Chapter 3
CREATION: The Buried Truth Of Man And Nature
We've already observed that the event of
biblical creation clearly defines the Creator-creature distinction against the pagan
Continuity of Being belief. It also
opposes paganism with another distinction:
the man-nature distinction.
As parts of the created universe, man and nature both are sharply distinguished
from the Creator, but they are also distinguished from each other. The picture looks like this:
CREATOR
Man
________
Nature
In this chapter I concentrate on the
man-nature distinction. This distinction
is crucial for everything that follows early Genesis in the Bible. So important is this distinction to God's plan
that paganism suppresses it like it does the Creator- creature
distinction. In the fleshly mind, these
spiritually vital distinctions have been buried underneath the Continuity of Being
doctrine. According to that old pagan
doctrine, God, man, and nature differ only in degree, not in kind.
What Is Man?
Let's begin with man first. The Bible and pagan culture radically disagree
on what man is. To see just how radical
the disagreement is, I will begin with a look at the biblical narratives of
man's creation. Then I will show how
man's design utterly sets him apart from all the universe. Finally, I will introduce the concept of
"divine institutions"--the fundamental features of human social
existence according to God's Word.
God's Description of Man's Creation. The "close-up" picture of man's
creation is given in Genesis 2:7,15-25.
God says He miraculously formed man from the earth. The term "dust" in this context is
sometimes interpreted by those following an accommodationist strategy as
metaphorical for man's upward development from primates. They think by so doing they can accommodate
the Genesis narrative to the evolutionary worldview. Unfortunately for this approach, the term
"dust" in this context is used for literal earth particles of bodily
decay after death (Gen. 3:19). Clearly,
at death man does not revert back to his supposedly previous primate existence!
The narrative, therefore, speaks of a
literal, instantaneous creation of man.
If the narrative's literal meaning weren't
clear enough from 2:7, it certainly is from 2:21-22. Unlike any other species, the human female is
derived from the one original body. This
is not an incidental detail; it relates to the entire plan of salvation as I
note later. There is simply no room in
this narrative for evolution of man from primate. This literal interpretation of Genesis 2 is
given in the New Testament (I Cor. 11:6-9; I Tim. 2:13-14).
Also note that man is assigned to a task
that involves labor and moral responsibility (2:15-17). Such a task requires social intercourse with
other human beings (2:18).
Accomplishment of the task involves study of nature and linguistic
description (2:19-20).
The other narrative of man's creation
(Gen. 1:26-30) reports that mankind as male and female is made in God's
image. In the ancient world kings would
set up images of themselves down among the people for them to worship (see Dan.
3). The images were their glory. Here God sets up an image of himself down at the
creature level of existence, not to be worshipped, but to be respected for His
glory (Jas. 3:9). This image of God is
to rule God's earth by subduing it and filling it by procreation.
God put into these narratives observational
data that have immense significance. We
are uniquely designed for a glorious role in the history of the universe. Let's look at some key features in man's
design.
The Unique Design of Mankind. Man's design
is fundamentally related to God's plan for the universe. Want a biblically correct
"self-image"? Lay hold of
these four truths that define the man-nature distinction!
1. Man
is an image of God in both body and spirit. This truth is of central
importance. This truth is the foundation
for all revelation, including the Incarnation of God the Son. Yet it suffers from two opposite
distortions. On one hand, there is the distortion
of Mormonism which holds to the belief that "as man is God once was, and
as God is man one day shall be."
Holding to the traditional pagan notion of the Continuity of Being, Mormonism
erases the Creator-creature distinction.
God the Father, in Mormonism, is not only the archetype of our body but He
actually has a physical body Himself (and procreated children with His
wives!).
On the other hand, to avoid idolatry
Christians usually restrict the "image" to the invisible, immaterial
part of man, leaving it utterly unrelated to the form of the body. As John Pilkey writes:
"No one disputes that the 'image of God' refers to conscience
and reason; but the view that this image has nothing to do with the body is
profoundly erroneous. . . because it
implies that God, in the Creation, failed to harmonize the form of the body
with these faculties.
The enemies of Christianity can sense the futility of this
theological flaw and have exploited it with profound effect. If the form of the human body derives from
any other source except divine faculties, then we might as well say that human
form derives from purely casual causes, unrelated to the ideal mind of God. Darwinism is the logical result, namely, that
God caused the animal and human forms to occur. . .without regard to any
dimension of His own essence."[1]
This is not just a neat philosophical
point. It has directly to do with the
Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. When
God the Son came into the world, He spoke of the human body to the Father,
"A body thou hast prepared for me" (Heb. 10:5). The ancient Church father Tertullian pictured
God at creation bending over His clay as He made man:
"Imagine God wholly employed and
absorbed in it--with his hand, his eye, his labor, his purpose, his wisdom, his
providence, and above all, his love which was dictating the lineaments of this
creature. . . . Whatever was the form and expression which was then given to
the clay by the Creator, Christ was in his thoughts as one day to become
Man, because the Word, too, was to be both clay and flesh. . . ."[2]
Thus
through a human body God could "fully" be contained (Col. 2:9) and
seen (John 14:9). Through a human body,
the Son rules forever (Heb. 1:3). Thus
in his body and spirit man is a theomorphism, utterly unlike any other
creature.
2. Through
his body, man rules nature. Unlike bodiless angels, man's spirit directly
rules nature beginning with that part of the earth that makes up his own
flesh. Thereupon, he can reach out with
his brain, mouth, and hands to name nature and subdue it. No one has put this point more succinctly
than the Medieval theologian Hugo St. Victor:
"The spirit was created for God's
sake, the body for the spirit's sake, and the world for the body's sake; so
that the spirit might be subject to God, the body to the spirit, and the world
to the body."[3]
Man's dominion rule is fulfilled by God
only through the Incarnation in Christ (I Cor. 15:24-28; Heb. 2:5-9). At that future day, man's dominion rule will
extend over even the angels (I Cor. 6:2-3; Heb. 2:5)! All of nature awaits this glorious moment
(Rom. 8:19-22).
Before then, however, every man must be
spiritually perfected through the exercise of ruling, starting with his own flesh
and working outward. Even the sinless
Son of God had to be perfected in this manner of exercising human dominion
(Heb. 2:10; 5:7-9). In the next section
I will use this point in discussing a biblical view of scientific knowledge,
and in later Parts of this framework I will show how it undergirds our
spiritual growth (sanctification). His
dominion role separates man from nature.
3. All
humans are made from Adam's single body. Unlike angels, each of whom are individual
creations, and unlike animals which were created in male-female pairs, mankind
is made from one body. In a unique way,
the woman was taken out of the man. Thus
the genetic composition of the human race originated in that body of clay in
Why the special treatment for man? Because man is central to God's plan of
showing forth His glory. God will one
day need to save men from their sins.
The entire race must be designed to be "redeemable" so that
one Savior can somehow die for the many (Rom. 5:12-19; I Cor 15:21-22). The woman must derive from the man if the man
is to be the central head of the original human race in sin and salvation. Such racial solidarity marks off mankind from
all animals, angels, and pagan concepts of what man is.
4. Man
through his spirit chooses, judges, loves, and knows. The creation
narratives report that the first man was faced with the moral choice of
obedience or disobedience as well as the task of knowing and naming. Far from some grunting primate, the first man
was fully capable of rapid learning (Gen. 2:19), conversing with God (Gen.
2:16-17), and singing a love song (Gen. 2:23). These reports have stunning implications!
Choice, conscience, love, and knowing
reveal the presence of the human spirit.
Man's spirit as part of the image of God is what enables him to be a
responsible, conscious knower (Prov. 1:23; I Cor. 2:11). It provides man with these finite versions of
God's "communicable" (Q)ualities of sovereignty, holiness, love, and
omniscience. Interestingly no one doubts
these qualities exist yet they cannot be measured, touched, tasted, or seen--precisely
the very same features unbelievers claim make them doubt God's existence!
a.
Choice. Because man is created
with his own spirit fashioned in God's image, he can never escape the Presence
of God in the depths of his heart. He
has to submit to Him with a heart of faith and the presupposition of the Word
of God, or he has to rebel against Him with a heart of unbelief and the presupposition
of autonomy. Here is why man, unlike
animals, is held ultimately responsible for his eternal destiny. As the "lord" of nature, man alone
has the (q)uality of choice that corresponds but is not identical to the
(Q)uality of God's
sovereignty.
Regardless of which response he makes,
however, his thoughts and speech will always betray his chosen
presuppositions. As manifestations of
his spirit, man's thoughts and words reveal its basic orientation toward
God. This is why God judges us by our words
(Matt. 12:34-37).
b.
Conscience. Although man
knows that he himself fails, he can never restrain himself from making real
moral judgments ("that is wrong", "you ought to. .
."). These judgments are not intended
merely as opinions or likes and dislikes; they intend to appeal to some
transcendent moral authority. Where is
the authority for such judgments? It
cannot come from experience with nature because whatever is the
state-of-affairs, isn't necessarily what is right. "Rightness" is not an arithmetic mean.[4] Moral authority cannot come from other people
or from society. History shows that
entire societies are judged as wrong.
Only two sources of moral authority for such judgments are
available: the self or God. Whichever is chosen, everyday moral judgments
reveal the chosen authority of man's spirit.
Moral judgments show the human (q)uality
of conscience as derivative of God's (Q)uality of holiness. Being relative to one's spiritual growth and
experience of revelation (I Cor. 8:7; Heb. 5:14), man's moral judgments are not
always correct in content, but they show inherent awareness of the moral
authority of the absolute Person.
c.
Love. Another evidence of
the human spirit made uniquely in God's image is love. Love requires the existence of another human
spirit for it can never be truly exercised apart from a personal
relationship. It is not good that anyone
be alone, even Adam in
Yet the (q)uality of human love can never
be identical to the (Q)uality of God's love.
God's love depends upon nothing in the universe for it pre-existed
creation within His triune nature. Human
love, by contrast, remains fragile, always dependent upon creature
existence. To exist human love requires an
environment in which man's existence is unthreatened so that it is
"safe" to give. This
environment cannot be supplied by the pagan worldview because it has no Infinite
Personal Creator Who loves with sovereignty and omnipotence. Paganism can only produce fear and
self-protective schemes. Real human
love, in other words, presupposes biblical creation and sets man off from nature.
d.
Knowledge. Perhaps the most
studied characteristic of man is his capacity to reason, to think conceptually,
and to speak his thoughts in language.
While pagan thinkers today try very hard to explain human knowledge on
the basis of evolutionary development from animals, the Bible clearly draws a
line between man and the animals in this regard (e.g., note use of aloga meaning
"unreasoning" in II Pet. 2:12).
The (q)uality of knowledge emanates from man's spirit and is a finite
form of the (Q)uality of Omniscience.
Man's other spiritual features of choice,
conscience, and love presuppose knowledge for they could not be exercised
without it (Lk. 1:1-4; Jn. 20:31; Eph. 1:17ff).
Yet it is also true that correct choices, obedience to conscience, and
exercise of authentic love open up knowledge (Jn. 7:17; Eph. 3:17-19). All men take for granted that conscience
controls the knowing process whenever they moralize that one is
"obligated" to accept the truth once it is known.
Human knowledge is similar but not
identical to omniscience. Human
knowledge presupposes a standard of truth; omniscience is its own. Human knowledge presupposes universal truths
(men use the terms "always", "never", etc., and express
their philosophy of life as a totality); omniscience is universal truth. Human knowledge derives from sensory
perception and reasoning; omniscience is independent of both. Human knowledge can imagine things to create
by various tools (language, machines, etc.); omniscience can create
directly. Finally, human knowledge is,
in the final analysis, "circular"; it always depends upon presuppositions
that control its reasoning.
Central to human knowledge is
language. Yet human language is quite
limited as anyone knows who has struggled to express an "impression"
or "intuition". Over the past
century or so, studies have exposed further limitations in human language and the
thought behind it. Evidences consist of
semantic and logical paradoxes, problems with infinity in mathematics, and
multiple geometries each of which isvlogically consistent but which contradicts
the others.[5] Various philosophers and
poets in this century have sought to "get beyond" language in ways
very similar to anti-rational mysticisms of ancient pagan religions.[6]
As with all the other features of man's
spirit, however, language exists at two levels--the level of God and the level
of man. Man's language requires for its
justification a higher, perfectly rational language or in modern terms, an
ultimate "metalanguage", for its validity. Of course, the Bible provides exactly that in
the Second Person of the Trinity as the Word of God Who created, upholds, and
constantly directs the universe (Jn. 1:1-4; Col. 1:16-17; Heb. 1:2-3;
11:1-3). Since within physical creation
only man possesses language and the knowledge expressed in it, the man-nature
distinction is shown again.
In both body and spirit, therefore, man is
uniquely designed in the image of God and set apart from the rest of the
universe.