Anthropology: Biblical Studies

I.                   Introduction

·         Theological Anthropology should be distinguished from Anthropology in general or the science of mankind. Where the latter concern themselves with the origin and history of humankind, with the physiological structure and the psychical characteristics of human being in general and of the various races of mankind in particular, with their ethnological, linguistic, cultural and religious development, and so on, the former is concerned only with what the Bible says respecting man and the relation in which he stands and should stand to God.

·         The transition from Theology proper to Anthropology is a natural one because Human beings are the crown of God’s creation and also the object of God’s special care.

·         Doctrine of humanity has always been the implicit center of Christian faith, not only because it is human beings who “have” Christian faith and who reflect on its meaning in theology, but also because Christian faith focuses on the man Jesus who is the Christ.

·         It is the human beings who receive the revelation of God, understand themselves as creatures and as sinners who have been redeemed by God.

·         Theology deals with the nature of humanity in relation to the question of its ultimate origin, meaning, and destiny, that is, in relation to God, and not just its phenomenal structure as organic and psychic being. This is why it is the revelation of God and not the human sciences which are decisive for the doctrine of humanity.

·         It is only when God is reveled as lord, creator and savior that we know that we are creatures, sinners, and redeemed.

·         Doctrine of humanity has been the subject of explicit debate down through the centuries, yet in the 19^th century with the discoveries of Darwin and Freud there is a revolution in the understanding of humanity, which the church is still assimilating.

·         It was at the heart of the liberal theology of the last century under the influence of Schleiermacher’s concentration on the Christian religious consciousness.

·         The famous debate between Barth and Brunner in the 1930s centered about the concept of the imago dei and the point of contact in humanity for revelation.

·         Bultmann with his use of existential philosophy has once again made the doctrine of humanity central theme of theology. For him mythological statements of the New Testament are assertions about human existence which can best be interpreted by means of the philosophy of Heidegger.

·         Bonhoeffer and his followers however assert that the existentialist understanding of humanity corresponds to a religious stage, which has now been superseded. Humanity has come of age and is able to deal with all its problems, including anxiety and guilt, apart from God. This has led to a renewed emphasis upon the dignity of humanity.

·         Karl Rahner the Roman Catholic theologians developed a unique approach to the doctrine of humanity. Beginning with an analysis of human knowledge they argue that all conscious activity involves both self-knowledge and also an openness to all of reality, to being as such. This means that the human knower is involved with an infinite horizon in an awareness, which is called transcendental experience. It is this transcendental experience, which constitutes humanity as subject, person and spirit. This is a particular form of the fairly common modern theological idea that humanity is constituted by its relation to God.

·         Feminist theologians have argued that throughout Christian history the understanding of humanity has been seen from the point of view of male experience, interests and concerns, and has thus neglected half the human race. Human nature has been understood from the perspective of male stereotypes of what is natural, virtuous and sinful and therefore has been seriously distorted.

II.                Origin of Human Being

·         Every thoughtful person is confronted with the question of his/her origin i.e. the origin of one’s being, one’s personality etc…

·         In the modern times, the Scriptural belief on creation narratives has not gone unchallenged.

·         The theory of evolution propounded by Charles Darwin as a scientific theory has questioned the authenticity of the account of creation especially of human being in the book of Genesis.

·         The theory of Evolution

1. Darwin tried to prove that human being evolved from the lower strata of simple life through a long process of development over million of years. For example tadpole, bat (mammals but fly), flying fish, monkeys drop their tail to lead to the apes stage and from apes human beings seems to have emerged from quadruped to biped living creatures.
2. Evolution just does not mean change. It is the theory that new types arise from preceding types, the more complex forms appearing as the descendents of the simpler ones, so that all living things bear a relationship to one another, is called the theory of organic evolution.
3. The theory of evolution is a complex idea. It states that all living things are related to one another because all came from the same common ancestor far back in geological times. It states that new species arose from preceding species of plants and animals that were simpler, that this has been happening since plants and animals first existed on this earth, and that it is still going on.
4. The various arguments put forth by the evolutionists are:

Ø  Comparative Anatomy: This is the argument for the structural similarity between man and the higher animals. This according to them is proof enough for evolution. However, Gerd Theissen asks, “if man and animals partake of the same food, same air, and have the same environment as other creatures, should not the lungs, digestive tract, skin, eyes and so forth, be similar?” According to him “similarity in anatomy suggests a common creator, not one creature springing from another. Two symphonies by one composer might be expected to have some marked similarities.” According to Louis Berkhof, “it can very well be accounted for by the assumption that God in creating the animal world made certain typical forms basic throughout, so as to have unity in variety, just as a great musician builds up his mighty composition on a single theme, which is repeated time and again, and at each repetition introduces new variations.

Ø  Vestigial Organs/ Rudimentary Organs: Organs like tonsils, appendix, and thymus gland, which, according to the evolutionist, were useful to our supposedly more primitive ancestors, have now in human being have actually become useless. Of late, however, the scientists are recognizing the usefulness of the organs also.

Ø  Embryology: The argument here is that the human fetus develops through various stages which are parallel to the alleged evolutionary process, from a one-celled organism to an adult species, but a closer study of the human embryo has revealed that there are dissimilarities in the chronology of the evolutionary process as propounded by the evolutionists. For example: the earthworm which has circulation, but no heart suggests that it should be circulation first and heart later even in human beings, but the reverse is actually true to human beings. It is the heart first and then the circulation

Ø  Bio-Chemistry and the Blood tests: All living organisms are of a similar bio-chemical makeup. Though originally there were some likeness but they did not any way prove their genetic relationship. For the tests actually the sterile drum which contains no living matter, was uses, while it is an established fact that the solid portion of the blood, containing the red and white cells, is the carrier of hereditary factors. Later tests, in which the spectroscope was called into use and the entire blood was examined, conclusively proved that there is an essential difference between the blood of animals and that of man.

Ø  Paleontology: According to this argument, evidence for various kinds of life in the form of fossils is found in the various rock strata, which actually are ancient probably belonging to the Stone Age millions of years ago. Fossils are remains – imprints, traces petrified or actual forms – of ancient plants or animals preserved through the ages in rocks, tar pits, or frozen tundra. While strata of rocks are often upturned twisted and contorted from their original layered appearance, scientists have been able to arrange them in the order in which they were deposited and thus to form the geologic timetable, which reveals the order of development of evolution, of plants and animals.” The evolutionists however fail to account for the intermediate forms, which would have been in existence at some point of time. They were however not able to find this missing links any more than the thousands of missing link between the various species of animals.

Ø  Genetics: This is the study of heredity and variations among related organisms. Even here evolution has failed to authentically prove that we belong to the lineage of beasts. Though mutation is fact but the trans-mutation is now considered to be impossibility.

5. The evolutionist says that all of the living forms found today have been produced from one common ancestor. Thus Darwin’s theory though is an attempt to explain the development of life, yet it does not explain how life came into existence and how consciousness evolved.
6. Though claims of a certain amount of change in the past can be accepted, but there is no convincing evidence to support the theory that there has been this much change.
7. Moreover, according to the laws of thermodynamics everything that exists is some form of energy. This energy is a constant, i.e. it does not increase or decrease in its quantity. So no one can create anything new. It also maintains that the second law of thermodynamics shows that no one can change to another more complex form of life, for the change is always from the complex to the simple and from order to disorder.
8. Thus the theory of Evolution is found replete with inconsistencies. Natural science therefore is compelled to acknowledge an intelligent will and purpose at work in the act of creation.
9. There are however, Theistic evolutionists teach that human being are evolved from a lower form
10. Some evolutionists suggest that the human body developed through a long evolutionary process, but God broke into the process and directly created the soul, bringing man into being.
11. There are some others who suggest that Adam was one among many contemporaries and that God conferred his image on Adam’s collaterals as well as on Adam; thus Adam’s federal headship extended to his contemporaries as well as to his offspring.

·          Scriptural account of the creation of Human Beings

1. Scripture offers us a two fold account of the creation of human beings, the one in Gen. 1:26,27, and the other in Gen. 2:7,21-23.
2. Higher criticism is of the opinion that the writer of Genesis pieced together two creation narratives, the first found in Gen.1:1 – 2:3, and the second in Gen. 2:4-25; and that these two are independent and contradictory.
3. Berkhof however is of the view, that the first narrative contains the account of the creation of all things in the order in which it occurred, while the second groups things in their relation to human being, without implying anything respecting the chronological order of man’s appearance in the creative work of God, and clearly indicates that everything preceding it served to prepare a fit habitation for human being as the ruler of creation. It shows us how human beings are situated in God’s creation, surrounded by the vegetable and animal world, and how he began his history.
4. Certain particular where the creation of human being stands out in distinction from that of other living beings:

Ø  The creation of human being was in the strictest sense of the word an immediate act of God

Ø  In distinction from the lower creatures’ human being were created after a divine type i.e. in the divine image.

Ø  The two different elements of human nature are clearly distinguished. In Gen. 2:7 a clear distinction is made between the origin of the body and that of the soul. The body was formed out of the dust of the ground; in the production of it God made use of pre-existing material. The soul of man was a new production of God. The two elements are the body and the breath or spirit of life breathed into it by God, and by the combination of the two, human being became “a living soul,” which means in this connection simply “a living being.” Ecl. 12:7; Mat 10:28; Luke 8:55; II Cor. 5:1-8; Phil. 1:22-24; Heb. 12:9. etc. 1 Thess. 5:23 however, recognize soul as another constituent part of human being. The belief in this third constituent part of human being is to express the belief that death is not the end. It is not non-existence but we continue to live though without the physical body.

III.             The Image of God

·         The imago Dei, image of God in human being, is first mentioned in Scripture in connection of their creation on the sixth and final day of creation. “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them...” (Genesis 1:27,28). Some think it merely consists in dominion over the creatures, but such an interpretation is severely restrictive. It is far more than that. Human being in the image of God; what does this mean in practical terms? It cannot refer to bodily, biological form since God is a Spirit and human being is earthly.

·         The main impact of the image is that God endues man with some of his divine attributes, thereby separating and making him different from the beasts.

·         God is creator, the great planner of the universe. He brought his plan to a triumphant conclusion when he saw everything that he had made and pronounced it good. God made man and woman a ‘them’; ‘male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number’ (Genesis 1:27-28). So God has given to men and women the ability to procreate new beings in his image, little humans with bodies and minds.

·         We have an insatiable desire to be creative, an urge increasingly emphasized (perhaps overemphasized) in schools, and recognized even by business management. An industrialist writes, ‘There is more stability among garage mechanics, to whom every repair job is different, who meets the customer, who sees the job through, who has the satisfaction of putting the car on the road again, than there is in the motor production line where the whole job has been deskilled and where the machine, in the form of the line, dominates the man who does nothing but turn a nut with a spanner every hour of every day of every week of every year’.

·         Animals are not creative. They endlessly reproduce a stereotyped design. A particular spider constructs a web of constant pattern. The song of a bird is species specific, or mimicry of another bird or human. No originality is demonstrated.

·         Man alone can reason and act upon his original thoughts. John Steinbeck puts it this way: ‘The last clear function of man-muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—that is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house, the dam: to take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from the conceiving. For man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments … . And this you can know—fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.’ Scientists would agree. They consider the ability to use tools and tame fire the hallmark of Homo sapiens.

·         Adam was created only a little lower than God (Psalm 8:5), as a free spiritual being. A responsible moral agent with a thinking mind and powers of choice and action, able to commune with God and respond to him, he could love and worship God—or if not, as he chose. Man could rebel against God. And the tragedy for the human race is that Adam and his wife, tempted by the serpent, did just that. Man, with such a golden start, used his freedom to turn against his Creator.

·         Man now misinterprets freedom as independence. Satan’s lie was to trick man into believing that to be independent of God was to be ‘free’. But there is no such thing as freedom. We are all slaves, either to Christ or to Satan.

·         Since the Fall, man remains a free agent in the sense that his decisions and conduct proceed from his inner character and not from external constraint. But because his very nature is now sinful, his decisions and acts are sinful too. When we do a wrong it is because we have been tempted by our evil desire, ‘and desire, when it is conceived gives is birth to sin’ (James 1:14-15). Our best good is defective in the sight of God. Even our righteous deeds are as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6), for a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit (Matthew 7:18). No wonder that Paul cried out, ‘I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature. For I have a desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out … .What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death?’(Romans 7:18-19; 24)

·         Man desperately desires freedom. But often he seeks it in the wrong place. The proliferation of new nations in Africa followed the desire to be free from the yoke of colonialism. But one tyranny has often been exchanged for another. University students in the seventies thought freedom came from chanting four-letter words through a megaphone. In the eighties they seek transient freedom through alcohol and drugs. Civil liberty campaigners demand freedom from censorship, easier divorce, woman’s rights, gay liberation and the like.

·         Only Christ can set men and women free: ‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us free’ (Galatians 5:1) (John 8:16). In this verse the combination of the noun and verb stresses the completeness of what has been done—free once and for all time. Vine comments, ‘The phraseology is that of a manumission (freeing) from slavery, which among the Greeks was effected by a legal fiction, according to which the manumitted slave was purchased by a god. As the slave could not provide the money, the master paid it into the temple Treasury in the presence of the slave, a document being drawn up containing the words ‘for freedom’. No one could enslave him again. He was the property of the god’. So Paul was able to call him ‘the Lord’s freeman’ (1 Corinthians 7:22; 9:1). Recently I saw a poignant car sticker, ‘Why does freedom cost so much?’ The cost was nothing less than the death of the Son of God. No wonder Peter says, ‘You, my brothers were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge your sinful nature’ (1 Peter 2:16).

·         Modern man has got it all wrong. Freedom is liberty, not libertinism. We are called ‘into the glorious liberty of the children of God’ (Romans 8:2). Adam was created free but became enslaved to sin. All men and women since have been in bondage. Christ came to set men free, ‘Whose service is perfect freedom’. The yearning for freedom is part of the image. It remains unsatisfied unless the slave is redeemed by Christ.

·         Therefore, the image of God in man is basically moral and spiritual: this is indicated in Colossians 3:10, "And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." In conjunction we may add Ephesians 4:24, "And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness."

·         As originally created, man was endowed with knowledge, righteousness and holiness. By his sin man was deprived of these virtues, but through Christ he is renewed and restored to his pristine glory, nay more than that.

·         To confirm this definition of the image, I point out that Adam, after the fall, is said to have had children after his image, meaning, that he had sinful offspring, just as he was sinful. So the image of God in man is essentially man being a reflection of God in his spiritually pure character.

·         The Fall diminished God’s image, not only in Adam and Eve, but in all their descendants, the whole human race. We retain the image structurally, in the sense that we remain human beings, but not functionally, for we are now slaved to sin, unable to use our powers to mirror God’s holiness. Regeneration begins the process of restoring God’s moral image in our lives. But not until we are fully sanctified and glorified shall we reflect God perfectly in thought and action as we were made to do and as the incarnate Son of God in His humanity actually did (John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38; 8:29,46)

Image Source: https://manna.amazingfacts.org/amazingfacts/website/medialibrary/images/mediascreenshots/creation-of-man.jpg

Posted in: Anthropology,Biblical Studies,man