher levels. Some hold that God put into Prime (First) Matter all potentialities (Forms) later actualized by His Efficient Causality. N.B.For the diagrams presented above as illustrative of the Emanation and Emergent-Evolution theories of the origin and organization of the cosmos, I am indebted to Dr. Archie J. Bahm, Professor of Philosophy, University of New Mexico. These diagrams appear in his well-known book, Philosophy: An Introduction, published by Wiley and Sons, 1953. It is by his permission that I reproduce them here, and for this privilege I am deeply grateful.-C.C.C.

Dr. A. H. Strong, in his Systematic Theology, suggests that the content of the Biblical teaching falls under the category of what is philosophically designated Ethical Monism.

It is my conviction, however, that Dr. Bahm, in the work cited above, presents a philosophical view which approximates rather closely the essence of the Genesis Cosmogony. Dr. Bahm has named his theory Organicism. Should the student wish to pursue the subject further, he can do so by familiarizing himself with the argument presented in Chapter 20 of Bahm’s book. The late Martin Buber, the Jewish theistic existentialist, in his book entitled The Eclipse of God develops the thesis that whereas philosophy holds fast to an image of God, or even to a faith in God, religion holds fast to God Himself. This is a true contrast.

I must confess that I find philosophical theory and terminology, aside from suggesting clues now and then to the understanding of certain matters of Christian doctrine, to have little in common with Biblical revelation as a whole.

Now may I close this volume with a personal confession, namely: I could never substitute for faith in the Biblical Heavenly Father who has revealed Himself to us in His Son Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1-4; Hebrews 11:6; John 15:1), any coldly intellectual philosophical theory of the origin and nature of the Mystery of Being. I recall here the striking forcefulness of the questions which Zophar the Naamathite addressed to Job in olden times: Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? (Job 11:7). There is but one answer to these questionsan unequivocal negative. Or, as the Apostle Paul puts it: The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God (1 Corinthians 3:19). Again: For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe (1 Corinthians 1:21). Through the foolishness of the preaching of what? The preaching of Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumblingblock, and unto Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:23-24).

Genesis 2:1-3

Day Seven: Rest Genesis 2:1-3

And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made.

Thus ends what has rightly been called the sublime Hymn of Creation.

1. God finished His work, on the seventh day. Does this mean that God, in some fashion, worked on the seventh day. To avoid such an interpretation, the Septuagint and certain other ancient versions insert the sixth day in the text instead of the seventh. Others have translated it, had finished. Still others take the passage to mean that God declared His creative work finished. The Creation evidently was completed, as it had already been pronounced very good. Could it be that on the seventh day God fitted up Eden to serve as man’s temporary abode in his first state of innocence and placed him in it?

2.* God rested from His work*.(1) But we are told that Jehovah fainteth not, neither is weary (Isaiah 40:28). Does God need to rest because of fatigue? Surely not. This is obviously an anthropomorphic expression indicating simply that God ceased from His labor of creating, or, as Skinner puts it, desisted from His creative activity. (Since the Creation was finished and pronounced very good, what more was there to do?) Murphy’s suggestion is that God’s rest arises from the joy of achievement rather than from the relief of fatigue. Moreover, even though God rested from His works of physical creation, He certainly did not rest from works of benevolence (redemption). (2) Heaven is eternal rest, that is, rest from any kind of physical or corporeal activity (surely, however, a principal aspect of the activity of Heaven will be growth in spiritual knowledge). God came out of His timelessness to create the heavens and the earth, in six successive epochs; this Creation having been completed, and Eden prepared for man’s first state, God returned back into the timelessness of pure Spiritual Being. Hence the Father’s rest continues, and therefore we have no formula, as at the end of each of the first six days, that there was evening and there was morning, a seventh day.All preceding periods had begun and ended; not so the seventhit is still going on. This is evidently what Jesus meant (John 5:17) in answering the Jews who were criticizing Him for healing on their week-day Sabbath. My Father worketh even until now, and I work, said Jesus. That is to say, You Pharisees criticize me for doing a work of benevolence on your little twenty-four-hour Sabbathbut why? My Father’s Sabbath has been going on throughout all these intervening centuries from the time He ceased from the creating of the world, yet through all this time He has been doing works of benevolence continuously. Why, then, should you literal-minded hypocrites find fault with me for doing a work of benevolence on your little week-day Sabbath?

3. Pro-lepsis: Resting and Hallowing.(1) Note that to bless is to wish something for that which is blessed (someone has said, infinite multiplication of the something wished); and to hallow is to remove that which is hallowed, out of its secular relations and to devote it to God. (2) This is obviously a pro-lepsis: and who was in a better position to understand this than Moses under whom the observance of the week-day Sabbath was established? Now a pro-lepsis is a connecting together, by the writer of the narrative, of two widely separated events in point of years, in an explanatory way, so that it appears as if they might have happened at one and the same time. Remember that Moses is writing this narrative long after the Creation. This means that God rested on the seventh epochal (aeonic) day, after finishing His Creation (of the physical universe).* But He did not sanctify the seventh solar day of the week as the Jewish Sabbath until many centuries later, to be specific, when the Hebrew people under Moses were in the Wilderness of Sin, previous to their arrival at Sinai*.In the sixteenth chapter of Exodus we have the account of the institution of the Jewish Sabbath. Moses, however, in giving us the Creation Narrative, connects the resting on the seventh aeonic day (after Creation) and the sanctification of the seventh solar day in the Wilderness of Sin, in such an explanatory way that it appears that the two events happened following the Creation, and at the same time, when in reality they were separated by many centuries. He does this, evidently, for the purpose of teaching the Jewish people why it was that Yahweh selected the seventh day of the week, instead of the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth day, as a day of rest for them, but especially as a memorial of their deliverance from Egyptian bondage (Deuteronomy 5:15). (3) Another example of pro-lepsis occurs in Genesis 3:20And the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. (Eve means Living or Life.) When Adam named her Eye, as far as we know, she was not the mother of anyone; but she was the mother of the entire human race when the Mosaic Cosmogony was written. Hence, Moses appended the explanatory clause, because she was the mother of all living, to show why Adam, with prophetic insight, named her Eve. (4) Pro-lepsis occurs in the New Testament, as in Matthew 10:2-4, in the enumeration of the twelve apostles. Matthew, in giving their names, concludes with the statement, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him. The clause, who also betrayed him, is merely explanatory on Matthew’s part, to make clear the identity of Judas. Yet the calling of Judas to the Apostleship and the betrayal of Jesus by Judas were events separated in time by some three years, although it might seem, from the wording of this passage from Matthew’s account, that they occurred at one and the same time. There can be little or no doubt that in Genesis 2:1-3, we have another pro-lepsis: only on this basis can the passage be harmonized with the teaching of the Bible as a whole.

(5) A. Campbell (CS, 139), takes the position that the Sabbath was observed from the Creation. However, there is no evidence whatever to support this view. There is not the slightest suggestion of an observance of the Sabbath prior to the time of Moses: the term does not even occur in the book of Genesis. There are intimations of a division of time into cycles of seven days (weeks) here and there in Genesis (e.g., Genesis 8:10-12; Genesis 29:16-30; Genesis 50:10), but there is no necessary connection between these and the observance of the seventh day as the Sabbath; moreover, there is not even an intimation of Sabbath observance associated with them. (6) It is crystal clear that the first observance of the week-day Sabbath occurred in the wilderness of Sin, as related in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus. It is inconceivable that the Procession under Moses would have been on the march from Elim to the wilderness of Sin, as we are told expressly that it was, on the first day of the eight-day period described here, for this would also have been a Sabbath had the institution been in effect at that time. The Law of the Sabbath forbade the people to do any work whatever, even to kindle a fire or to leave their habitations on that holy day (Exodus 16:29; Exodus 31:14-15; Exodus 35:2-3; Numbers 15:32-36); hence, marching on that first day into the wilderness of Sin would have been a flagrant violation of the Sabbath Law. Now, as the story is given, throughout the six days that followed the first day of marching, the people, at God’s command, gathered manna (bread from heaven) each day, and, again at God’s command, they gathered a double portion on the sixth day. Why so? Because the day that followedthe last day of this eight-day periodwas the first observance of the Jewish Sabbath. The Scripture makes these facts too clear for misconception (Exodus 16:21-30). Not too long after this, the Procession reached Sinai, and there the positive law of the Sabbath was incorporated into the Decalogue (Exodus 20:8-11). (7) The Sabbath was a provision of the Mosaic Law, given to one people only, a people living in a part of the world where it could be properly observed (e.g., without the kindling of a fire, Exodus 35:2-3, Numbers 15:32-36) without working a hardship on them (cf. the words of Jesus, Mark 2:27-28). The wording of Exo 20:8, Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy, does not necessarily imply a previous observance; remember means, evidently, keep in memory, or do not forget the Sabbath day, thus having reference primarily to their future observance of the day. If it be contended that the word remember here has reference to past observance, I answer simply that the Hebrew people had already observed the Sabbath at least a few times, from the occasion of its institution in the Wilderness of Sin (Exodus 16). The language of this sixteenth chapter makes it too obvious for question that what is described here was the first observance of the seventh day of the week as the Jewish Sabbath.

(8) Finally, the Sabbath was an integral part of the Decalogue, and the Decalogue was the heart of the Mosaic Covenant. In Deuteronomy 5:4-22, we find Moses repeating the Ten Commandments, including the command to keep the seventh day as the Sabbath, In Deuteronomy 5:1-3 of the same chapter, we find him stating expressly that God had not made this Covenant with their fathers (the Patriarchs), but with the generation that had been present at Horeb (another name for Sinai), and with their descendants to whom he, Moses, was speaking on that occasion (just before his own death and burial). (Cf. Galatians 3:19. Here the Apostle tells us that the Law (Torah) was added, that is, codified, because of the growing sinfulness of the people under no restraint but that of tradition and conscience). Moses then goes on to tell the people, no doubt to remind them (Deuteronomy 5:12-15), that the seventh-day Sabbath was set apart by Divine ordinance to be observed by the Children of Israel as a memorial of their deliverance from Egyptian bondage, (Cf. Nehemiah 9:13-14). It necessarily follows that the observance must have been inaugurated after that deliverance had taken place, that is, after the Exodus. All these Scriptures account for the fact that we find no mention of the Jewish Sabbath in Genesis, that is, throughout the Patriarchal Dispensation. What, then, was the purpose of the inspired writer (Moses, cf. Matthew 19:7-8; Luke 16:19-31; Luke 24:27; Luke 24:44; John 1:17, etc.) in correlating the observance of the week-day Sabbath by the Jewish nation with the day of God’s rest from His creative activity? The answer is obvious: it is to explain why the seventh day was selected to be memorialized instead of any one of the other six days. We have in Genesis the reason why the particular day of the week was chosen; we have in Deuteronomy what the day was chosen for, that is, what it was Divinely intended to memorialize. (There is no need whatever for assuming two contradictory accounts here, nor even for assuming two different accounts.) In a word, the Genesis narrative is to inform us that the seventh day of each ordinary week was sanctified as a memorial for the Jewish nation because that was the great aeonic day on which God rested from His creative activity in the beginning. Thus it may be contended legitimately that the extent of the time involved in these two instances is not any necessary part of the exegetical parallel.

(9) The seventh-day Sabbath was a sign between Yahweh and one people only, the Children of Israel (Exodus 31:12-17). It was divinely appointed a memorial of their deliverance from the bondage of Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:12-15), and as such never had any significance whatever for a Gentile. Moreover, it was to cease with the abrogation of the Old Covenant and the ratification of the New by the death of Christ on the Cross (Hosea 2:11, John 1:17, Colossians 2:13-17, 2 Corinthians 3:3-15, Galatians 3:23-27; Hebrews 8:6-13; Hebrews 9:23-28; Hebrews 10:8-14; 1 Peter 2:24). In our Dispensation, the observance of the seventh day would, of course, as stated above, have no meaning, especially for Gentiles. Hence, in the New Testament writings, whereas Jesus, the Apostles, and the early evangelists often went into the synagogues on the Sabbath (the seventh day) to preach the Gospel to the Jews wont to be assembled there, all Christian assemblies, however, were held on the first day of the week, the day on which the Lord was raised from the dead (Mark 8:31; Mark 16:9, Acts 4:10-12; Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:1-2), which came to be known as the Lord’s Day (Revelation 1:10). There is no particular connection between the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Lord’s Day. There is, however, a kind of analogy: that is, as the Sabbath was ordained a memorial of the deliverance of ancient or fleshly Israel from the bondage of Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:15), and as Egypt is, in Scripture, a type of a state of sin, so the Lord’s Day is a memorial of the deliverance of spiritual Israel (Galatians 3:29) from the bondage of sin and death, through the resurrection of Christ.

(10) Note allusions to the six days of Creation in other parts of the Bible, especially Exodus 20:11 and Exodus 31:15-17. Do these passages require us to accept the days of the Genesis Cosmogony as days of twenty-four hours each? On this point Tayler Lewis (Lange, CDHCG, 135-136) writes with great clarity, as follows: The most clear and direct allusion is found in the Fourth Commandment, Exodus 20:11, -Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth.-’ This language is held to be conclusive evidence of the latter having been ordinary days. They are of the same kind, it is said, or they would not have been put in such immediate connection. There could not be such a sudden change or rise in the meaning. This looks plausible, but a careful study shows that there is something more than first strikes us. It might be replied that there is no difference of radical ideawhich is essentially preserved, and without any metaphor in both usesbut a vast difference in the scale. There is, however, a more definite answer furnished specially by the text itself, and suggested immediately by the objectors-’ own method of reasoning. God’s days of working, it is said, must be the same with man’s days of working, because they are mentioned in such close connection. Then God’s work and man’s work must also be the same, or on the same grade for a similar reason. The Hebrew word is the same for both: -In six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work; for in six days the Lord made (wrought) heaven and earth.-’ Is there no transition here to a higher idea? And so of the resting: -The seventh day shall be to thee a sabbath (a rest), for the Lord thy God rested on the seventh day-‘words of the same general import, but the less solemn or more human term here applied to Deity. What a difference there must have been between God’s work and man’s workabove all, between God’s ineffable repose and the rest demanded for human weariness. Must we not carry the same difference into the times, and make a similar ineffable distinction between the divine working-days and the human working-daysthe God-divided days, as Augustine calls them, and -the sun-divided days,-’ afterwards appointed to us for -signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years-’ of our lower chronology? Such a pointing to a higher scale is also represented in the septennial sabbath, and in the great jubilee period of seven times seven. They expand upwards and outwards like a series of concentric circles, but the greatest of them is still a sign of something greater; and how would they all collapse, and lose their sublime import, if we regard their antitype as less than themselves, or, in fact, no greater than their least! The other analogy, instead of being forced, has in it the highest reason. It is the true and effective order of contemplation. The lower, or earthly, day is made a memorial of the higher. We are called to remember by it. In six (human) days do all thy work; for in six (divine) days the Lord made heaven and earth. It is the manner of the Scriptures thus to make times and things on earth representatives, or under-types, of things in the heavens, hypodeigmata ton en tois ouranois (Hebrews 9:23). Viewed from such a standpoint these parallelisms in the language of the Fourth Commandment suggest of themselves a vast difference between the divine and the human days, even if it were the only argument the Bible furnished for that purpose. As the work to the work, as the rest to the rest, so are the times to the times.

(11) Thomas Whitelaw (PCG, 12, 13) comments in similar vein: The duration of the seventh day of necessity determines the length of the other six. Without anticipating the exposition of ch. Genesis 2:1-4, it may be said that God’s sabbatic rest is understood by the best interpreters of Scripture to have continued from creation’s close until the present hour; so that consistency demands the previous six days to be considered as not of short, but of indefinite, duration. The language of the fourth commandment, when interpreted in accordance with the present theory, confirms the probability of its truth. If the six days in Exodus 20:11 are simply natural days, then the seventh day, in which God is represented as having rested from his creative labours, must likewise be a natural or solar day; and if so, it is proper to observe what follows. It follows (1) that the events recorded in the first five verses of Genesis must be compressed into a single day of twenty-four hours, so that no gap will remain into which the short-day advocates may thrust the geologic ages, which is for them an imperative necessity; (2) that the world is only 144 hours older than man, which is contrary to both science and revelation; (3) that the statement is incorrect that God finished all his work at the close of the sixth day; and (4) that the fossiliferous remains which have been discovered in the earth’s crust have either been deposited there since man’s creation, or were created there at the first, both of which suppositions are untenable. But now, if, on the contrary, the language signifies that God laboured in the fashioning of his cosmos through six successive periods of indefinite duration (olamim, aeons), and entered on the seventh day into a correspondingly long period of sabbatic rest, we can hold the opposite of every one of these conclusions, and find a convincing argument besides for the observance of the sabbath in the beautiful analogy which subsists between God’s great work of olamim and man’s little work of sun-measured days. (Perhaps I should emphasize the fact here that the Pulpit Commentary, although first published about the turn of the century and recently re-issued, is still one of the sanest, most comprehensive, and most scholarly of all Biblical Commentaries. Perhaps the most erudite of all such sets is the Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical Commentary, co-edited by Dr. John Peter Lange and Dr. Philip Schaff, first published in 1868; the volume on Genesis, by J. P. Lange, is translated from the German, with essays and annotations by Dr. Tayler Lewis. The general content of these Commentaries has been affected very little by recent scientific discoveries and hypotheses. I should say that this is a mark of their true greatness, their reliability.)

(12) Some additional evidence concerning the days of the Creation is in order here, if for no other reason, to demonstrate the general ambiguity with which the Hebrew yom is used in the Old Testament. For example, Genesis 1:5 (here Day refers to daylight); Genesis 2:4 (here yom takes in the whole Creative Week); Genesis 2:17 (here the word indicates an indefinite period); Genesis 35:3the day of my distress; Ecclesiastes 7:14the day of prosperity, the day of adversity; Psalms 95:8the day of temptation in the wilderness (Did not this day last forty years?); Deuteronomy 9:1here day means in a short time; Psalms 2:7here we have an eternal day, a day in God’s Eternal Purpose), etc. Note also in the New Testament the Greek equivalent, hemera, John 8:56my day here takes in Christ’s incarnate ministry and probably His entire reign as Acting Sovereign of the universe (Acts 2:36, Philippians 2:9-11); Hebrews 3:15in this text to-day takes in the present season of grace, that is, the entire Gospel Dispensation. Thus it will be seen that by the same word yom, and its Greek equivalent hemera, the Scriptures recognize an artificial day (Genesis 1:5), an eternal day (Psalms 2:7), a civil day (Leviticus 23:32), a millenial day (2 Peter 3:8), a judgement day (Acts 17:31), a solar day (Exodus 16:4-5, Romans 14:5), a* day-period* (Genesis 2:4, John 8:56, Hebrews 3:8, Romans 13:12), etc. Certainly, the sheer elasticity with which these Hebrew and Greek words are used for our word, day, throughout the Bible forbids the dogmatic assumption of a single fixed meaning!

It is worthy of note here that Gleason L. Archer, Jr., whose fidelity to the Scriptures can hardly be questioned, in his outstanding book, published recently, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, after rejecting the concepts of a twenty-four-hour day and of a revelational (special prophetic visional) day, presents the view which I have adopted here, namely, that in the Genesis Cosmogony each of the seven Creative Days must have been a period of indefinite duration (that is, as man measures time). He writes (pp. 176-177): According to this view the term yom does not necessarily signify a literal twenty-four-hour day, but is simply equivalent to stage. It has often been asserted that yom could not bear this meaning, but could only have implied a literal day to the Hebrew mind according to Hebrew usage. Nevertheless, on the basis of internal evidence, it is the writer’s conviction that yom in Genesis 1 could not have been intended by the Hebrew author to mean a literal twenty-four-hour day. I fail to see how any other interpretation can be validated on the basis of the content of the Genesis Cosmogony as a whole.

4. The Mosaic Hymn of Creation is especially meaningful in one respect: in v. 31 it sets the sublime optimistic motif of the entire Bible. This verse reads: God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good. What a burst of exultation and benediction to be called forth from the inmost being of Elohim at His contemplation of His own handiwork in its entirety! What order, what beauty, what glory there was, to elicit such Divine exultation! Yetdoes not this verse strike the note of optimism that pervades the Bible from beginning to end? Does it not impress the truth upon us that God’s work can never be destroyed, indeed can never be ultimately marred, much less ruined (Acts 3:21); that Good will never be overcome by Evil, but will in fact overcome Evil, in the consummation of the Divine Plan of the Ages? This crescendo of moral victory reaches its height in the New Testament. Even in the midst of the Great Tribulation which man will bring upon himself at the end of the present Dispensation, the spread of evil in all its formsgreed, lust, violence, war, utter preoccupation with earthly thingswhen the saints see these iniquities becoming world-wide, Jesus Himself tells us, they shall lift up their eyes and see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory (Matthew 24:29-30; Matthew 16:17-18; Mark 13:19-26; Luke 21:20-28). Never is there the slightest intimation anywhere in Scripture of the possibility of Satan’s triumph over the Creation of God! On the contrary, it is expressly affirmed again and again that Satan and his rebel host (of both angels and men) are doomed; that their proper habitation is the pit of the abyss, that is, segregation in Hell, the penitentiary of the moral universe (Matthew 25:41, 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 1:6), and that to this ultimate destiny they are bound to be consigned by the Sovereign Will that decrees and executes Absolute Justice. (Matthew 25:31-46; John 5:28-29; Hebrews 2:14-15; Philippians 2:5-11; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28; Romans 2:2-11; Acts 17:30-31; Revelation 20:11-15).

5. The Correspondence with Present-day Science of the main features of the Genesis account of the Creation is little short of amazing. (1) On the basis of the panoramic interpretation of the Genesis Cosmogony, the one which we have adopted here, largely on the ground that it does not require any far-fetched applications of the various parts, that is to say, any unjustified stretching of the meaning of the Scripture text, the whole Creation Narrative, in its essential features, parallels the fundamental theories of the physical sciences of our day. On the basis of this panoramic view, there is no need to postulate any post-cataclysmic reconstruction theory (based on the notion of a gap between Genesis 2:1-2) to provide a. way of escape from the difficulties of modern geology. Certainly the stretch of time between the first brooding of the Spirit over the primeval deep and the Divine consilium in which it was decreed that man should be created in God’s image, was eminently sufficient to allow for the developments claimed by such sciences as astronomy, physics, paleontology, archeology, anthropology, etc., and, as we shall see later, for those aspects of the biological and physiological sciences which truly can be designated scientific.Besides, the notion of the building of a new cosmos on the ruins of a former one, without even a suggestion, in the Scripture text, ,of any natural or moral reason for such wholesale changes, makes the reconstruction theory a purely arbitrary one on man’s part, (2) Again, the oft-heard cyclical theory of cosmic history is usually, either in its origin or in its adoption, a case in which the wish is father to the thought on the part of atheistically and agnostically motivated scientists who would attempt to avoid the problem of Creation by zealously affirming what they choose to designate the eternity of matter. (In passing, it should be noted that the correlation of the word eternal (which most certainly signifies timelessness) with the nature of what man calls matter is per se an obvious contradiction.) Evidently, even though the theory of cycles of catastrophes and reconstructions might reasonably allow for the view that, as Hoyle puts it, matter is infinitely old (a view which he himself rejects), any such cyclical theory deprives cosmic being and history of any meaning whatsoever, and certainly ignores the fact of the Intelligence and Will which, on the basis of the theory of cycles, necessarily establishes and sustains the successive periods of cosmic order that are supposed to emerge from respective prior cataclysms. (Let us not forget that cosmos is order.)As a matter of fact, these cyclical theories have little or nothing to support them, apart from the human imagination which conjures them up.

(3) Again, the Genesis account of the Creation is in strict accord with the nuclear physics of our time in presenting radiant energy (light), of some kind, as the first and ultimate form of physical energy. This, as stated heretofore, is a commonplace of present-day physical science. (4) Especially, however, is the Order of the Creation as presented in the Genesis Narrative in the closest harmony with present-day scientific thinking, and indeed with the facts of human experience. And the amazing thing about this correspondence is that it is true, despite the fact that the Mosaic Cosmogony can certainly be proved to have had its origin in pre-scientific times, that is, before the sciences, as we think of them, had begun to be developed. In the Genesis Narrative the word good, as We have noted heretofore, signified the order that prevailed as a result of the ordinations of the Word and the broodings of the Spirit; hence, at the end of the creative process God is said to have looked out on the whole and pronounced it very good, that is to say, the order was perfect, perfection signifying wholeness, Obviously, energy, especially the different kinds of radiant energy (light), were necessarily the first physical existents; hence, we are told that these were created on Day One. This was the necessary physical beginning of the cosmos, insofar as human experience and science can determine. (The Primal Energy is, of course, the Divine Intelligence and Will.) Again the creation of both light and atmosphere necessarily preceded the appearance of all forms of life: without light and atmosphere plants could not perform the mysterious process of photosynthesis, the process by which solar energy is captured, so to speak, and converted into stored food energy for beast and man. Without photosynthesis no form of animal life, the human body included, could exist. Morrison (MDNSA, 26-27): All vegetable life is dependent upon the almost infinitesimal quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, so to speak, it breathes. To express this complicated photosynthetic chemical reaction in the simplest possible way, the leaves of the trees are lungs and they have the power when in the sunlight to separate this obstinate carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen. In other words, the oxygen is given off and the carbon retained and combined with the hydrogen of the water brought up by the plant from its roots. By magical chemistry, out of these elements nature makes sugar, cellulose, and numerous other chemicals, fruits and flowers. The plant feeds itself and produces enough more to feed every animal on earth. At the same time, the plant releases the oxygen we breathe and without which life would end in five minutes. Let us then, pay our humble respects to the plant. Animals give off carbon dioxide and plants give off oxygen. It has recently been discovered that carbon dioxide in small quantities is also essential to most animal life, just as plants use some oxygen. Hydrogen must be included, although we do not breathe it. Without hydrogen water would not exist, and the water content of animal and vegetable matter is surprisingly great and absolutely essential. Oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and carbon, singly and in their various relations to each other, are the principal biological elements. They are the very basis on which life rests. There is, however, not one chance in millions that they should all be at one time on one planet in the proper proportions for life. Science has no explanations to offer for the facts, and to say it is accidental is to defy mathematics.

And, finally, in this connection, without the subhuman orders to provide for man the means of food, shelter, clothing, medicines, etc., he simply could not exist in his present natural state. (Moreover, according to the Divine Plan, man’s natural state as a person created in God’s image is the necessary pre-condition to growth in holiness which is the very essence of the Spiritual Life, just as the Spiritual Life is the necessary preparation for the Life Everlasting (1 Corinthians 15:44-49, Romans 8:18-25, Matthew 5:8. Hebrews 12:14, 2 Peter 3:18).

To summarize: the general order of the Creation as set forth in Genesis was, briefly, as follows: energy, light, atmosphere, lands and seas, plants, water and air animals (and it is a commonplace of biology today that animal life had its beginning in the water), land animals, and finally man and woman. This, as we have noted, was an order determined by the very nature of things as they are known by present-day science; hence, it presupposes a directing Intelligence and ordering Will. (Surely Order, anywhere, or of any kind, presupposes an Orderer.) Again, this universal order consisted in the harmony (hence, unity) of all natural non-living and living processes. Every created class of things was fulfilling the function, and attaining the end, for which the Creator-God had brought it into existence; in a word, there was perfect harmony and unity of all the component parts of the whole natural Creation. This universal order prevailed, of course, until sin entered the world. Sin is transgression of the law of God; it is lawlessness (1 John 3:4) and this is disorder.

It is of the utmost importance to emphasize here the fact that the order in which the various parts, non-living and living, of the natural Creation are said to have been brought into existence, in the account given us in the first chapter of Genesis, is precisely that which is claimed by modern science. Yet the Genesis Cosmogony was written, as we all know, long before men knew anything about radiant energy, atomic processes, cellular processes, plant photosynthesis, psychosomatic entities, etc., or their sequential inter-relationships. This is a fact, I contend, which can be accounted for only on the ground of the special Divine inspiration of the Mosaic Cosmogony.

I consider it a privilege to present here the following conclusive paragraphs from the pen of Dr. Unger (IGOT, 184-186): In the first two Chapter s of Genesis in an account unique in all ancient literature, the Pentateuch catalogues the creation of the heavens and earth, and all plant, animal and human life. Other nations have their creation stories. But these are important only by sheer contrast in accentuating the sublimity and grandeur of the inspired record. Purged of the gross polytheistic perversions of the numerous non-inspired creation legends by virtue of its advanced monotheistic point of view, only the Genesis account arrives at the great First Cause in that incomparably magnificent opening word: -In the beginning God created. -’ (Genesis 1:1). Lifting the reader with one stroke out of the morass and confusion of the polytheistic accounts, in which primitive peoples in their naive efforts to explain the origin of the universe attributed each different phenomenon to a separate cause in the form of a deity, the Pentateuch conducts us at once to that which was totally beyond the grasp of the natural mind, the concept of the universe as a whole as the creative act of one God. By inspiration the author of the Pentateuch has the secret which the polytheistic writers of ancient Mesopotamia blindly groped after, the unifying principle of the universe. In an age grossly ignorant of causation, Genesis stands out all the more resplendently as a divine revelation. The discovery of secondary causes and the explanation of the how of creation in its ongoing operation is the achievement of science. How cause produces effect, how order and symmetry prevail, how physical phenomena and organic life are interdependentthese and similar questions science has answered. But science can go only so far. The elements of the universe, matter, force, order, it must take for granted. Revelation alone can answer the why of creation. The Bible alone discloses that the universe exists because God made it and brought it into being for a definite purpose. The account of the origin of the cosmos in Genesis, moreover, is not only incomparably superior in every respect to ancient cosmogonies and creation accounts, but what is all the more amazing in the light of the utterly unscientific age in which it was produced, is its scientific precision even when judged by the standards of our modern scientific age. Commenting on the account of creation which we find in Chapter I of Genesis, W. F. Albright calls the -sequence of creative phases-’ which it outlines as -so rational that modern science cannot improve on it, given the same language and the same range of ideas in which to state its conclusions. In fact, modern scientific cosmogonies show such a disconcerting tendency to be short-lived that it may be seriously doubted whether science has yet caught up with the Biblical story.-’ (This excerpt from Albright occurs in the article, The Old Testament and Archeology, in the Old Testament Commentary, H.C. Alleman and E. E. Flack (Philadelphia, 1948), p. 135).

6. Unscriptural Notions of God and Creation.(1) Atheism, means literally, no god. The term is applied generally to any theory that the universe is the product of blind chance; of fortuitous concourses of atoms, etc. (2) Agnosticism, which means literally, without knowledge. As Robert G. Ingersoll once put it: I do not say that there is no GodI simply say that I do not know. I do not say that there is no future lifeI simply say that I do not know. It has been rightly said that an agnostic is a man who wants to be an atheist. It is so much easier to profess agnosticism than to defend atheism. (3) Pantheism, meaning literally, all is God. Pantheism identifies God with the world, nature, the universe, etc. Objections: Pantheism is self-contradictory in that it tries to attribute infinity to God, yet shuts Him up within a finite process; moreover, it contradicts our intuitions as intelligent creatures that we are not particles of God, but unique self-conscious entities; and finally, it makes God include within Himself all evil as well as good, or takes the only possible alternative of regarding evil as illusion. But an illusion cannot be an illusion of nothing.Pantheism denies God’s transcendence.(4) Deism, the view that there is a God, that He created the world and set it going, and then withdrew from all further intercourse with it, much as a man winds a clock and then expects it to run forever of its own accord. Objections: (a) Deism came into existence in the age in which Newton’s concept of the rigidity of the laws of nature dominated all science. As someone has put it, Having brought God into the picture to account for these laws of nature, it then bowed Him out with thanks for His provisional services. (b) To accept deism is to reject special providence, prayer, miracle, redemption, inspiration, revelation, resurrection, immortality, etc., in short, the entire Plan of Redemption that is revealed in the Bible. (c) The concept of an infinite God who would create and then take no further interest in His Creation simply makes no appeal to man’s spiritual consciousness. Such a concept of God has nothing to offer in the way of meeting human aspiration and human need. Such a God is not, cannot be, a God of Love. Deism denies the immanence of God. (5) Materialism, the theory that all phenomena of human experience are traceable ultimately to matter in motion.Objections: (a) Our only means of knowing matter is through the instrumentality of mind; hence, in knowing matter, mind proves itself to be of a higher order than the matter which it knows. (b) The attributes (powers) of mind are of a higher rank than the attributes of matter. Perception, consciousness, self-consciousness, meaning, the sense of values, and the like, simply cannot be explained on the ground of any powers inherent in matter. (c) Mind, rather than matter, proves itself to be the eternal and independent principle. It must continue to be so regarded until it can be scientifically demonstrated that mind is to be identified with the activity of brain cells. But all attempts to explain the psychical from the physical are failures: psychology cannot be reduced to sheer physiology.(d) Matter was never known to generate per se thought, feeling, or will. The sensible man knows intuitively that he is essentially spirit, although in this present life tabernacled in a body. (e) We must accept the eternity of spirit or find ourselves without any explanation of the noblest phenomena of our own being, viz., consciousness, personal intelligence, intuitive ideas, freedom of choice, moral progress, our beliefs in God and immortality, etc. Man simply refuses to believe what the materialist tries to tell himnamely, that he is of no higher order of being than the brute. (f) Modern research in the area of the phenomena of the subconscious supports conclusively, the spiritualistic interpretation of man, that is, the conviction that the person is essentially imperishable soul or spirit which the ultimate dissolution of the body cannot affect. (6) Dualism, the theory of two eternal self-existent principles, namely, Mind and Matter, or God and Energy-Matter. Objections: (a) It is unphilosophical to assume the existence of two unoriginated and unending principles, when one self-existent First Cause is sufficient to account for the facts. (b) Those who hold this view usually admit that matter is an unconscious, hence imperfect, substance, and therefore subordinate to the Divine Will; obviously, this is equivalent to admission of the priority of God as Eternal Spirit, Mind, etc. (c) If matter is inferior to mind it belongs in the realm of secondary causation. But this leaves us where the doctrine of Creation begins. This doctrine does not attempt to dispense with the First Cause; it ascribes adequate Efficient Causality of all things to God. (d) Creation without the use of pre-existing matter is in harmony with what we know of thought-power, and is, therefore, more reasonable than the notion of the eternity of matter, (Cf. recent research in the phenomena of extrasensory perception and psychokinesis. See Vol. I, pp. 93-98, of my Survey Course in Christian Doctrine.)

(7) Emanationism, the theory according to which the universe is the product of successive emanations from the being of God (variously designated Unity, The One, The Monad, etc.). This view is untenable because it denies the infinity and transcendence of God, because it makes the Deity include within Himself all evil as well as Good, and because it leads logically to pantheism, hence is subject to the same objections that are valid against pantheism. (8) Naturalism.Atheists and agnostics of our day prefer to be known as naturalists. However, because of the ambiguity of the word nature, so-called naturalismwhatever form it may takeis little more than denial of the supernatural, the superhuman, etc., especially what is known in Bible teaching as a miracle.

(9) Humanism is another favorite facade behind which modern-day atheists and agnostics hide. (a) Humanism may be what is roughly described as humanitarianism; for example, the humanism of the late Clarence Darrow. This type of humanism is rooted in extreme pessimism. In essence it is personal commitment to the task of ameliorating for our fellows the tragedy of living in this present evil world: to victims of this insatiable pessimism, the idea of a future life is not even entertained, nor is such a life even considered desirable. (b) Again, humanism may, and often does, take the form of the deification of man; subjectively, it is a chest-thumping philosophy, well exemplified in the poetry of Walt Whitman, William Henley, et al.(c) True humanism, however, is the humanism of the Bible, the humanism based on the two Great Commandments (Matthew 22:34-40; Matthew 5:1-12; Matthew 25:31-46; Galatians 5:22-25). This is the humanism that flows spontaneously out of the heart that is filled with love for God and for one’s fellow-men. In our world, selfish and sinful as man may be, there is still altruism as well as self-seeking, co-operation as well as conflict. (See Pico della Mirandola’s famous Oration on the Dignity of Man.)

(10) Polytheism is the name given to belief in many gods. Practically all the nations of antiquity invested every natural object with its protecting god or goddess, nymph or naiad. These polytheistic deities were, generally speaking, personifications of the forces of nature, and in particular of the Sun-Father and the Earth-Mother. (11) Monotheism, is thename given, to belief in one God only. Biblical monotheism is properly designated a self-revelation of the living and true God. The greatest spiritual struggle that the ancient Children of Israel faced continually was that of retaining the monotheistic self-revelation of Yahweh-Elohim, communicated to them, through the mediatorship of Moses, instead of drifting into the idolatrous polytheism of the tribes by which they were surrounded on all sides. (12) Henotheism is belief in one god, accompanied, however, by recognition of the existence of other deities. (13) What is known as monotheism (belief in one God) in religion is that which is known as monism (belief in one First Principle) in philosophy. Ethical monism is the designation which has been used at times to signify, from the viewpoint of philosophical terminology, the essence of Biblical religious theory and practice.

7. Theism (from the Greek theos (god): Latin equivalent, deus).The theistic God is the God of the Bible. Theism is the doctrine of the living God, the I AM (HE WHO IS), the Creator, Preserver, and Sovereign of the universe, both natural and moral (Exodus 3:14, Psalms 42:2, Hosea 1:10, Deuteronomy 6:4, Mark 12:29, Matthew 16:16, Acts 14:15, Romans 9:26, 1 Thessalonians 1:9, Hebrews 10:31). The God of the Bible is not personificationHe is pure Personality (Exodus 3:14). The God of the Bible is Pure Actuality; in Him all potentially is actualized; hence He is the living and true God. He is Wholeness, that is, Absolute Holiness, For the theist, God is transcendent in His being and immanent in His power. Thompson (MPR, 253): It is in theism that the concept of God comes alive, that rational thought can echo something of what religion finds God to be. It is in theism that the ultimates of existence and value are more than mere abstractions. It is in theism that religious thought can, for the first time, advance beyond myth and symbol and make rational contact with the objects of religion. No philosophical theism, however, can do justice to the objects of faith. It is true only so far as it can go, and it cannot go far. Yet it can go far enough to underwrite faith’s affirmation that Goodness and Truth are one Being. (Job 11:7, Hebrews 11:6).

FOR MEDITATION AND SERMONIZING

The Fool’s Decision

Psalms 14:1The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Note the phrase, in his heart, that is, that which is primarily emotional in man. One simply cannot logically think his way into atheism: the fact is that there must be a First Cause or First Principle who is sui generis (self-existent), that is, without beginning or end (Revelation 1:17-18); the only possible alternative would be that at some time, somewhere, and somehow, nothing created something. This, of course, would be absurd: as the ancients put it, ex nihilo, nihil fit.This Power which we call First Cause or First Principle in philosophy, we think of as God in Christian faith and practice, Atheism, therefore, is not a product of intelligence; it is, rather, the result of an emotional imbalance of some kind. I am convinced that the majority of atheists are professed atheists primarily because they want to be known as atheists.A perverted will is more often the source of unbelief and irreligiousness than ignorance or any other cause. (We are reminded of the Russian astronaut who said that he looked throughout the stratosphere, throughout the stretches of celestial space, but he failed to see any God anywhere. What stupidity! The living and true God is Spirit, not to be apprehended by the physical eye (John 4:24). But of course it is practically certain that this astronaut had never looked into the Biblethe fact that accounts for his stupidity!) Essentially we are what our thoughts make us to be.

We call attention here to three commonplace evidences of God in the world which are incidental to everyday experience, so much so in fact that, like the shining of the sun, we are prone to overlook their eternal significance. These are as follows:

1. Life.With the coming of every spring, as the poet has put it so exquisitely,

Whether we look or whether we listen, We hear life murmur or see it glisten; Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.

(1) This profound mystery called lifeso elementary, so pervasive, so wonderfulwhat is it? The only answer issilence. This Stream of Life flows out from Someone, Somewhere, Somehow: it rises through the vegetable psyche and through the animal psyche, reaching its height in the rational psychein self-conscious personality (man). (2) We are born, not made; we were born of our parents, our parents were born of their parents, and so on and on and on. The first human parents were obviously the handiwork of previous Life. Life is generated, not created. The red River of Life (physical life is in the blood, Leviticus 17:11) has been flowing out from Somewhere, Someone, for ever and ever. This Someone is the living God (Matthew 22:32; Matthew 16:16; Acts 14:15; 1 Thessalonians 1:9; 1 Timothy 4:10; Hebrews 10:31) who breathed into the lifeless creature whom He had formed of the dust of the ground the Breath of Life (Genesis 2:7); hence, man is said to be the image of God (Genesis 1:27), (Note that the Source of this River of Life is the I AM, HE WHO IS, the Living One (Exodus 3:14; Revelation 22:1; Revelation 1:17-18) whose very essence is to be: in our God of the Bible existence and essence are one.) (3) Lifein whatever form, physical, spiritual, eternalis the gift of God (Acts 17:24-25; John 1:4-5; John 3:16; John 11:25-26; Romans 6:23; 1 John 5:11-12). If there is no God, no eternally Living One (Revelation 1:17-18), there is no explanation of life. Science still stands mute before the mysteries of being, What is energy: What is life? What is consciousness? What is self-consciousness? Man simply does not know: he can only imagine and speculate. As Tennyson has written

Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flowerbut if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.

2. Law.(1) Our world is a world of order; otherwise, there could never be a science, because science is man’s effort to discover and to describe the order he finds in the various realms of being. (2) We hear so much about the laws of nature. But what are they? They are descriptions of the processes which take place in naturenothing more, nothing less. These laws may tell us how things act in their various interrelationships, but they do not tell us why they act as they do. (Two atoms of hydrogen, for example, unite with one atom of oxygen to form a molecule of water: this is how the process takes place. But why does it do so, in just these proportions? Science cannot answer this question. Faith alone can answer itbecause the answer is God, the Will of God.)

(3) Every effect in nature has its cause. M. M. Davis (HTBS, 15): A caravan was crossing the desert. An early riser reported that a camel had been walking about the tent during the night. He was asked how he knew it, and he pointed to the tracks in the sand, saving that nothing but a camel made such tracks. And when we look about us, we see the tracks of Jehovah. We see them in the hills and mountains, in the valleys and plains, in the rivers and oceans, in the flowers and trees, in the birds and fishes, in the sun, moon, and stars, in the covenant of the day and night, in the coming and going of the seasons, and, most of all, in man himself. With all his splendid achievements-and they are splendidman has not been able to make things like these. (4) It is just as true today as it ever was that design presupposes a designer.Titus, (LIP, 436), writing from the viewpoint of an evolutionist, in stating the teleological argument, has this to say: Take, for example, the long process of development leading to the human brain and mind of man. The process has produced minds which begin to understand the world, and it has produced thought and understanding. This is unintelligible unless the course of evolution is directed. (5) The most famous argument from design for the existence of God is that of William Paley, in Chapter s I-VI of Paley’s Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, a book first published in 1802. The argument is as sound as it ever was: nothing has ever been discovered that would negate it. In crossing a heath, writes Paley, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place: I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? Why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, viz., that when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g., that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. This mechanism being observed (it requires indeed an examination of the instrument, and perhaps some previous knowledge of the subject, to perceive and to understand it; but being once, as we have said, observed and understood), the inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose for which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction and designed its use. (I have reproduced here only a small fraction of Paley’s complete argument. I urge every Bible student to secure a copy of Paley’s book and read the argument as a whole; it is thoroughgoing, completely logical, and in my humble opinion, incontrovertible, that is, by any person with an unbiased attitude.) The application is obvious: The Cosmos, Universe, World, etc., like a great watch, is so replete with evidence of order and design, that the presupposition of a Supreme Architect or Designer is unavoidable. (6) As thought presupposes a thinker, as adaptation presupposes a being to adapt, as behavior presupposes a being to do the behaving, as love presupposes a lover, so law presupposes a lawgiver.Scientists, in their use of the term law, pay tribute, whether wittingly or unwittingly, to the Supreme Lawgiver. (It should be remembered that science borrowed this term from jurisprudence, not jurisprudence from science.) (7) Where there is law, there is the lawgiver. This is true in the natural world: the Will of God, expressed through the Word, and actualized by the Spirit, created the cosmos, and sustains it in its various processes. But will belongs to the person and personality; hence, the orderly natural processes which men describe in terms of laws are but the methods by which the Divine Person expends His energy. Science admits the fact of law; to be consistent, it must admit the fact of the Lawgiver whose Will is the constitution of the cosmos.

Back of the loaf is the snowy flour,

And back of the flour the mill;

And back of the mill is the wheat and the shower,

And the sun, and the Father’s will.

(-Maltbie B. Babcock)

(8) Not only in the vast reaches of outer space, nor in the complexities of the submicroscopic atom, are we brought face to face with the Primary Intelligence and Will, but in the moral realm as well. The distinction between good and bad, right and wrong, rests eternally in the Will of our God, the God who is Absolute Justice (Psalms 89:14; Psalms 85:10). All moral norms emanate from God, either implanted in man by creation or communicated to him by revelation (Romans 7:7). (9) The same is true in the spiritual realm. The law of Moses was God’s Will for the Jewish Dispensation (John 1:17). The Gospelthe law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1-4)is God’s power unto salvation to all obedient believers throughout the present Dispensation (Romans 1:16-17; Romans 2:12-16). Why so? Because it is the Will of God with respect to human redemption. God wills that all men shall believe, repent, confess Christ, be baptized into Christ, and continue steadfastly thereafter in the Spiritual Life (Acts 16:31; Acts 2:38; Romans 10:9-10; Galatians 3:27; Acts 2:42; Galatians 5:22-25), and He promises eternal redemption on these terms and conditions (Hebrews 9:11-12). If the Bible does not have its source in the Will and Love of God, it is a miserable hoax. If it is not all that it claims to be, it is the greatest imposture ever perpetrated on humanity.

3. Love.(1) This master passion which has inspired innumerable hymns, songs, poems, works of art, and deeds of sacrificial service, is an ever-present energy flowing out from Someone, Somewhere, even as life and law. Those who concern themselves so much with the problem of evil and its origin, need give attention also to the fact of good and its source: for Love is the Highest Good, the Summum Bonum. (2) What is love? It is not sensuality. It is attraction to an object combined with the desire for oneness with that object. The nobility of the love is determined by the nobility of its object. (3) As the essential principle of life is growth, and of law is authority, so the essential principle of love is sacrifice.He who loves much will give much. One will inevitably espouse the interests of the object of one’s love: for example, the mutual love of sweethearts, the love of parents for their children, the love of a patriot for his country, the love of the man of true piety for his God. So when our God looked out upon the world and saw His moral creatures in danger of perishing forever, He incarnated Himself as their Savior (1 John 4:8, John 3:16, Matthew 1:23; Hebrews 2:14-18; Hebrews 4:14-16). Love is the greatest force on this earthit is far mightier than the sword. It will be the sole motivating force in Heaven: there faith will become knowledge; hope will attain fruition, but love will be all in all, imperishable, and sovereign (1 Corinthians 13:13).

The night has a thousand eyes,

And the day but one;

Let the light of the bright world dies

With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,

And the heart but one;

Yet the light of a whole life dies

When love is done.

(Francis W. Bourdillon).

Strange, yet powerful, echoes of Godlife, law, and love-forces of Heaven, universal in scope, without beginning Or end. Man is here today and gone tomorrow, but life, law, and love are for ever. Life presupposes a personal God, law a sovereign God, and love a compassionate God. Only a fool says in his heart, There is no God. Practical atheism is, of course, far more common than theoretical atheism. The practical atheist takes no account of God in his life; he lives as if there were no God; he is altogether heedless of the outcome of his ways, of the inevitability of. inflexible Justice.

Are you a practical atheist? Then you are foolish. Are you a theoretical atheist? Then you, too, are foolish, Atheism is foolishness, the essence of which is stupidity. The denial of God is the most stupid decision a person can make, because it. not only consigns him to the complete loss of God as his eternal destiny, but it also enslaves him to a warped and twisted outlook on his life and its meaning in this present world. Turn ye, turn ye, before it is everlastingly too late (James 4:8).

The Living God

Acts 17:22-31. Joh. 4:24. Who-or what-is God? What does the word signify? Whoor whatis its true referent?

Let us approach this question, first, negatively:

1. God is not just an idea in the human mind. (There are those who insist that instead of God having created man in His image, man has in fact created God in his imagination.) To this we object that any group of men capable of fabricating by sheer imagination a God of Justice, Love and Grace such as the God of the Bible, or of a Revealer of God such as Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be, would themselves have to be gods. If Jesus had not lived at all, the writers of the Gospels would have been as great as He by virtue of their ability to imagine such a Personage and to put on His lips such a Teaching as that revealed in their biographies of Him. Jesus Himself declared expressly: He that hath seen me hath seen the Father (John 14:9). It is the contention of this writer that the conclusive proof of the existence of God is to be foundbut only by honest and good hearts, of course (Luke 8:15, Matthew 13:14-15, Isaiah 6:9-10, Acts 28:25-28)-in the life and teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ (John 17:1-5, Hebrews 1:1-4). If Jesus was not all that He claimed to be, then He was the rankest imposter who ever appeared in the world.

2. God is not just a projection of the father-image, as the Freudians would have us believe: religion, they say, is essentially belief based on wish, that is, wish-fulfilment, In reply to this rather subtle deception, it will be noted (1) that it tends to lead to a gross idolatry of Man, (2) that Freud exemplified his own wish-fulfilment notion by his bitterness and dogmatism about religion, that is, his extremism exemplifies his own inner desire, not just to explain religion, but to explain it away; (3) that his writings show that he had not the faintest conception of what genuine religious experience is, and little or no understanding of the essential unity and spirituality of the content of the Bible (a characteristic of many so-called learned men); (4) that his basic thesis is flatly contradicted by the fact that religious conviction has led innumerable believers to suffer persecution and even martyrdom for their faith (wish-fulfilment and vicarious sacrifice cannot be reconciled); (5) and finally, the Freudian, and indeed all atheistic arguments, simply ignore the fact of the Mystery of Being, the explanation of which man’s history shows to have been always his most universal and profound concern. The various arguments for the existence of God are hardly affected by the Freudian hypothesis.

3. God is not a material object or idol, not a likeness of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below. In the ancient Greek temple the statue of the god or goddess occupied the main room known as the cella, e.g., the statue of Athena Parthenos (Athena the Virgin) in the cella of the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis. To devotees of pagan temple worship, the statue was, literally, the god or goddess. Idolatry is expressly forbidden throughout Scripture (Exodus 20:4-6, 1 John 5:21, 1 Corinthians 10:14, 1 Thessalonians 1:9). (Are not artistic representations of Jesus, in sculpture, statuary, portraiture, etc., under the ban of this same Divine prohibition of idolatry in any form, and hence evidences of human profanity?)

4. God is not nature nor is He anything in nature. Some wag has facetiously suggested that the pantheist (who identifies God with nature) could well perform his daily devotion each morning simply by kissing his pillow before arising to the duties of the day. God is not natureHe is the Author of nature. (Genesis 1:1, Acts 17:24, Colossians 1:16-17, Hebrews 1:1-4.) God is not anything in nature: hence He is not to be worshiped as sun, moon, stars, earth, or any created thing. The religious experience reaches far beyond the esthetic, that is to say, from nature itself to the God of nature, from the created to the Creator.

5. God is not a personification of anything whatsoever, The old pagan deities were all personifications of natural forces (such as Zeus, of the sun, or Athena, of wisdom), but the living and true God is not personification in any senseHe is pure personality (Exodus 3:14).

6. God is not an impersonal energy, influence, or principle. He is not of the order of electricity, the atomic process, the life process, and the like. He is not just an impersonal principle, such as Mind, for example. God has mind, to be sure, but we only create confusion when we say that God and Mind are identical. Nor is God some abstract impersonal influence. Of course, God is good; but God is not to be identified with the abstract moral influence, Good. God is love, too; but this does not mean that God and Love are one and the same: it means that our God is the God of Love (John 3:16, 1 John 4:7-21). In the sense, of course, that He is the Creator-God, He may properly be designated philosophically the First Principle (from principium, source, origin, from princeps, the first in line when a Roman military company (centuria, century) numbered off.) This does not mean, however, that God is an impersonal abstraction of some kind. Principle is the first thing in nature, law the second, and matter, as we know it, is third.

Approaching the subject, then, affirmatively, who is God?

It will be noted that Jesus used two designations for God, (1) Spirit (John 4:24), and Heavenly Father (Matthew 6:26; Matthew 6:9; John 17:11). The former gives us insight into the nature or type of being of God; the latter designates God’s special relationship with His Covenant children. By these two terms Jesus has given us a clearer insight into the meaning of the word, God, than can be gotten from all the sophisticated names coined by the philosophers. By these two designations Jesus has made God intelligible, that is, congenial to man.

1. God is Spirit.God is the one and only infinitely perfect Spirit, the Creator and Ruler of all things, and the Author of all good. This is to say that God as to nature is personal, having understanding, affection, and free will, but not having a body. (Romans 11:34, John 3:16, Luke 22:42, Isaiah 46:10, Ephesians 3:11). Where there is spirit, there is personality, uniqueness, otherness, vitality, and sociality. Therefore, our God who is a Spirit is a personal God, a living God, a loving God. In the sense that God is personal, we too are personal: we have been created in His image (Genesis 1:26-27). Strong (ST, 250): God is not only spirit, but He is pure spirit. He is not only not matter, but He has no necessary connection with matter. Again: When God is spoken of as appearing to the patriarchs and walking with them, the passages are to be explained as referring to God’s temporary manifestations of Himself in human formmanifestations which prefigured the final tabernacling of the Son of God in human flesh.

2. God is Heavenly Father.A distinction is essential here: In a universal sense God as Creator is the Father of all spirits (Hebrews 12:9; cf. Genesis 2:7). It is as Redeemer, however, that God is to His Covenant-elect, their Heavenly Father. There is no evidence in Scripture that the natural, the unregenerate, person, the one who has never accepted the terms of Covenant relationship, has any right to address God by. this special relational Name. (1 Corinthians 2:14; Ephesians 2:1-10; Romans 8:14-17; John 14:6; John 14:13-14; 2 Corinthians 6:18) (Note especially Luke 15:3-7; Luke 15:11-32. What we have here is not the Narrative of the Prodigal Son, as it is commonly designated; what we have here in fact is the Narrative of the Forgiving Father. There is no portrayal of God which compares with this in all the literature of man.)

To summarize (according to Knudson, RTOT, 65): God is no blind force in nature, no vague spiritual presence, no abstract principle, but a living personal being, who distinguishes himself from the world which he has made, freely communicates himself to his children, and by his sovereign will guides the course of nature and history.

What should we learn from these truths about God? We should learn (1) that our God is always yearning for us to draw near to Him (James 4:8); (2) that true worship is the communion of the human spirit with the Divine Spirit, according to the means and appointments of the Word of truth (John 4:24; John 8:31-32; John 17:17); (3) that our chief end in life is to love and serve God here, that we may enjoy unending fellowship with Him hereafter (Romans 6:23, 1 John 1:1-4, Matthew 25:34).

The Living Word

Hebrews 4:12-13, 1 Samuel 15:22. Nothing is so displeasing to God as disregard for His Word. Yet the world is full of persons todaymany of them church-memberswho talk ignorantly and glibly about what they call the mere Word. (There are no meres in the Divine vocabulary.) The Word has been from all eternity, from before the foundation of the world and the creation of man. To trifle with the Word is to commit heinous sin (Matthew 24:35, Mark 8:38, 1 Thessalonians 2:13).

Note the following matters of profound importance:

1. Practically all the confusion (sectism) in Christendom is directly traceable to man’s presumption: that is, caused by his adding to, subtracting from, or substituting for, the Word.

2. Exaltation of feelings, experience, the inner consciousness, etc., as authority in religious faith and practice, over the plain teaching of the Word, is mysticism.For eighteen centuries the Church has been loaded down with all forms of mysticism, every one of which effectively nullifies the power of the Word.

3. Exaltation of institution above the plain teaching of the Word results in literalism, legalism, and especially in traditionalism.Traditionalism exalts ecclesiasticism, hierarchism, and church dogma and decree, above the authority of the Scriptures, whereas the Bible is our all-sufficient Book of Discipline, fully adequate to furnish the man of God completely unto every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17). If a creed contains more than the Bible, it contains too much; if it contains less than the Bible, it does not contain enough; if it contains the same as the Bible, it is unnecessary, because we have the Bible. Let us endeavor, therefore, to speak where Scripture speaks, and to keep silent where Scripture is silent.

4. The Word of God cannot be resisted by material things: when God speaks, all nature obeys (John 1:1, Hebrews 1:3, 2 Peter 3:5, Psalms 33:9). The only power on earth that can resist or neglect God’s Word is man’s free will (John 5:40, Romans 13:1-2, Hebrews 2:1-4, and the man who does either nullifies God’s power to redeem him. Cf. Romans 1:16note the qualifying phrase, to every one that believeth.

5. There will be just two classes in the Day of Judgment: those who have done, and those who have not done, what is commanded in the Word (Matthew 7:24-27, Hebrews 5:9). The supreme question is not, What must I feel to be saved? but is always, What must I do to be saved (Acts 2:38; Acts 16:30; Acts 22:10). Men must do something to be saved: they must do what God requires them to do to enter into Covenant relationship with Him. They must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 16:31); they must repent, turn from sin (Acts 2:38; Acts 17:30, Luke 13:3); they must confess Christ (Matthew 10:32-33, Romans 10:8-10); they must be buried with Christ in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life (Acts 2:38, Galatians 3:27, Romans 6:3-5); they must continue steadfastly in the essentials of Christian faith and worship (Acts 2:42, 2 Peter 1:5-11); they must bring forth in their lives the works of faith and the fruit of the Spirit (2 Peter 3:18, James 2:14-26, Galatians 5:22-25). Note especially, in closing, the solemn warnings in Hebrews 4:12-13, and in 1 Samuel 15:22.

Genesis 2:4-7

**PART EIGHT: THE BEGINNING OF HOMO SAPIENS

Genesis 2:4-7**

1. Diagrammatic Review of Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3

Day

Day

Energy,

Matter-in Motion, Light

CREATION

Chronology,

or Measurement of Time

Atmosphere

THE

Water and

Air Species

BEGINNINGS

Land Animals,

Man,

Lands and Seas Plant Life

Naming of Animal

Species,

Woman

2. Antiquity of the Pentateuch.There are three outstanding marks of uniqueness in the Pentateuch (Torah) which certainly support the conclusion that it is more ancient, by centuries, than the rest of the Old Testament canon. (1) The name of Jerusalem is not found in the Pentateuch. This is inconceivable on the supposition that it was compiled after the Davidic reign or during the period of Captivity. (Cf. Joshua 10:5; Joshua 10:23; Joshua 15:8 (note the significance of the parenthesis here); 2 Samuel 5:5-10; cf. Genesis 14:18). (2) The Divine title, Lord of hosts (Jehovah of hosts), occurring in 1 Samuel 1:3 for the first time, is absent from the Pentateuch. Yet it is a title common to the other books of the Old Testament. (3) There is no mention whatever in the Pentateuch of the ministry of sacred song. This would be a strange omission if any part of the fivefold volume had been written in post-exilic times, when sacred song was the pre-eminent part of the Hebrew ritual. As a matter of fact psalmody seems to have been a form of ritual worship which had its beginning in the Davidic reign.

3. The Internal Unity of Genesis is striking evidence that the book was ultimately the product of one hand. The thread of thought, the motifnamely, the Messianic developmentis unbroken throughout. Beginning with the Creation and the Fall of man, the promise that the Seed of the woman should bruise the Serpent’s head, the institution of sacrifice as the beginning of religion, the spread of sin and death as a consequence of the intermarriage of the pious Sethites with the irreligious Cainites, the Deluge, the subsequent dispersion, the Call of Abraham to become the progenitor of the people of the Old Covenant, the lives of the patriarchsin fact, everything points forward (1) primarily, in point of time, to the organization of the Jewish Theocracy and the ratification of the Old Covenant at Sinai with Abraham’s fleshly seed; and (2) secondarily, again in point of time, to the death and resurrection of Christ, and the establishment of the New Covenant at Jerusalem, with Abraham’s spiritual seed (Galatians 3:16; Galatians 3:23-29; John 1:17; Colossians 2:13-15; Hebrews 9:11-12; Hebrews 9:23-28; Hebrews 8:1-13; Hebrews 9:11-22). It is inconceivable that such a unity of theme could have been achieved at the hands of numerous uninspired men or as a consequence of frequent editorial revision. In support, therefore, of the traditional Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, I should like to insert here two excerpts from scholars whose conclusions deserve full consideration, as follows: (1) William Henry Green (UBG, Preface, v): All tradition, from whatever source it is derived, whether inspired or uninspired, unanimously affirms that the first five books of the Bible were written by one man and that man was Moses. There is no counter-testimony in any quarter. From the predominant character of their contents these books are commonly called the Law. All the statutes contained in them are expressly declared to have been written by Moses or to have been given by the Lord to Moses. And if the entire law is his, the history, which is plainly preparatory for, or subsidiary to, the law, must be his likewise. (2) W. H. Bates, writing in The Bible Champion, issue of July, 1920: Genesis treats of matters which took place ages before Moses was born. The account which it gives of many events, is circumstantial, descending even to details of conversations and descriptions of personal attitudes and incidents which none could be cognizant of but the parties concerned. The very latest event mentioned in it had occurred, at the shortest estimate, more than half a century before Moses was born, and the rest of its human history covered a period extending to more than a thousand years of a prior antiquity, the earlier parts of it standing in relation to Moses as the times of Homer, Hesiod, and Thales stand to ours. As evidence connects Moses with all the books of the Pentateuch, the conclusion to which we are brought is that Genesis was compiled by him, The proper statement for us to make is this: Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are of Mosaic authorship, while Genesis is of Mosaic editorship, he having compiled it from pre-existing books: and so all has Mosaic authority. It should be noted, however, that later editorial hands may have supplied a slight touch here and therepossibly put upon the margin of manuscripts as explanatory commentswhich subsequent copyists have incorporated into the body of the work. (The student should be cautioned here that books and articles defending the Mosaic authorship of the Torah, which were written soon after the turn of the century, are frequently more reliable in their content than works on the same general subject written in recent years. It should be noted also that Green, by the term counter-testimony, referred, of course, to external evidence, of which there is very little to confirm the JEDP theory: that theory is based almost exclusively on alleged internal evidences of composite authorship.)

I see no reason for denying that Moses may have used traditions, or even documents (rolls), which had been handed down from earlier generations, in establishing the framework of the book of Genesis. (Note here the testimony of Jesus Himself to the Torah and its Mosaic origin: Matthew 19:3-9; Mark 10:3-4; Luke 16:29; Luke 20:37; Luke 24:27; Luke 24:44; John 1:17; John 3:14; John 5:45-46; John 7:19-23, etc.) Certainly, of all the Hebrew leaders of great antiquity, Moses was the one man most thoroughly equipped, both by education and by personal faith, for preserving in writing for future generations the early history of mankind, the history of the beginnings of the Hebrew nation, and the eternal principles of the Moral Law.

The internal unity of Genesis is too obvious to be questioned.This is true, regardless of any theory of authorship that might have, been put forward. Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3 gives us a sketch, in broad outlines, of the arrangement of the universe at large, with particular emphasis, of course, on the earth and its manifold forms of life, all designed to serve as man’s permanent abode. Genesis 2:4-25 is a brief sketch, graphic in its simplicity of detail, of the fitting up of Eden as the temporary home of this first human family prior to their first violation of the moral law and the consequent birth of conscience in them. With this introduction, the narrative launches, very properly, into the account of man’s expulsion from the Garden (his loss of innocence), and his subsequent history in the two diverging lines of piety (the Sethites) and irreligion (the Cainites). Whitelaw (PCG, 39-40): The internecine struggle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, which the fratricidal act of Cain inaugurated (ch. 4), is the legitimate and necessary outcome of the sin and grace revealed in Eden (ch. 3), while the melancholy story of the temptation and the fall presupposes the paradisaical innocence of the first pair (ch. 2). Thus homogeneous in itself, it likewise connects with the preceding section through ch.2,which as a monograph on man, supplies a more detailed account of his creation than is given in the narrative of the six days-’ work, and, by depicting man’s settlement in Eden as a place of trial, prepares the way for the subsequent recital of his seduction and sin, and of his consequent expulsion from the garden. All this, in turn, prepares the reader for the account of the cause and consequences of the Deluge (the revelation of Divine Judgment that inevitably overtakes human arrogance, licentiousness, and violence), and then for the account of the election of the fleshly seed of Abraham to the Divine tasks of preserving the knowledge of the living and true God in the world, and of preparing the way for the advent of the Messiah, the note on which it terminates in certain aspects of the death-bed prophetic utterances of Israel (ch. 49). The one motif of this progressive revelation throughout is redemption in Christ Jesus. And so the book of Genesis as a whole becomes linked inseparably to the content of the Bible as a whole, and Paradise Lost of Genesis becomes Paradise Regained of the book of Revelation.

4. Relation of Genesis 2 to Genesis 1: the Separate Document Theory.On the ground of certain obvious, yet readily explainable characteristics which distinguish Genesis 2:4-25 from the preceding chapter 1, recent destructive criticism has alleged diversity of authorship. We have already conceded that the hypothesis, frequently advanced, that Moses, in writing the book, may have made use of pre-existing traditions and documents (books, rolls) is neither incredible nor impossible. But the peculiarities of different parts do not justify the reckless abandon with which the book has been analyzed and separated into different hypothetical original codes by the advocates of the so-called Analytical or Documentary Theory. The authorship, subject-matter, and even the existence of these alleged Codes are largely matters of conjecture.

The question before us at this point is the following: Is Genesis 2:4-25, which we are now studying, a section from another original document (to be specific, from the alleged J (Jahvist) Code, so called because of its general use of the Name Yahweh (Jehovah) for Deity, as distinguished from the E (Elohist) Code, so called because of its general use of the Name Elohim for the Deity, as in Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3)? Or, is the content of Gen 2:4-25 designed to be an explanatory amplification of the content of Gen 1:1 to Genesis 2:3, the Hebrew Cosmogony, with both originating from, or at least woven together by, the same author, none other than Moses the great lawgiver? The advocates of the separate-document (analytical) theory argue that Genesis 2 could not have been written by the author of the Cosmogony which precedes it, for the following reasons:

(1) That it is a second and superfluous account of the Creation.This is an unwarranted assumption. The business of taking two different parts of any narrative, relating to matters which are distinct and having different themes, and wresting them from their intended meaning into two alleged variant accounts of the same thing, is a vicious critical method. The first chapter of Genesis treats of the Creation in its broad outlines, in a panoramic fashion as we have noted previously, and as reaching its climax in man’s appearance on the earth; the second chapter, however, treats of man specifically, as the object of God’s gracious providence, in the preparation of Eden for his habitation in his original state of innocence, and in the institution of marriage by means of which domestic society had its beginning and human history began its march down the corridors of time.

(2) That there are discrepancies between the two sections.(The student should keep in mind that we are considering here only the relation between the first two Chapter s of Genesis, nothing more.) Of course, on the supposition that Genesis 2:4-25 is a separate account of the Creation, there are apparent discrepancies. But, that Genesis 2:4-25 is a separate account of the Creation is precisely the thing these critics have set out to prove: and every rule of logic is violated when the thing to be proved is used as the pre-supposition from which one must take off, in order to arrive at the proof. (This is the fallacy of begging the question, petitio principii.)However, on the hypothesis that Genesis 2 is a recapitulation, with specific details as to the nature of man, his primitive moral state, and the circumstances of his primitive environment, there are no discrepancies of any note. The creation of the universe, the heavens, the earth, the sea, and the kinds of creatures they include, is roughly sketched in chapter 1, but is taken for granted in chapter 2. The latter provides details which were unavoidably passed over in the former, such as the dual nature of man, his original innocence, the preparation of Eden as his first habitation, the creation of woman, and the institution of marriage. From this point of view, there are no dissonances between the two Chapter s: rather, the second is complementary to the first.

(3). That the style and diction of the two sections are different.Well-why not? Their respective themes demand differences in terminology. All such differences arise not only from the personality and habits of the author, but also from the character of the subjects treated. It has been argued that ch. 1 is systematic, chronological, scientific; that it abounds in stereotyped phrases; that it moves in a solemn and impressive monotone; that its author restricts himself to the great facts without entering in an explanatory way into particular details; and that he uses a ceremonious, solemn, formal style of writing, including many expressions that savor of remote antiquity; that chapter 2, on the other hand, is topical in its order of presentation, free and flowing in diction; that its author writes with a delicacy, pathos, and evenness of style that is entirely wanting in chapter 1. Does not diversity of themes readily account for these contrasts? Green (UBG, pp. 7-41): Ch. 1 is monumental, conducted on a scale of vastness and magnificence, and its characters are massive and unyielding as if carved in granite. Chs. 2 and 3 deal with plastic forms of quiet beauty, the charms of paradise, the fateful experiences of Adam and Eve. In the onward progress of creation all is conducted by the words of Omnipotence, to which the result precisely corresponds. There is no call for such a style in a simple narrative like ch. 2, where it would be utterly out of place and stilted in the extreme. It is said that ch. 1 proceeds from the lower to the higher, ending with man; while, on the contrary, ch. 2 begins with the highest, viz., with man, and proceeds to the lower forms of life. But as ch. 2 continues the history begun in ch. 1, it naturally starts where ch. 1 ends, that is to say, with the creation of man, especially as the whole object of this chapter is to depict his primitive condition. In a word, then, ch. 1, being an epitome of the Creation as a whole, is epical in character; ch. 2, being an account of early man’s first kind of environment, is essentially pastoral in character.

I cite here the statements of the well-known German critical analyst, Kalisch (as quoted in PCG, 39-40), in re the alleged irreconcilable differences between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2what he calls the two cosmogoniesas excellent examples of the recklessness with which the early destructive critics and the more recent demythologizers conjure up discrepancies which actually do not exist at all. I shall quote Kalisch’s statements and call attention to the obvious fallacies involved in them, as follows: (1) In the first cosmogony vegetation is immediately produced by the will of God; in the second its existence is made dependent on rain and mists and the agricultural labours (K). ButGen 1:11-12 does not require us to believe that vegetation was first produced immediately by the will of God. Indeed the word immediately is an arbitrary assumption. As a matter of fact, the very Divine decree, Let the earth bring forth grass, herbs, trees, etc., indicates clearly that God was proposing to operate by means of secondary causes (laws of nature) at whatsoever time or times these various means (seeds, rain, mists, agricultural labor) should be brought into existence. (In all these Divine Decrees, the specific means and methods of actualization are not revealed, in Genesis 1.) No particular chronology is indicated. Hence, Genesis 2:4-7 simply amplifies the Genesis 1:11-12 account, by giving more detailed information as to the origin and operations of these necessary means. (2) In the first the earth emerges from the waters, and is, therefore, saturated with moisture; in the second it appears dry, sterile, and sandy (K). Butgranting that the earth did emerge from the waters (Genesis 1:9-10)and we have noted heretofore the ambiguity of the term waters, as used in these verseswhat in all likelihood was its surface condition? It must have been a veritable terrestrial mud-flat. Then certainly the cooling of the earth’s crust set in, bringing about solidification, and at the same time helping to establish the proper atmospheric conditions for the ultimate appearance of vegetation. All that is indicated in Genesis 2:5-6 is that, at this point in the Creation, the atmospheric conditions necessary to plant life had not yet been fully actualized and the customary agricultural operations had not yet been instituted because, as yet, there was no man to engage in Such activities. We could also assume here, reasonably I think, that a distinction is intimated between wild plant life and domesticated plant life, that which is produced by human agricultural methods. (3) In the first, man and his wife are created together; in the second, the wife is formed later, and from a part of man (K). But-the notion that Genesis 1:26-28 teaches that the first man and his wife were created together is again a sheer, and genuinely absurd, assumption. The chronology and methodology of their origin is not even under consideration in this Scripture; as a matter of fact, the terms male and female, as used here, have only generic, not particular (individual), significance. Hence, the details of the origin and nature of our first parents are supplied in ch. 2. (4) In the former, man bears the image of God, and is made ruler of the whole earth; in the latter, his earth-formed body is only animated by the breath of life, and he is placed in Eden to cultivate and guard it (K). But-the image of God of Genesis 1:26-27 is precisely the enduement which resulted from the inbreathing of God of Gen 2:7, the Divine act by which the corporeal tabernacle was ensouled, that is, endowed with the essential elements of personality. Eden is an added detail to describe the man’s primordial state of unhindered access to his Creator, prior to his violation of the moral law. Nor is there any statement in Genesis 2 that would in any way affect the lord tenancy of the earth with which he was divinely invested according to Genesis 1:26-30. (5) In the former, the birds and beasts are created before man; in the latter, man before birds and beasts (K). But Genesis 2:19-20 does not necessarily involve any time-sequence: it is not the time, but simply the fact, of the creation of the higher air and land animals which the writer records here. Many eminent authorities render this passage, And God brought to the man the beasts which he had formed, etc. Moreover, there is no warrant for supposing this to be the account of a second creation of animals, exclusively within, and of a kind adapted to, the Edenic environment, as some have suggested. Thus the student cannot but recognize the fact that these arguments presented by Kalisch (and other destructive critics) to show that we are dealing here with two cosmogonies characterized by irreconcilable differences, simply do not hold water. In fact, the alleged discrepancies disappear altogether under the view that the content of ch. 2 is intended to be an amplification of the broad outlines of ch. 1, a view that may well be declared self-evident on close examination. As a matter of fact, ch. 2 cannot really be designated a cosmogony at all, that is, in any true sense of that term.

5. Relation of Genesis 2 to Genesis 1: the Complementary Theory. This is the view that Genesis 2:4-25 fills in the important details which are necessarily omitted from Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3, because of the over-all structure, design, and elevated tone of the first section. The following chart will serve to illustrate, I think, the complementary relationship of these two sections:

Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3 is a broad general account of the creation of energy-matter, and its subsequent arrangement into a cosmos, with special emphasis on the origin of the earth and its relation to the celestial bodies. The section concludes with the account of the origin of living species, attaining perfection in man.

Genesis 2:4-25 is a kind of recapitulation, giving important details with special reference to the origin and nature of our first parents, their primitive habitation, and the beginnings of society in general, in the forms especially of liberty, law, language, and marriage. This section is not in any sense contradictory of the firstrather, it is complementary.

Because that in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made (Genesis 2:3)a statement concluding the general panoramic Hymn of Creation.

These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created (Genesis 2:4): a statement introducing specifically the history of man, first in his primitive habitation, and then inthe world at large. Here we have the first use of the word toledoth (generations), the word used to introduce each of the ten sections of the book, and never used to describe antecedents, but always to introduce consequents.

In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1) In this section the Name used for Deity is Elohim, the Name that designates Him in His absoluteness (transcendence) of being and power. Elohim designates the Creator-God (Isaiah 57:15).

In the day that Yahweh Elohim made earth and heaven (Genesis 2:4). In this section the Name Yahweh (Jehovah) is used, the Name which reveals the Deity in His works of benevolence, in His providential activities toward His creatures, especially man, Yahweh designates the Redeemer-God.

On the third day of Creation, according to this section, the physical features of the earth appeared: the condensation of vapors could well have resulted in the outlining of continents and oceans. And God called the dry land Earth (Genesis 1:10). This condensation resulted in rainfall, thus preparing the way for vegetation.

In the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven (Genesis 2:4), Note again the ambiguity of the word day. This statement takes us back to the second and third days of Genesis 1, to the time before there was either rainfall or vegetation. Genesis 2:6 describes the beginning of rainfall (the mists here surely indicate the condensation of vapors which resulted in rain, as suggested in Genesis 1:9-10, because rain necessarily preceded the origin of terrestrial plant life). Thus the writer, in this section, takes us back into the record of the Creation, in order to prepare us for the more detailed account of the origin, nature, and primitive history of mankind.

In the first section we read that man was created in the image of God, both male and female (Genesis 1:27).

In the second section, we are told how man was created, and of what he consists by nature; also how woman was created and what her divinely ordained relation is to man (Genesis 2:7; Genesis 2:21-25).

In the first account, we are told that man was created, but we are given no information as to his primeval environment.

The second section supplies this information with its account of the Edenic garden. Genesis 2:9 may have reference to vegetation in Eden, rather than to vegetation generally.

In the first section we are told, without any amplification, that the water and air species were created on the fifth day, and land animals on the sixth day (Genesis 1:20-25).

In this section, Genesis 2:19, literally rendered, reads: And God brought to the man the birds and beasts which He had formed out of the ground, etc. This gives us some added information as to the living matter of which these forms of life were constituted, and tells us how they received their names (Genesis 2:18-20).

RECAPITULATION: In Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3, we have the account, in broad outline only, of the origin of the cosmos, and especially of the earth and its atmospheric and planetary surroundings, and the main kinds of living creatures,all this leading up to the creation of man in the image of God.

RECAPITULATION: In Genesis 2:4-25 we have the account of the beginning of society and its essential institutions, viz., liberty, law, language, and marriage. Thus it will be seen that this section is not really a cosmogony; that it is, rather a complementaryor, one might say, supplementaryaccount with an entirely different structure, content, and emphasis.

6. The Problem of the Two Divine Names.As we have noted above, there are two Names given to the Deity in the first two Chapter s of Genesis, that is, in the original text. The Name used in the first section (Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3) is, without exception, the Name Elohim, which is translated God throughout the Old Testament. However, beginning with ch. Genesis 2:4, the Name Yahweh begins to occur (occasionally in connection with Elohim, but not generally so). This Name, which derives from the so-called Tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew letters without vowel points, YHWH, literally transliterated Yahweh (but imperfectly as Jehovah, as in the A.S.V.), but translated Lord in the Authorized Version and in the Revised Standard Version, has, from as far back as the third century B.C., been regarded by the Jewish people as too sacred to be uttered: hence, in reading, they have generally substituted the word Adonai (my Lord) for the divinely revealed great and incommunicable Name of Exo 3:14. This distinction of Names in the first two Chapter s of Genesis is one of the principal arguments offered by the critics in support of their theory of two original documents or codes. A careful study of the use of these two Names throughout the Old Testament as a whole will disclose the fact that in many instances they are used interchangeably either in a single Scripture or even in a part of a Scripture verse. Conservative scholars generally take the position that the distinction of these two Names derives not from two different original accounts or documents, but from their meaning as representing the two primary phases of the Divine Activity, namely, those of creation and redemption; hence, that Elohim designates the Creator-God, Yahweh the Redeemer-God.

The problem of an adequate Name for our God has always been a most difficult one, because of the limitations of human vocabulary. Rotherham (E.B., 26): Does not -name-’ in the Bible very widely imply revelation? Men’S names -are throughout the Scriptures fraught with significance, enshrining historical incidents, biographical reminiscences, and so forth; and why should the Name of the Ever-Blessed be an exception to this rule? Does not the Almighty Himself employ this Name of His as though it had in it some self-evident force and fitness to reveal His nature and unfold His ways? His Name is continually adduced by Himself as His reason for what He does and what He commands: -For I am Yahweh.-’ (Exodus 3:14; Isaiah 42:8; Isaiah 43:3; Isaiah 45:5; Isaiah 46:9-11; Psalms 46:10; Hebrews 11:6). Some have said that the meaning of The Name is not clear, that perhaps it has been kept so by Divine design. With this notion I cannot agree. Exodus 3:14in this passage, says Rotherham (EB, 26), -I am that I am-’ expresses the sense, -I will become whatsoever I please-’. and we know He pleases to become to His people only what is wisest and best. Thus viewed, the formula becomes a most gracious promise; the Divine capacity of adaptation to any circumstances, any difficulties, any necessities, that may arise, becomes a veritable bank of faith to such as love God and keep His commandments. The frequently heard claim that Yahweh is simply the name of the tribal deity of ancient Israel is absurd, on the face of it: the very meaning of the Name invalidates such a notion. Again I quote Rotherham (EB, 24): Men are saying today that -Y-’ was a mere tribal name, and are suggesting that -Y-’ Himself was but a tribal deity. As against this, only let The Name be boldly and uniformly printed, and the humblest Sunday-school teacher will be able to show the groundlessness of the assertion. It is inconceivable that the leaders of the ancient Hebrew people, surrounded on all sides as they were by tribes all practicing the grossest polytheistic systems, could have conjured up this Name-signifying pure personality, spirituality, holiness, etc.out of their unaided human imagination. We simply cannot with reason regard Yahweh as a mere Hebrew name for Deity; we can indeed regard it only as a Divine self-revelation, as The Name by which the living and true God has really made Himself known to His people by His acts of Divine Goodness, especially those embraced in the unfolding of His Divine Plan for the redemption of His creatures who were, at the beginning, created in His image, after His likeness. (John 3:16-18, Galatians 1:3-4, Titus 2:13-14, Hebrews 12:2).

The so-called analytical dissection of Scripture passages, and even of parts of such passages, to bolster theories of alleged discrepancies, is a vicious form of textual criticism. The same is true of the reckless discriminatory treatment, at the hands of the same critics, of the alleged alternation of the Divine Names, Elohim and Yahweh, and the hypothetical theories therefor. T. Lewis has stated this aspect of the case, especially with reference to the Divine Names, clearly (Lange, CDHCG, 107-108), using as an example the suggestion that the Name Elohim has regard to the universalistic aspect, and the Name Yahweh to the theocratic aspect, of God’s being and activity. Lewis has written: Admitting the distinction, we may still doubt whether it has not been carried, on both sides, to an unwarranted extent. He goes on to show how the critics of both schools violate their own oft-asserted a priori contention that the Bible must be treated like all other books. The universalistic view, he says is already curing itself by its ultra-rationalistic extravagance. It reduced the Old Scriptures not only to fragments, but to fragments of fragments in most ill-assorted and jumbled confusion, Its supporters find themselves at last in direct opposition to their favorite maxim that the Bible must be interpreted as though written like other books. For surely no other book was ever so composed or so compiled. In the same portion, presenting every appearance of narrative unity, they find the strangest juxtapositions of passages from different authors, and written at different times, according as the one name or the other is found in it. There are the most sudden transitions even in small paragraphs having not only a logical but a grammatical connection. One verse, and even one clause of a verse, is written by the Elohist, and another immediately following by the Jehovist, with nothing besides this difference of names to mark any difference in purpose or in authorship. Calling it a compilation will not help the absurdity, for no other compilation was ever made in this way. To make the confusion worse, there is brought in, occasionally, a third or fourth writer, an editor, or reviewer, and all this without any of those actual proofs or tests which are applied to other ancient writings, and in the use of which this -higher criticism,-’ asit calls itself, is so much inclined to vaunt.

The theocratic hypothesis, Lewis goes on to state, is more sober, but some of the places presented by them as evidence of such intended distinction will not stand the test of examination. What first called attention to this point was the difference between the first and second Chapter s of Genesis. In the first, Elohim is used throughout; in the second, there seems to be a sudden transition to the name Jehovah-Elohim, which is maintained for some distance. This is striking; but even here the matter has been overstated. In the first chapter, we are told, the name Elohim occurs thirty times, without a single interruption; but it should be borne in mind that it is each time so exactly in the same connection, that they may all be regarded as but a repetition of that one with which the account commences. We should have been surprised at any variation. In this view they hardly amount to more than one example, or one use of the name, carried through by the repetition of the conjunctive particle. Thus regarded, the transition in the second passage is not so very striking. It is not well to say that anything in the composition of the scriptures is accidental or capricious, yet, as far as -the Bible is written like other books,-’ we may suppose a great variety of causes that led to it as well as the one assigned. It might have been for the sake of an euphonic variety, or to avoid a seeming tautology. It might have been some subjective feeling which the writer would have found it difficult to explain, and that, whether there was one writer or two. Again, it might have been that the single name suggested itself in the first as more simple and sublime standing alone, and, in this way, more universalistic, as it is styled; whilst in the second general resume the thought of the national name comes in, and the writer, whether the same or another, takes a holy pride in saying that it was the national God, our God, our Jehovah-Elohim, that did all this, and not some great causa causarum, or power separate from him. There might be a feeling of nearness in respect to the one name that led to its use under such circumstances. This critique speaks so eloquently for its own reasonableness that it fully serves our purpose here, namely, to demonstrate the artificiality, and indeed, the superficiality, of the mass of conjecture which has been built up in theological circles in the name of consensus of scholarship with respect to the unity of Genesis and the bearing thereupon of the alternating use of the two Divine Names.

These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven. And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for Jehovah God had not caused it to rain upon the earth; and there was not a man to till the ground; but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

7. Reversion to Genesis 1:6-13. (1) Genesis 2:4generations, literally begettings. This, as we have noted, is the key word by which Genesis divides naturally into sections. Cf. Genesis 5:1; Genesis 6:9; Genesis 10:1; Genesis 11:10; Genesis 11:27; Genesis 25:12; Genesis 25:19; Genesis 36:1; Genesis 37:2. Note that in all these passagesthose in which this key word (toledoth) occursthe reference is not to antecedents, but to consequents, i.e., not to ancestors, but to posterity. We see no reason for making an exception of the use of the word here (Genesis 2:4): hence, the generations of the heavens and of the earth undoubtedly refers to the historical developments that followed the cosmic Creation itself (Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3); and the added statement, in the day that Yahweh Elohim made earth and heaven, must take us back to what was taking place on the second and third days of the Creation Weekthe days on which the atmospheric firmament and the earth with its lands and seas made their appearance (Genesis 1:6-13). All this was preparatory, of course, to the account of the beginnings of human society in its essential aspects such as those of liberty, law, language, and marriage. (2) Again, the yom (day) of Genesis 2:4 designates an indefinite period of time (cf. Numbers 3:1, Ecclesiastes 7:14, Psalms 95:8, John 8:56, Romans 13:12, Hebrews 3:15), apparently commensurate with that of the second and third stages of Mosaic Cosmogony (Genesis 1:6-13). (There are those, of course, who hold that the day of Gen 2:4 designated the whole Creation Week, that of the preceding Cosmogony: Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3). (3) Moreover, this surely is evidence that Genesis 2:4 does not belong to the account which precedes it (regardless of the meaning of the word day), but is the statement that is designed to introduce that which follows, throughout the rest of ch. 2. Does the phrase, earth and heaven, then, suggest the psychosomatic structure of the human being, whose body is from the physical world but whose spirit (interior life) was originally inbreathed by direct Divine action (1 Corinthians 15:45-47, Job 33:4, Ecclesiastes 12:7, Acts 17:25, Hebrews 12:9)? Green (UBG, 11-12): This title, the generations of the heavens and of the earth, must announce, as the subject of the section which it serves to introduce, not an account of the way in which the heavens and the earth were themselves brought into being, but an account of the offspring of the heavens and the earth; in other words, of man, who is the child of both worlds, his body formed of the dust of the earth, his soul of heavenly origin, inbreathed by God Himself. And so the section proceeds regularly. First, Genesis 1:1, -in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,-’ the title announcing that the theme of the first chapter is the Creation. Then Genesis 2:4, -the generations of the heavens and of the earth,-’ announcing that the theme of that which follows is the offspring of heaven and earth, or, the history of Adam and his family. Then Genesis 5:1, -the generations of Adam,-’ in which his descendants are traced to Noah and his sons. Then Genesis 6:9, -the generations of Noah,-’ or the history of Noah’s family, and so on to the end of the book.

(4) Having sketched graphically the theological facts regarding the Creation generally, the writer now turns his attention to man, the creature for whose use and benefit everything else has been called into being. This entire section (Genesis 2:4 to Genesis 4:26)* is a history of Adam and his family,* their original innocence, their temptation and fall, their subsequent careers in two diverging lines, and the establishment of true religion through them. In ch. 1, man is considered only as a part of the general scheme of things; in ch. 2, he is considered exclusively, in his primitive environment and innocence, as the handiwork of God and the object of His providential acts. In ch. 1, the scene is the whole world and all it contains; in ch. 2, it is limited to Eden, which was fitted up for the habitation of the first human family during their probationary state. (5) It should be noted also that the order of statements in ch. 2 is not chronological, but that of association of ideas.Green (UBG, 24-25): Genesis 2:7, man is formed; Genesis 2:8, the garden is planted and man put in it; Genesis 2:9, trees are made to spring up there; Genesis 2:15, man is taken and put in it. We cannot suppose the writer’s meaning to be that man was made before there was any place to put him, and that he was kept in suspense until the garden was planted; that he was then put there before the trees that were to supply him with food had sprung up; and that after the trees were in readiness he was put there a second time. It is easy to deduce the most preposterous conclusions from a writer’s words by imputing to them a sense he never intended. In order to pave the way for an account of the primitive paradise, he had spoken of the earth as originally destitute of any plants on which man might subsist, the existence of such plants being conditioned on that of man himself. This naturally leads him to speak, first, of the formation of man (Genesis 2:7); then of the garden in which he was put (Genesis 2:8). A more particular description of the garden is then given (Genesis 2:9-14), and the narrative is again resumed by repeating that man was placed there (Genesis 2:15). As there was plainly no intention to note the strict chronological succession of events, it cannot in fairness be inferred from the order of the narrative that man was made prior to the trees and plants of Eden, much less that he preceded those of the world at large, of which nothing is here said.

(6) Genesis 2:5-6. The clause, in the day that Yahweh Elohim made earth and heaven, points back to what had occurred in the second and third stages of the Creation, namely, the origin of the atmospheric firmament (expanse, heaven, sky), and the origin subsequently of the earth (as it became detached from surrounding nebulae and so assumed its form as a planet) and its physical features (lands and seas): that is, to the time when as yet there was neither vegetation nor rainfall nor a man to till the ground. In a word, the dry land having become separated from the waters (seas), and an atmosphere having been thrown around the planet, as a result of the cooling of the earth’s crust vaporous substances (mists) began to ascend into the skies and to return to the earth in the form of rain. All this, of courselight, atmosphere, lands, seas, rainfallnecessarily preceded the first beginnings of plant life: precisely in the same order as depicted in the Cosmogony of Genesis 1. The stage was now set for the appearance of the crown of the Creation, man himself, and for the various developments revealed in subsequent Chapter s: (1) man’s Edenic state (Genesis 2:4-25), (2) his subsequent temptation and fall (Genesis 3:1-24), (3) the story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:1-16), (4) the degeneracy of the Cainites (Genesis 4:16-24), and (5) the birth of Seth (Genesis 4:25-26) to carry on the Messianic genealogy.

(7) We are not surprised, therefore, to find the totality of the Divine Being and His attributes designated by the dualistic Name, Yahweh Elohim, in this section. Once the documentary unity of the Elohistic and Yahwistic sections is entertained, this complete Name becomes a declaration that the Redeemer-God of Adam and his posterity is one with Elohim the God of the whole cosmos. This dualistic Name occurs twenty times in chs. 2 and 3 (the account of man’s paradisaical state), but only once thereafter in the entire Torah (Exodus 9:30). It must be kept in mind that Elohim is a plural form. Strong (ST, 319): God’s purpose in securing this pluralization may have been more far-reaching and intelligent than man’S. The Holy Spirit who presided over the development of revelation may well have directed the use of the plural in general, and even the adoption of the plural name Elohim in particular, with a view to the future unfolding of the truth with regard to the Trinity. E. S. Brightman, a later advocate of the Analytical Theory concedes the following (SOH, 22): It follows that the use of the divine names is by no means an infallible, or the chief, criterion for separation of the sources. Steuernagel says that there is no compulsion for a Jahvistic writer always to use the name -Jehovah.-’ Eichrodt rightly calls dependence on this criterion the -baby-shoes-’ of criticism, that need to be taken off. Nor is there any reason why Moses should not have used both Names as he saw fit, because it was to him specifically that the revelation of the Tetragrammaton was made (Exodus 3:13-15; Exodus 6:2-3) in its fulness of meaning; hence Moses was pre-eminently qualified to use the Names as he saw fit, and to combine them in describing the absolute beginnings of God’s creative and redemptive activity, as in the section before us. This fact argues in favor of the Mosaic authorship of Genesis.

And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

8. Man a Psychosomatic Being.This is one of the most important and meaningful statements in all literature. (1) Yahweh Elohim formed the man (that is, the corporeal or physical man) of the dust of the ground. If this passage were put in modern terms, the phrase, dust of the ground, would probably be rendered, the physical elements (those which go to make up all that is designated matter), hence the elements into which the body is resolved at death. (2) The verb used here, yatsar, translated formed, is used in the Old Testament of a potter molding clay (Isaiah 29:16, Jeremiah 18:4); used also of spirit in Zechariah 12:1. (3) Having thus formed the earthly house of our tabernacle (2 Corinthians 5:1), the Creator then breathed into it the breath of life, and the it became a he.In this graphic anthropomorphic picture, the Creator is represented as, stooping over and placing his mouth and nostrils upon the opened mouth and nostrils of the lifeless corporeal form (as in ordinary resuscitation) and expelling into it the breath of life. To be sure, this phrase means that God caused the inanimate form to come alive, but in man’s case itdesignates infinitely more than mere vitality (as we know from immediate personal experience), (Cf. Genesis 7:22here the breath of the spirit of life is said to be characteristic of animal forms, but there is no implication that God breathed this vitality into them: cf. Acts 17:25). Indeed there is no intimation anywhere in Scripture that God breathed His breath into any other creature than man: this is most significant. What, then, is implied by it, in man’s case? Surely, whatever more is implied by it, it cannot be less than the truth that God expelled into the corporeal form, not only vitality, but also the potentiality of the thought processes which specify man as man, thus constituting him to be a person.This surely gives us a clue to the meaning of the phrase, the image of God, as used of the human being in Genesis 1. Of course, this does not mean that God endowed man with the potentiality of deity, but with the potentiality only of divinity.(Note well, not with actual divinity, but only with the potentiality of it, which can be actualized only by the Spiritual Life.) These two words, deity and divinity are not synonymous, and to use them as such is an egregious error. Deity and humanity are differences of rank or kind, not of degree: man is human and there is no process whatever by which a human being can be transmuted into a deity. To be sure, in speaking of God, we use the phrase, the divine Being, but only by way of contrast with the human being. Hence, in Scripture, the righteous person, by leading the Spiritual Life (Galatians 5:22-25), by growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ (2 Peter 3:18), by living the life that is hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3), is said to become a partaker of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), and therefore fitted for the inheritance of the saints in light (Colossians 1:12). In a word, man can become godlike (1 Timothy 4:7), but he does not have the potentiality ever of becoming God, or of acquiring the attributes of God.

(4) Man became a living soul. Note that the R.S.V. renders it living being, and that the A.V. and the A.S.V. render the same word, as used in Genesis 2:19, living creature. The verse obviously emphasizes the fact that man is a living being (soul), not that he has living being (soul). Nephesh is the product of the fusion of the basar (flesh) and the ruach (spirit). (Ruach may be rendered either spirit or wind: however, common sense born of human experience can recognize the absurdity of interpreting this passage as indicating that man is body animated by wind: the notion is ridiculous.) Man is distinguished from the brute by the sublimely sententious fact that God breathed: this means that man is like God, because he has the breath of God in him. His corporeal part shares the corporeal life of the lower animals, but his spiritual powers constitute him to share the privileges and responsibilities of a good world and the capabilities of spiritual growth and ultimate union with God. In short, Genesis 2:7 declares that God created man a complete being. I see no reason for reading mystical, esoteric, or magical connotations into this Scripture; in its simplest terms, it means that God constituted him a bodymind or body-spirit unitya person.

(5) We have here, then, one of the most remarkable anthropomorphic passages in literature, and its most amazing feature is its complete agreement with the most recent science, in which the psychosomatic (organismic) interpretation of the human being prevails, in biology, physiology, medicine, psychology and psychiatry. (Psychosomatic medicine is a commonplace in our day: it is universally recognized that the interior life is affected by the exterior, and that the exterior is even more poignantly affected by the interior.) Genesis 2:7 means simply that man is a mind-body or spirit-body unity, not essentially dualistic in structure, but with the physical and the spiritual (personal, mental) elements interwoven in a complexity that defies analysis. (This means also that while mind and body thus interact, neither can mind become entirely body, nor body entirely mind. Even in the next life, according to Bible teaching, the saint will continue to be a spirit-body unity, the natural (psychikos, soulish) body having been transmuted into the spiritual (pneumatikos) body, the change described in Scripture as the putting on of immortality (1 Corinthians 15:35-57, Romans 2:6-8, 2 Corinthians 5:1-10). Christianity is unique in the emphasis it places on the redemption of the bodies of the saints; cf. Romans 8:18-25).

(6) The Breath of Life.Keil and Delitzsch (BCOTP, 79): The dust of the earth is merely the earthly substratum, which was formed by the breath of life from God into an animated, living, self-existent being. When it is said, -God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,-’ it is evident that this description gives prominence to the peculiar sign of life, viz., breathing; since it is obvious, that what God breathed into man could not be the air which man breathes: for it is not that which breathes, but simply that which is breathed. Consequently, breathing into the nostril can only mean that God, through His own breath, produced and combined with the bodily form that principle of life, which was the origin of all human life, and which constantly manifests its existence in the breath inhaled and exhaled through the nose. (Italics mineC. C.) (7) This inbreathing by the Eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14) determined individual human nature to be what it is specifically, namely, essentially spirit indwelling an earthly body, and hence incapable of annihilation. (Man is specified, i.e., set apart as a species by his thought processes.) This Divine inbreathing also determined (by endowing the creature with the power of choice) individual human destiny, either (for the righteous only) ultimate eternal union with God (Life Everlasting: 1 Corinthians 13:9-12, Hebrews 12:23, 1 John 3:2, Revelation 14:13), or (for the neglectful, rebellious, disobedient) ultimate eternal separation from God (eternal death: 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10, Acts 17:30-31, Romans 2:4-9; Revelation 6:15-17; Revelation 20:11-15; Revelation 21:1-8; Revelation 22:10-15), in the place prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 5:29-30; Matthew 25:41). (The last end of the wicked is not annihilation, but segregation in the penitentiary of the moral universe, Gehenna or Hell). (8) Reduced to its basic significance, Genesis 2:7 emphasizes the fact that man is a fusion of body (earthly elements) and spirit (divinely inbreathed by the Creator Himself): an earthly house of this tabernacle (2 Corinthians 5:1-8), vitalized by spirit, thus communicated to it by the Breath of God. Where there is spirit, in the full sense of the term, there is vitality, personality, sociality, and ultimately, but only as the product of the Spiritual Life, wholeness or holiness.

(9) Nephesh in this text, therefore, denotes the complete living human being, that is, in his present state. Man’s body consists of the earthly elements; it is formed from adamah; in a wider sense, formed out of the earth (Genesis 18:27, Psalms 103:14); hence, at death the body goes back to the earthly elements from which it was originally constituted (the elements which it shares with the whole animal creation). (Genesis 3:19; Genesis 3:23; Job 10:9; Job 34:15; Psalms 146:4). But the spiritthe interior being, in a very literal sense, the imperishable ego, self, personis from God, and hence, at the death of the body, it goes back to the God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7; Genesis 7:22; Job 32:8; Job 33:4; Psalms 18:15; Psalms 104:29-30; Proverbs 20:27; Isaiah 42:5; Acts 17:25), for His final judgment and disposition of it (John 5:28-29; Matthew 12:41-42; Matthew 25:31-46; Acts 17:30-31; Romans 2:4-9; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Revelation 20:11-15). According to this remarkable Scripture (Genesis 2:7), man is so constructed in this present life, as to be neither entirely corporeal nor entirely mental, but a complex fusion of the powers of both body and mind into a wondrous whole (Psalms 139:14).

9. Body, Soul, Spirit.(1) What, then, are the essential elements (parts, or separate categories of powers) of human nature? There are two theories: what is known as the dichotomous theory, that man is made up of body and spirit; and what is called the trichotomous theory, that he is somehow constituted of body, soul, and spirit.(Matthew 10:28; Matthew 27:50; Luke 23:46, John 19:30; Job 27:3; Job 32:8; Job 33:4; Ephesians 4:23, 1 Corinthians 5:3, 3 John 1:2, and esp. Ecclesiastes 12:7, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Hebrews 4:12)-’. This problem (of the proper correlation of these three terms, as used in the Bible) is, in many respects, difficult; hence, in attempting to determine the correct explanation, one should not be dogmatic. The problem is complicated especially by Scriptures in which soul and spirit seem to be used interchangeably. (Cf. Genesis 41:8 and Psalms 42:6; John 12:27; John 13:21; Matthew 20:28 (psyche, life) and Matthew 27:50.) (2) It seems obvious, however, that Genesis 2:7 supports the dichotomous view. Certainly it teaches that man is a living soul or living being, constituted of a body of earthly elements and a Divinely inbreathed spirit. Common sense confirms the fact that the Divine inbreathing described here was an inbreathing, not merely of the vital principle, but of the rational as well; not only of the life processes, but of the thought processes also, with all their potentialities: the subsequent activity of the man so constituted (naming of the animal tribes, acceptance of the woman as his counterpart, and, sad to say, his disobedience to God’s law) proves him to have been truly homo sapiens.Man does not just livehe knows that he lives.

(3) The phrase, living soul, as used here does mean living being, but a living being composed of body and spirit, and thus endowed with the elements of personality: hence, man is said to have been created in the image of God. Note the following pertinent quotations assembled by Strong (ST, 486): Soul is spirit as modified by union with the body (Hovey). By soul we mean only one thing, i.e., incarnate spirit, a spirit with a body. Thus we never speak of the souls of angels. They are pure spirits, having no bodies. (Hodge). (Cf. Hebrews 1:14nevertheless, angels are represented in Scripture as manifesting themselves in some kind of external texture, something that makes them perceptible by man.) We think of the spirit as soul, only when in the body, so that we cannot speak of an immortality of the soul, in the proper sense, without bodily life (Schleiermacher). That the soul begins to exist as a vital force, does not require that it should always exist as such a force in connection with a material body. Should it require another such body, it may have the power to create it for itself, as it has formed the one it first inhabited; or it may have already formed it, and may hold it ready for occupation as soon as it sloughs off the one which connects it with the earth (Porter, Human Intellect, p. 39). It should be noted here especially that in Scripture there is said to be a natural (psychikos, soul-ish) body, and, for the redeemed, a spiritual (pneumatikos) body (1 Corinthians 15:44-49, 2 Corinthians 5:1-10, Philippians 3:20-21, Romans 2:7; Romans 8:11). Strong himself writes (ST, 486): The doctrine of the spiritual body is therefore the complement to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Aristotelian-Thomistic teaching is that soul informs body, or, vice versa, that body is informed by soul (inform meaning to give form to, that is, to put a thing in its proper class); hence, that the two are inseparable, because body needs soul, and soul needs body, for mutually complementary ends. The same thing may be said of spirit, as used in Scripture: it seems always to be represented as being associated with, or identical with, a rarefied form of matter. (It will be recalled that the old Greek philosopher, Demokritos, taught that nothing exists ultimately but atoms and the void; soul atoms, however, said he, are no doubt of a finer texture of matter than the gross atoms of the body.) Knudson (RTOT, 229): That ruach did not denote a third element in human nature, distinct from nephesh, is evident from the fact that it is often used synonymously with nephesh as a designation both of the principle of vitality and the resultant psychical life. (Cf. Genesis 6:17; Genesis 45:27; Judges 15:19; 1 Samuel 30:12; Ezekiel 37:5; Psalms 104:29; Isaiah 26:9; Isaiah 19:14; Exodus 28:3; Psalms 51:12, Judges 8:3; Proverbs 16:19.) All this boils down to the fact that, with reference to man, neither soul nor spirit, in Biblical teaching, is bodilessness: the notion of disembodied spirits is a distinctive feature of Oriental mysticisms. According to Scripture teaching, God alone is Pure Spirit (John 4:24); that is, without body or parts, but having understanding and free will. (There are two Scriptures, of course, which seem to favor the trichotomous theory, though on closer scrutinyit seems to meare not necessarily to be taken as doing so, These are 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12. Concerning 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Frame writes (ICC-Th, 209-210): The Apostle prays first in general that God may consecrate them [the Thessalonian Christians] through and through, and then specifically that he may keep their spirit, the divine element, and the soul and body, the human element, intact as an undivided whole, so that they may be blameless when the Lord comes. A. T. Robertson writes (WPNT, 38-39): Your spirit and soul and body …not necessarily trichotomy as opposed to dichotomy as elsewhere in Paul’s Epistles. Both believers and unbelievers have an inner man (soul, psyche; mind, nous; heart, kardia) … and the outer man (soma).But the believer has the Holy Spirit of God, the renewed spirit of man (1 Corinthians 2:11, Romans 8:9-11). (Cf. Titus 3:5). This author goes on to say that the apostolic prayer here is for the consecration of both body and soul (cf. 1 Corinthians 6). The adjective holokleron. .. means complete in all its parts. Strong holds (ST, 485) that this text is not intended to be a scientific enumeration of the constituent parts of human nature, but a comprehensive sketch of that nature in its chief relations. P. J. Gloag (PC-Th, 106) adheres to the trichotomous view. He writes: The -spirit-’ is the highest part of man, that which assimilates him to God, renders him capable of religion, and susceptible of being acted upon by the Spirit of God. The -soul-’ is the inferior part of his mental nature, the seat of the passions and desires, of the natural propensities. The -body-’ is the corporeal frame. Such a threefold distinction of human nature was not unknown among the Stoics and Platonists. There are also traces of it in the Old Testament, the spirit, or breath of God, being distinguished from the soul. With reference to Hebrews 4:12, the use of psyche and pneuma is certainly not too clear. The idea presented here is that of the probing, penetrating, adjudicating activity of the logos: logos is pictured as the all-seeing Eye of God which pierces the human being to its deepest depths: to the subtlest relations of human personality, the very border-line between the psyche and the pneumaall this is open to the logos (James Moffatt, ICC-H, 56). As Barmby writes (PC-H, 110): the logos is a living power. more keenly cutting than any sword; cutting so as to penetrate through and throughthrough the whole inner being of man, to its inmost depths; then, in doing so, discerning and opening to judgment all the secrets of consciousness. Or, according to Delitzsch, as quoted by Barmby (PC-H, 111): In fallen man his pneuma which proceeded from God and carries in itself the Divine image, has become, -as it were, extinguished-’; -through the operation of grace man calls to mind his own true nature, though shattered by sin-’; -the heavenly nature of man reappears when Christ is formed in him-’; and thus the Word of God -marks out and separates-’ the pneuma in him from the psyche in which it had been -as it were, extinguished.-’ (Cf. Galatians 4:19, Colossians 1:27).

To summarize: I find the tendency in general among commentators to look upon the psyche (soul) as the seat of the present animal (natural) life, and the spirit as the seat of the higher faculties and powers, in man. It is my personal conviction, however, that soul, in whatever state it may exist and continue to exist, stands for a body-spirit unity (or mind-body unity), to be explicit, a psychosomatic unity. However, regardless of the interpretation of the distinction between soul and spirit that one may accept, the fact remains that each is represented in Scripture as associated in the concrete, that is, in human life itself, with an outer or bodily texture of some kind. And it is this very fact which nullifies the claims of materialism and brings to light the really profound uniqueness and significance of the Christian doctrine of immortality. Hence, this is the fact in which we are here primarily interested.

(4) Permit me to state parenthetically that it has been my conviction for some time that certain findings in the area of the phenomena of the Subconscious in man throw considerable light on this problem of the distinction, if such a distinction really exists, between the soul and the spirit in the human being. Men who have engaged in research in this particular field uniformly describe the human interior man (2 Corinthians 4:16, Romans 7:22, Ephesians 3:16) as a house, so to speak, with two rooms in it: a front room which faces the external world and through which impressions from that world make their entrance by way of the physical senses; and a back room in which the impressions which have entered by way of the front room find a permanent abiding-place. This front room is commonly designated the objective (conscious, supraliminal) part of the self, or simply the objective mind; this back room, the subjective (subconscious, subliminal) part of the self, or simply the subjective mind. It is to this room that we refer when we speak of the Subconscious in man. The objective takes cognizance of the external world; its media of knowledge are the physical senses; it is an adaptation to man’s physical needs, his guide in adapting to his present terrestrial environment. (The fact is often overlooked that man’s physical senses serve only to adapt him to his present earthly milieu; they really shut outor at most only give him clues tothe world that lies beyond sense-perception, the real world (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). Suppose, for example, that a man had a visual mechanism like the lens of a high-powered microscope, so that every time he looks into a glass of water, he sees all the little bugs floating around in it; or, suppose he had a kind of x-ray eye that would enable him to be little more, apparently, than a skeleton (to which sundry internal and external accoutrements are necessarily attached) meeting other like skeletons, etc., in ordinary social intercoursewho would want to experience such a kind of life as this, even if such a life were possible, which, to be sure, it would not be? Or, suppose that man had an auditory mechanism constructed in the manner, let us say, of a radio receiving set attuned to all the vibrations that are coming into his ear, and impinging on his auditory nerve, from the outer air, from water, or from other sourcessuch an uproar would surely drive him crazy in short order. As a matter of fact, I am profoundly thankful that I do not have the sense of smell which my little dog has: it would make life unlivable to any man. Hence, we can readily see that the function of the physical senses is to enable the person to adjust to his present terrestrial environment: they cannot open to his view the glories of the world that lies beyond that of time and sense. Incidentally, Plato named this world of sense, the world of becoming, and the world beyond sense-perception, the world of being; Kant called the former, the phenomenal world, and the latter, the noumenal world.) The objective mind of man is needed, therefore, in order that he may take cognizance of his needs and responsibilities in relation to the external world in which he now lives. Its highest function is that of reason, which is in fact reflection upon what he has apprehended by sense-perception. The subjective mindthe Subconsciouson the other hand, takes cognizance of its environment independently of physical sense; it apprehends by pure thought and intuition; it is the storehouse of memory; it is the seat of perfect perception of the fixed laws of nature; it performs its highest functions when the objective processes are in abeyance (that is, in natural or induced sleepthe latter is hypnosis); it is especially amenable to suggestion.This subliminal (below-the-threshold-of-consciousness) part of the inward man seems to be unlimited by objective concepts of distance, space, and time (one can go back into childhood, or travel throughout the cosmos, in a dream): it functions effectively outside the space-time dimension. It has all the appearance of a distinct entity (being), with independent powers and functions, having a psychical (or metapsychical) order of its own, and being capable of functioning independently of the corporeal body. It is, in a real sense, the very core of the human being, It seems to be, in its ultimate aspect, the ontological self, the essential and imperishable being of the human individual. I suggest, therefore, that the objective powers of the human psyche are rightly to be correlated with what we call mind (or soul?) in man, and that the subjective powers may rightly be correlated with what we call spirit in him.Therefore, it is certainly well within the bounds of probability that all that I have suggested here to be included under the word spirit may be specifically what God breathed into man when He created him. (See further infra, in the few paragraphs on the phenomena of the Subconscious.) Again, let me remind the student that all this does not mean that either mind (or soul) or spirit exists independently of some form of bodily texture, either in this present world or in the world to come.

10. The Christian Doctrine of Immortality, only intimated in the Old Testament (Job 14:14; Job 19:25-27; Genesis 5:24, Hebrews 11:5; 2 Kings 2:10-11; Hebrews 11:9-10; Hebrews 11:13-19), is fully revealed in the New. (1) As stated heretofore, according to Biblical teaching, there is a natural body (this we know also from personal experience), and there is also a spiritual body, that is, a body gradually formed by the sanctification of the human spirit by the indwelling Spirit of God (Romans 5:5; Romans 8:11; Romans 14:17; 1 Corinthians 15:44-49; 2 Corinthians 5:1-8; 1 Corinthians 6:19; 1 Corinthians 3:16-17; Hebrews 12:14). The spirits of the redeemed, although separated from their natural (soul-ish) bodies at death, will be clothed in their spiritual bodies in. the next life (Philippians 3:20-21). (Certainly present-day science has nothing to say against this teaching. Modern nuclear physics has proved that matter may take such attenuated forms (even the atom is found to be, not a particle, but a field of inconceivably powerful forms of energy) as to be practically non-physical, or at the most only metaphysical.) Incidentally, to try to determine whether this transmutation takes place immediately at death, or, following an intermediate state, at the general Resurrection (Matthew 11:21-24; Matthew 12:38-42), is, of course unjustified, presumptuous, and futile: it is vainly trying to interpose man’s measurements of time into the realm of God’s timelessness: and all such matters are best left to the disposition of the Sovereign of the universe, who, we can be sure, doeth all things well. (2) This final transmutation of the saint’s natural body into his spiritual body is what is designated in the New Testament as the putting on of immortality (Romans 2:7, 1 Corinthians 15:53-54); that is to say, in Scripture, immortality is a doctrine that has reference exclusively to the destiny of the body (Romans 8:20-23). Immortality, moreover, is not something that all men have, or will have, regardless of the kind of life each may lead; on the contrary, immortalitythe redemption of the bodyis a reward of loving obedience to the Gospel requirements (Acts 2:38, Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 8:35-39, Galatians 3:27, Romans 10:9-10) and of the faithful pursuit of the Spiritual Life (Romans 2:7; Romans 14:17; Hebrews 12:24; Galatians 5:16-25; 2 Peter 1:5-11; 2 Peter 3:18; Revelation 2:10; Revelation 3:5; Revelation 19:8). Strictly speaking, the word eternal means without beginning or end, whereas immortal means having a beginning but no ending.We must always distinguish, therefore, between survival and immortality: the two words are not synonymous. The spirit of man is eternalit will live forever in one of two states, namely, in a state of reconciliation with God (Heaven) or in a state of separation from God (Hell). (Cf. Matthew 25:46here Jesus teaches explicitly that Hell is equally eternal with Heaven: this text clearly refutes theories of ultimate annihilation of the wicked, of the possibility of post-mortem repentance, or of possible salvation by proxy (Ezekiel 18:19-20, Luke 16:19-31, Romans 14:10, 2 Corinthians 5:10, Revelation 20:11-15, etc.), and the like: notions characteristic of the cultists. The matter of importance to us, at this point, is that in Scripture teaching, there is no promise of spiritual bodies (immortality) to the lost, nor is there any information given us about the kind of bodies in which they will be tabernacled after the Judgment.However, Jesus certainly makes it clear, in Matthew 10:28, that they will take with them into the infernal abode some kind of body. And to destroy, as the term is used here, does not mean annihilationit means eternal punishment in Gehenna (the real hell). (Note how frequently Jesus used the name Gehenna in His teaching: Matthew 5:22; Matthew 5:29-30; Matthew 18:9; Matthew 23:15; Matthew 23:33; cf. Hebrews 10:31, James 3:6.)

(3) 1 Corinthians 15:44-49. Here the Apostle is setting forth in some detail the doctrine of the ultimate redemption of the bodies of the saints. Throughout this entire chapter, his subject is the body, especially the resurrection of the body, and that only. The sainted dead, he tells us, will come into possession of their spiritual bodies, when Jesus comes again, by resurrection; and those Christians who may be living on earth at the time will take on their spiritual bodies by transfiguration (1 Corinthians 15:50-55). Again, John the Beloved, we are told, saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of God, etc. (Revelation 6:9); that is, evidently he saw the immortalized spirits of the redeemedthe spirits of just men made perfect (Hebrews 12:23)those whose redemption had been made complete by their putting on of their spiritual bodies (immortality), and hence were once again body-spirit unities or living souls.The first Adam, the Apostle tells us, was a living soulhe was so created. The last Adam, he goes on to say, became a life-giving spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45). Christ, the Second Adam (Romans 5:12-19) has power, as the Crown of humanity, to give to His elect their new spiritual bodies: hence, He is said to have abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel (2 Timothy 1:10; John 10:14-18; John 11:25-26). (Robertson (WPNT, IV, 195) comments on 1 Corinthians 15:39 as follows: Paul takes up animal life to show the great variety there is, as in the plant world. Even if evolution should prove to be true, Paul’s argument remains valid. Variety exists along with kinship. Progress is shown in the different kingdoms, progress that even argues for a spiritual body after the body of flesh is lost.). To be sure, our Lord, while in the flesh, had a human spirit (Luke 23:46, John 19:30), but His human spirit was so posessed by the Holy Spirit that the terms Spirit of Christ, Spirit of Jesus, and Holy Spirit, are used interchangeably (John 3:31-36, Acts 16:6-8, 1 Peter 1:10-12). Hence the Spirit of Jesus became truly a life-giving Spirit (Romans 8:11); after three days, His Spirit returned to earth and gave life to His body which had been interred in Joseph’s tomb (Psalms 16:8-10; Acts 2:24-32; Romans 8:11; Philippians 3:20-21; 1 John 3:2), This spiritual body, though exhibiting the same individuality, was different in texture from His former earthly body: it was of such a texture that he could manifest Himself at will regardless of physical barriers of any kind (Matthew 28:16-20; Mark 16:12-13; Mark 16:19; Luke 24:13-15; Luke 24:36-43; Luke 24:50-51; John 20:11-31; Acts 1:1-5; Acts 1:9-11; 1 Corinthians 15:1-8). His earthly body was constituted of flesh and blood. But flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 15:50); hence, His resurrection body was one of flesh and bones (John 20:24-29, Luke 24:39-40): evidently the blood, the seat of animal life, was gone. (Luke 24:39Note how, in this Scripture, the risen Christ sought to impress upon His Apostles that He was not a phantasm, not just a ghost.) Subsequently, at His Ascension to the Father, His body underwent a final change, known in Scripture as glorification (Daniel 12:3; John 7:39; John 17:5; 1 Corinthians 15:40-41; Romans 2:7, Hebrews 2:10): it was in His glorified body that He temporarily manifested Himself on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-6, 2 Peter 1:16-18); and it was in this body, the radiance of which was above the brightness of the noonday sun (Acts 9:1-9; Acts 22:5-11; Acts 26:12-18), that He appeared to Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road, temporarily blinding the persecutor, but qualifying him for the apostleship (1 Corinthians 15:8; 1 Corinthians 9:1; Acts 1:8; Acts 2:33; Acts 10:39-41; Acts 26:16-18; 1 John 1:1). And Paul the Apostle informs us that it is God’s Eternal Purpose that His electthose whom, through the Gospel (Romans 1:16), He calls, justifies, and glorifies (Acts 2:39, 2 Thessalonians 2:14, Romans 10:16-17, 1 Corinthians 4:15, 1 Peter 5:10) are foreordained ultimately to be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:28-30); that is, redeemed in body and spirit, and henceagain as living souls (Revelation 6:9, Hebrews 12:23)clothed in glory and honor and immortality (incorruptible bodies, Romans 2:7). Hence, note well 1 Timothy 6:14-16: it is the Lord Jesus Christ about whom the Apostle is writing here: He alone, it could truly be affirmed, as the firstborn from the dead (Colossians 1:18, Acts 26:23), hath immortality, dwelling in light unapproachable, seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty (Acts 2:29-36, 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, Ephesians 1:17-23, Philippians 2:9-11, 1 Peter 3:21-22). There is no doctrine of disembodied spirits or eternal bodilessness in Biblical teaching. As to his essential nature, the living being (soul) known as man (generically) is a body-spirit (psychosomatic) unity, in whatever state he may exist, either in this world or in the world to come. It irks me beyond measure to find the statement in books and printed articles (written by men who ought to know better, and indeed would know better had they ever subjected themselves to the discipline of metaphysics) that human nature is changing. Again let me say that man as to nature is a body-spirit or body-mind unity, set apart as a species by his thought processes: should he cease to be such, he would no longer be man.A change of nature would be a substantial change, that is, a change from one kind of being to another kind. There is no evidence anywhere that man is undergoing any such change: should he do so, the human race would finally cease to exist. Changes in the form of corporeal maturation, or in the form of the addition of increments of knowledge to personality, etc., do take place constantlybut these are not changes of human nature; that is, and, as far as we know, always will be a body-spirit unity. To summarize in the words of Gareth L. Reese, in The Sentinel (organ of the Central Christian College of the Bible, Moberly, Missouri), issue of February, 1965: By means of the Gospel, men, have had disclosed to them the life of the future world, and the incorruptibility (aphtharsis) of body and soul. Paul has pointed out that the wicked survive death, and have wrath, indignation, tribulation and anguish awaiting them. He also taught that one of the things included in the redemptive act of Christ was the redemption of the body. Christ died for the body as well as for the soul. This is why he can speak of the uncorruptible body which awaits the redeemed at the second coming of Christ. (2 Timothy 1:10, Romans 2:4-10, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). (A word of caution here: It will be rioted that I have been using the phrases, mind-body unity, and spirit-body unity, as if they were synonymous. This, as pointed out previously, is not necessarily the case. It could well be -that the former designates the conscious, the latter the subconscious, powers and activities of the interior man. Be that as it may, my contention is that either phrase designates what is called in Genesis 2:7 a living soul.)

(4) The duality of human nature is not only a fact psychosomatically, but a fact morally and spiritually as well. (Perhaps I should make it clear at this point that in writing of the duality of human nature, I do not mean a duality of being (or essence); I mean, rather, a duality of operational activities, that is, of mental (or personal) as distinguished from corporeal processes.) Note, in this connection Romans 7:14-24; Romans 8:1-9; Galatians 5:16-25, etc. It should be understood that the term flesh as used in these Scriptures is the Pauline designation for the natural or unregenerate man (1 Corinthians 2:14; cf. John 3:1-8, Titus 3:4-7), one who, no matter how obvious his respectability, morality, self-righteousness, etc., has not the Spirit (Jude 1:19, Romans 8:9), and is therefore spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1, Colossians 2:13). Evil, in Scripture, is not attributed to matter as such, nor to the body as such, nor to the right use of the body, but to the wrong use of it. Sin, according to New Testament teaching, has its fountainhead, not in the flesh (considered as body), but in the mind of the flesh, the carnal mind. (Cf. Matthew 15:18-20, Mark 7:20-23). This idea may be illustrated clearly by the Freudian doctrine of the libido, namely, that itthe libidois the psychic energy by which the physiological sex drive is represented in the mind. Hence, one who thinks constantly of sex indulgence (lasciviousness, Galatians 5:19) is bound to have an over-developed libido. We are pretty generally what our thoughts make us to be: cf. Philippians 4:8-9; Romans 1:21; Romans 1:28-32). That is to say, it is the misuse of the body by the carnal mind that is the primary source of moral evil (sin). (No sin is ever committed that is not the choice of self above God, of my way of doing things over God’s way of doing things.)

Perhaps it should be noted here that the rigid dualism of body and soul (soma and psyche) is not a Biblical teaching. It is a featurean outstanding featureof Oriental mysticisms and of Platonic philosophy. In the Socratic-Platonic system, the body is explicitly declared to be the tomb of the soul, and true knowledge of the essences of things, becomes possible only when the soul (after numerous re-incarnations) is finally liberated from the body, its corporeal prison. This, let me repeat for emphasis, is not Biblical teaching. Although in Scripture there is recognition of a duality of operational activities within human natureof corporeal processes and mental (or personal) processes, of viscerogenic drives and psychogenic drives, etc.there is no such notion of duality or dualism of human nature as essence or being, as that espoused by Oriental mysticism, Pythagoreanism, and Platonism.

11. Christian Teaching about the Human Body.I think we fail to recognize the high value that is placed on the human body in Biblical, and especially in New Testament, teaching. (1) In Scripture, for example, there is no such notion presented as that which characterizes some pagan, and even some so-called Christian sects (cultists)the doctrine that to purify the soul one must punish the body: hence, fanatical forms of monasticism, long periods of penance, extreme periods of fasting, such practices as scarification, flagellation (whipping the body), and the like. (Look up the story of the Penitentes who have flourished unto this day in northern New Mexico.) The tendency of mysticism has always been to downgrade, and actually degrade, the human body. Plotinus (A.D. 205-270), for example, the founder of Neoplatonism, is said to have been ashamed he had a body, and would never name his parents nor remember his birthday. (2) In New Testament teaching, the body of the saint, the truly converted person, is said to become at conversion the temple of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38; Romans 5:5; Romans 8:11; 1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; 2 Corinthians 1:21-22; Galatians 3:2; Ephesians 1:13-14; Ephesians 2:19-22; Ephesians 4:30; Revelation 7, etc.). (3) In the New Testament, the human organism, which of course includes the body, is presented as a metaphor of the Body of Christ, the Church (Ephesians 1:22-23; Ephesians 4:12; Ephesians 5:22; Colossians 1:18; Colossians 1:24; Colossians 2:19; 1 Corinthians 12:27). (4) In the New Testament, we find many exhortations to temperance, cleanness, and chastity, which have primary reference to the body (Romans 1:26-27; Romans 12:1; Matthew 5:27-31; 1 Corinthians 5:9-11; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1 Corinthians 6:13; 1 Corinthians 9:27; Galatians 5:19-21; Ephesians 5:5; 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8; 1 Timothy 1:9-10; 1 Timothy 6:9-10; Titus 2:12; Hebrews 13:4; 1 Peter 1:15; 1 Peter 2:11; James 3:1-6; Revelation 21:8; Revelation 22:15). (4) In Scripture, as we have pointed out several times, human redemption includes the redemption of the whole psychosomatic unitythe living being known as manthe last phase of which is the redemption of the body, which is designated the putting on of immortality (Romans 2:7). Progression in human redemption is from the Kingdom of Nature, through the Kingdom of Grace, into the Kingdom of Glory. Christianity is the only religious system in which emphasis is placed on the importance of the human body, its care, and its proper functions. This is just another form of the uniqueness of the Christian faith.

12. How Man Differs from the Brute.As far as we can ascertain from the observation of animal behavior, the differences between the operational powers of the brute and man are vast, and may be summarized as follows: The brute, through the media of his physical senses, is conscious, that is, aware of the events of his physical environment. But man is self-conscious: he distinguishes between the me and the not-me.I am aware, not only of the manuscript page on which I am typing these words, but also of the fact that I am doing the typing. Hence, man, being a person created in God’s image (Exodus 3:14), uses personal pronouns. If a brute could ever say, meaningfully to itself, I am, it would no longer be just an animal. (2) The brute has percepts deriving originally from sensations. Man, however, has concepts as well as percepts, and concepts derive from his thought processes. By means of concepts, man is able to transcend the space-time continuum which he now inhabits. (3) The brute gives no evidence of having the power of reasoning (from this to that).Certainly no man would be so foolish as to try to teach his old dog the principles of calculus, either differential or integral. But man is capable of both inductive (from experience to ideas) and deductive (from idea to idea) reasoning. Hence, it is man alone who has developed the sciences of pure mathematics and pure (symbolic) logic. (4) The brute forms no judgments; that is, gives no evidence of mental ability to unite two percepts by affirmation or to separate then by denial (e.g., The rose is red, or, The rose is not red). But man is constantly forming and communicating judgments. A judgment in epistemology becomes a proposition in logic and a sentence in grammar; hence,man has developed all these branches of knowledge. (5) The brute, having no ideas to express in propositional language, is confined to the language of gestures, dances, cries, etc. But man has ideasvery complex ideas at timesand can communicate them in the form of propositional language. (6) The brute is determined in its acts by its physiological impulses. But man is self-determined.In every human act, three sets of factors are involved, namely, those of heredity, those of environment, and those of the personal reaction. Self-determination in man is the power of the self, the I, to determine its own acts (make its own decisions, choices, etc.). Freedom is the power to act or not to act, or to act in one way instead of another, in any given situation. (7) The brute seems to have little or no freedom from instinct (which has been called the Great Sphinx of nature). Think how restricted, how utterly uninteresting, life would be for man if he were confined solely to grooves of instinctive behavior But man has intelligence which empowers him to vary his responses, even to delay them; and by means of intellection, he can make progress through trial-and-error. (8) The brute seems to have no power of contrary choice, But man has this power. Everyone knows from experience that in his various acts, he could have chosen to act differently. Common sense tells him that he is not indeterminable, nor completely determinable, but actually self-determinable, in the last analysis. Freedom, negatively defined, is immunity from necessity. (9) The brute gives no evidence of having moral or spiritual propensities. But man has never been found so depraved as to be completely without them. (10) Hence, the brute, although manifesting responses which seem to indicate affection, pleasure, guilt, shame, remorse, and the like, certainly does not have conscience in any true sense of the term. Conscience is the voice of practical reason; only where there is reason, can there be conscience. Man alone possesses conscience in the strict sense of the term. When one does what one has been brought up to believe to be right, conscience approves; when one does that which one has been brought up to believe to be wrong, conscience chides. Conscience is what it is educated to be, and man alone is capable of such education. Because of this lack of ability to make moral distinctions, the brute is not considered responsible before the lawthe brute is not regarded as a moral creature with moral responsibility. We do not haul our animals into court and charge them with crimes; such a procedure would be ludicrous. Nor does anyone in his right mind ever try to teach his old horse, dog, cat, or any other kind of pet, the Ten Commandments, or the multiplication tables, or the alphabet. (11) Man is distinguished from the brute especially in the tremendous range of his moral potential.As Aristotle has stated the case so realistically (Politics, I, 2, 1253a, Jowett trans.): Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used by intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst ends, Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals and the most full of lust and gluttony. Indeed, man is capable of more heinous acts of lust, cruelty, violence, and viciousness of all kinds, than any brute; and even more destructive in their consequences are his sins of pride, ambition, greed, overweening arrogance, and the likesins of the spiritof which the brute can hardly be considered capable at all. It has been rightly said that man’s range of moral potential is such that he can either walk up in the Milky Way or wallow in the gutter, depending of course on his own individual attitude toward life and its meaning. (12) The distinction between the brute and the child is a distinction of kind (nature) and not of degree.Just as a poppy seed cannot produce a mustard plant, so the brute does not have the potentialities of a human being. The child has the essential elements of human nature potentially from conception and birth: the brute never has them at any time in its life. Undoubtedly the human racehomo sapienshad its beginning in an original pair, the male and the female, from whom all their progeny have inherited by ordinary generation the body-spirit unity by which human nature is specified. (It is generally held by scientists, I think, that there has been only one alleged case of biological evolution terminating in homo sapiens.All theories of alleged centers of human origin are built on sheer conjecture. But should these theories be validated later, the fact still remains that homo sapiensthe name adopted by scientists for man as we know himhad his origin in the union of the male and the female. No provision exists in nature, that anyone knows of, for homosexual procreation.) The first man was created a living soul by the free act of God in endowing him with the Breath of Life; the childevery child of Adam’s progeny-is a living soul through the media of secondary causes (parental procreation). The child who matures in this terrestrial environment will have a personality actualized largely through the interaction of the factors of heredity and those of environment (plus, as we have said, the personal reactions). Who knows, then, but that the child who dies in infancy will acquire a personality constituted of the factors which go to make up his celestial (heavenly) environment? For, as Jesus states expressly, to such belongeth the kingdom of God (Luke 18:15-17, Matthew 19:13-15, Mark 10:13-16, Matthew 18:1-6). We must remember that our Lord, by His death on the Cross, atoned for the innocent and the irresponsible unconditionally (John 1:29, Romans 3:20; Romans 5:18-19). (13) Absolute beginnings are certainly supernatural or at least superhuman; but entities so begun are perpetuated by the operation of natural forces (secondary causes). This does not mean that the essential elements of personality must depend on physical conditions for their own actualization and development, as if they were properties of matter.To be sure, a healthy body is distinctly an asset to a spiritually healthy mentality; still and all, we know that great intelligence and spirituality may develop in weak physical frames. There is no limit to the potential development of the inward man in holiness, until his perfection is attained in the putting on of immortality. (Matthew 5:8; Matthew 5:48; Romans 14:17; 2 Corinthians 13:11; Philippians 3:12; Hebrews 12:14; Hebrews 12:23; 1 Peter 5:10; 2 Peter 3:18). To suppose that any such potentialities characterize the brute would be the height of absurdity.

13. Man is Specified as Man by His Thought Processes.(1) By specified is meant here, set apart (i.e., from the lower animals) as a distinct species.Man is specified by his power of reason: this includes the thought processes of which he is capable. Science supports this reasoning by its designation of man as homo sapiens, from the Latin homo, a human being, a man, and sapiens, sensible, knowing, wise, etc. (2) Man can be defined specifically only in the light of those operational concepts which have peculiar reference to him as man. (By operational is meant a judgment, based on shared experience, not of what an entity appears to be, but of how it acts,) The operational concepts relating to man may be divided roughly into three classes as determined by the levels of organization or dimensions in his being: namely, those which are specific of him, characteristic of man onlythe psychical, metapsychical, and psychological concepts; those which he shares with all living beingsthe biological and physiological concepts; and those of physics, chemistry, and mechanics, those which he shares with the inanimate creationthe physiochemical concepts. An incalculable amount of error has crept into scientific thinking as a consequence of the unwarranted mingling of the concepts peculiar to one dimension of the human being with those specific of another. So writes the late Dr. Alexis Carrel (MU, 32-34): he goes on to say: It is nothing but word play to explain a psychological phenomenon in terms of cell physiology or of quantum mechanics. However, the mechanistic physiologists of the nineteenth century, and their disciples who still linger with us, have committed such an error in endeavoring to reduce man entirely to physical chemistry. This unjustified generalization of the results of sound experience is due to over-specialization. Concepts should not be misused. They must be kept in their place in the hierarchy of the sciences. (3) All the attempts which have been made in recent years to reduce -man to a kind of glorified brute have endedas all such attempts are bound to doin complete failure, for the obvious reason that man is more than a brute. Even the most ardent evolutionist admitsat least implicitlythat man has evolved beyond the brute stage; that is to say, that he is animal plus, and it is the plus that makes him man. Man is specifically mind, spirit, etc., that is, that part of the organism which is man actually, is essentially non-corporeal. Or, as one writer has put it: Spatial predicates do not apply to minds or ideas. The very fact that man has advanced beyond the mere animal stage (as the evolutionists would put it) means that he is obligated by his very nature to use his reason to control his appetites and passions and to direct his will. (4) Any adequate study of human abilities must involve the problem of the meaning of meaning. A sensation is an event in the nervous system, But the consciousness (awareness) of this sensation is something else. Obviously, it is not the sensation itself, but an experience caused by the sensation. The sensation is event A, the consciousness of it is event B. And no one knows, no one can even begin to explain, what consciousness really is. We do know, however, that consciousness brings into play certain word-symbols, such as joy, pain, sorrow, disgust, remorse, etc., to identify the particular sensation or affect. But the use of word-symbols obtrudes the whole problem of meaning into the picture: to what do these word-symbols refer? Sensation is physiological, to be sure. But experience convinces us that consciousness does not belong in that category, and that meaning cannot be reduced to physiology at all. Sensation occurs in the body, but meaning is a phenomenon of the thought process. There is no correlate in the brain for meaning in thought. Hence the utter folly of trying to reduce psychology to sheer physiology.

14. The Power of Abstract Thought specifies man as man. (1) Abstract is from abs, from, and trahere, to draw, hence, to draw from. Cognition, or knowing, for example, is a process of abstraction. The first step in cognition is the sense-perception of an object, such as a chair, book, etc. The second step is that of image-ing or imagination, the process by which the mind abstracts and stores away the image of the thing perceived. (When a student leaves the classroom, he does not take with him in his head or in his mind the actual chair in which he has been sitting: he takes only the image of the chair.) The third and final step in cognition occurs when the mind abstracts from both the sense-perceived thing and the image thereof, a process which is known as conceptualization.The concept (universal, form) is essentially an act of thought, a determination of the essence of the thing once perceived, that is, the aggregate of properties which puts the thing (apprehended as the object) in its particular class of things. It is by conceptualizing that man is able to transcend the space-time dimension in which he is confined corporeally. E.g., the word horse, as such, as a combination of letters, is only a symbol. But every symbol has its referent; every figure is a figure of something.Hence, the referent of the word-symbol horse may be an actual horse now being perceived by physical vision, i.e., the percept (particular). Or its referent may be the totality of the properties which go to make up the essence of every horse that ever did or ever will exist, i.e., the concept (universal). This means that man is capable of thinking in terms of past, present, and future: it means that he is capable of compiling a dictionary in which concepts are stereotyped in the form of definitions. (2) Man’s power of abstract thinking has enabled him to construct language by means of which he communicates ideas. Anthropologists generally agree, I think, that man’s inherent ability to construct language is the one factor which, above all others, has enabled him to drive forward throughout the ages to his present level of being and culture. As Gillin writes (WMIA, 451): By far the most ubiquitous type of symbol systems used by human beings is spoken language. Again, The ability to speak articulate language is, apparently, a feature in which the human species is unique.. Susanne Langer writes (PNK, 83): Language is, without doubt, the most momentous and at the same time the most mysterious product of the human mind. Between the clearest animal call or love or warning or anger, and a man’s least, trivial word, there lies a whole day of Creation.-’ Sapir (Lang., 8-10) writes: Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols. He then goes on to state that language is not exclusively a psychophysical construct: the so-called organs of speech (lungs, larynx, palate, nose, tongue, and lips) he says are no more to be thought of as primary organs of speech than are the fingers to be considered as essentially organs of piano-playing or the knee as the organ of prayer. In a word, these are organs of speech if and when the person (the mind or will) chooses to use them as such. Sapir concludes: Hence, we have no recourse but to accept language as a fully formed functional system within man’s psychic or -spiritual-’ constitution. We cannot define it as an entity in psychophysical terms alone, however much the psychophysical basis is essential to its functioning. Language is not only the medium by which conceptual thought is developed; it is also the means of making such thought communicable. Culture follows communication, and is enhanced by progress in facility of communication. Language, says Sapir, is universal, and perhaps the oldest of human inventions. (3) Again, man’s development of the sciences of pure mathematics is perhaps the most obvious example of his power of thinking in abstract symbols. The anthropological theory that man first learned to count (in terms of tens, of course) by using his fingers and thumbs as counters, would seem to be a reasonable explanation. Indeed, counters are used in the classroom today to make young children acquainted with the number series. We can be sure, however, that counters (marbles, pebbles, blocks, etc.) were never used anywhere or under any circumstances to multiply 999,999 by 999,999. Pure mathematics in its more complex aspects must have been the product of human thought in its most abstract form, Mathematics is, of course, like verbal speech, one of the sciences of communication. The same is basically true of music: as everyone knows, music has its foundation in mathematical relationshipsa fact which the Greek philosopher-mystic, Pythagoras, discovered in the long, long ago. Man has what might be called indefinite (though not infinite) power to think and live in mathematical, and hence metaphysical, terms. (4) The meaning of meaning is in itself an abstraction. Meaning is an essential feature of consciousness, over and above, and of a nature different from, the sensory content. A word that is read to a person comes into that person’s consciousness as sound and meaning.A wild beast perceives a sound in the human voice; a trained animal discovers a kind of meaning (perhaps a command, or a summons to food and drink); but a human being alone discerns therein a thought.There is no alchemy of wishful thinking by which a mental process can be reduced to a cellular process exclusively: no matter how the two processes are correlated, they are not identical.Any theory that consciousness has no real efficacy or significance, or that mind, as a projection of a biological process, can be described simply in terms of stimulus and response is utterly inadequate to account for the more refined abstract phenomena of man’s psychical and metapsychical dimensions. (5) Dr. Ernst Cassirer, in his excellent little book, An Essay on Man, develops the thesis that man is to be defined, not in terms of a metaphysical substance of some kind, nor in terms of an empirically discerned biological set of instincts, but in terms of his specific tendency to think and live by means of symbols. It is this power and tendency to symbolify, Cassirer holds, which has produced the facets of his culture, namely, language, art, myth, and ritual. Even much of his history is written in terms of symbols-records and documents surviving from past ages. And symbolizing, no matter what form it may take, is essentially abstraction.

15. The Power of Creative Imagination also specifies man as man. Creative imagination is thinking in terms of the possible and the ideal: it lies at the root of practically all of man’s achievements. It is popularly regarded, of course, as confined to the realm of art, as finding its outlet primarily in artistic productions. This it surely does: as Chesterton has put it, Art is the signature of man. But we must not overlook the fact that man’s creative imagination is equally as responsible for his science as for his art, The scientist, in his laboratory, envisions what might be, under such-and-such conditions; he proceeds to set up the conditions; then he performs the experiment and thus demonstrates whether his theory is true or false. Thus it isby the trial-and-error methodthat science has attained the level of achievement which it exhibits in our day. Man’s creative imagination is the root of all his technology; scarcely an invention (tool) is known which did not exist in theory before it existed in fact. Then, too, man has always been subject to the lure of the ideal: think of the utopian books which have been written, embodying man’s efforts to envision and portray the ideal society: Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Bacon’s New Atlantis, Campanella’s City of the Sun, Butler’s Erewhon, etc. Think of the achievements of such creative geniuses as Pythagoras, Archimedes, Paracelsus, Da Vinci, the Curies, Pasteur, the Mayos, Einstein, etc.! There is little doubt that man’s creative imagination has its fountainhead in the powers of the Subconscious.

16. A Sense of Values also specifies man as man. (1) Because he is a rational and moral being, he has ever demonstrated his propensity to evaluate: hence, to coin such words as truth, honor, beauty, justice, goodness, and the liketerms which have no meaning whatsoever for a lower animal. There are many who hold that this sense of values is innate: Aristotle, for example, had this to say (Politics, I, 2, 1253a, Jowett trans.): It is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state. Scholastic philosophers likewise have consistently maintained that the sense of right and wrong, of good and bad, is inherent in all men, whatever their condition in life or level of culture: that no people ever existed lacking this elementary sense of moral discrimination. This they designate the Ethical Fact. (2) It must be acknowledged that this sense of values has inspired man’s development of the science of jurisprudence. Jurisprudence has its basis in morality; that is, in human relations, relations among moral beings (persons). As ethics, the science of moral action, has been developed little by little throughout the centuries, so jurisprudence, the science of law, has been developed little by little along with ethics. Jurisprudence is the product of man’s reason, formulated for the purpose of preserving those relations and acts which he has found necessary to his well-being, and preventing those which he has found to be destructive of individual character and social order. (3) Law is either customary (handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation) or statutory (permanently embodied in some stereotyped form). Originally, law was promulgated in the form of tradition; later, when writing came into use, by carving on wood, stone, metal, clay tablets, etc. (e.g., the Roman Law of the Twelve Tables; the two tables of stone of the Mosaic Code; the Code of Hammurabi in Babylon, about 1800 B.C., engraved on a pillar of black diorite, and now in the Louvre, Paris; the Code of Solon in Athens, carved on wooden rollers or prisms, set up in the court of the archon basileus, so that they could be turned and read by the people, etc.). In the later historic period, law was inscribed on parchment or papyrus; today, it exists in printed form, in the statute books of civilized peoples. Law is the product of human thought: anyone with an ounce of gumption knows that neither ethics nor jurisprudence exists among brutes.

17. The Power of Laughter also specifies man as man. This is a fact which cannot be over-emphasized. But what is laughter? We do not know. Books and parts of books have been written on the subject, without shedding much light on the source or nature of this remarkable human phenomenon. Genuine humor is, of course, the ability to laugh at the follies and foibles of mankind, especially one’s own, without becoming bitter: it is to recognize man’s frailties but to go on loving him in spite of them. Genuine humorists are rare in the history of world literature (such as Chaucer, Sterne, Jane Austen, Will Rogers): too many have vitiated humor by resort to bitterness, cynicism, cruel satire, and the like (e.g., Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain). The sense of humor is a priceless possession, and one which we Americans cannot lose without losing our heritage. Richard Armour, writing in The Saturday Evening Post, of December 12, 1953, has presented the case eloquently. An American fighter pilot, he writes, shot down behind the North Korean lines, imprisoned for two and a half years, starved until he weighed barely 100 pounds, and beaten time and again to the edge of unconsciousness, made three extremely revealing statements when he got home. The first: -I never saw any evidence of a sense of humor on the part of the Chinese and North Korean Communists.-’ The second: -One thing that made it possible for us to stick it out was our seeing the funny side of things.-’ The third: -How about the fellows who couldn-’t laugh? They-’re dead.-’ This writer goes on to show that dictators are necessarily humorless men. For them to fail to be deadly serious would be to vitiate the impression of their self-exploited indispensability which they must keep uppermost in the minds of their dupes. For them to permit themselves to be laughed at would result in their downfall. The sourpuss, says Mr. Armour, is as much a trade-mark of Communism as the hammer and sickle. He concludes: Dictators fear laughter and know that people who keep their wit as well as their wits about themas the Dutch did under the Nazis; and the Poles now do under the Communistsare hard to subjugate. A sense of humor may be the secret weapon of the democracies. Laughter is healthy, wholesome and civilizing. Laughing at our sometimes desperate circumstances helps keep us sane. Laughter at our sometimes overproud, sometimes overpetty, selves helps keep us down toand up tohuman size. After all, the ability to laugh is one of the distinctions between man and the animals. It may also be one of the distinctions between free people and slaves. It is a recognized fact that a well-developed sense of humor is one of the unfailing ear-marks of a mature person.A popular novelist makes one of his characters remark about a certain young woman: When once she learns to laugh at herself, she will begin to grow up. The sense of humor, and the power of laughter which goes with it, seem to be lost only when men cease to be genuinely human and become fanatics crazed by the assumption of their own self-righteousness and indispensability.

18. The Phenomena of the Subconscious uniquely specify man as man. (1) There is no more generally accepted fact in present-day psychology than that of the unbroken continuity of the psychic processes on the subliminal level. The total content of the psyche is at any given time far more vast than the content of consciousness at the particular time. (2) Intimations of the powers of the inner self which have been opened to view by psychic research are found in two of the most common facts of human experience, namely, the subconscious association of ideas and the subconscious maturing of thought, as illustrated in the sudden appearing in a dream or in a dreamlike moment of waking, of the solution of a problem which has been vexing the mind in the hours of objective awareness and reasoning. (3) Review, at this point, the distinctions between the objective and subjective, the conscious and subconscious, aspects of the psyche (the inward man) as interpreted by present-day research, as presented supra in the section entitled, Body, Soul, and Spirit, In this connection, the student must also keep in mind the fact that the Subconscious of psychic phenomena, which is completely psychical in content, is not to be confused with the Unconscious of Freudianism, which is psychophysiological. (Review also the stream-of-consciousness psychology of William James.) (4) Hypnosis is practiced extensively today, in different fieldsin dentistry, sometimes in surgery, in childbirth, etc. Autohypnosis occurs in trances characteristic of orgiastic religious cults. Catalepsy is a state of deep hypnosis in which the patient is rendered insensible to fleshly pain. Compare hibernation in animals, for example, with suspended animation in human beings. (5) Phenomena of the Subconscious which indicate the human spirit’s transcendence of the space-time dimension are telepathy (communication of thought and feeling from one person to another, regardless of distance involved, without the mediation of the physical senses), clairvoyance (the power to see physical objects or events apart from the media of the physical senses), and prescience (foreknowledge of events in time). These are the phenomena included under the well-known term, extra-sensory perception, ESP. These phenomena are under study in various colleges and universities in our day, notably by Dr. J. B. Rhine and his colleagues of the Department of Parapsychology at Duke University. (See Rhine’s books, The Reach of the Mind, The New World of the Mind, etc.) Certainly such phenomena as telepathy and clairvoyance support the Biblical doctrines of inspiration and revelation: if human spirit can communicate with human spirit without the use of physical media, surely the Divine Spirit can in like manner communicate God’s truth to selected human spirits (Acts 2:4, 1 Corinthians 2:10-13, Matthew 10:16-17, John 16:13-14, Matthew 10:19-20). The phenomena of prescience, of course, support the claim of prophetic insight and prophetic transcendence of time that is characteristic of Biblical religion. (6) Phenomena of the Subconscious which point up the human spirit’s apparently unlimited power of knowing, are perfect memory and perfect perception of the fixed mathematical) laws of nature.Thus the perfect memory of the Subconscious provides a scientific basis for the doctrine of future rewards and punishments. Who knows but that perfect memory, by which the self preserves the records of its own deeds, both good and evil, may prove to be the worm that never dies, and conscience (that is, unforgiven, guilty conscience) the fire that is never quenched (Luke 16:19-31, Mark 9:43-48, Revelation 20:11-15). Again, the perfect perception, by the Subconscious, of the fixed laws of nature, supports the view that Life Everlasting will not be a matter of stretched-out time, but essentially illumination or fulness of knowledge, that is, intuitive apprehension of eternal Truth, Beauty, and Goodness: in a word, eternal life will be wholeness or holinessthe union of the human mind with the Mind of God in knowledge, and of the human will with the Will of God in love. This will be the Summum Bonum, the Beatific Vision (1 Corinthians 13:12, 1 John 3:1-3). (In the life we now live on earth this phenomenon of perfect perception manifests itself in mathematical prodigies, musical prodigies (perfect pitch), photographic memory, idiot-savants, and the various aspects and fruits of what we call creative imagination.)(7) Phenomena of the Subconscious which support the view that spirit (mind) is pre-eminent over body are those which are exhibited in cases of suggestion and auto-suggestion.These phenomena remind us that all men are endowed by the Creator with psychic powers designed to be of great value to them in maintaining physical and mental health, if they will but utilize these powers as they should. (Cf. Proverbs 23:7, Philippians 4:8). This fundamental fact is the basis of what is known and practiced in our day as psychosomatic medicine.(See the great work by H. Bernheim, Suggestive Therapeutics, recently re-published by the London Book Company, 30-41 Fiftieth Street, Woodside, New York.) (8) Phenomena such as those of psychokinesis, levitation, automatic writing, the projection of ectoplasms and phantasms, and the like, seem to indicate that the thought energy of the Subconscious has the power to transmute itself into what we call physical energy and thus to produce physical phenomena. Psychokinesis (or telekinesis) is that kind of phenomenon in which ponderable objects are said to be influenced, and even moved, by thought energy alone. Dr. Rhine and his colleagues have long been experimenting in this field and claim to have obtained positive results. In automatic writing, the Subconscious is said to assume control of the nerves and muscles of the arm and hand and to propel the pencil. Levitation is not, as often defined, the illusion that a heavy body is suspended in the air without visible support: it is alleged by students of psychic phenomena to be the real thing, produced by subconscious thought power. Ectoplasm is defined by Hamlin Garland as an elementary substance that is given off by the human body, at the command of the Subconscious, in varying degrees. He conceives it to be ideoplastic, that is, capable of being moulded, by the subjective thought power either of the psychic or of the sitter, in various shapes. To quote the distinguished physicist, Dr. Millikan: To admit telekinesis and the formation of ectoplasmic phantasms is not to destroy the smallest fragment of scienceit is but to admit new data, to recognize that here are unknown energies. Materialization does not contradict one established fact: it merely adds new facts (quoted by Garland, FYPR, 379, 380). Phantasms are described as thought projections of the Subconscious, that is, ethereal reconstructions of matter by the power of thought. They may be called embodied thoughts, we are told, even as man may rightly be called the embodied thought of God. Truly, then, thoughts are things.(It should be made clear at this point that these phenomena are not to be identified with aspects of what is known in Scripture as necromancy, such as, for example, alleged communication between the dead and the living. All forms of necromancy, conjuration, sorcery, occultism, etc., are strictly condemned in both the Old and New Testaments: (cf. Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 19:26; Leviticus 19:31; Leviticus 20:6, Deuteronomy 18:10-12; Galatians 5:20, Revelation 21:8; Revelation 22:15, etc.). (9) All such phenomena as psychokinesis, levitation, ectoplasms, phantasms, etc., serve to support the view of the primacy of thought (spirit) in the totality of being. In the possession and use of these powers of thought energy, thought projection, and thought materialization, man, it is contended, reveals the spark of the Infinite that is in him, and thus himself gives evidence of having been created in God’s image.For, is not the cosmos itself, according to Biblical teaching, a construct of the Divine Will, a projection of the Divine Spirit, an embodiment of the Divine Thought as expressed by the Divine Word (Genesis 1; Psalms 33:6; Psalms 33:9; Psalms 148:1-6; Hebrews 11:3)? Biblical teaching is simply that the Will of God, as expressed by His Word, and actualized by His Spirit, is the Constitution (that which constitutes) of our universe, both physical and moral.

(10) To summarize: It will thus be seen that the phenomena of the Subconscious prove that mind is continuously activeit never sleeps, not even when the body is at rest. They also go to prove the independence, transcendence, and imperishability of the essential human person, the human spirit, and therefore support the spiritualistic (as against the materialistic) view of man’s origin, nature, and destiny. They confirm the fact of the primacy of spirit in man, and, on the basis of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (that whatever begins to exist must have an adequate cause) they support our conviction of the priority and sovereignty of the Divine Spirit in whose image man was created (John 4:24; Job 32:8; Job 33:4; Hebrews 12:9). (For those who wish to pursue the study of the Subconscious further, the following books are recommended, in addition to those already mentioned as works by Dr. Rhine: F. W. H. Myers, The Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, 2 vols., Longmans, Green and Company, New York; Hereward Carrington, The Story of Psychic Science, published by Ives Washburn, New York; Dr. Alexis Carrel, Man the Unknown, published by Harpers, New York; Hamlin Garland, Forty Years of Psychic Research, Macmillan, New York. Also The Law of Psychic Phenomena, by Dr. T. J. Hudson, the 32nd edition of which was published in 1909. Some of these works are now out of print, but copies are usually available at second-hand bookstores. For out-of-print books, write the London Book Company, Woodside, New York, or Basil Blackwell, Broad Street, Oxford, England.)

19. The Mind-Body Problem, That thought processes do take place continuously in man, no matter how they are to be accounted for, can hardly be a matter of controversy: such processes are facts of every person’s experience. This, of course, accentuates the old mind-body problem, which is no nearer solution today than it ever was. (1) Generally speaking, it appears to be an empirical fact that mental life, as man experiences it in his present state, is correlated with brain activity: if certain parts of the brain are damaged or removed, certain aspects of conscious life cease to occur. To say, however, that either consciousness or thought is connected with the activity of brain cells in some inscrutable manner is a far cry from affirming that either consciousness or thought is exclusively brain activity. Correlation is not identity. We have already noted the distinctions between sensation, on the one hand, and consciousness and meaning, on the other. We repeat here that there is no correlate between cellular activity in the brain and meaning in thought. The idea that such a connection exists, is inconceivable. Moreover, the fact that brain activity is in some way connected with mental activity in no way militates against the Biblical doctrines of survival and immortality. (This matter is fully treated infra, in the section on The Assumptions of Scientism.) (2) We often hear statements such as the following: Thoughts are nothing but electro-chemical impulses through neural pathways in the brain. Colors are nothing but different wave-lengths of radiant energy. Pain is nothing but a certain kind of excitation of the nerve-endings. Sounds are nothing but movements in a vibrating medium which make their impact on the human ear. Man is nothing but a biological being. The foregoing statements (cliches) are examples of the (now recognized in logic) fallacy of over-simplification, sometimes called the nothing-but fallacy or the reductive fallacy. They are unjustifiable identifications of mental events with physical or physiological events. The human being is not so simply constructed. (3) Present-day philosophy does not regard the mind-body problem as being any nearer solution than it has been in the past. Plato, as we have noted, was a complete dualist. For him, the soul (or mind) was an eternally pre-existent entity, which is incarcerated for the time being in an, alien corporeal prison-house, from which it may be liberated ultimately, after successive re-incarnations, only by the death of the body. Plato’s great pupil, Aristotle, taught that the soul exists as the animating principle of the living body in this world, that body and soul co-exist in an inseparable organic unity, that indeed the soul cannot exist independently of the body which it informs and actualizes. Augustine modified the teaching of Platonism on this subject by affirming that man is both body and soul and must be redeemed (perfected) as a thing of both flesh and spirit, Aquinas, strictly a disciple of Aristotle, interpreted the latter as teaching that the soul might possibly exist apart from the body, but can exist in a fully perfected state only when united to body, either in this natural life or in its resurrected state. Descartes, the first of the modern philosophers, also modified Platonic dualism, by defining man (that is, mind) as finite thinking substance, thus restricting the term soul to include only the human thought processes, We have already noted that Biblical teaching throughout presents the human being as a body-spirit (or body-mind) unity (Psalms 84:2), and expressly affirms that salvation occurs ultimately, that is, as perfected or complete, in the clothing of the redeemed in their spiritual (or ethereal) bodies. This body-spirit or body-mind doctrine is in complete harmony with the psychosomatic (or organismic) approach of modern science, especially the science of medicine. (Organismic in philosophy designates a structure with parts so integrated that their relation to one another is governed by their relation to the whole.). Again I affirm that this organismic interpretation of the human being is in complete accord with the Christian doctrine of immortality. (4) However, psychologists who adopt the organismic approach to the study of the human being, even when this approach is applied to the study of human behavior exclusively, find themselves compelled to adopt dualistic concepts in describing human motivation: hence, they distinguish between what they call viscerogenic (i.e., biological or physiological) drives, and what they call psychogenic (i.e., originating in more refinedand essentially personalfactors, such as ideals, interests, values, tastes, inclinations, sentiments, traits, attitudes, etc.) drives. I suggest that it would be conducive to clarity of understanding to use the simpler terms, physical and mental (or psychical), respectively.

(5) One proposed solution of the mind-body problem is that which is designated epiphenomenalism, a term coined by T. H. Huxley. This is the view that mind is just the name we give to certain phenomena which merely accompany certain kinds of processes and changes in the nervous system; so-called mental states are a kind of aura, so to speak, which hover about the brain processes without having any substantive existence themselves or any special function; in a word, mind is nothing but a natural brain function. Consciousness arises in some kind of transformation of neural energy, but is not itself a distinct form of being of any kind. Whatever movement takes place is a one-way process: from body toward what is called mind, never from mind toward body. Now there is indeed a possibility that there is a correlation between the forces of the electro-magnetic field and the life and thought processes. This, however, does not necessarily mean that when the physical body dies, the mind, self, or person dies with it. As we shall note later, contrary to the assumptions of the materialists, this theory can be seen readily to harmonize with the Biblical doctrine of immortality. (6) A few clarifying words are in order here about the much-exploited Conditioned Reflex, and along with it, Watsonian behaviorism.The Conditioned Reflex (the dog-and-drool psychology), the most rudimentary form of learning, is essentially a physiological act. Thisthe conditioned reflexis a term which has been given widespread currency in recent years (with but little justification) as a result of the experiments reported by the Russian biologist, Pavlov (died in 1936). Pavlov performed his experiment on dogs. Having first made sure that the visual perception of food (stimulus A) would elicit a flow of saliva (for which he contrived a measuring apparatus) and that the sound of a gong (stimulus B) would not, Pavlov then presented gong and food together, either in immediate succession or with some temporal overlap, for a number of times, and found that the presentation of the sound of the gong (stimulus B) alone would then cause salivation. A similar technique has been used many times with human subjects and it has been found that responses can be conditioned in the same way. This is especially true of infants; as a matter of fact, reflexive conditioning is perhaps the most elementary form of learning. It is certainly the modus operandi of animal training. It is now known, however, that a conditioned reflex, although established by many repetitions of both the original and conditioning stimuli, is soon lost. Moreover, it should be noted that whatever may be the stimulus that produces it (i.e., whether the original or the conditioning stimulus), the response is not altered by the conditioning. This means that conditioning is simply the extension of the range of stimuli that will elicit the same response: hence it is at most only a theory of afferent (bearing inward) learning. And by no stretch of the imagination can this type of conditioning rightly be regarded as accounting for more than just a small fraction of the learning process. It is obvious that the process of learning as a whole involves not only an extension of the range of effective stimuli (afferent learning), but also conscious alteration of response to the same stimulus (efferentbearing outwardlearning). This alteration of response, moreover, must come from within the individual and involves personal choice: indeed man is distinguished from the brute by his power of varying his responses, and even of delaying his response, to the same stimulus (e.g., eating a steak to satisfy an immediate demand of the appetite, or refraining from eating the steak for the sake of health). Variability of possible responses to any given stimulus necessitates personal choice. The mature individual does not respond to the same stimulus in the same manner as he responded as a child or as a youth; his responses are more refined, that is, more precise, perhaps more effectively adaptive. Of course, if conditioning is extended to include all forms of learning, as is done generally today in classes in psychology and in education, then, to avoid the fallacy of a circular argument, distinction must be made between reflexive conditioning and ideational conditioning of human responses. The conditioning of human acts by the introduction and association of ideas takes place at a much higher level than the conditioning which produces the essentially physiological conditioned reflex (such as that of Pavlov’s experiment). Alteration of response at this higher level brings into play the conscious and voluntary activity of the person. Finally, it is doubtful that conditioning as a theory of learning (and hence of motivation) is any improvement upon its predecessor, the venerable doctrine of association.In Pavlov’s experiment, for example, did the dog salivate merely because of the sounding of the gong or because of its continued association of that sound in its own memory with the reception of food? Surely common sense supports the latter view. Conditioning, therefore, of the type of Pavlov’s experiment, although probably accounting for the rudimentary beginnings of the learning process, in infants and young children, falls far short of accounting for the more mature phase of that process which begins with accountability and extends throughout the rest of life. As a matter of fact, the Conditioned Reflex explains very little, insofar as human learning is concerned. (7) In the nineteen-twenties and following, one Professor John B. Watson, came forth with a theory in which he repudiated the traditional concept of thinking, describing it as subvocal speechtalking, that is, under one’s breath. This caused Dr. Will Durant to quip that Dr. Watson had made up his larynx that he did not have a mind. Watson’s book, Behaviorism, sold into hundreds of thousands of copies. His theory, however, has gone the way of Dianetics, Hadacol, Kilroy was here, and other passing fads. It has ever been a matter of amazement to me that any intelligent person could find it possible to swallow such a shallow concept. Today the theory receives passing mention only in textbooks on the history of psychology.

(8) The commonsense view of the mind-body relationship is known as interactionism. According to this view, mind and body continuously interact, each upon the other: the relation is that of a two-way process, that of mind upon body, and at the same time that of body on mind. This is the view that is implicit in the practice of psychosomatic medicine. That interaction of this kind does take place is the testimony of everyday experience, although it must be admitted that the mode of this interaction seems to be unfathomable. The student, for example, does not leave the room after class until he makes up his mind to propel his feet toward the door. The pitcher in a baseball game throws the ball if and when and how he makes up his mind (wills) to use his arm to throw it. I am reminded here of what Dr. Rudolph Otto has written (IH, 214): For a manifestation of the influence exerted by the psychical upon the physical, we need in fact go no farther than the power of our will to move our bodythe power, that is, of a spiritual cause to bring about a mechanical effect. This assuredly is an absolutely insoluble riddle, and it is only the fact that we have grown so used to it that prevents it from seeming a -miracle-’ to us. I commend the following summarization by the late C. E. M. Joad (GP, 498): Common sense holds that a human being is not exclusively a body. He has a body, but he is, it would normally be said, more than his body; and he is more, in virtue of the existence of an immaterial principle which, whether it be called mind, soul, consciousness or personality, constitutes the reality of his being. This immaterial principle, most people hold, is in some way associated with the bodyit is frequently said to reside in itand animates and controls it. It is on some such lines as these that the plain man would, I think, be inclined to describe the make-up of the human being. He would describe the human organism, that is to say, as a duality. In the view of the present writer this commonsense account, which discerns in a human being the presence of two radically different principles, the one material and the other immaterial, is nearer to the truth than any other of the alternatives in the field. (This is in exact accord with the teaching of Gen 2:7, that man is a creature of both earth and heaven.) Psychologists tacitly admit the impossibility of a naturalistic resolution of the mind-body problem: this they do simply by ignoring it and giving their attention almost exclusively to the study of human behavior.

20. Homo sapiens (Genesis 2:7). (1) This is the term we use here, because it is the term used by present-day science to designate man as we know him and as he has proved himself to be by his works, in both prehistoric and historic times. The term means literally, wise man, that is, man who is capable of reason, who is specified by his thought processes. Dictionary definitions of the term are the following: Man, regarded as a biological species; and, the single surviving species of the genus Homo, and of the primate family, Hominidae, to which it belongs. It will be noted that the first of these definitions involves something of a paradox: as we have surely proved, man is not a strictly biological specieshe is more than biologicalhe is psychobiological, a body-mind or body-spirit unity (body-mind, if only the conscious part of his psyche is. being considered, but body-spirit, if the phenomena of the Subconscious in him are being considered.) (It is a favorite trick of the self-styled naturalists to incorporate all human powers, psychical and metapsychical included, into what they think of as a biological totality, when as a matter of fact they are begging the question every time they arbitrarily extend the biological into the area of these higher phenomena characteristic of man. Petitio principii is a common fallacy to which scientists are prone, especially those who have never grounded their thinking in the discipline of metaphysics.) (2) Genesis 2:7 is one of the most meaningful and far-reaching statements in literature. However, its import can certainly be obscured by extremist interpretations. Dr. James H. Jauncey writes so clearly on this point (SRG, 56), affirming that evolution or any other theory of the origin of man cannot make God superfluous, as evidenced by the fact that Darwin himself in his Origin of Species (ch. 15, last paragraph) concedes that in the beginning the Creator gave life to one of a few primary forms. Jauncey continues as follows: On the other hand, it is equally important for the student of the Bible to avoid reading into Scripture what it does not say. It is easy to assume that when the Bible says that God created man from the dust of the earth, it means that He made some kind of mud and out of this formed a man in the same way that a kindergarten child forms an image of man out of clay. But the Bible does not say this. It gives no indication of the process God used. If it should prove that this process was not instantaneous, this would not be surprising with a Creator who takes years to make an oak out of an acorn. He could make a mature man in a fraction of a second, but in fact He takes some twenty years and a very complicated and intricate process to do so. This does not mean that God could not have created the first man instantaneously. Indeed, He may well have done so, but it does mean that we cannot assume what the Bible does not in fact say. All this boils down to the single fact that the whole problem is not one of Divine power, but of the Divine method.Dr. A. H. Strong (ST, 465-476), on the other hand, goes all out for the doctrine of Creation (including that of man) by evolution. He writes as follows: The Scriptures, on the one hand, negative the idea that man is the mere product of unreasoning natural forces. They refer his existence to a cause different from mere nature, namely, the creative act of God. But, on the other hand, the Scriptures do not disclose the method of man’s creation. Whether man’s physical system is or is not derived, by natural descent, from the lower animals, the record of creation does not inform us. As the command, -Let the earth bring forth living creatures-’ (Genesis 1:24) does not exclude the idea of mediate creation, through natural generation, so the forming of man -of the dust of the ground-’ (Genesis 2:7) does not in itself determine whether the creation of man’s body was mediate or immediate. Evolution does not make the idea of a Creator superfluous, because evolution is only the method of God. It is perfectly consistent with a Scriptural doctrine of Creation that man should emerge at the proper time, governed by different laws from the brute creation, yet growing out of the brute, just as the foundation of a house built of stone is perfectly consistent with the wooden structure built upon it. All depends upon the plan. An atheistic and undesigning evolution cannot include man without excluding what Christianity regards as essential to man. But a theistic evolution can recognize the whole process of man’s creation as equally the work of nature and the work of God. While we concede, then, that man has a brute ancestry, we make two claims by way of qualification and explanation: first, that the laws of organic development which have been followed in man’s origin are only the methods of God and proofs of His creatorship; secondly, that man, when he appears upon the scene, is no longer brute, but a self-conscious and self-determining being, made in the image of the Creator and capable of free moral decision between good and evil.

(3) The present writer takes the position here that Genesis 2:7 is surely an anthropomorphic revelation of Divine truth unparalleled in literature. The fact stands out clearly that the inspired writer intends, by this one great affirmation, that man shall know the truth concerning his origin and his nature, from which his destiny as an individual (person) is to be determined. He intends all men to know that each has within himbreathed into him by the Creator Himselfthe potentiality of becoming a sharer of divinity (2 Peter 1:4); that his very life is a Divine gift which is to be given back to God in loving obedience and service (Romans 12:1, Matthew 22:35-40); that he is constituted a person by creation, with all the rights and duties that attach to persons simply and solely because they have been created persons.This is the only doctrine of man that makes sense or that can give hope to his life in this present world. There is more truth and meaning for man in this one Scripture, Genesis 2:7, than is to be found in all the tomes written by man himself (no matter how scholarly), all the products of human speculation the majority of which confuse more than they clarify. (This subject is treated more fully in Part Ten infra.)

FOR MEDITATION, SERMONIZING, AND SPECIAL STUDY

What Is Man?

Psalms 8:4. It seems that the eighth Psalm was written under the spell of the nighttime. The inspired psalmist, contemplating the heavenly bodies in their courses, the stars in all their glory, and the moon in her reflected brightness, with sweet reasonableness associates himself with the cosmos he inhabits, and begins to realize both his weakness and his strength. No science is more calculated to inspire with lofty emotion than that of astronomy. It is not possible for any honest and intelligent person to look out upon the vastness of heaven’s canopyset with a multitude of starry worldswithout finding his thoughts turning to the contemplation and adoration of the One who made all this to be (Psalms 19:1-6; Psalms 33:6; Psalms 33:9; Psalms 104:1-6; Psalms 148:5-6; Isaiah 40:18-26, etc.). From contemplation of the Creator and His wonderful natural works, our minds descend, like the psalmist’S, to meditation on the creature; and, in humility, we exclaim: What is man, that thou art mindful of him?

Throughout his history, man has written many things, both good and bad, about man. Alexander Pope, in his Essay on Man, wrote as follows:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, The proper study of mankind is man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the skeptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic’s pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest; In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reasoning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little or too much: Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused, or disabused; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled: The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.

Shakespeare, however, wrote of Homo sapiens in more extravagant terms (Hamlet, II, ii, 315-320): What a piece of work is man; How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals. Jonathan Swift, the English satirist, at the opposite pole of thought, once exclaimed: I hate and detest the animal called man. And someone has dubbed man the joker in the deck of nature. It was Aristotle, however, who, in an excerpt quoted supra, struck a saner, more felicitous note, emphasizing the amazing range of man’s moral potentialities. What is man? is a. question that must be approached from different points of view. What is man

1. As to his nature? (1) He is the image of God (Genesis 1:27), obviously in a personal sense (Exodus 3:14). (2) Operationally, he is dualistic as to his powers. As an organism, he is made up of the elements that make up all matter (as to his body), the whole vitalized (as-’ to his spirit) by Divine inbreathing (Psalms 139:14, Job 33:4). He is a body-spirit unity, a living soul (Genesis 2:7, 1 Corinthians 15:45).

2. As to his place in creation? (1) He has been made a little lower than God (A.S.V.), than the angels (A.V.). (Psalms 8:4-9, Hebrews 2:5-9). (2) He is lord tenant of earth, God’s steward over all lower orders and things (Genesis 1:28; Genesis 9:1-7). This dominion he holds by virtue of his intelligence and will; and his science is but the fulfilment, historically, of the Divine injunction to multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it. Dutt (JCHE, 12): And in this man reveals the divine within him. How else can we explain God’s creative acts? Why the universe, the earth, and man? Why did not God retain them as an idea simply, reposing in His mind? Earth was not needed either for throne or footstool, and man himself supplies nothing essential to the nature of God. But there is a side of the divine nature which can be satisfied only in the expenditure of creative energy. It expressed itself primarily in the formation of matter; secondly, in intelligence; and, lastly, in redemption. These are worthy of the mind of God, and in them we believe He takes profound delight. (Acts 14:15, Revelation 4:11).

3. As to his responsibility? (1) He is a moral being, a citizen of moral government. Morality, in its strictest sense, is conformity to the rule of right, and this rule is prescribed by the Creator, the Sovereign of the cosmos (Romans 7:7). (2) Endowed with the power of choice by virtue of which he is a moral being, he has always been under law.The first law was positive, and hence designed to prove his moral character, both to himself and to his posterity (Genesis 2:16-17). Throughout the early centuries, the moral law was handed down by word of mouth through the patriarchs, until the Mosaic Code was added because of the transgressions of the people (Galatians 3:19, Romans 5:12-14). But the Mosaic Law was to be binding only until the seed should come and nail it to his cross (Galatians 3:19; Galatians 3:22-24; Colossians 2:13-15; John 1:17; Matthew 5:17-18; 2 Corinthians 3:1-16; Hebrews 10:1-4; Hebrews 8:6; Hebrews 8:13, etc. Jesus, the Seed of the woman, abrogated the Mosaic Law and instituted the perfect law of liberty, i.e., the Gospel (James 1:25; James 2:8; Romans 8:3; Romans 10:4; Romans 8:2). (This does not mean, of course, that Christians are exempt from obedience to the moral lawnot by any means! When a man makes two wills, he may take certain provisions of the first and incorporate them into the second, and they become binding, not because they were in the first will, but because they are re-enacted in the second. In like manner, the provisions of the moral law have been re-enacted in the Last Will and Testament of our Lord (Ephesians 4:6; Acts 17:24; Acts 14:15; 1 John 5:21; Matthew 5:34; James 5:12; Ephesians 6:1; Ephesians 6:4; 1 John 3:15; Romans 13:1-10; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1 Corinthians 6:18; Romans 1:26-27; 2 Corinthians 12:21; Galatians 5:19; Ephesians 5:3-5; Colossians 3:5; 1 Timothy 1:9-10; Revelation 21:8; Revelation 22:15; Ephesians 4:28; Colossians 3:9; Ephesians 4:25; Ephesians 5:3; Luke 12:15; 1 Corinthians 5:11, etc.). The sole exception is, of course, the law of the Sabbath: this is not re-enacted in the New Testament; all Christian assemblies, under the guidance of the Apostles, were held on the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day (John 16:13, Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 16:2, Revelation 1:10). The Lord’s Day is a memorial of the Resurrection of Christ: Mark 16:9). (3) Man is under the Divine Law as revealed in Scripture, in particular, under that which is revealed in the New Testament. Divine law was communicated orally through the patriarchs in the early ages of the world; then codified for the Hebrew People, through Moses, when they were elected to preserve the knowledge of the living God (monotheism). But the Old Covenant contained only the types and shadows of the perfect law to be revealed through Christ and His Apostles. Christ was the Word of God incarnate, and His Will, as revealed in the New Testament, is the all-sufficient Book of discipline for His elect, the church (John 16:7-15; John 20:22-23; Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:1-8; Ephesians 1:20-23; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). A. J. Gordon (MS, 169): Scripture is literature indwelt by the Spirit of God. The absence of the Holy Ghost from any writing constitutes the impassable gulf between it and the Scripture. (4) He has the ability to comprehend and obey the law of God, the Divine Word (Psalms 19:7; Psalms 119:89; 1 Thessalonians 2:13). He can know his duty, reflect, compare, judge, and act; hence it is evident that his present state is probationary.(5) He is, therefore, a responsible creature. Endowed with the power of choice, and put under a law that has been revealed, and having the ability to apprehend and obey that law, he is responsible to the Government of Heaven for his thoughts and deeds (1 John 5:2-3, Psalms 119:143; 1 Samuel 15:22-23, Matthew 7:21-27; Revelation 20:11-15; Revelation 22:12-15). Law would not be law without a penalty for its violation: hence, the law of God embraces the most awful punishment of which the human mind can conceive, namely, eternal separation from God and from the glory of His might (2 Thessalonians 1:7-10, Matthew 25:45-46, Revelation 20:11-15).

4. As to his destiny? (1) He has a physical body which returns to the dust, that is, to the -physical elements of which it is composed (Genesis 3:19, Job 10:9; Psalms 103:13-16; Ecclesiastes 12:7). (2) He is essentially imperishable spirit, Divinely inbreathed; as such he will live forever, either in a state of union with God or in a state of separation from God (Acts 7:59, Luke 23:46, Hebrews 12:9, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Hebrews 4:12, 1 Corinthians 15:45-48, Ephesians 2:19-22, Colossians 1:20; 2 Corinthians 5:1-10; 2 Corinthians 5:17-19; Romans 2:12-16; Romans 5:1-5; Romans 8:10-11; Romans 2:5-9; Revelation 20:11-14). (3) His destiny will be Heaven or Hell. Heaven is the fellowship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, of the good angels, and of the spirits of just men made perfect, that is, the elect of all Dispensations, clothed in glory and honor and incorruption (Hebrews 12:22-24). Hell is the abode of Satan and his rebel host, and of the lost souls of earth (Psalms 9:17; Matthew 8:12; Matthew 10:28; Mark 9:47-48; Luke 16:19-31; 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 1:6; Revelation 20:11-14). (4) Every man’s destiny is determined by his acceptance or rejection, as the case may be, of the Mediatorship of the Lord Jesus. A complete surrender to, and walk with, our Christ leads to Heaven; neglect or refusal to confess Christ and to live according to His revealed will, leads to Hell (Matthew 7:13-14; Matthew 7:24-27; John 14:1-9; John 14:15; John 15:10-14; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; 2 Corinthians 10:5; Philippians 2:12-13; Romans 2:5-11; Romans 12:1-2; Hebrews 5:9; John 5:28-29). The Spiritual Life is the life that is hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:1-4).

The three great problems of philosophy, said Immanuel Kant, are God, freedom, and immortality. From the human point of view, these are the problems of the origin, nature, and destiny of the person. There are just three problems that are of primary importance to all mankind; these are, What am I? Whence came I? and, Whither am I bound? No other matters are of any significance in comparison with these! How incalculably important then that we should live in obedience to the Word of God, in the commitment of faith, and in the assurance of hope (Hebrews 6:17-20)and so live for eternity (1 John 5:4)! The Way itself has been made plain (Isaiah 35:5-10): walk ye in it!

On the Tripersonality of God

Refer back to the us in Genesis 1:26.

Deuteronomy 6:4Jehovah our God is one Jehovah. This truth is repeatedly emphasized throughout the entire Bible. However, the one here has reference especially to the uniqueness of God: Our Yahweh is the only Yahweh (Isaiah 44:6-8; Isaiah 45:5-7; Isaiah 45:18; Isaiah 45:20-25; 1 Timothy 2:5, Ephesians 4:6; Romans 10:12; Romans 3:30; 1 Corinthians 8:4, Acts 17:24-28).

In this unity, however, there is embraced a triple personality, as evident from the following Scriptures: (1) the use of the plural form Elohim for the Deity (Genesis 1:1, Psalms 8:5); (2) intimations of Divine intercommunion (Genesis 1:26; Genesis 3:22; Genesis 11:7; Isaiah 6:8); (3) the baptismal formula (Matthew 28:19); (4) the statements of Jesus in John 14:23; John 14:26; (5) the apostolic benediction (2 Corinthians 13:14); (6) the introduction to Peter’s First Epistle (1 Peter 1:2).

The doctrine of the tripersonality of God may be summarized as follows:

1. In the Bible there are Three who are recognized as God: (1) the Father (Psalms 2:7, John 6:27, 1 Peter 1:2, etc.); (2) the Son (John 1:1; John 1:18; John 20:28 (note that Jesus accepts Thomas’s confession here without protest), Romans 9:5, 1 John 5:20, Titus 2:13); (3) the Spirit (Acts 5:3-4, 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, Hebrews 9:14, John 4:24).

2. These three are so presented that we are compelled to think of them as distinct persons, as evident: (1) from passages in which the Father and the Son are distinguished from each other (Psalms 2:7; John 1:14; John 3:16; Galatians 4:4); (2) from passages in which the Father and the Son are spoken of as distinct from the Spirit (John 15:26; John 14:26; John 14:16-17; Matthew 28:19; Galatians 4:6; 2 Corinthians 13:14); (3) from passages asserting or implying the personality of the Holy Spirit, as in Acts 5:9; Acts 7:51; Acts 15:28; John 14:16; 1 Corinthians 2:10-11; Romans 8:26; Ephesians 4:30; 1 Thessalonians 5:19; Isaiah 63:10. Note passages that depict the Spirit as manifesting powers of which only persons are capable (John 14:16; John 14:26; John 15:26; John 16:7-8; John 16:13-14; Luke 12:12; Matthew 4:1; Acts 9:21; 1 Corinthians 2:9-10; 1 Timothy 4:11; Genesis 6:3); as having those faculties which only persons have (Luke 11:13; Psalms 51:11; Nehemiah 9:20; Romans 8:26-27; Romans 15:30; Acts 16:6-7; 1 Corinthians 2:11; 1 Corinthians 12:11); as suffering slights that can be experienced only by persons (Isaiah 63:10; Matthew 12:31-32; Mark 3:29; Acts 5:3-4; Acts 7:51; Ephesians 4:30; Hebrews 10:29; 1 Thessalonians 5:19); as associated with other persons, both Divine and human (Matthew 28:19, 2 Corinthians 13:14, 1 Peter 1:2; Acts 15:28; Acts 16:6-7; Acts 8:29; Acts 10:19, etc.).

3. These distinctions of personality are immanent and eternal, as evident (1) from passages asserting the pre-existence of Christ, the Son (John 1:1; John 8:58; John 10:30; John 17:5; John 17:24; Philippians 2:5-6); (2) from passages asserting or implying intercourse between Father and Son previous to the Creation of the world (John 17:5; John 17:24; John 1:18; Galatians 4:4; Hebrews 12:2); (3) from passages asserting that the Son was the executive Agent in the Creation of the world (John 1:3, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Colossians 1:16-17; Hebrews 1:2-10); (4) from passages which assert the eternity of the Spirit (Genesis 1:2, Psalms 33:6, Hebrews 9:14, Psalms 139:7, 1 Corinthians 2:10-11).

4. This tripersonality is not to be construed as tritheism: cf. John 4:24. In other words, there are not three Gods-there is only one God. God is Three in One, however; that is, a triple personality embraced in the unity of the Divine Essence. Whereas three persons among men have the same kind of essence, the three Persons of God have the same essence.The Father is not God as such, for God is not only Father, but also Son and Holy Spirit; the Son is not God as such, for God is not only the Son, but also Father and Spirit; the Holy Spirit is not God as such, for God is not only the Spirit, but also Father and Son. This tripersonality of God was not revealed in Old Testament times, perhaps lest the Children of Israel should be tempted to drift into tritheism (the worship of three Gods), under the influence of the practices of their polytheistic pagan neighbors. Hence, in the Old Testament we have God, the Word of God, and the Spirit of God, but in the full light of the New Testament (Christian) revelation, these become known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, respectively.

5. The immanence of these three Divine Persons in one another is set forth in the following Scriptures: John 3:34; John 10:30; John 14:10-11; John 16:14-15; John 17:20-23; Ephesians 4:6, 2 Corinthians 3:17, 1 Timothy 3:16, Hebrews 1:3.

6. While we can draw no lines separating the Persons of the Godhead, they are presented in Scripture as capable of dissociation one from another at the same time: (1) In John 14:16-17, the Son, one Person, prays to the Father, another Person, to send the Spirit, the third Person, upon the Apostles to guide them into all the truth: cf. John 16:7-10, etc.; (2) the Father is distinguished from the Son as the Sender from the One sent, also as the Begetter from the One Begotten (John 1:14; John 3:16-17; John 1:18; 1 John 4:9); (3) the Son is pictured as praying to the Father (John 11:41-42, Matthew 26:36-46) (cf. also the 17th chapter of John); (4) the Spirit is distinguished from both the Father and the Son, and is said to have been sent by both (John 14:16-17; John 14:26; John 15:26; John 16:7; Galatians 4:4-7); (5) at the baptism of Jesus, when the Son was standing on the bank of the Jordan after coming up out of the water, the Father was speaking from Heaven, and the Spirit was descending through the air in a bodily form, as a dove (Matthew 3:16-17, Mark 1:10-11, Luke 3:21-22, John 1:32-33).

7. This doctrine of the tripersonality of God is, of course, inscrutable. (Incidentally, it should be noted that the term, Trinity, is not to be found in Scripture.) Imperfect analogies may be cited, however, as follows: (1) the mystical union of man and woman in marriage (Matthew 19:5-6, Ephesians 5:28-32); (2) the inter-relationships between Christ, the Head, and the members of His spiritual Body, the Church (Ephesians 1:22-23; Romans 12:4-5; 1 Corinthians 12:12; Ephesians 4:1-16; Ephesians 5:22-23); (3) the metaphor of the vine and the branches (John 15:4-5): the teaching of Jesus here is that the life of the Vine (Christ) diffuses itself in the life of every branch (individual disciple, saint, etc.), and hence that the life of each saint, vitalized as it is by the indwelling Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38, Romans 5:5, 1 Corinthians 6:19), is manifested in the life of all who make up the Body; (4) the complex psychosomatic unity, the human being: on the corporeal side, man is built up successively of cells, tissues, organs and systems; on the personal side, of reflexes, habits, traits, dispositions, etc., and all these are organically fused (integrated) in the incomparably complex being known as homo sapiens; (5) in the various cases of dual, or even multiple, personality that have been reported from time to time. Interesting experiments have disclosed from two to five apparently distinct, yet conflicting, personalities within a single corporeal frame. One of the most notable examples is the classic case of Sally Beauchamp, as reported by Dr. Morton Prince, in his well-known book, The Dissociation of a Personality.Hence, if dual or triple personality is possible in man, why should it be thought incredible in the Deity?

8. Nowhere is this unity of tripersonality in God brought out so forcefully as in the Great Commission, that is, in the baptismal formula authorized by our Lord Himself: baptizing them, said He, that is, baptizing those who have been made disciples, into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. (Baptism is the only ordinance in the entire Bible that is to be administered in the namethat is, by the authorityof the triune God: it must therefore be a most sacred, spiritual, heart act, cf. Romans 6:17). Does this mean that the believer is to be immersed three times? No, because the singular is used, name, not names: there are not three authorities in the Godhead, not three sovereignties: there is but one Sovereigntythat of the Godhead as a whole. Hence, one immersion brings the penitent believer into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit at one and the same time, simply because the Father, Son, and Spirit are one God. So-called trine immersion, therefore, is unscriptural; it would be valid only if there were three Gods, if tripersonality were actually tritheism. But there is one, and only one God, and one immersion brings the believer into Covenant relationship with Him. (Cf. especially Ephesians 4:4-6).

This doctrine of the triune personality of our God is, to be sure, mysterious, inscrutable, beyond comprehension by the finite mind. Yet it is necessary to any possibility of divine revelation and human redemption. 1. It is essential to a correct understanding of God’s relationships with man.The God who loves must make common cause with the object of His love. It has been rightly said that love is an impossible exercise in a solitary being. We need not only a God who is eternal and sovereign (Elohim), but a God as well (Yahweh) who so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16). 2. It is essential to a proper self-revelation of God.If there are not Three Persons, then there is no Son who can adequately reveal the Father (John 14:8). Herein lies the emptiness of Unitarianism and all such liberal colorless cults: they have no perfect revelation of God. And if there is no Holy Spirit, then self-communication of the Divine Being to the human being is impossible (Genesis 2:7, 1 Corinthians 2:6-15). 3. It is essential to the Scheme of Redemption.If God is one, solitary and alone, then there can be no mediation, no atonement, no intercession, no redemption. The gulf between God and man is not one of degree, but one of kind: it is infinite. Only One who is God can bridge that gulf and effect a reconciliation. Without a Redeemer, redemption and reconciliation are meaningless terms, and religion is a human invention and sheer presumption. 4. It is essential to all true worship of God.Worship, says Jesus, is the communion of the human spirit with the Divine Spirit, on the terms and conditions as revealed by the Spirit in the Word (John 4:24). Therefore, without both Spirit and Word there can be no true worship (cf. Romans 8:26-27). 5. It is essential to any adequate Christology.Rejection of this doctrine of the tripersonality of God suffices to explain the utter inadequacy of all Unitarian and so-called modernistic views of Jesus. If Jesus was just a man, and not the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, not the God-Man, Immanuel (Matthew 1:23), then He cannot be the Savior of anyone or anything. If He was just a teacher, a divinely illumined philosopher and ethical teacher, and no more, then His teaching, like all philosophy, is just another guess at the riddle of the universe, and the world is back where it was two thousand years ago, floundering in the muck and mire of pagan superstition. 6. It is essential to any perfect pattern of human life and conduct.We believe that Jesus was truly God with us (Matthew 1:23, John 14:8). Therefore His teaching and His practice are perfect patterns for us to follow.Without the Son to reveal and to live the perfect life, the life that God would live and would have us live, then we are without an Exemplar: we have no Way, no Truth, no Life. In fact, every fundamental doctrine of the Christian FaithIncarnation, Atonement, Resurrection, Sanctification, Immortalizationis rooted deeply in the fact of the tripersonality of God.

Moreover, to speak of so-called pagan trinities in the same breath with the triune God of the Bible is to manifest either gross ignorance or a mind blinded by prejudice and a perverted will. In the first place, what are commonly called trinities in heathen mythologies are not trinities at all, but triads: that is, not three in one, but three separate ones for whom no unity of essence or function was ever claimed. In the second place, these so-called trinities are, in most cases, vague and unidentifiable; they are invariably surrounded by other gods regarded as equally powerful. In the Vedas, there were Dyaus, Indra, and Agni. In Brahmanism, there wereand still are-Brahma (Creator), Vishnu (Preserver), and Siva (Destroyer). These, among the oldest of the deities of natural religion, more nearly approximate a trinity than any similar groups; yet in either case the three constituted a triad rather than a triunity; moreover, they were thought of as ethical antagonists, in most instances. In Egyptian mythology, there were Osiris, Isis his consort, and Horus their son. But there were many other great gods in Egypt, in addition to these three, depending at times on the particular priestly caste which enjoyed dynastic power. Nor is there any well defined triad in Greek mythology. Was it Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades? Or Zeus, Hera and Athene? Or Zeus, Hera, and Apollo? Instead of a triad, the ancient Greeks generally referred to their twelve great gods. The same is generally true of the Romans, who took over these twelve great Greek gods and gave them Latin names. The Romans had gods for everything: the making of gods, as Augustine has pointed out so eloquently in his City of God, was the chief business of the superstitious Roman people. According to a witticism of Petronius (Satiricon, 17, 5): Indeed, our land is so full of divine presences that it is easier to meet a god than a man.

Then, in addition to all this, the gods of the heathen mythologies were crude, grossly anthropomorphic, and downright immoral. Every god had his female consort, and as many mistresses, including even ordinary women, as his passions might impel him to appropriate. (Read, for example, the Ion of Euripides.) Zeus was perhaps the most assiduous philanderer of the lot: he stopped at nothing, including incest (Hera, his consort, was also his sister), rape, and treachery. There is absolutely nothing of this character in the Biblical presentation of the tri-personality of the God of the Bible. It is entirely void of such gross-’ anthropomorphism. The inter-relationships among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are exclusively incorporeal, ethical, and spiritual. In fact the only relations sustained by the three persons of the Biblical Godhead, of a semiterrestrial character, are those sustained with man spiritually and for man’s redemption. These relations are signified by the two terms, the begetting of the Son, and the proceeding forth of the Spirit. The term begetting, in reference to the Son, describes an eventthe Incarnationwhich took place in time, and through the instrumentality of the Virgin Mary. Prior to His Incarnation, His Name was Logos, Verbum, Word (John 1:1-3). By the miracle of the Incarnationthe overshadowing of the Holy SpiritHe became the Only Begotten Son of God (Luke 1:26-38), the Mystery of Godliness (1 Timothy 3:16). The same is true of the procession of the Spirit: that, too, is an event which, whenever it occurs, occurs in time (time being, of course, co-etaneous with the Creative Process, including both Creation and Redemption), and for specific Divine ends, as, for example, the coming of the Spirit upon holy men of old, upon the great prophets, and especially upon the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost (2 Peter 1:21, 1 Peter 1:10-12; Acts 2:1-4; Acts 7:51-53). To speak of the inter-relations among the Three Persons of the Biblical God in corporeal, or even in anthropomorphic, terms, is a gross perversion of the truth. And by no stretch of the imagination can any resemblance be found between the various triads of heathen myth and legend and the tripersonality of the living and true God. For our God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:24).

On the Divine Names in Genesis

For the benefit of students who might want to delve more deeply into this fascinating problem, I am summarizing here the catenae of the Elohistic passages, the Yahwistic (Jahvistic) passages, and finally the mixed passages (those in which both Names occur), as given by Tayler Lewis in Lange’s Genesis (CDHCG, 106-107). In my opinion, this is information that needs to be preserved; and since not too many of our young ministers will find this great work (now long out of print) available, except perhaps those who may have access to the libraries of the older theological seminaries, I feel justified in taking sufficient space to present it here, in somewhat abridged form, of course, as follows:

1. The Elohistic Sections, frequently designated universalistic or cosmogenetic (those in which the Name Elohim predominates or is used exclusively): (1) Chs. Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3. The Hebrew Cosmogony. (2) Ch. 5. The Sethite Line (Genesis 5:29, a glance at the judgments of Yahweh, the exception). (3) Ch. Genesis 6:9-22. The toledoth of Noah. (4) Ch. Genesis 7:10-24. Beginning of the Flood. Elohim orders Noah and his progeny, along with pairs of all flesh, into the ark; Yahweh, however, as the God of the Redemptive Plan shuts him in (Genesis 7:16). (5) Ch. Genesis 8:1-19. The emergence from the ark. (6) Ch. Genesis 9:1-17, The Divine blessing on Noah and the new race. The rainbow covenant. (7) Ch. Genesis 17:9-27. The ordinance of circumcision. Ch. Genesis 19:29-38. The story of Lot and his daughters. (8) Ch. Genesis 21:1-21. Ishmael’s expulsion. Yahweh, only in Genesis 21:1. (9) Ch. Genesis 21:22-24. Abraham’s covenant with Abimelech (but Yahweh in Genesis 21:33). (10) Ch. Genesis 25:1-18. Abraham’s death. (But in Genesis 25:11, it is Elohim who blesses Isaac). (11) Chs. Genesis 27:46 to Genesis 28:9. The wanderings of Jacob. Esau’s marriage. (However, note El Shaddai (God Almighty) in Genesis 28:3, and Elohim in Genesis 28:4). (12) Ch. 30. Story of Rachel (but see also mixed sections infra).(13) Ch. 31. Jacob’s departure from Laban. (But Yahweh in Genesis 31:3; Genesis 31:49.) (14) Ch. 33. Jacob’s return. (15) Ch. 35. Elohim throughout, except in Genesis 35:11, El Shaddai. (16) Chs. 41-50. Story of Joseph in Egypt. (Yahweh only in Genesis 49:18). (17) Exo., chs. 1 and 2. Israel’s oppression in Egypt.

2. The Yahwistic (Jehovistic or Jahvistic) Sections (those in which the Name Yahweh predominates or is used exclusively, and which are frequently designated theocratic): (1) Chs. Genesis 2:4 to Genesis 3:24) Man in Eden, and expelled from Eden. (2) Ch. 4. Story of Cain and Abel. Yet Eve thanks Elohim for Seth, Genesis 4:25, and calling on the Name of Yahweh is said to have become common practice among the pious Sethites, Genesis 4:26. (3) Ch. Genesis 6:1-8. Yahweh repudiates the antediluvian race, but preserves humankind through Noah. (4) Ch. Genesis 7:1-9. Noah’s deliverance on the basis of his righteousness. (5) Ch. Genesis 8:20-22. Noah’s thank-offering and Yahweh’s resolution to have mercy on mankind. (6) Chs. Genesis 10:1 to Genesis 11:31. The genealogical table. Yahweh mentioned only twice, with reference to Nimrod (Genesis 10:9), and with reference to the confusion of tongues at Babel (Genesis 11:5-6; Genesis 11:8-9). (7) Chs. Genesis 12:1 to Genesis 17:8. Abram’s call (Genesis 12:1-8). Protection of Sarah in Egypt (Genesis 12:10-20). Abraham’s settlement in Bethel, and his separation from Lot (ch. 13). The deliverance of Lot (ch. 14). (Abraham praises Yahweh as El Elyon (Genesis 14:22): cf. Exodus 6:3.) Yahweh’s covenant with Abraham (ch. 15). Sarah and Hagar, with reference to the child of the Promise (ch. 16). Yahweh as El Shaddai, God Almighty (ch. Genesis 17:1; cf. again Exodus 6:3). (8) Chs. 18-19:28. The appearance of Yahweh to Abraham in the plains of Mamre. Yahweh’s judgment on Sodom. (9) Ch. 24. Isaac’s marriage. (10) Ch. Genesis 25:19-26. The twins, Jacob and Esau. (11) Ch. Genesis 26:2; Genesis 26:12; Genesis 26:24-25. Theocratic testimonies and promises. (12) Ch. Genesis 29:31-35. Yahweh takes Leah into His favor. (13) Ch. Genesis 30:25-43. New treaty between Jacob and Laban. (14) Ch. 38. Yahweh punishes the sons of Judah. (15) Ch. 39. Yahweh with Joseph in Egypt,

3. The mixed sections.(1) Ch. Genesis 9:18-27. Genesis 9:26-27: Blessed be Yahweh, the Elohim of Shem. May Elohim enlarge Japheth. (2) Ch. 14. Melchizedek a priest of El Elyon, and blesses Abraham in this name. But Abraham speaks in the Name of Yahweh El Elyon. (3) Ch. 20. Elohim punishes Abimelech. The latter addresses Him as Adonai.(4) Ch. Genesis 20:1-18. Abraham (Genesis 20:11) speaks of the fear of Elohim.He prays to Elohim for Abimelech’s house (Genesis 20:17), for Yahweh had closed up the mothers-’ wombs of the house of Abimelech (Genesis 20:18). (5) Ch. 27. The words of Isaac as reported by Rebekah: the blessing before Yahweh (Genesis 27:7). Jacob: Yahweh, thy Elohim (Genesis 27:20). Genesis 27:27 and Genesis 27:28 remarkable: Jacob already blessed by Yahweh, but Isaac gives him the bessing of Elohim.(6) Ch. Genesis 28:10-22. The angels of God. Genesis 28:13I am Yahweh, the Elohim of Abraham and the Elohim of Isaac (Genesis 28:13). Jacob (Genesis 28:16-17): Yahweh is in this place. This is none other than the house of Elohim.Cf. also Genesis 28:20-22. (7) Chs. Genesis 29:31 to Genesis 30:24. Yahweh takes Leah into favor (Genesis 29:31-35); yet the blessing of fruitfulness is the concern of Elohim (Genesis 30:2). Elohim favors Leah with the births of the fifth and sixth sons (Genesis 30:18; Genesis 30:20). Rachel thanks Elohim for the birth of Joseph, taking away her reproach (Genesis 30:23), but she named him Joseph, saying, Yahweh add to me another son (Genesis 30:24); cf. also Genesis 30:27, the words of Laban. (8) Ch. 32. Jacob: The Elohim of my father Abraham, and the Elohim of my father Isaac, Yahweh, etc. (Genesis 32:9). Thou hast wrestled with Elohim and with men (Genesis 32:28). I have seen Elohim face to face (Genesis 32:30). (9) Ch. 39. Yahweh is with Joseph in Egypt (Genesis 39:2). Joseph says to Potiphar’s wife: How can I commit this great sin against Elohim? (Genesis 39:9). Yahweh is with Joseph in prison (Genesis 39:21).

4. Other Names for the Deity which occur in Genesis are the following: (1) El, Mighty One (Genesis 14:18-20; Genesis 14:22; Genesis 16:13; Genesis 17:1; Genesis 21:33; Genesis 28:3; Genesis 31:13; Genesis 35:1; Genesis 35:3; Genesis 35:11; Genesis 43:14; Genesis 46:3; Genesis 48:3; Genesis 49:25). (Elohim, God, gods, occurs repeatedly throughout the Torah and the entire Old Testament.) (2) El Shaddai, God Almighty (Genesis 17:1; Genesis 28:3; Genesis 35:11; Genesis 43:14; Genesis 48:3; Genesis 49:25; cf. Exodus 6:3). (3) El Elyon, The Highest, The Most High (Genesis 14:18-20). (4) El Roi, God of seeing (Genesis 16:13; cf. Genesis 32:30, Peniel, meaning the face of God). Obviously, these are Names especially of attributes of God, they frequently overlap in meaning, and they are all to be distinguished from the great and incommunicable Name, YHWH (Exodus 3:14), which is the Name of the very essence (being, nature, etc.) of the living and true God. His name is HE WHO IS.

5. For a thoroughgoing discussion of the great and incommunicable Name, YHWH, the Tetragrammaton, the student is referred to Rotherham (EB, 22-29), from which the following excerpt is presented as sufficient for present purposes. Rotherham writes (EB, 22-23) as follows (concerning the suppression of The Name): The Tetragrammaton, or name of four letters (in allusion to the four letters YHWH), is a technical term frequently employed by scholars, and will here, for a little, serve a useful purpose. Besides employing this term, we can reverently speak, of -The Name,-’ or can set down the first letter only, -Y,-’ in the same way as critics are wont to use the Hebrew letter yod as the initial of the Divine Name intended. It is willingly admitted that the suppression has not been absolute; at least so far as Hebrew and English are concerned. The Name, in its four essential letters, was reverently transcribed by the Hebrew copyist, and therefore was. necessarily placed before the eye of the Hebrew reader. The latter, however, was instructed not to pronounce it, but to utter instead a less sacred nameAdonay or Elohim. In this way The Name was not suffered to reach the ear of the listener. To that degree it was suppressed. The Septuagint, or ancient Greek version, made the concealment complete by regularly substituting Kurios; as the Vulgate, in like manner, employed Dominus; both Kurios and Dominus having at the same time their own proper service to render as correctly answering to the Hebrew Adonay, confessedly meaning -Lord.-’ The English Versions do nearly the same thing, in rendering The Name as LORD, and occasionally GOD; these terms also having their own rightful office to fill as fitly representing the Hebrew titles Adonay and Elohim and El.So that the Tetragrammaton is nearly hidden in our public English versions. Not quite. To those who can note the difference between -LORD-’ and -Lord-’ and between -GOD-’ and -God,-’ and can remember that the former (printed with small capitals) do while the latter do not stand for The Nameto such an intimation of the difference is conveyed. But although the reader who looks carefully at his book can see the distinction, yet the mere hearer remains completely in the dark respecting it, inasmuch as there is no difference whatever in sound between -LORD-’ and -Lord-’ or -GOD-’ and -god.-’ It hence follows that in nearly all the occurrences of The Name (some 7,000 throughout the Old Testament) the especial Name of God is absolutely withheld from all who simply hear the Bible read. -Nearly all,-’ for there are about half a dozen instances in the A.V., and a few more in the R.V., in which this concealment does not take place. In other words there are these very few places in which the Tetragrammaton appears as -Jehovah,-’ and although it may be asked, -What are they among so many?-’ still their presence has an argumentative value. If it was wrong to unveil the Tetragrammaton at all, then why do it in these instances? If, on the other hand, it was right to let it be seen in these cases, then why not in all? With the exceptions explained, however, it remains true to say, that in our public versions the one especial Name of God is suppressed, wholly concealed from the listening ear, almost as completely hidden from the hastening or uncritical eye. Rotherham goes on to state that, although the motive for the suppression, namely, to safeguard the Divine Majesty in the minds of men, is respected, the suppression itself must be regarded as a mistake, on the following grounds: (1) that it was an unwarrantable liberty; (2) that it has led to serious evil in the form of the notion that -Y-’ was a mere tribal name, and that -Y-’ Himself was but a local deity. Solid advantage, concludes this author (EB, 24), may be counted upon as certain to follow the restoration of The Name. Even if the meaning of The Name should not disclose itself, the word itself would gradually gather about it the fitting associationsand that would be a gain; and godly readers would be put on questand that would be a further gain; and if the true significance of the Tetragrammaton should be brought to light, there would be a trained constituency to whom appeal could be madeand that would be a yet greater gain. To the objection that Jesus followed the Septuagint version as it stood (in which The Name is concealed under the common title Kurios, Lord), notably in citing Psalms 110:1 (cf. Matthew 22:41-45), Rotherham answers that Jesus had to plead His Messiahship at the bar of the Scriptures as then current, and any criticism by Him of the nation’s Sacred Documents might have placed a needless obstacle in the people’s path, and adds: We thus conclude that the objection may and should be set aside as inconclusive, and so fall back on the reasons given why the Divine Name should be suffered uniformly to appear.

Rotherham, insists that the rendering of The Name as Jehovah should be abandoned because it is too heavily burdened with merited critical condemnation. This pronunciation, he tells us, was unknown prior to the year 1520, when it was introduced by one Galatinus. It was formed by combining the sacred Tetragrammaton and the vowels in the Hebrew word for Lord, substituted by the Jews for JHVH, because they shrank from pronouncing The Name. As another authority has put it: To give the name JHVH the vowels for the word for Lord (Hebrew, Adonai) and pronounce it Jehovah is about as hybrid a combination as it would be to spell the name Germany with the vowels in the name Portugalviz., Gormuna.From this we may gather, writes Rotherham (EB, 25), that the Jewish scribes are not responsible for the -hybrid-’ combination. (The use of Jehovah is, unfortunately, a defect of the American Standard Version. The Revised Standard Version returns to the Authorized Version’s word Lordin small capitals.) The form Yahweh, Rotherham concludes, is for all practical purposes the best.

6. Conclusion: It strikes me that to formulate any satisfactory hypothesis to account for the interchangeable use of these various names (or titles) for our God, in the book of Genesis, would be a fruitless task. It seems, rather, that no such arbitrarily conceived hypothesis is needed. In fact the writer apparently does not follow any sustained particular pattern of differentiation. This apparently indiscriminatory use of these various names (or titles) is precisely the fact that makes the Documentary Hypothesis little more than a hodge-podge of conjecture, one in which unknown and unknowable redactors have been arbitrarily conjured up by the destructive critics to give the Hypothesis any semblance of reasonableness.

REVIEW QUESTIONS ON PART EIGHT

Diagram from memory the content of Gen 1:1 to Genesis 2:3.

Explain what is meant by the term Homo sapiens, as used by scientists.

State the three marks of the uniqueness of the Pentateuch as cited in this section.

Summarize the evidence of the internal unity of the book of Genesis.

What do we mean by saying that the Documentary Theory of the Pentateuch is based exclusively on alleged internal evidence?

What is the separate document theory of the relation of Genesis 2 to Genesis 1?

What are the claims advanced to support this theory?

State the chief objections to these various claims.

Is there any justifiable reason for assuming that we have in Genesis 2 a second cosmogony? Explain your answer.

What is the complementary theory of the relation of Genesis 2 to Genesis 1?

List the added details of the account of the Creation that are given in Genesis 2.

What is the over-all theme of Genesis 1? Of Genesis 2?

How does the diversity of theme affect the literary style of each chapter?

What is meant by the problem of the two divine Names?

Explain what each of these Names means when translated.

What is meant by the Tetragrammaton?

Explain how the Name Yahweh substantiates the doctrine of the Divine inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures.

What other names are given to the Deity in Genesis and what does each mean?

From the various passages in which the word generations occurs in Genesis, what must we conclude that it points to? To what, then, does it point in Genesis 2:4?

To what stage of the Creation does the inspired writer return in introducing his account of man’s primitive state?

To what does day refer, as used in Genesis 2:4?

On what day of the Creation did the first rainfall occur?

Does chapter 2 describe vegetation in the world at large, or only that of the Garden of Eden?

Does this chapter have anything to tell us as regards the priority of man or plants?

What is the import of the combination of the two divine Names in Genesis 2:5; Genesis 2:7?

Explain what the words psychosomatic and organismic mean?

Explain how Genesis 2:7 harmonizes with the present-day scientific view of man as a psychosomatic unity.

Explain how this text also harmonizes with the organismic approach to the study of man characteristic of present-day psychology.

What profound truth is suggested by the phrase, a living soul?

How do the words deity and divinity differ in meaning?

Does deity differ from humanity in degree or in kind? Explain.

Are we to conclude that God’s inbreathing endowed man with the attributes of deity? Explain.

Explain what is meant by the statement that God’s inbreathing endowed man with the potentiality of becoming a partaker of the divine nature.

How does this potentiality become actualized?

What was determined, by God’s inbreathing, to be the nature and destiny of the human being?

Distinguish between the dichotomous and trichotomous theories of man.

What do we mean by saying that man is a creature of both earth and heaven?

List the attributes that are characteristic of spirit, as the term is used in the Bible.

What is the Biblical teaching concerning the relation between body and spirit (or mind) in man?

Does any one of these termsmind, soul, or spirit-indicate bodilessness in Scripture?

To what systems of human origin does the concept of disembodied spirits belong?

Explain the Scripture teaching about the natural body and the spiritual body.

In the light of present-day study of the powers of the Subconscious, what might well be the distinction between mind and spirit in man? Hence, how might body-mind unity differ from body-spirit unity, and how might the soul be related to either or both of these unities?

Explain how the doctrine of man as a body-mind or body-spirit unity is in harmony with the Christian doctrine of immortality.

State the Christian doctrine of immortality.

Distinguish between survival and immortality.

How does the word eternal probably differ in meaning from the word immortal?

List the evidences of the high value which Christian teaching gives to the human body.

What does the Bible teach regarding the ultimate destiny of the bodies of the redeemed? Of those of the lost?

What changes took place in the body of Jesus after His resurrection?

What is meant by the Apostle’s statement that Jesus became a life-giving spirit?

Explain 1 Corinthians 15:45.

Explain Romans 8:28-30 in relation to God’s Eternal Purpose for His elect.

What seems to be the Pauline distinction between flesh and spirit?

What Pauline phrase apparently corresponds to the Freudian concept of the libido?

In what systems of human origin do we find the doctrine of a rigid dualism of soul and body?

Summarize New Testament teaching about the human body, and show what is unique in it.

Distinguish between man’s powers of perception and conception.

What is especially significant about his power of conceptualization?

List the powers which distinguish man from the brute.

Explain how man’s power of abstract thinking specifies him as man.

What is meant by abstraction in relation to the process of cognition?

List the facets of human culture which originate in man’s tendency to symbolify.

Explain the significance of language in specifying man as man.

How does sensation in man differ from consciousness, and from meaning.

What is the full import of these distinctions?

Explain what is meant by the phrase, the meaning of meaning.

Elaborate the statement that it is impossible to reduce psychology to sheer physiology.

Explain how man’s power of creative imagination specifies him as man.

Explain how man’s sense of values specifies him as man.

What are the two sciences which originate in man’s application of his sense of values to everyday living?

Explain how man’s sense of humor and his power of laughter specify him as man.

List and explain the phenomena of the Subconscious which specify man as man.

Explain what is meant by extrasensory perception and by psychokinesis, and show how these phenomena support the Biblical revelation of human nature and destiny.

What is the over-all significance of the phenomena of the Subconscious?

What is meant by the phrase, man’s range of moral potential?

Explain what is meant by the mind-body problem.

Show how psychologists are compelled to adopt dualistic terms in attempting to explain human motivation and behavior.

Explain what is meant by the nothing but fallacy.

State the theory of epiphenomenalism, and show why it is not necessarily a materialistic theory.

Explain the Conditioned Reflex and show how it is deficient as a theory of learning.

Distinguish between reflexive and ideational conditioning.

Show how educationism really begs the question in trying to explain all learning in terms of the Conditioned Reflex.

State the theory of interactionism and point out the difficulty involved in it.

Give some examples from everyday life of the power of the psychical to direct the physical in man.

Explain the statement that the problem of Creation is not one of the Divine power, but of the Divine method, employed.

Show how this statement is related to the exegesis of Gen 2:7.

Summarize the excerpt from Dr. Jauncey’s book dealing with the exegesis of Gen 2:7.

Summarize the excerpt from Dr. Strong’s book dealing with Genesis 2:7.

What is the view presented in this textbook of the exegesis of Gen 2:7?

Genesis 2:8-25

**PART NINE: THE BEGINNING OF SOCIETY

(Genesis 2:8-25)**

And Jehovah God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made Jehovah God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads. The name of the first is Pishon: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth in front of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. And Jehovah God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it (Genesis 2:8-15).

1. The Garden.(Cf. Isaiah 51:3; Ezekiel 28:13; Ezekiel 31:8-9; Ezekiel 36:35; Joe 2:3). (1) God planted it eastward, that is, to the east of the Land of Promise (Canaan), and from the point of view of the writer. Is it significant that there is no mention here of anything to the west? (2)* In Eden:* a name derived probably from the Sumerian edin, meaning a plain or a steppe (Cornfeld, AtD, 13), and translated into the Greek, in the Septuagint, as paradeisos, a name meaning orchard or garden (probably a garden of fruit trees). Paradeisos is transliterated into English as Paradise. The location of this Garden is not precisely determinable. Only two theories have been advanced: the one puts it at the head of the Persian Gulf; the other, in Armenia, the region east of Asia Minor, the area around Mt. Ararat and Lake Van. (3) Did Eden exist at all geographically? I see no reason for assuming that it could not have so existed: indeed actual geography is indicated by specific mention of the two rivers whose names have been historically established, namely, the Tigris and the Euphrates. This would mean that the Garden was somewhere in Mesopotamia (from meso, middle, and potamos, -‘river; hence, in the middle of or between the Tigris and the Euphrates). (The Euphrates has never had any other historical name, but the Hiddekel of the Genesis account was called the Tigra by the Persians and the Tigris by the Greeks: cf. Daniel 10:4, also the testimony of Strabo, Pliny, et al). However, it is not possible to identify the other two rivers, the Pishon and the Gihon, because it is not possible to identify, with any degree of certainty, the districts, Havilah and Cush, respectively, which these two rivers are said to have compassed (probably skirted). The best bet is that Havilah referred to an area somewhere in the Arabian peninsula, probably what is today called Yemen (Genesis 25:18; Genesis 10:7; Genesis 10:29; 1 Samuel 15:7; also Genesis 16:7; Genesis 20:1; Exodus 15:22). Cush may have represented the Kas of the Egyptian monuments, since Cush is pretty generally thought to be the Hebrew name for modern Nubia, the name which by extension became Ethiopia, the nameapparently a misnomerused by the Greeks (cf. R.V. Genesis 2:13; also Numbers 12:1, Exodus 2:21, Genesis 10:6-8, 1 Chronicles 1:8-10, Isaiah 11:11; 2 Kings 19:9, 2 Chronicles 12:3; 2 Chronicles 14:9); in this case, the Gihon could have been the Nile. (Some authorities think that Cush represented the country, in Elam, taken over by the Kassi of the Babylonian inscriptions, about 1600 B.C.). It could be, of course, that the main river (apparently a subterranean sea) which went out of Eden to water the garden was the Persian Gulf itself, and the four heads emanating from it may have been identified, in ancient Hebrew thought, as the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris (which at one time flowed directly into the Gulf), and the Indus Rivers (the four great rivers of what the noted Egyptologist, James H. Breasted, has named the Fertile Crescent; see sketch map 2). Some hold that the four rivers may have been the Phasis, the Araxes, the Euphrates and the Tigris. Murphy thinks the Pishon may have been the River Halys, which flows into the Black Sea, and in the bend of which was the ancient capital of the Hittite Empire, Boghazkoi (or Hattusas). Finally, it could well be that subsequent geological changes have destroyed the site of Eden altogether. (Incidentally, little is to be accomplished by speculating about some of the geographical names that appear in the Pentateuch; hence, we do not intend to devote much time or space here to what can be but little more than conjecture.) Moreover, it is this writer’s opinion that the significance of Eden geographically is of secondary consequence to the spiritual meaning which the story of Eden has for the inward man, the spiritual meaning which may well be communicated to us by the Spirit of God symbolically or metaphorically in the very terms which reappear in the Revelation, the last book of the New Testament (cf. Revelation 22:1-5; also Genesis 2:7, Genesis 22:14). (4) Geographical significance is indicated, however, in the fact that the Biblical account of Eden does harmonize with scientific conclusions about the origin of mankind. Advocates of the evolution hypothesis are trying in our time to establish a theory of centers of human origin. This theory, however, is wholly conjectural, built on the assumption that certain archeological finds, in widely separated places of earth (skeletal parts, such as bones, teeth, etc.) are to be described as humanoidal and could point to separate developments of lower animal forms into, humankind. But biologists for the most part agree, I think, on the basis of the evolution hypothesis, that there has been but one biological development flowering in man as we know him (homo sapiens). Both the prehistoric and historic evidence now available agree with Scripture in putting the cradle of the human race in Southwest Asia, whence it dispersed westward via the Mediterranean Sea and the Danube Valley, and southwestward by way of the Nile and its tributaries; and eastward into what is now known as India and China, and finally by way of the Aleutians and Bering Strait into the Americas. Ethnologists are generally agreed that the American aborigines came from Mongoloid ancestry in Eastern Asia: the Eskimo is definitely Mongoloid.

(5) We must never overlook the profound import-in the form of symbol and metaphorof the various aspects of this exquisitely-told account of man’s original state. Surely the Garden itself does by symbol and metaphor point back to an original innocence and unhindered fellowship of man with God. The Eden story teaches us (a) that God’s purpose for man was that the latter should dwell in close communion with his Creator, and (b) that God had actually constituted him for, and ordained him to, happiness as his natural and proper intrinsic end in life. As a matter of fact, personal experience must convince us that man’s natural impulses uniformly indicate that he has been ordained to happiness or well-being; that the normal human being does not set out deliberately to make himself ultimately and permanently miserable. Man’s failures occur in his misguided efforts to find happiness in apparent goods (those which satisfy some appetite in isolation) instead of real goods (those which benefit the whole man by adding perfections or removing imperfections). In a word, man’s depravity is expressed in his rebellious determination to find true happiness without God: this no man ever did or ever will do. The tragic fact is that he allowed his moral discernment to become vitiated by a wrong choice at the very outset of his existence (cf. Matthew 6:33). This Divine purpose is at the very heart of the Eden narrative: in his Edenic state, man had unhindered access to God: this fellowship he would still have, had he not forfeited the right to it by defying the Will and transgressing the law of God. But even the more tragic fact is that the story of the Gardenof man’s losing his oneness with his Creatoris repeated in the life of every human being who reaches the age of moral discernment (Romans 3:23). (It is interesting to note here that Breasted puts forward the idea that in the story of Adam and Eve we have the account of the birth of conscience in man, of his emergence from the Age of Power into the Age of Character, from the age of his struggle with nature into that of his struggle with himself; this struggle with himself Breasted designates an unfinished historical process (DC, 386). This is an interesting view, one with which, I should say, the account in Genesis 3:6-13 is in harmony.)

(6) Indeed, I raise the question here: Could not much of the account of the Garden of Eden be deliberately symbolical? The heart of the teaching here is that the river which originated somewhere in the subterranean deep, and flowed out of Eden to water the garden (Genesis 2:10) is symbolical (metaphorical) of the River of Life itself, the River which flows out timelessly from one source only, the throne of God and of the Lamb (Revelation 22:1); for let it be never forgotten that our God, the God of the Bible, is the living God (Matthew 16:16, Acts 14:15, John 11:25-26, 1 Thessalonians 1:9; Hebrews 3:12; Hebrews 9:14; Hebrews 10:31; Hebrews 12:22; Revelation 1:17-18), the Source and Preserver of every form of lifenatural, spiritual, and eternal. This River of Life, with its Tree of Life, as the source and sustainer of life perpetually, plays a tremendous role in Biblical thought (Psalms 46:4, Ezekiel 47:1-12) and again in the consummation of the Biblical drama (that is, the actualization of the Eternal Purpose of God: cf. Revelation 2:7; Revelation 7:17; Revelation 22:1-2; Revelation 22:14-17; Revelation 22:19; Proverbs 3:18). (This Garden of the Lord God became throughout the Scriptures the highest ideal of earthly excellence: cf. Isaiah 51:3; Ezekiel 28:13; Ezekiel 31:9; Joe 2:3.) It is profoundly meaningful that this River and this Tree first appearing in the story of Paradise Lost should reappear in the story of Paradise Regained. We must not overlook the fact that the Apocalypse was signified to John the Beloved (Revelation 1:1); this means that it is couched in prophetic symbolism throughout. Why, then, should not these terms which have symbolic meaning in Revelation be recognized as having the same import when first used in the book of Genesis? (We shall consider this matter again infra, in our study of the Trees of the primeval Garden.)

2. Man in the Garden.(1) God created (bara) the Man in His own image (Genesis 1:27); that is, He formed (specified) him a body-spirit unity, a living soul or living beinga complete person (Genesis 2:7); blessed him (Genesis 1:28), conferred on him dominion over the whole earth (Genesis 1:28, Psalms 8); planted a garden of delight for his first occupancy (Genesis 2:8); and then put him into the Garden to dress and to keep it (Genesis 2:15). (2) Genesis 2:9It seems evident that this statement refers exclusively to vegetation within the Garden, and not outside it. There is no implication in this verse that man preceded plant life in the over-all Creation. We are nowhere informed that the luxuriant vegetation of the Garden was brought into existence at the same time as the vegetation that spread generally over the earth’s surface. Eden, with its trees and flowers, was a special act of Providence. It seems equally obvious that the world at large was prepared for man’s occupancy after his probationary state was terminated by his transgression of Divine law. (3) God blessed the first human pair, the Man and the Woman (Genesis 1:28). It should be noted that throughout the Scriptures God’s blessing is never a mere wish on His part, but always contains the means of self-fulfillment, if only properly applied by man. God never proposes to do for man what man can do for himself.(4) God put the Man in the Garden: obviously another anthropomorphism: that is, God did not pick him up bodily and put him down in the Garden; rather, He exerted some kind of influence on the inward man, on the man’s spirit; the Man went where he was ordained to go, in consequence of a suggestion to his subconsciousness, some secret impulsion, or even an openly stated command of the Creator (cf. Acts 8:26; Acts 10:19; Acts 13:4; Acts 16:6-7).

(5) Two Divine injunctions directed the course of the Man’s life in the Garden: In the first place, he was to dress and to keep it (Genesis 2:15); in the second place, he was to refrain from eating the fruit of a particular tree, known as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (6) The first of these commands signified that the Man was to till the soil of the Garden, to cultivate its vegetation (trees, plants, and flowers), and to protect this vegetation from the depredations of weeds and of wild beasts. Even the plants, flowers and trees of this bower of delight stood in need of human tending, lacking which they would surely have degenerated. (Does not nature, if left to her own resources, tend to degenerate, both in quantity and in quality? Plant tomatoes this year, and cultivate them, and you will have a good crop; but just let the seed drop into the ground and come up in what is called volunteer fashion next year, and you will have an inferior crop.) Nor were animals so domesticated that the Man did not need to protect (fence?) the Garden against their depredations. Do we have here an ominous hint of the greater Adversary who, even then, was going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it (Job 1:7, 1 Peter 5:8)? (7) Work never was, never will be, a curse to man. Skinner (ICCG, 66): The ideal existence for man is not idle enjoyment, but easy and pleasant work, -the highest aspiration of the Eastern peasant-’ being to keep a garden. Note Genesis 3:17even here, in the statement of the penalty, it is not work -that is declared to be a curse; rather, it is expressly stated that the curse (the penalty of sin) would proceed from the ground. That is, work in itself was not a part of the penalty; rather, the frustrations pursuant to honest labor, which would characterize man’s life outside Eden, on the earth at large, would be the penalty. Corn-feld (AtD, 15): The curse is actually in the niggardliness of the soil or the fruitlessness of man’s labor. Hester (HHH, 67-68): God provided work for man before the Temptation and the Fall, because it is indispensable to life and is essential to the happiness of man. It is not a curse but a blessing. Without work people could not live and without it man would be miserable and useless. All really happy and useful people have learned the thrill and the satisfaction of achievement by hard work. Francisco (IOT, 23): Labor antedates the Fall; after the Fall, labor becomes toil. (Who would ever want to live the life of a grasshopper floating down stream? It is as true today as it ever was that an idle brain is the devil’s workshop. It is inconceivable that Heaven should be a life void of all activity: life is activity. Man’s drive for security is fraught with frustrations; security never was, never will be, fully realized in this life. It may well be that God could have created a being incapable of vice and crime and sinbut surely such a creature would not be a man.)

(8) Gardens and God are always close to each other. The very idea of a gardena properly tended garden-suggests beauty: and does not our God love beauty? (Even the great Southwest desert is a thing of beauty and a joy forever to anyone who can appreciate its wondrously varied and unique plant and animal life.) A garden also suggests life and growth, for where there is life, there must be growth: the living thing that does not grow will stagnate and die. A garden also suggests the possibility of weeds, and hence the necessity of being tended by man, lest the weeds take over and smother the flowers and the fruits. In like manner, the Spiritual Life must be properly tended: the fruit of the Spirit must be protected against the encroachment of weeds, the wheat from the destructive activity of the tares (Matthew 13:24-30, Galatians 5:16-25). What an idyllic setting we find portrayed in this story of the Garden of Delight, Paradise! What more vivid symbolism of man’s unbroken fellowship with God could the Holy Spirit have given us! What more meaningful picture could He have vouchsafed us to accentuate the terrible import of the account which followsthe account of the awful tragedy of man’s deliberate wrecking of that fellowship!

3. The Tree of Life.(1) Is this term to be taken literally? That is, was this an actually existing tree? Certainly it could have been a real tree, bearing real fruit, the properties of which were specifically designed to renew physical youth and vigor. There is nothing incredible in such an interpretation. If God provides food to renew man’s physical strength, as we know that He does (hence, Matthew 6:11), why should it be thought incredible that He should have prepared a special kind of food to renew and preserve man’s physical youth? According to this view, the means provided for this purpose was the fruit of the Tree of Life; and Adam, though mortal by creation, had this means of counteracting his mortality. Thus had he maintained his innocence, and by unswerving obedience to God’s Will had grown into holiness, we may suppose that his body could have been transfigured and translated to Heaven without the intervention of physical death (its dissolution, or resolution into its physical elements). Moreover, when he did transgress the law of God, it became imperative that he should be expelled from the Garden, and that the way of the tree of life should be guarded, in order that in his state of rebelliousness, he might not gain access to its fruit and so renew his youth; that is to say, in order that the inherent laws of mortality might work out their course in his physical constitution (cf. Genesis 3:22-24; Genesis 5:5). It seems that in view of the possibility (or shall we say, likelihood?) of his making the fateful choice of transgression above obedience (1 John 3:4), Divine Wisdom had made ready the whole earth for his occupancy and lord tenancy, as the stage on which His Plan of Redemption, embodying His Eternal Purpose, should be executed (Isaiah 46:8-11, 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, Ephesians 3:8-13, John 17:1-6; Ephesians 1:4, Hebrews 4:3, 1 Peter 1:19-20, Revelation 13:8; Revelation 17:8). As Monser has written (TMB, 39-41): As the Scheme of Redemption began gradually to unfold, then began this wondrous series of types. which opens with the Tree of Life. Like the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil it takes its name from the service it renders, but unlike that Tree, the very nature and quality of its fruit are productive of the immortal life. To Adam and Eve in their virgin innocence the use of its fruit would be natural since they were thus, conditionally, mortal beings, becoming mortal because of sin. Yet, as we reckon things, the design of the fruit seems peculiar. Other trees, and their fruits, might contribute to man’s daily support. This was to preserve an undecaying vigor to one so supported. The inheritance of life was in it. It did not lose its valuable property when man sinned, but man lost his right to partake of it, being turned aside by the flaming sword of the cherubim, while the Tree was put under constant guard. To doubt or deny this is not only to challenge Holy Writ, but also to deny angel-life, and the frequent record of angelic presence found throughout the Scriptures.

(2) Certainly, however, this Tree of Life has symbolic significance for all mankind: obviously it was designed to be a symbol of unhindered access to God, (See discussion of symbols in Part Two.) Symbols are of such a nature as to be addressed to man’s physical senses or to his mental images originally derived by way of sense-perception. Symbols are, as a rule, existent in some way in the physical realm; and Biblical symbols are for the purpose of presenting more clearly to the understanding the spiritual and abstract qualities of things, by means of outward signs and pictures addressed to the senses (Milligan, SR, 72). Hence, it was to be expected, because of the inadequacy of human language for the communication of Divine Thought, that the Remedial System should be one gorgeous array of picture-lessons (Monser). But it is in a metaphorical sense especially that this Tree of Life, whether it actually existed or not, has the most profound significance for man. The metaphor is a special kind of symbolan abridged form of comparison compressed into a single word or phrase. Hence we may rightly hold that the Tree of Life, the symbol of unbroken fellowship with God, is also the symbolin the form of a metaphorof the mediatorship of the Logos (1 Timothy 2:5, John 1:14, Hebrews 12:24, Genesis 28:12, John 1:51). Thus the Tree of Life takes its place along with other Scripture metaphors of the various aspects of the redemptive work of Christ, such metaphors as the Bread of Life (John 6:32-35), the Water of Life (John 4:13-14; John 7:37-38; Revelation 7:17), the True Vine (John 15:1-6), the Door to the Sheepfold (John 10:7-16), the Smitten Rock (Exodus 17:6, Isaiah 53:4-6, 1 Corinthians 10:3), etc. This metaphorical import is clearly indicated in the references to the Tree of Life which appear again in the Book of Revelation (Revelation 2:7; Revelation 22:2; Revelation 22:19). In these passages it becomes evident that the Tree of Life is Christ Himself, the Great Physician, whose redemptive ministry is literally and specifically for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:2; cf. John 1:29, Isaiah 54:4-5). After all, this is the meaning of the Tree of Life which has profound significance for God’s elect. As is the case invariably, the references in the Old Testament to this subjectas indeed to any subject of notecan be fully understood only in the light of the New Testament Scriptures relating to the same subject.

(3) Finally, it should be noted here that a tree of life appears frequently in the literature of the ancients. In the non-Biblical accounts, however, it was pictured as existing in some place inaccessible to man. But the Tree of Life in Genesis is said to have been in the midst of the Garden (Genesis 2:9) into which Yahweh Elohim put the Man. This undoubtedly indicates that God intended for the Man to enjoy the blessing symbolized by this Tree, the blessing of unhindered fellowship with Himself, the kind of fellowship which the Man broke by his act of disobedience, the act which brought sin to the earth, and, as a consequence, separation from God. This separation, in turn, brought into operation true religion, the religion that is essentially redemption and reconciliation, the binding anew of man to God (from religo, religare, to bind back or again: cf. 2 Corinthians 5:18-21).

(4) A most important principle must be stated in this connection (one to which we shall be harking back frequently as we continue our study of Genesis) as follows: Concepts that are widespread, woven into the traditions of peoples everywhere, no matter how degenerate they may have become as a result of popular diffusion, point back unmistakably to genuine originals.No counterfeit ever existed that did not presuppose a genuine. Hence, the purity of the accounts in Genesis of such events as the Tree of Life, man’s Golden Age of innocence, his Temptation and Fall, the role of Satan in these events, the institution of Sacrifice, Noah’s Flood, etc., we have every right to contend that we have the true original or ancestral forms, in a word, the facts which became corrupted in theory and practice by popular diffusion from their original locusthe cradle of civilization, From the very beginning, human tradition and speculation have brought about the corruption of Divinely revealed truth.

Note Pfeiffer’s summary here (BG, 20): Among the many trees which grew in the garden, Genesis 2:9 specifies two as of particular significance: the tree of life, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life was designed to confirm man in the possession of physical life, and to render death an impossibility. Because of man’s sin, it never came to be used. Man was expelled from the garden, after his sin, -lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever-’ (Genesis 3:22-23).

And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (Genesis 2:16-17).

4. The Beginnings of Liberty and Law.Note that God first went to great pains to impress upon the Man the scope of the liberty which he was to enjoy: he would be free (note, freely eat) to partake of the fruit of every tree of the Garden, with just one exception. Of the fruit of one particular tree he was not to partake: this was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This reminds us forcefully of the fact that genuine human liberty is enjoyed only within the circumference of obedience to the law; that outside that circumference liberty becomes prostituted into license.(Cf. Matthew 7:24-27; John 14:15; John 15:10; John 15:14; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Galatians 5:1; Hebrews 5:9; James 1:25; James 2:8; 1 John 3:4). Multitudes sell themselves to the Devil either in pursuit of unrestrained personal liberty, or in the pursuit of illicit knowledge. Man, from the beginning of his existence, has ever engaged in the futile business of trying to play God.

5. The* Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil*.(1) The knowledge of good and evil may signify (a) the power of moral judgment; hence the partaking of it marked the beginning of man’s actual experience of sin and the consequent birth of conscience; or (b) the maturity that man acquires through personal experience of sin and its consequences (cf. for the meaning of maturity in Scripture, Numbers 1:3; Numbers 1:20; Numbers 1:22; Numbers 14:29-30; Numbers 26:2; Numbers 32:11; 1 Chronicles 27:23; Leviticus 27:3, etc.); or (c) the awakening of the physical sex drive in man resulting in physical coition (the view that has always been rather widespreadbut if true, Does this mean that the Male and the Female prior to their partaking of this forbidden fruit had the power to reproduce their kind exclusively by thought?); or (d) perhaps all these views taken together, or (e) the entire gamut of possible knowledge (omniscience).

(2) The argument is often heard that this Tree was so named because until man ate of its fruit he could have no adequate understanding of sin and its consequences. It is said that incapacity to know good and evil may be a characteristic of unconscious childhood and unreflecting youth, or of debilitated age, but it is not conceivable of one who was created in God’s image, invested with moral dominion, and himself constituted the subject of moral government. The reply usually given to this argument is that Adam and Eve, prior to their first transgression of the Divine law (1 John 3:4) were not totally incapable of knowing good and evil, but, rather, were without the experience of sin in their lives. Experience, it is said, is a dear school, but, nevertheless, it is the only one in which we can learn anything perfectly (cf. John 7:17, Romans 12:2). Strong (ST, 583): Adam should have learned to know evil as God knows itas a thing possible, hateful, and forever rejected. He actually learned to know evil as Satan knows itby making it actual and a matter of bitter experience. The fact is that the choice required of the Man (and the Woman) was the choice between self and God, between one’s own way of doing things and God’s way of doing things. It is the choice which every human being makes, one which he cannot avoid, as he goes through this life, The first human pair chose self, and sin entered the world; selfishness is at the root of every sin that man commits; the essential principle of sin is selfishness. Hence, God has sought to achieve through redemption and immortalization what might have been brought about by spiritual growth and transfiguration. Knowledge of good and evil is the power to distinguish between good and evil, not in act only, but in consequence as well. This faculty is necessary in order that man my reach moral maturity.

(3) Did this particular Tree, then, have a real existence; that is, did it exist in the manner that a tree is known to exist in the forest? Those who so contend base their conviction largely on the contention that the condition of the heart is invariably made known by the outward act. By their fruits ye shall know them (Matthew 7:15-20). On the eating or not eating of the fruit of this Tree were suspended the issues of life and death. Hence the relationship between this first human pair and their Creator was not changed until the former manifested their selfish choice in the overt act of disobedience to God. Not that there was harm in the particular thing which was eaten; rather, the harm came about in the partaking of anything which had been expressly forbidden by the Divine Will.A father may command his son to bring him a book and to put it on the piano, when to lay it upon the library table would be just as satisfactory (it would seem)that is, if the father had not specifically ordered that it be placed on the piano. The father’s command would be sufficient for an obedient childhe would put the book in the place where his father has told him to put it. Thus, the father’s command would become a proof of the child’s love and obedience. So it was with the Father’s command issued to Adam and Eve: their defiance of it was evidence of their lack of faith, trust and love; and this defiance was consummated in the overt act which was itself proof of their rebellious hearts. Moreover, as it was in the case of the man’s Fall, so it is in respect to his Restoration: Conversion is not complete until man demonstrates his faith and repentance and his voluntary choice of Christ as his personal Redeemer, Priest and King, in the external act of Christian baptism. Faith changes the heart, repentance the life, and baptism the relationship (Galatians 3:27). Baptism is an overt witnessing to the facts of the Gospel, the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, and is also the overt act whereby the penitent believer commits himself to Christ in such a way that the whole world can see this commitment, testify to it, and be influenced by. the example of it.

(4) Speculation as to what kind of fruit this Tree produced naturally would be foolish and unprofitable, granting, of course, that the Tree and its fruit were existent as-objects in the external world. There would be no reason to suppose that, in any case, any injurious properties were inherent in it. The death that was to follow on the transgression was to spring from the eating, and not from the fruit; from the sinful act, and not from the creature, which in itself was good (Whitelaw). Why, sneeringly asks the skeptic, suspend the destiny of the world on so trivial a circumstance as the eating of an apple? Milligan (SR, 37-40) states the case substantially as follows: Such a question arises from total ignorance of the subject. A few observations will suffice: (1) It was exceedingly important, in the very beginning, that the first creatures of the human race know themselves, and know whether or not their hearts were strictly loyal to God. (2) No better proof of their loyalty or disloyalty could have been made than that which, according to Moses, God appointed for this purpose. (3) It was of such simplicity that they easily understood it; hence violation of this first precept had to arise from a spirit of pure disloyalty, It was a positive law, and positive law requires a thing to be done simply and solely because the Divine Lawgiver demands it. Those very acts which irreverent men have styled mere outward acts, mere external performances, have been means used by the Lord to prove the faithor lack of iton the part of His creatures. (4) Hence, it follows that this positive precept, originally given to man as a test of his loyalty, was in no sense the cause of his disloyalty; it was simply the occasion and proof of it. The spirit of disloyalty cherished in the heart will as certainly lead to a man’s condemnation and final ruin as will the open and overt transgressions of any law, whether it be moral or positive. (The student should note here that there is no mention of an apple in the Genesis account: here, mention is made only of the fruit of this particular Tree (Genesis 3:6), without any specification of the particular kind of fruit. The notion of an apple was brought into the story by John Milton, in Paradise Lost.Was this idea of an apple borrowed from the Greek tradition of the Golden Apples which Ge (Earth) gave to Hera at her marriage with Zeus? According to the legend, these apples were guarded by the Hesperides in their specially prepared gardens near the river Oceanus in the extreme West, perhaps near the Atlas Mountains of North Africa between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert?). Cf. Pfeiffer (BG, 20): Man was blessed by God in the beautiful Garden of Eden, but man had one responsibility: obedience to the express command of God. God chose a tree as the means whereby Adam could be tested, We need not assume any magic quality in the tree. It was the act of disobedience which would mar man’s fellowship with God. Kraft (GBBD, 47): Just one simple prohibition in an environment otherwise apparently completely safe and freebut therein was the fatal opportunity of choice: to obey or not to obey.

6. The Knowledge of Good and Evil.(1) The present writer must admit his agreement with Biblical students who hold that the knowledge of good and evil, in the text before us, is a phrase which signifies complete knowledge (total wisdomas someone has put it); in a word, omniscience. Strictly speaking, good and evil are terms that have reference to more than moral acts, to a great deal more than knowledge of the physical sex life; as a matter of fact, they have reference to the constructiveness or destructiveness of all human motivation and action. Moral or ethical knowledge embraces the fundamental facets of every other branch of human knowledge, and cannot be isolated from human activity in general. (Cf. 2 Samuel 14:17, Isaiah 7:15-16.) Certainly mature knowledge includes knowledge of the ways and means of reproducing the human species. But this is only a partand indeed a rather small partof the totality of human knowledge. It seems to me that the fundamental truth embodied in this prohibition (Genesis 2:17) was that man was never to leave God out of his life, nor in overweening pride and ambition aspire to illicit knowledge, the kind of knowledge and wisdom (wisdom is the right use of knowledge) which God alone possesses and which God alone knows how to use for the benefit of all His creatures. Dr. J. B. Conant, in his little book entitled, Modern Science and Modern Man, advances the thesis that the prime fallacy of which man has been guilty for the last one hundred years or more is that of thinking himself capable of attaining unlimited knowledge. This, says Dr. Conant, is to claim omniscience, and omniscience man does not have; to be sure, his capacity for knowledge is indefinite, but it is not infinite. This, Conant points out, is the great moral and spiritual truth which is taught us in the Book of Job (cf. Job 11:7, also chs. 38-41). Elliott (MG, 45-46): Basically, the sin involved is pride, trying to be as God. Man too often feigns or desires omniscience, thus putting himself at the center of the stage rather than God. God wanted man to have life (the tree of life), but it was to be obtained only as God granted the experiences (tree of knowledge) validating life (cf. John 10:10).

(2) Again I raise the question: Was this particular Tree a real tree, bearing real fruit of some kind? Or is the account of this Tree one that is clothed entirely in symbol or metaphor? I do not deny that it could have been an actual tree bearing real fruit: far be it from me to impose limitations on the Wisdom and Power of God: hence I have presented in the excerpts quoted above the views of writers who propose the literal interpretation. The problem involved here is this: Was the outward act, in the case of our first parents, that of eating some kind of real fruit of some kind of real tree, or is the account of the eating of the fruit of the Tree in question symbolic of some other overt act of disobedience to God. I do not question the fact that an overt or outward act of defiance of God’s Will was involved. Let me repeat, however, that this is not the point at issue. That point is the problem of the character of this act: Was it a partaking of literal fruit of some kind, or was this story of man’s eating the forbidden fruit designed to describe metaphorically any unspecified human act of human disobedience to God. Such disobedience, of course, whatever form it may take, is sin (1 John 3:4). In short, whether a literal tree is indicated in this story or not, a human act of rebellion against God, the Sovereign of the universe, is clearly indicated; and this is the essential import, for all mankind, of the story of this Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and of the tragic role which it played in the moral and spiritual history of the race.

7. The Assured Penalty: in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Shook (GB, 62): The clause of the prohibition, -Thou shalt surely die,-’ evidently refers to physical death and means no more than -thou shalt become dieable.-’ Literally rendered, this clause is, dying, thou shalt die. Adam Clarke paraphrases it: From that moment thou shalt become mortal, and shall continue in a dying state till thou die. (It is a known biological fact in our time that the human being begins to die from the moment he is born.) Thou shalt be mortal (the Greek of Symmachus) Thou shalt be subject to death (The Targum of Jonathan). (But there is no evidence that Adam had ever been in any sense immortal; rather, the context of this whole story indicates that he was created mortal.) The death indicated here is obviously twofold: (a) the resolution of the body into its physical elements, or physical death (Genesis 3:19; Genesis 5:5; Hebrews 9:27-28, Romans 5:12-21; 1 Corinthians 15:22-23), and (b) the separation of the inward man from God, the Source of all life (Acts 17:24-28; Luke 15:24; Luke 15:32; Ephesians 2:1-3; Colossians 2:13). By the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil man forfeited his liberty to eat of the tree of life (Dummelow). C. H. M., (NBG, 31-32): In the midst of the fair scene of creation, the Lord God set up a testimony, and this testimony was also a test for the creature. It spoke of death in the midst of life.-In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.-’. Adam’s life was suspended upon his strict obedience. The link which connected him with the Lord Cod was obedience, based on implicit confidence in the One who had set him in his position of dignityconfidence in His truthconfidence in His love. I would here suggest to my reader the remarkable contrast between the testimony set up in Eden and that which is set up now. Then, when all around was life, God spoke of death; now, on the contrary, when all around is death, God speaks of life: then, the word was, -in the day thou eatest, thou shalt die.-’ Now, the word is, -believe and live.-’(Cf. John 14:6; John 11:25-26; John 17:3, etc.).

And Jehovah God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him. And out of the ground Jehovah God formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them: and whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And the man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the heavens, and to every beast of the field; but for man there was not found a help meet for him (Genesis 2:18-20).

8. The Beginning of Language.(1) The Man, from adamah, red (red earth); according to Rotherham (EB, 34), probably akin to adhamah, ground (Genesis 2:7, 1 Corinthians 15:47), hence, Adam. This name indicates here collective humanity according to its origin in the first human pair, or in the one man in general, who was certainly the universal primitive man and the individual Adam in one person (Lange, CDHCG, 192). Note also -that God is said to have formed out of the ground every living thing of the field (Genesis 2:19); that Adam is said to have given names to all the tame-beasts, and to the birds of the heavens, and to all the wild beasts of the field (Genesis 2:20), according to the Rotherham translation. (Cf. cattle, for tame-beasts, Genesis 1:24). Cornfeld (AtD, 14): In a profound way the story portrays the character of human existence, its interdependence with God, with the soil, with woman, and with animal life. (Note that the operation of the penalty of sin was to proceed from the ground: Genesis 3:17-19). (2) What the Man Did.It must be kept in mind that we are dealing here with events that occurred on the sixth day of the Creation. There is no reason for assuming that all this happened after God had finished his work which he had made (Genesis 2:1-2). Hence, on this sixth day, in addition to what God did, the Man is said to have named the birds and the beasts as they gathered in his presence, and then, after falling into a deep sleep during which the woman was created, and then brought to him at his awakening, to have recognized and accepted her as his counterpart: and so the institution of marriage was established. (No reference is made in the Genesis Cosmogony to brute females, but we infer, from the Divine ordination (Genesis 1:22) to be fruitful and multiply, that the brute females had been created along with the brute males.)

(3) The Meaning of Good.This is a very ambiguous word as it is bandied about by thoughtless purveyors of cliches. For the real meaning of the word, however, we must go to the Bible. We read that following His work of Creation, God looked out upon it and pronounced it all very good (Genesis 1:31). That is to say, all created things were doing what the Creator had designed them to do in relation to the totality of being. In order that anything be good it must be good for something: that is, good for what by its very nature it is constituted to do. Hence, when, on the sixth day, God looked out upon what had been done, he discovered there was a great lack-essential needs to be provided forin relation to the Man, the crown of His whole Creation. Hence the pronouncement, It is not good that the man should be alone. Now that which is a good for any created being must be something that perfects its nature, something that fulfils its potentialities as a creature. So it was with the Man. Obviously, it was not good for the Man to be alone, because, lacking a proper counterpart, a creature answering to his needs, his own potentialities could never have been actualized in himself nor handed down to his posterity: in a word, the whole human race would have perished with him, would have died a-borning. There were four reasons especially why the creation of the Woman was necessary: (a) the Man needed the Woman in order to reproduce their kind; (b) the Man, himself a social being by nature, needed the society of his own kind (Robinson Crusoe, it will be recalled, found no happiness in the association of brutes only); (c) the Woman was needed that she might become a type of the Bride of the Redeemer; and (d) the Woman was indispensable, for the profound reason that the entire Plan of Redemption was wrapped up, so to speak, in the Seed of a Woman (Genesis 3:15). (Skinner (ICCG, 47): Of the revolting idea that man lived for a time in sexual intercourse with the beasts, there is not a trace.) Hence, Yahweh Elohim caused the beasts and the birds to assemble in the Man’s presence, perhaps to pass in a grand review before him, and the latter, obviously exercising the gift of speech, gave names to them. This act was a striking attestation of the Man’s intelligence: it seems that each name selected by him met with Divine approval. Moreover, this grand review must have stirred within him a profound sense of disappointment, even frustration, in the fact that no creature appeared before him who was adapted to his own particular needs. The latent social instinct in his bosom, the craving for companionship of his own kind, was aroused. To satisfy these needs, God created the Woman and brought her unto the Man. (Note that the Man’s naming of the animal species was prima facie evidence of his ability and his right to hold dominion over them.)

(4) The Beginning of Language.It is certainly of far-reaching import that the means of communication among personsthat is, meaningful spoken languageshould have been originated in preparation for the beginning of human society in the first conjugal union. It seems that the animal species were brought before the man to see what he would call them: to make him aware of the fact that he could recognize in none of them the counterpart which he himself needed. His spontaneous ejaculations proved sufficient for the origin of human speech, but failed to satisfy his aroused sense of need of companionship of his own kind. All this boils down to the obvious conclusion, namely, that the Man gave expression to these names as a result of Divine inspiration. This brings us to the consideration of one of the most significant facts of human history, namely, that as yet, even down to our man time, no satisfactory purely naturalistic theory of the origin of language has ever been formulated by man. The origin of languageof propositional, syntactical speechis still enshrouded in mystery.

In the course of the history of human science, twoand only two of any consequencenaturalistic theories of the origin of language have been advanced: these are designated the interjectional and the onomatopoetic (or onomatopoeic) theories. According to the interjectional theory, speech-sound-units were originally of subjective origin that is, they derived from emotive utterances. But surely our experience of language proves beyond any possibility of doubt that words which are expressive of emotion (interjections) are negligible in relation to any linguistic system as a whole; in a word, they are the least important and least used of all speech elements. Sapir (Lang., 4-5): … under the stress of emotion we do involuntarily give utterance to sounds that the hearer interprets as indicative of the emotion itself. But there is all the difference in the world between such involuntary expression of feeling and the normal type of communication of ideas that is speech. The former kind of utterance is indeed instinctive, but it is non-symbolic. Moreover, such instinctive cries hardly constitute communication in any strict sense. The mistake must not be made of identifying our conventional interjections (our oh! and ah! and sh!) with the instinctive cries themselves. These interjections are merely conventional fixations of the natural sounds. They differ widely in various languages in accordance with the specific phonetic genius of each of these. There is no tangible evidence, historical or otherwise, tending to show that the mass of speech elements and speech processes has evolved out of the interjections. According to the onomatopoetic theory, human language had an objective source; that is, it had its origin in the imitation of sounds in nature. This theory has little to recommend it, for two reasons especially: in the first place, there is no possible way of ascertaining what the first form of human speech was; hence no possible way of comparing the first phonemes (units of speech-sound) with the sounds in nature from which they are supposed to have been derived; and in the second place, sound-imitative phonemes of words that make up fully developed languages which are propositional and relational in their thought content, are obviously so rare as to be of little consequence. Again Sapir (Lang., 7): What applies to the interjections applies with even greater force to the sound-imitative words. Such words as -whippoorwill,-’ -to mew,-’ -to caw-’ are in no sense natural sounds that man has instinctively or automatically reproduced, They are just as truly creations of the human mind, flights of human fancy, as anything else in language. They do not directly grow out of nature, they are suggested by it and play with it. Hence the onomatopoetic theory of the origin of speech, the theory that would explain all speech as a gradual evolution from sounds of an imitative character, really brings us no nearer to the instinctive level than is language as we know it today. Again (p. 8): However much we may be disposed on general principles to assign a fundamental importance in the languages of primitive peoples to the imitation of natural sounds, the actual fact of the matter is that these languages show no particular preference for imitative words. I repeat, therefore, that there is no naturalistic theory of the origin of human language that will stand the test of critical scrutiny. The lesson which Genesis 2:19-20 conveys is that language is of Divine origin, by communication from the Spirit of God to the God-breathed human spirit.

And Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof: and the rib, which Jehovah God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man, And the man said,* This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed (Genesis 2:21-25*).

9. The Beginning of Human Society.(1) Society is defined as a permanent moral union of two or more persons, for the attainment of common ends (goods) through their co-operative activity. Man is by nature a social being: he lives with others, works with others, is benefited by others, and himself benefits others, universally and inevitably, These are facts of history and of ordinary observation and experience. Man is by nature a political animal, wrote Aristotle; that is, a social being, a dweller in a polis (city-state). Temporal society is of two kinds, namely, domestic society (from domus, household) which consists of the conjugal and the parental-filial relationships, and civil societythat of the state, of persons living under the direction of a ruling regime. The Church, of course, does not belong in the category of temporal societiesit is, rather, a supernatural spiritual society.

(2) Adam’s deep sleep.As a result of the grand review of the animal species, the facts became evident that no fresh creation from the ground could be a fit companion for Adam: that this companion (counterpart) must be taken from his own body. Hence, God is said to have caused a deep sleep to fall upon him. What was the character of this deep sleep? Skinner suggests (ICCG, 68): a hypnotic trance induced by supernatural agency, the purpose being to produce anesthesia, with perhaps the additional idea that the divine working cannot take place under human supervision. While Adam knows no sin, God will take care he shall feel no pain (M. Henry). (Note the typical import of this account: see infra, Adam as a Type of Christ).

(3) The Creation of the Woman.(a) While Adam was in this deep sleep, God, we are told, removed one of his ribsthis rib He is said (literally) to have builded into the Woman. The place in man’s body from which this part was taken is most significant: as M. Henry puts it (CWB, 7): Not out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved. (Cf. the term rib with the oft-repeated popular phrase, bosom companion). (b) Were the sexes separated or isolated from a common hermaphroditic ancestor or ancestry? Obviously, this crude notion that the first human being was androgynous (from andros, man, or husband, and gynaikos, woman or wife) and later became separated into male and female, has not one iota of support in the Genesis account. (For a facetious presentation of the tale of the androgynous man, see the account proposed by the Greek comedy writer, Aristophanes, in Plato’s Symposium).

(c) Do we not have here another example of the fundamental truth that in God’s Cosmic Plan, in both the physical and spiritual phases of it, life springs out of real or apparent death? In this instance, out of the deep sleep of the Man emerged the life of the creature answering to his needs. (Cf. Matthew 10:39; Matthew 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24; John 3:16; 1 Corinthians 15:35-49). (d) Genesis 2:21, rib, literally something bent or inclined.Those who scoff at this old rib storyand their name is Legionmiss the point of the whole account, both its naturalistic import (the Woman’s nearness to, and oneness with, the Man in marriage), and its positivistic significance (i.e., its typical reference, for which see infra, Eve as a Type of the Church). Skinner (ICCG, 68): the story doubtless suggests a deeper significance, that is, -the moral and social relation of the sexes to each other, the dependence of woman upon man, her close relationship to him, and the foundation existing in nature for. the feelings with which each should naturally regard the other.-’ (The quote here is from Driver). (e) Why does not the male man lack one rib today? Because it was only Adam’s individual skeleton that was affected by the removal of one of his ribs. Moreover, the Lamarckian theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics is rejected by the science of our day (except perhaps, in Russia, where the Russian biologist, Lysenko, has been lauded for re-affirming it). It must be understood, too, that this particular actthe removal of a rib from Adam’s framewas not of the character of a naturally acquired modification; Scripture makes it clear that it was a special Divine act performed only once, and that at the fountainhead of the race. (f) I suppose that no story in the Old Testament has been viciously attacked and ridiculed as extensively as this old rib story. In this instance especially, the thought expressed in one verse of a great religious poem is surely confirmed. That line is: Blind unbelief is bound to err. To be sure, unbelief is bound to err, because it is blind, because it is the product of a closed mind.

(g) It should be noted that, having created the Woman, God Himself brought her unto the man. This means that our Heavenly Father performed the first marriage Himself. It means infinitely more: it means that He would have all men to know that marriage is a Divinely ordained institution. It means, too, that marriage is the oldest institution known to humankind: it was established prior to worship, sacrifice, religion, and all human government. Its antiquity and universality are paralleled only by human language. (h) That domestic society in its various aspects is an ordination of the laws of nature and of nature’s God is evident from the following facts: from the definition of the word natural as that for which there is in man’s make-up a genuine ability or capacity, a genuine inclination, and a genuine need; from the constitution of human nature itself (no man can realize his potentialities living in isolation from his kind); from the natural division of the human race into the two sexes, male and female, and from the union of the two as nature’s modus operandi for procreating and preserving the race; from the natural physiological and psychological powers of both male and female to enter into the conjugal union; from the natural inclination of both sexes to enter into this union; from the wondrous complementary character of the two sexes per se; from the genuine need of both male and female, as physiologically constituted, for the conjugal relation (as the natural and moral outlet for the sex drive); and especially for the genuine need of human children for the protection, care and love of parents. There is no kind of offspring that is as helpless, and as helpless for as long a time, as the human infant. Animal offspring mature in a few weeks or months at the most; the human child needs from eighteen to twenty-one years to mature physically, and many more years to mature mentally and spiritually. Maturation, in the case of the person and personality, is a lifelong process: it is never complete, in all its aspects, in the life on earth. Thus it is seen to be evident beyond all possibility of doubt that the conjugal union must be the origin and basis of all human society, and the home the origin and basis of all political and social order.

(i) Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, said Adam, on receiving the Woman unto himself. Whitelaw (PCG, 52): The language is expressive at once of woman’s derivation from man (1 Corinthians 11:8; 1 Corinthians 11:12) and likeness to man. The first of these implies her subordination or subjection to man, or man’s headship over woman (1 Corinthians 11:3), which Adam immediately proceeds to assert by assigning to her a name; the second is embodied in the name which she receives. (I see no reason to think that this dominion or headship needed to be exercised prior to the entrance of sin, and the disorder caused by sin, into our world. Cf. Genesis 3:16). It seems to me that the most fundamental fact expressed here in Adam’s statement, is that of the oneness of the male and female in marriage. Note the now here (This is now, etc.): that is, in our state of matrimony: obviously, the words could not apply to the male and female generally, that is, outside of marriage. Hence, the breaking of this oneness, by such acts as fornication, adultery, homosexuality, or any of the numerous forms of sex perversion (unnatural uses of the sex power and privilege) is sin.Pfeiffer (BG, 21): Life is realized in its fullest dimensions when man and woman dwell together in that unity which God purposed and established.

(j) She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Rotherham (EB, 35): Heb., ishshah, -female-man,-’ from ish, -man-’ or -husband.-’ Her generic name is Woman; her personal name, bestowed on her later, like the first, by Adam, was Eve (Genesis 3:20). 10. The Sanctity of Marriage.(1) Genesis 2:24Were these words spoken by Adam, or by the inspired author of the Torah? By the first husband, or by the historian? (Cf. the words of Jesus, Matthew 19:1-9, Mark 10:2-12). In either case, they must be understood as the Divine declaration of the law of marriage; as affirming, once for all, the Divine ordination of the conjugal union and the sanctity of its function, especially in the procreation and education of the race. (2) The basis of marriage is, according to this Scripture (Genesis 2:24; cf. Matthew 19:5-6, Mark 10:7-8 1 Corinthians 6:16, Ephesians 5:31) the conjugal union actualized by the first pair at their creation; its nature, a forsaking (by the woman as well as the man) of parents, especially in the matter of habitation, and, relatively, in respect of affection, and the man’s cleaving unto his wife, in the joining together of the two in both body and soul; its result, their becoming into one flesh. This language points to a unity of persons and not simply to a conjunction of bodies, or a community of interests, or even a reciprocity of affections. Malachi (Genesis 2:15) and Christ (Matthew 19:5) explain this verse as teaching the indissoluble character of marriage and condemning the practice of polygamy (White-law, PCG, 52). (3) Having looked over all the animal pairs and found no fulfilment for his potentialities nor satisfaction for his need, Adam did find all this in the Woman. This was part of God’s blessing in Creation. The perpetuation of this blessing was to be assured through monogamy (Genesis 2:24). It seems that polygamy was permitted at different times in the Old Testament Dispensations (Acts 17:30). But the most fruitful statethe right state-is for each man to cleave unto his wife and unto her only. Jesus so states the case in Matthew 19:4-6 and in Mark 10:6-9). (4) It should be noted that New Testament teaching, in completing these accounts of the institution of the conjugal union (Genesis 1:27; Genesis 2:23-24) does not put any emphasis on the strength of sex; rather, it places the emphasis on the sanctity and inviolability of marriage (cf. again Matthew 19:4-6, also 1 Corinthians 6:16), as the symbol of the mystery of Christ’s relationship with His Church (Ephesians 5:28-33). (However, it should be noted here that the teaching of Jesus does allow divorce and remarriage (the phrase, except for fornication, applies with equal force to what follows it, shall marry another, as to what precedes it, whosoever shall put away his wife): cf. Matthew 5:31-32; Matthew 19:3-9). We also learn, from Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:10-16, that in cases of desertion in which the deserting party is an unbeliever, the marriage covenant may be regarded as permanently dissolved. I know of no other Scriptural ground to justify remarriage after divorce.) (5) Some will say that the existence of sex in human life was a natural thing and a blessing. Mankind, we are told, was created male and female (Genesis 1:27; Genesis 5:2), and the Divine blessing was bestowed upon them with the command (Genesis 1:29) to be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth (that is, populate it). Someone has said that this reads almost like a wedding benediction. All this is true, no doubt. It is true that sex in human life was, and is, a natural thing, that is, if rightly used; the sin comes in the misuse and abuse of it. It is a power, however, which has been perverted and degraded by man into some of the most iniquitous of human acts. We are living in an age when unholy emphasis on the so-called sex drive (libido) is universal and threatens to undermine the very foundations of American home life. Sex is included with hunger and thirst as the basic organic drives; to be sure, we know that a man cannot live very long without food and drink; but who ever heard of a man dying of sex frustration? Freudianism, at the hands of its over-zealous disciples, has become a kind of sophisticated pornography that is spread abroad in the college and university classroom under the specious cover of academic freedom. Dr. Will Durant has said that the inhibition (discipline) of sex is the first principle of civilization.This is true: it is the first step out of the jungle and the barnyard. History proves that a nation’s morale is dependent on its morality; and that its morality is determined largely by its sex morality, that is, upon its home life which is rooted by nature in the sex life of parents.

(6) A prominent contributor to a well-known periodical writes of the mythology that has grown up around the subject of sex, as follows: the myth that sex is natural and therefore automatically self-adjusting and self-fulfilling (all the techniques in the world cannot fill the emptiness which grows between two people who no longer have anything important to say to each other, therefore no ground exists for blaming the estrangement on some lack in the physical relationship in marriage); the myth that there is a right man for a right woman; the myth that sex can be treated casually (I-can-take-it-and-leave-it-when-I-am-ready point of view); the myth that sex is something I have to have or I will be sick (the argument often used by the male to win the acquiescence of the female: many a young woman has been lured into illegitimacy by the specious plea of love or need, when she has done nothing but contribute to the vanity of the male animal by adding to his conquests), etc. This writer goes on to say (having misplaced the original of this excerpt, I cannot give proper credit) that the sexual crisis in our time is the sign of that chaos which afflicts men and women whose capacity to love has been lost or taken from them. Parental instruction concerning the pitfalls which young people face in our present-day complex and lawless society must be given them in early childhood. No safeguards exist any longer but the moral standards set by our home life and training. (7) The primary ends of marriage are procreative and unitive.By procreative we mean, of course, that marriage is essentially for the procreation and training of offspring and the consequent reproduction and preservation of the human species. Generation without proper training would, in most cases, contribute to the increasing momentum of lawlessness. Some of the silliest cults of our time are the cults of so-called self-expression. The natural order demands that children not just be born and then be tossed out to grow up willy-nilly, like Topsy. Lack of discipline in infancy and childhood is one of the main sources of juvenile delinquency. We train our dogs and our horses: why, then, do we allow our children to grow up without any discipline whatever? Someone has rightly said that it is far better for a child to learn respect for proper authority in the high-chair than to grow up and have to learn it, when it is too late, in the electric chair. But marriage is also unitive in character. Mutual love and helpfulness contribute continuously to the personality development of the married couple. The man has a home; the wife has security; both have affection (that mutual love which is the union of spirits as well as of bodies); the result is the most tender, intimate, and sacred covenant relationship, with the sole exception of the covenant of grace, into which human hearts can enter. The physical union is an important factor in true marriage, of course: it is characteristically unitive in its enhancement of the intimacy of the conjugal relation. But it is not the most important factor. There must be a union of spirits, well as of bodies, to make a marriage permanent. It is true, however, that sexual coition, sanctified by Christian love, is the most poignant bliss that human beings can experience short of the Beatific Vision (Union with God) itself. Nor is there any relationship into which human hearts can enter that is as fruitful, as productive of wellbeing and of genuine happiness as the relationship of a long and happy marriage. Fortunate indeed is the man and woman who can contract and maintain such an ever increasingly fruitful relationship as they grow old together. There is nothing that can compare with it in human experience. Small wonder, then, that the Apostle writes of it as a kind of prototype of the spiritual relationship between Christ and His elect, the Church! (Ephesians 5:22-33; Ephesians 4:10-16; Romans 6:3-7; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Acts 20:28; 2 Corinthians 11:2, etc.).

(8) Genesis 2:25naked, but not ashamed.Keil (KD, BCOTP, 91): Their bodies were sanctified by the spirit which animated them. Shame entered first with sin, which destroyed the normal relation of the spirit to the body, exciting tendencies and lusts which warred against the soul, and turning the sacred ordinance of God into sensual impulses and the lusts of the flesh. Delitzsch (quoted by Whitelaw, PCG, 52, and by Lange, 210): They were naked, yet they were not so. Their bodies were the clothing of their internal glory, and their internal glory was the clothing of their nakedness. Lange (CDHCG, 210): Nakedness is here the expression of perfect innocence, which, in its ingenuousness, elevates the body into the spiritual personality as ruled by it, whilst, on the contrary, the feeling of shame enters with the consciousness of the opposition between spirit and sensual corporeity, whilst shame itself comes in with the presentiment and the actual feeling of guilt. I find no clear evidence, or even intimation, to support the view that Adam and Eve were united in physical coition prior to the admission of sin into their lives. It seems to me that the meaning of the names given to their sons, Cain and Abel, respectively a spear (was not Cain’s murderous act truly a spear driven into the heart of Mother Eve?) and a breath or a vapor (what Abel’s short existence truly was) refute such a view. Surely these names could not have applied to circumstances of the Edenic state of innocence! I must therefore agree with those who hold that a partbut only a partof the knowledge acquired by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was the awareness and the experience of the physical sex union. Not that this union was wrong, or a sin, in itself, but that in consequence of man’s rebelliousness it was bound to become a prolific source of the most vicious and depraved of human acts (cf. Romans 1:26-32).

11. Paradise, O Paradise! From the beginning of his existence, man has always dreamed of such a blissful state of being as that portrayed in the Genesis story of the Garden of Delight. This is reflected in the numerous visions of an ideal earthly state as represented by the utopias (from the Greek negative prefix, ou, no, and noun, topos, place; hence, no place) which have appeared in practically every period of human literature. The completely secularistic and hedonistic note is struck by our old friend, Omar, in the Rubaiyat. For Paradise enow writes Omar, give me

A Book of Verses underneath the bough; A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness.

The French artist, Paul Gauguin, describes such an earthly paradise as a life filled brimful with happiness and radiant like the sun, in perfect simplicity, seeking refreshment at the nearest brook as, I imagine, the first man and woman did in paradise.

In all ages, the vision of a spiritual celestial Paradise seems also to have stirred the hope that springs eternal in the human breast. In this category, we have the Sumerian Garden of the gods, the Greek Gardens of the Hesperides, the Homeric Elysian Fields (Islands of the Blessed), the Hindu Uttarakuru, the Norse Asgard, the Teutonic Valhalla, the Aztec Garden of Huitzilopochtl, the Celestial Oasis of the Moslems, the Happy Hunting Grounds of the American Indians, and many others. (See The Quest for Paradise, in medical magazine, MD, June, 1965). (See also the four successive races of men as envisioned by the 7th century B.C. Greek poet, Hesiod, in his Works and Days, namely, the golden race, the silver race, the race of demigods, and the last, the iron race, described as vicious, corrupt, and filling the earth with violence: cf. Genesis 6:5; Genesis 6:11-12). Truly, where there is no vision, where the music and the dream of life is lost, there the people cast off restraint: cf. Proverbs 29:18).

Is it not reasonable to hold that the universality of this dream, even in its most degraded (materialistic) forms, presupposes such a state of being, spiritual and eternal, such a fulfilment for those who have prepared themselves in this world to appreciate it, by living the Spiritual Life, the life that is hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3), awaiting them at some time, somewhere beyond the blue, in the City of God, New Jerusalem, the antitype, of which the type is the Edenic Garden of the book of Genesis. In a word, that we have in the Genesis narrative and its fulfilment in Revelation, the truth respecting the eternal Paradise or Heaven, the future home of the redeemed sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty (Hebrews 11:10; Hebrews 12:22; Galatians 4:12, 2 Corinthians 6:18; Isaiah 65:17-19; Isaiah 66:22-23; 2 Peter 3:8-13; Revelation 2:7; Revelation 21:1-7; Revelation 22:1-5). (For interesting reading, in this connection, the following are suggested: The Myth of Er, in the last book of Plato’s Republic, the concluding Chapter s of Bunyan’s great allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress, and Book 18 of Augustine’s classic work, The City of God).

12. Summary of the Circumstances of Man’s Original State (cf. Ecclesiastes 7:29): It was a state (1) of personal life, of self-consciousness and self-determination; (2) of untried innocence (holiness differs from innocence in the fact that it is not passivity, but is the product of continuous moral activity in obedience to the Divine Will); (3) of exemption from physical death (as death is in the world, because sin is in the world, and because sin had not yet been committed, the penalty of death had not yet been pronounced upon the race); (4) of special Divine providence; (5) of unhindered access to God; (6) of dominion over all the lower orders; (6) of liberty within the circumference of the moral law and its requirements; (7) of intimate companionship with a helper answering to the man’s needs. Generally speaking, it would seem that this Edenic existence was a probationary state. Milligan (SR, 50): The whole earth, was created, and from the beginning arranged with special reference to the wants of man. But to make a world free from all decay, suffering, and deaththat is, such a world as would have been adapted to the constitution, wants, and condition of man had he never fallen, when at the same time God foresaw that he would sin and become mortalto do so would have been very inconsistent with Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Benevolence. Even erring man would not act so unwisely. And hence we find that the world in general was from the beginning constituted and arranged with reference to man as he is, and not man as he was, in Eden. Paradise was a mere temporary abode for him, during the few days of his primeval innocence. On the basis of this view, it is the conviction of the present writer that God’s Plan of Redemption is an integral part of His whole Cosmic Plan of Creation, and that Creation will not be complete until the righteous stand in the Judgment, clothed in glory and honor and immortality, redeemed in spirit and soul and body.

FOR MEDITATION AND SERMONIZING

Adam as a Type of Christ

(Review concerning types and antitypes in Part Two.)

Romans 5:14, 1 Corinthians 15:45. Note the points of resemblance, as follows:

1. Both came by Divine agency: the First Adam, by Divine inbreathing (Genesis 2:7); the Second Adam, by Divine overshadowing of the womb of the Virgin (Genesis 3:15; Luke 1:26-37; Matthew 1:18-25; John 1:1-14; Galatians 4:4; 1 Timothy 3:16).

2. Both said to be the image of God: the First, the personal image (Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 5:1; Genesis 9:6; 1 Corinthians 11:7); the Second, the very image (i.e., both personal and moral: Hebrews 1:3; John 10:30; John 14:6-11; Colossians 2:9; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 1 Peter 2:22; 1 John 3:5; Hebrews 4:15; Hebrews 7:26-27). The fundamental revelation of the Old Testament is that God created man in His own image (Genesis 1:27); that of the New Testament is that God took upon Himself the likeness of the creature, man (John 1:14, Hebrews 2:14-15, Philippians 2:5-8).

3. Both were tempted by the Devil: the First, in a Garden where all the environmental factors supported him, and yet he yielded (Genesis 3:1-7); the Second, in a wilderness where the environmental factors all favored the Tempter, but, by reliance on the Word of God, and in the strength of perfect manhood, He resisted the temptation (Matthew 4:1-11, Hebrews 4:15). Sin lies not in the temptation, but in the yielding to it (Cf. Matthew 26:36-46).

4. Both were to subdue the earth: the First Adam, in a physical sense (Genesis 1:28Adam, in its generic sense, takes in all mankind, and human science is but the fulfilment of this Divine injunction); the Second Adam, in a spiritual sense (Matthew 28:18; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28; Philippians 2:9-11; Colossians 1:13-20; Ephesians 1:20-23). The Lord Jesus holds spiritual sovereignty over the whole of created being: He is Lord of the cosmos and the Absolute Monarch of the Kingdom of Heaven (Acts 2:36, Revelation 1:17-18).

5. The First Adam was the first-born and head of the physical creation (Genesis 1:26-27). Christ, the Second Adam, is the firstborn from the dead and the Head of the spiritual creation (the Regeneration: Ephesians 5:23; Ephesians 1:22; John 3:1-8; Titus 3:5; Matthew 19:28; Romans 8:29; Colossians 1:15; Colossians 1:18; Hebrews 12:23, etc.).

Here the analogies end. The contrasts, on the other hand, are equally significant: (1) Romans 5:17-19, 1 Corinthians 15:21-23: Whatever was lost by the disobedience of the First Adam is now regained by the obedience of the Second (John 1:29): regained, for the innocent and irresponsible, unconditionally (Luke 18:16; Matthew 18:3-6; Matthew 19:14), but, for the accountable, conditionally, that is, on the terms of admission into the New Covenant (Acts 16:31; Acts 2:38; Matthew 10:32-33; Luke 13:3; Romans 10:9-10; Galatians 3:27; Romans 6:3-11). (Children who grow up to be adults responsible for their acts will experience personality development as a result of the impact of the factors of this terrestrial environment. This is a psychological fact. Does not this prove that babies who die in infancy, before reaching accountable age, will experience personality development through the impact of the factors of the celestial (heavenly) environment into which they will immediately enter? In either case, Christian redemption is the redemption of the whole being, in spirit and soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). (2) We belong to Adam by generation (Acts 17:24-28, Hebrews 12:9, Malachi 2:10). We belong to Christ by regeneration (John 3:1-8, Titus 3:5, Matthew 19:28; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24, etc.). (3) The First Adam was created a living soul (Genesis 2:7, 1 Corinthians 15:45). The Second Adam, by bringing life and immortality to light through the gospel (2 Timothy 1:10) became a life-giving spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45; John 5:21; John 6:57; John 11:25-26; Romans 8:2; Romans 8:11.). (4) We are all the posterity of the First Adam by ordinary or natural procreation, and we look to Eve as the mother of all living (Genesis 3:20). But the time came when God had to set aside all flesh: the sad fact is that all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). The whole world is concluded under sin, put under Divine condemnation (John 3:16-18), that all might return to God by one Way: that Way is Christ (John 14:6, 2 Corinthians 5:17-20). Fleshly birth no longer avails anything: Ye must be born again (John 3:3-8). By the new birth we become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), and so belong to Christ (1 Corinthians 5:11; 1 Corinthians 6:20; 1 Corinthians 7:23; Galatians 3:13; 1 Peter 1:18-20; Acts 20:28). (5) Hence, true brotherhood is in Christ and in Him only. (Romans 8:1, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 3:27-28). We hear so much today about the universal brotherhood of man, but the prevailing conception expressed in this phrase is that of a social, rather than a spiritual, brotherhood. A study of the Scriptures reveals the fact clearly that God no longer places any particular value on fleshly brotherhood of any kind. Men can no longer come to God on the basis of anything within themselves: they must come through Christ. Hence the utter folly of trying to substitute fraternalism, social service, eugenics, civic reform, or any other human device, for the church of the living God. Spiritual brotherhood in Christ is the noblest relationship known in Heaven or on earth: it is an eternal relationship. While our false prophets of the dawn are vainly trying to substitute civic righteousness, social service, respectability, and the like, for the things that abide, every Gospel preacher needs to be at his post preaching repentance and remission of sins in the name of Christ (Luke 24:47, Acts 2:38). Good citizenship is not the basis of membership in the Body of Christ: a new birth is, however (Matthew 12:50).

Eve as a Type of the Church

1. Adam was in need of a helper meet for his needs. It was not good that he should be alone: that is, alone he could not actualize his potentialities nor fulfil God’s design in creating him, that of procreating the human race (his kind). Eve was, therefore, provided to meet this need. (Note Genesis 2:18not a helpmeet, but a helper meet for (answering to) the man’s need,his counterpart.)In like manner, when our Lord returned to the Father, having accomplished the work the Father had given Him to do (John 17:4-5), it became necessary for a helper to be provided answering to His need: for this purpose the Church was brought into existence (John 1:29, 1 Corinthians 3:9, 2 Corinthians 11:2-3, Ephesians 5:22-32, Romans 7:4, etc.). It was necessary that a sanctuary be provided in this temporal world for the habitation of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22): this sanctuary is the Church (Romans 5:5, Acts 2:38, 1 Corinthians 3:16; 1 Corinthians 6:19; Galatians 3:2; Galatians 5:22-25): no other institution on earth is, or can be, this sanctuary. It was necessary also that provision be made to actualize Christ’s redemptive work: the Church was established to meet this need. The mission of the Church is twofold, and only twofold, namely, to preserve the truth of God, and to proclaim that truth unto the uttermost parts of the earth (Matthew 16:16-20; Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8). No institution but the Church is divinely commissioned to proclaim the Gospel to all the nations (Matthew 24:14). Hence, the Church is described in Scripture as the pillar and ground of the truth, not only of its preservation, but also of its worldwide proclamation. (1 Timothy 3:15; John 8:31-32; John 16:7-15; John 17:17; Romans 1:16, 1 Timothy 3:4; 2 Timothy 1:13; 2 Timothy 2:2; 2 Timothy 3:16-17).

2. As Eve was the bride of Adam, so the Church is the Bride of the Redeemer. The Church is described in the New Testament under such striking metaphors as (1) the Body of Christ, a metaphor suggesting a fellowship of parts, a living organism (Romans 12:4-5; Ephesians 1:22-23; Ephesians 2:16; Ephesians 4:4; Ephesians 4:12; Ephesians 4:25; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31). (2) the Temple of God, a metaphor suggesting, stability, solidarity, permanence (Ephesians 2:19-22, 2 Thessalonians 2:4, 1 Corinthians 3:16, 2 Corinthians 6:16), (3) the Household of God, a metaphor suggesting spiritual familial affinity (Galatians 6:10, Ephesians 2:19; Ephesians 3:15; Hebrews 3:6; 1 Peter 2:5; 1 Peter 4:17), and (4) the Bride of Christ, a metaphor suggesting constancy and purity (John 3:29; Revelation 19:6-9; Revelation 21:2; Revelation 21:9; Revelation 22:17).

3. While Adam was in a deep sleep, God removed the material out of which He made, (literally, which He builded into) the Woman (Genesis 2:22). In like manner, while Jesus slept the deep sleep of death, on the Cross, one of the soldiers thrust a spear into His side, and straightway there came out blood and water (John 19:34), the materials out of which God has constructed the Church. We are cleansed, purged of the guilt of sin, through the efficacy of Christ’s blood (the Atonement which He provided by giving His life for us). (Cf. John 1:29, Leviticus 17:11, Hebrews 9:22, 1 John 1:7, 1 Corinthians 10:16, Hebrews 9:14, Matthew 26:28, 1 Corinthians 11:25, Ephesians 1:7, Colossians 1:20; 1 Peter 1:18-19; 1 Peter 2:21-24; Revelation 1:4). And the place-the only placeDivinely appointed for the repentant believer to meet the efficacy of this cleansing blood is the grave of water (Christian baptism). (Cf. Matthew 28:18-20, Titus 3:5, John 3:5, Acts 2:38, Galatians 3:27, Romans 6:3-7, 1 Peter 3:20-21, etc.).

4. As Eve was a partaker of the corporeal nature of Adam (Genesis 2:23), so the Church is a partaker of the spiritual nature of Christ (2 Peter 1:4, Ephesians 2:10).

5. Adam was divinely appointed to rule over his wife (Genesis 3:16). This Divine ordination, it will be noted, followed their fall into sin. Authority is necessary to any form of society, even domestic society (that of the household), because of the selfish and rebellious impulses in the human heart (Romans 3:23). Hence, when sin entered, and thus introduced disorder into their lives, God saw fit to vest the authority in the man as the head of the household; and human experience testifies that this was a wise provision. This sovereignty must be exercised, however, as a sovereignty of love (Ephesians 5:23-24). In like manner, Christ is the sole head over all things to the Church (Ephesians 1:22-23, Colossians 1:18). Matthew 28:18here all means all-or nothing. Ephesians 4:4one Lord, not one in Heaven and another on earth. Acts 2:36both Lord and Christ, that is, Acting Sovereign of the universe and the Absolute Monarch of the Kingdom of Heaven. (Philippians 2:9-11, 1 Corinthians 15:24-28). Christ delegated His authority to the Apostles as the executors of His Last Will and Testament (Matthew 17:5; John 16:7-15; John 20:21-23, Luke 24:44-49, Acts 1:1-8). There is not one iota of Scripture evidence that the Apostles ever delegated their authority to any man or group of men. Rather, apostolic authority is incorporated in the Word, as communicated by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 1:10-15, 1 Thessalonians 2:13), that is, in the New Testament Scriptures (Acts 2:42). The Church is a theocracy, with each local congregation functioning under the direction of elders and deacons (Acts 11:30; Acts 14:23; Acts 15:4; Acts 16:4; Acts 20:17-36; 1 Timothy 3:1-13, Titus 1:5-9, Ephesians 4:11, etc.). Denominationalism is the product of the substitution of human theology and human authority for the authority of Christ and His Word. The grand theme of all Christian preaching should be the Lordship of Christ. But is it? How often does one hear this message sounded out from the modern pulpit?

6. Adam name his wife (Genesis 3:20): her generic name was Woman; her personal name, Eve. Likewise, Christ named His elect, the Church. Cf. Isaiah 65:15; Isaiah 56:5; Isaiah 62:2; Acts 11:26; Acts 15:15-18; Revelation 22:4. Matthew 16:18my church. Romans 16:16the churches of Christ. This could be just as correctly translated Christian churches; the adjectival form Christian is just as correct as the genitive of possession, of Christ. Both names mean belonging to Christ (Acts 20:28, 1 Corinthians 6:20, Galatians 3:27-29). In the New Testament, individual Christians are named disciples, believers, saints, brethren, priests, etc. But these are all common names: to elevate any one of them to a proper name is to make it a distinguishing, hence denominational, designation. The same is true of all such human names as those of Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Campbell, etc. (1 Corinthians 1:10-17; 1 Corinthians 3:1-7). The name of Christ is the only name (authority) in which salvation is granted to men (Acts 4:11-12; cf. Philippians 2:9-11; Acts 2:38; Acts 26:28; 1 Peter 4:16; Colossians 3:17).

7. Adam had only one wife. In like manner, Christ has only one Bride, one Body, one Temple, one Household, etc. John 10:16they (Jew and Gentile) shall become one flock, one shepherd. Matthew 16:18my church, not churches. Ephesians 4:4There is one body. For this spiritual Body to have more than one Head, or for this Head to have more than one Body, would be an unexplainable monstrosity. Yet this is the picture presented today by the denominationalism and hierarchism of Christendom, and the price that has been paid for this state of affairs is, as John R. Mott once put it, an unbelieving world. Denominationalism is a fungus growth on the Body of Christ, having its source in human (theological) speculation and presumption. It is anti-Scriptural, and it is an open violation of the Will of Christ as expressed in His sublime intercessory prayer (John 17:20-21). There is no salvation in any denomination per se, simply because all denominationalism is of human authority and hence extraneous to the Body of Christ. Salvation is possible only in Christ, and to be in Christ is to be in His Body (Galatians 3:27, Acts 4:11-12, Romans 8:1, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 6:15; Ephesians 2:10; Ephesians 4:24).

8. As Eve was the mother of all who live upon the earth naturally (physically), so the Church is the mother of all who live spiritually (Genesis 3:20, Acts 17:25-26, John 3:3-5, Galatians 4:26). To the union of Adam and Eve sons and daughters were born in the flesh (Genesis 5:1-5); to the union of Christ and His Church sons and daughters are born into the Heavenly Family (John 3:7, 1 Peter 1:23, Romans 8:14, Ephesians 3:14-15, Hebrews 8:8-12).

As the material creation would have been incomplete, even non-existent, without Eve, so the spiritual creation (the regeneration) would be non-existent without the Church. Hence, the Eternal Purpose of God looked forward to the Woman as the counterpart of the Man, and to the Church as the counterpart of Christ, her Head (Ephesians 1:4-5, Romans 8:28-30). Man was first brought into existence, then Woman was viewed in him, and taken out of him, In like manner, Christ was lifted up, then the Church was viewed in Him, and taken out of Him (John 3:14-15; John 12:32). There was no other creature so near to Adam as was his bride, and there is no people so near to Christ as His Bride, the Church; hence the Church is said to be the fulness of him that filleth all in all (Ephesians 1:23; Ephesians 4:15-16).

C. H. M. (NBG, 15-17): When we look at the type before us, we may form some idea of the results which ought to follow from the understanding of the Church’s position and relationship. What affection did not Eve owe to Adam! What nearness she enjoyed! What intimacy of communion! What full participation in all his thoughts! In all his dignity, and in all his glory, she was entirely one. He did not rule over, but with her. He was lord of the whole creation, and she was one with him. All this will find its full antitype in the ages to come. Then shall the True Man-the Lord from heaventake His seat on the throne, and, in companionship with His bridethe Churchrule over a restored creation. This Church is quickened out of the grave of Christ, is part -of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.-’ He the Head and she the Body, making one Man, as we read in the fourth chapter of Ephesians,-Till we all come, in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.-’ The Church, being thus part of Christ, will occupy a place in glory quite unique. There was no other creature so near to Adam as Eve. because no other creature was part of himself. So in reference to the Church, she will hold the very nearest place to Christ in His coming glory. (Note that Adam apparently did rule with Eve, not over her, prior to their fall into sin, as stated above.)

REVIEW QUESTIONS ON PART NINE

What does the name Paradise signify?

What are the two views of the possible location of Eden?

What two rivers, in the Genesis account, seem to locate Eden geographically, and why?

In what respect does the Biblical story of Eden accord with scientific thought concerning the origin of mankind?

What is the apparent symbolical import of the Garden of Eden?

What lesson does this story have for us with respect to all mankind?

What significance does Breasted find in the story of Eden?

Explain the metaphor, the River of Life, as it is further developed in the New Testament.

What two Divine commands directed the Man’s life in the Garden?

What was the Man’s work in the Garden?

What does this teach us about honest labor? When did this become toil?

In what respects are gardens and God in close relationship?

How may the Tree of Life be explained as having actual existence and fruit? What function could this fruit have served?

What does the Tree of Life symbolize?

What is the metaphorical significance of the Tree of Life?

In what sense is the Biblical story of the Tree of Life unique in comparison with non-Biblical traditions?

What fundamental truth is indicated by the fact of the universality of certain traditions, as, e.g., those of a prehistoric Golden Age, of Sacrifice, of a Flood, etc.?

In what verse of Genesis do we have the account of the beginning of liberty and of law?

What does this Scripture teach about the relation between liberty and law?

State the rather common views of the significance of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Concerning the theory that this knowledge was, and is, the maturity that man acquires through the personal experience of sin and its consequence, does this imply that man fell upward?

How is holiness to be distinguished from innocence?

Are we to suppose that the Tree of Knowledge had real existence? On the basis of this view, what was the intent of the prohibition regarding the fruit of this Tree?

Explain what is meant in Scripture by a positive law. What is the chief function of positive law?

What kind of choice was involved in the decision to eat of the fruit of this Tree?

What kind of choice is involved in every sin?

What is the view adopted in this text of the nature of the knowledge of good and evil indicated by the Genesis account of this Tree?

What is probably the full meaning of the phrase, good and evil?

Why do we reject the view that the only knowledge indicated in this account was physiological sex knowledge?

What would be the symbolic meaning of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

Regardless of whether this Tree was real or only symbolic, or even only metaphorical, what kind of human act was involved in the eating of its fruit?

What was the twofold character of the death consequent upon eating of the fruit of this Tree?

How, according to Genesis, did human language originate?

What is the evident meaning of the word good, as used in Genesis 2:18?

State the two naturalistic theories of the origin of language and point out the inadequacy of each.

How is society to be defined?

What are the two kinds of human society?

What was the significance of Adam’s deep sleep?

What profound naturalistic and positivistic truths are to be derived from the account of Woman’s creation out of part of Adam’s body?

What lessons are to be derived from the identity of the particular part of Adam’s body that God used to build into the Woman?

What is the significance of the statement that God, after creating the Woman, brought her unto the man?

State the grounds on which we regard domestic society as a natural, and therefore divinely ordained, society.

Explain the significance of the phrases, bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.

Explain how the entire account of the Creation of the Woman emphasizes the sanctity of marriage.

What error is involved in the notion that the sex drive is in the same class of organic drives as the drives for food and drink?

State and explain the primary ends of marriage.

Explain the relation of physical coition to the unitive aspect of marriage.

Explain how the morale and morality of a people are related to their sex morality.

Show how the inviolability of marriage and the home is related to national morality and stability.

Explain the significance of the statement that Adam and Eve were naked, but not ashamed.

List the circumstances of man’s original state.

Review the material on Types and Antitypes in Part Two.

List and explain the points of resemblance between Adam and Christ.

List the points of difference between Adam and Christ.

List the points of resemblance between the bride of Adam and the Bride of the Redeemer.

What should these truths teach us regarding the glory and dignity of the Church?

What should these truths teach us about the mission of the Church?