Chapter II. The Original State Of Man.
In determining man's original state, we are wholly dependent upon Scripture. This represents human nature as coming from God's hand, and therefore “very good” (Gen. 1:31). It moreover draws a parallel between man's first state and that of his restoration (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24). In interpreting these passages, however, we are to remember the twofold danger, on the one hand of putting man so high that no progress is conceivable, on the other hand of putting him so low that he could not fall. We shall the more easily avoid these dangers by distinguishing between the essentials and the incidents of man's original state.
Gen. 1:31—“And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good”; Col. 3:10—“the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him”; Eph. 4:24—“the new man that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.”
Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:337-399—“The original state must be (1) a contrast to sin; (2) a parallel to the state of restoration. Difficulties in the way of understanding it: (1) What lives in regeneration is something foreign to our present nature (‘it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me’—Gal. 2:20); but the original state was something native. (2) It was a state of childhood. We cannot fully enter into childhood, though we see it about us, and have ourselves been through it. The original state is yet more difficult to reproduce to reason. (3) Man's external circumstances and his organization have suffered great changes, so that the present is no sign of the past. We must recur to the Scriptures, therefore, as well-nigh our only guide.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:164-195, points out that ideal perfection is to be looked for, not at the outset, but at the final stage of the spiritual life. If man were wholly finite, he would not know his finitude.
Lord Bacon: “The sparkle of the purity of man's first estate.” Calvin: “It was monstrous impiety that a son of the earth should not be satisfied with being made after the similitude of God, unless he could also be equal with him.” Prof. Hastings: “The truly natural is not the real, but the ideal. Made in the image of God—between that beginning and the end stands God made in the image of man.” On the general subject of man's original state, see Zöckler, 3:283-290; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:215-243; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:267-276; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 374-375; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:92-116.
I. Essentials of Man's Original State.
These are summed up in the phrase “the image of God.” In God's image man is said to have been created (Gen. 1:26, 27). In what did this image of God consist? We reply that it consisted in 1. Natural likeness to God, or personality; 2. Moral likeness to God, or holiness.
Gen. 1:26, 27—“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.... And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.” It is of great importance to distinguish clearly between the two elements embraced in this image of God, the natural and the moral. By virtue of the first, man possessed certain faculties (intellect, affection, will); by virtue of the second, he had right tendencies (bent, proclivity, disposition). By virtue of the first, he was invested with certain powers; by virtue of the second, a certain direction was imparted to these powers. As created in the natural image of God, man had a moral nature; as created in the moral image of God, man had a holy character. The first gave him natural ability; the second gave him moral ability. The Greek [pg 515]Fathers emphasized the first element, or personality; the Latin Fathers emphasized the second element, or holiness. See Orr, God's Image in Man.
As the Logos, or divine Reason, Christ Jesus, dwells in humanity and constitutes the principle of its being, humanity shares with Christ in the image of God. That image is never wholly lost. It is completely restored in sinners when the Spirit of Christ gains control of their wills and they merge their life in his. To those who accused Jesus of blasphemy, he replied by quoting the words of Psalm 82:6—“I said, Ye are gods”—words spoken of imperfect earthly rulers. Thus, in John 10:34-36, Jesus, who constitutes the very essence of humanity, justifies his own claim to divinity by showing that even men who represent God are also in a minor sense “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). Hence the many legends, in heathen religions, of the divine descent of man. 1 Cor. 11:3—“the head of every man is Christ.” In every man, even the most degraded, there is an image of God to be brought out, as Michael Angelo saw the angel in the rough block of marble. This natural worth does not imply worthiness; it implies only capacity for redemption. “The abysmal depths of personality,” which Tennyson speaks of, are sounded, as man goes down in thought successively from individual sins to sin of the heart and to race-sin. But “the deeper depth is out of reach To all, O God, but thee.” From this deeper depth, where man is rooted and grounded in God, rise aspirations for a better life. These are not due to the man himself, but to Christ, the immanent God, who ever works within him. Fanny J. Crosby: “Rescue the perishing, Care for the dying.... Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, Feelings lie buried that grace can restore; Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness, Chords that were broken will vibrate once more.”
1. Natural likeness to God, or personality.
Man was created a personal being, and was by this personality distinguished from the brute. By personality we mean the twofold power to know self as related to the world and to God, and to determine self in view of moral ends. By virtue of this personality, man could at his creation choose which of the objects of his knowledge—self, the world, or God—should be the norm and centre of his development. This natural likeness to God is inalienable, and as constituting a capacity for redemption gives value to the life even of the unregenerate (Gen. 9:6; 1 Cor. 11:7; James 3:9).
For definitions of personality, see notes on the Anthropological Argument, page 82; on Pantheism, pages 104, 105; on the Attributes, pages 252-254; and on the Person of Christ, in Part VI. Here we may content ourselves with the formula: Personality = self-consciousness + self-determination. Self-consciousness and self-determination, as distinguished from the consciousness and determination of the brute, involve all the higher mental and moral powers which constitute us men. Conscience is but a mode of their activity. Notice that the term “image” does not, in man, imply perfect representation. Only Christ is the “very image” of God (Heb. 1:3), the “image of the invisible God”(Col. 1:15—on which see Lightfoot). Christ is the image of God absolutely and archetypally; man, only relatively and derivatively. But notice also that, since God is Spirit, man made in God's image cannot be a material thing. By virtue of his possession of this first element of the image of God, namely, personality, materialism is excluded.
This first element of the divine image man can never lose until he ceases to be man. Even insanity can only obscure this natural image,—it cannot destroy it. St. Bernard well said that it could not be burned out, even in hell. The lost piece of money (Luke 15:8) still bore the image and superscription of the king, even though it did not know it, and did not even know that it was lost. Human nature is therefore to be reverenced, and he who destroys human life is to be put to death: Gen. 9:6—“for in the image of God made he man”; 1 Cor. 11:7—“a man indeed ought not to have his head veiled, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God”; James 3:9—even men whom we curse “are made after the likeness of God”; cf. Ps. 8:5—“thou hast made him but little lower than God”; 1 Pet. 2:17—“Honor all men.” In the being of every man are continents which no Columbus has ever yet discovered, depths of possible joy or sorrow which no plummet has ever yet sounded. A whole heaven, a whole hell, may lie within the compass of his single soul. If we could see the meanest real Christian as he will be in the great hereafter, we should bow before him as John bowed before the angel in the Apocalypse, for we should not be able to distinguish him from God (Rev. 22:8, 9).
[pg 516]Sir William Hamilton: “On earth there is nothing great but man; In man there is nothing great but mind.” We accept this dictum only if “mind” can be understood to include man's moral powers together with the right direction of those powers. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2:2—“What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!” Pascal: “Man is greater than the universe; the universe may crush him, but it does not know that it crushes him.”Whiton, Gloria Patri, 94—“God is not only the Giver but the Sharer of my life. My natural powers are that part of God's power which is lodged with me in trust to keep and use.” Man can be an instrument of God, without being an agent of God. “Each man has his place and value as a reflection of God and of Christ. Like a letter in a word, or a word in a sentence, he gets his meaning from his context; but the sentence is meaningless without him; rays from the whole universe converge in him.” John Howe's Living Temple shows the greatness of human nature in its first construction and even in its ruin. Only a noble ship could make so great a wreck. Aristotle, Problem, sec. 30—“No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.” Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi, 15—“There is no great genius without a tincture of madness.”
Kant: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end, and never as a means only.” If there is a divine element in every man, then we have no right to use a human being merely for our own pleasure or profit. In receiving him we receive Christ, and in receiving Christ we receive him who sent Christ (Mat. 10:40). Christ is the vine and all men are his natural branches, cutting themselves off only when they refuse to bear fruit, and condemning themselves to the burning only because they destroy, so far as they can destroy, God's image in them, all that makes them worth preserving (John 15:1-6). Cicero: “Homo mortalis deus.” This possession of natural likeness to God, or personality, involves boundless possibilities of good or ill, and it constitutes the natural foundation of the love for man which is required of us by the law. Indeed it constitutes the reason why Christ should die. Man was worth redeeming. The woman whose ring slipped from her finger and fell into the heap of mud in the gutter, bared her white arm and thrust her hand into the slimy mass until she found her ring; but she would not have done this if the ring had not contained a costly diamond. The lost piece of money, the lost sheep, the lost son, were worth effort to seek and to save (Luke 15). But, on the other hand, it is folly when man, made in the image of God, “blinds himself with clay.” The man on shipboard, who playfully tossed up the diamond ring which contained his whole fortune, at last to his distress tossed it overboard. There is a “merchandise of souls”(Rev. 18:13) and we must not juggle with them.
Christ's death for man, by showing the worth of humanity, has recreated ethics. “Plato defended infanticide as under certain circumstances permissible. Aristotle viewed slavery as founded in the nature of things. The reason assigned was the essential inferiority of nature on the part of the enslaved.” But the divine image in man makes these barbarities no longer possible to us. Christ sometimes looked upon men with anger, but he never looked upon them with contempt. He taught the woman, he blessed the child, he cleansed the leper, he raised the dead. His own death revealed the infinite worth of the meanest human soul, and taught us to count all men as brethren for whose salvation we may well lay down our lives. George Washington answered the salute of his slave. Abraham Lincoln took off his hat to a negro who gave him his blessing as he entered Richmond; but a lady who had been brought up under the old regime looked from a window upon the scene with unspeakable horror. Robert Burns, walking with a nobleman in Edinburgh, met an old townsfellow from Ayr and stopped to talk with him. The nobleman, kept waiting, grew restive, and afterward reproved Burns for talking to a man with so bad a coat. Burns replied: “I was not talking to the coat,—I was talking to the man.” Jean Ingelow: “The street and market place Grow holy ground: each face—Pale faces marked with care, Dark, toilworn brows—grows fair. King's children are all these, though want and sin Have marred their beauty, glorious within. We may not pass them but with reverent eye.” See Porter, Human Intellect, 393, 394, 401; Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 2:42; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:343.
2. Moral likeness to God, or holiness.
In addition to the powers of self-consciousness and self-determination just mentioned, man was created with such a direction of the affections and [pg 517] the will, as constituted God the supreme end of man's being, and constituted man a finite reflection of God's moral attributes. Since holiness is the fundamental attribute of God, this must of necessity be the chief attribute of his image in the moral beings whom he creates. That original righteousness was essential to this image, is also distinctly taught in Scripture (Eccl. 7:29; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10).
Besides the possession of natural powers, the image of God involves the possession of right moral tendencies. It is not enough to say that man was created in a state of innocence. The Scripture asserts that man had a righteousness like God's: Eccl. 7:29—“God made man upright”; Eph. 4:24—“the new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth”—here Meyer says: “κατὰ Θεόν, ‘after God,’ i. e., ad exemplum Dei, after the pattern of God (Gal. 4:28—κατὰ Ἰσαάκ, ‘after Isaac’ = as Isaac was). This phrase makes the creation of the new man a parallel to that of our first parents, who were created after God's image; they too, before sin came into existence through Adam, were sinless—‘in righteousness and holiness of truth.’ ” On N. T. “truth” = rectitude, see Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1:257-260.
Meyer refers also, as a parallel passage, to Col. 3:10—“the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him.” Here the “knowledge” referred to is that knowledge of God which is the source of all virtue, and which is inseparable from holiness of heart. “Holiness has two sides or phases: (1) it is perception and knowledge; (2) it is inclination and feeling” (Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:97). On Eph. 4:24 and Col. 3:10, the classical passages with regard to man's original state, see also the Commentaries of DeWette, Rückert, Ellicott, and compare Gen. 5:3—“And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image,” i. e., in his own sinful likeness, which is evidently contrasted with the “likeness of God” (verse 1) in which he himself had been created (An. Par. Bible). 2 Cor. 4:4—“Christ, who is the image of God”—where the phrase “image of God” is not simply the natural, but also the moral, image. Since Christ is the image of God primarily in his holiness, man's creation in the image of God must have involved a holiness like Christ's, so far as such holiness could belong to a being yet untried, that is, so far as respects man's tastes and dispositions prior to moral action.
“Couldst thou in vision see Thyself the man God meant, Thou nevermore couldst be The man thou art—content.” Newly created man had right moral tendencies, as well as freedom from actual fault. Otherwise the communion with God described in Genesis would not have been possible. Goethe: “Unless the eye were sunlike, how could it see the sun?” Because a holy disposition accompanied man's innocence, he was capable of obedience, and was guilty when he sinned. The loss of this moral likeness to God was the chief calamity of the Fall. Man is now “the glory and the scandal of the universe.” He has defaced the image of God in his nature, even though that image, in its natural aspect, is ineffaceable (E. H. Johnson).
The dignity of human nature consists, not so much in what man is, as in what God meant him to be, and in what God means him yet to become, when the lost image of God is restored by the union of man's soul with Christ. Because of his future possibilities, the meanest of mankind is sacred. The great sin of the second table of the decalogue is the sin of despising our fellow man. To cherish contempt for others can have its root only in idolatry of self and rebellion against God. Abraham Lincoln said well that “God must have liked common people,—else he would not have made so many of them.” Regard for the image of God in man leads also to kind and reverent treatment even of those lower animals in which so many human characteristics are foreshadowed. Bradford, Heredity and Christian Problems, 166—“The current philosophy says: The fittest will survive; let the rest die. The religion of Christ says: That maxim as applied to men is just, only as regards their characteristics, of which indeed only the fittest should survive. It does not and cannot apply to the men themselves, since all men, being children of God, are supremely fit. The very fact that a human being is sick, weak, poor, an outcast, and a vagabond, is the strongest possible appeal for effort toward his salvation. Let individuals look upon humanity from the point of view of Christ, and they will not be long in finding ways in which environment can be caused to work for righteousness.”
This original righteousness, in which the image of God chiefly consisted, is to be viewed:
[pg 518](a) Not as constituting the substance or essence of human nature,—for in this case human nature would have ceased to exist as soon as man sinned.
Men every day change their tastes and loves, without changing the essence or substance of their being. When sin is called a “nature,” therefore (as by Shedd, in his Essay on “Sin a Nature, and that Nature Guilt”), it is only in the sense of being something inborn (natura, from nascor). Hereditary tastes may just as properly be denominated a “nature” as may the substance of one's being. Moehler, the greatest modern Roman Catholic critic of Protestant doctrine, in his Symbolism, 58, 59, absurdly holds Luther to have taught that by the Fall man lost his essential nature, and that another essence was substituted in its room. Luther, however, is only rhetorical when he says: “It is the nature of man to sin; sin constitutes the essence of man; the nature of man since the Fall has become quite changed; original sin is that very thing which is born of father and mother; the clay out of which we are formed is damnable; the fœtus in the maternal womb is sin; man as born of his father and mother, together with his whole essence and nature, is not only a sinner but sin itself.”
(b) Nor as a gift from without, foreign to human nature, and added to it after man's creation,—for man is said to have possessed the divine image by the fact of creation, and not by subsequent bestowal.
As men, since Adam, are born with a sinful nature, that is, with tendencies away from God, so Adam was created with a holy nature, that is, with tendencies toward God. Moehler says: “God cannot give a man actions.” We reply: “No, but God can give man dispositions; and he does this at the first creation, as well as at the new creation (regeneration).”
(c) But rather, as an original direction or tendency of man's affections and will, still accompanied by the power of evil choice, and so, differing from the perfected holiness of the saints, as instinctive affection and child-like innocence differ from the holiness that has been developed and confirmed by experience of temptation.
Man's original righteousness was not immutable or indefectible; there was still the possibility of sinning. Though the first man was fundamentally good, he still had the power of choosing evil. There was a bent of the affections and will toward God, but man was not yet confirmed in holiness. Man's love for God was like the germinal filial affection in the child, not developed, yet sincere—“caritas puerilis, non virilis.”
(d) As a moral disposition, moreover, which was propagable to Adam's descendants, if it continued, and which, though lost to him and to them, if Adam sinned, would still leave man possessed of a natural likeness to God which made him susceptible of God's redeeming grace.
Hooker (Works, ed. Keble, 2:683) distinguishes between aptness and ableness. The latter, men have lost; the former, they retain,—else grace could not work in us, more than in the brutes. Hase: “Only enough likeness to God remained to remind man of what he had lost, and enable him to feel the hell of God's forsaking.” The moral likeness to God can be restored, but only by God himself. God secures this to men by making “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, ... dawn upon them” (2 Cor. 4:4). Pusey made Ps. 72:6—“He will come down like rain upon the mown grass”—the image of a world hopelessly dead, but with a hidden capacity for receiving life. Dr. Daggett: “Man is a ‘son of the morning’ (Is. 14:12), fallen, yet arrested midway between heaven and hell, a prize between the powers of light and darkness.” See Edwards, Works, 2:19, 20, 381-390; Hopkins, Works, 1:162; Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:50-66; Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 14:11.
In the light of the preceding investigation, we may properly estimate two theories of man's original state which claim to be more Scriptural and reasonable:
A. The image of God as including only personality.
[pg 519]This theory denies that any positive determination to virtue inhered originally in man's nature, and regards man at the beginning as simply possessed of spiritual powers, perfectly adjusted to each other. This is the view of Schleiermacher, who is followed by Nitzsch, Julius Müller, and Hofmann.
For the view here combated, see Schleiermacher, Christl. Glaube, sec. 60; Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine, 201; Julius Müller, Doct. of Sin, 2:113-133, 350-357; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:287-291; Bib. Sac., 7:409-425. Julius Müller's theory of the Fall in a preëxistent state makes it impossible for him to hold here that Adam was possessed of moral likeness to God. The origin of his view of the image of God renders it liable to suspicion. Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 113—“The original state of man was that of child-like innocence or morally indifferent naturalness, which had in itself indeed the possibility (Anlage) of ideal development, but in such a way that its realization could be reached only by struggle with its natural opposite. The image of God was already present in the original state, but only as the possibility (Anlage) of real likeness to God—the endowment of reason which belonged to human personality. The reality of a spirit like that of God has appeared first in the second Adam, and has become the principle of the kingdom of God.”
Raymond (Theology, 2:43, 132) is an American representative of the view that the image of God consists in mere personality: “The image of God in which man was created did not consist in an inclination and determination of the will to holiness.”This is maintained upon the ground that such a moral likeness to God would have rendered it impossible for man to fall,—to which we reply that Adam's righteousness was not immutable, and the bias of his will toward God did not render it impossible for him to sin. Motives do not compel the will, and Adam at least had a certain power of contrary choice. E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 119-122, also maintains that the image of God signified only that personality which distinguished man from the brute. Christ, he says, carries forward human nature to a higher point, instead of merely restoring what is lost. “Very good” (Gen. 1:31) does not imply moral perfection,—this cannot be the result of creation, but only of discipline and will. Man's original state was only one of untried innocence. Dr. Robinson is combating the view that the first man was at his creation possessed of a developed character. He distinguishes between character and the germs of character. These germs he grants that man possessed. And so he defines the image of God as a constitutional predisposition toward a course of right conduct. This is all the perfection which we claim for the first man. We hold that this predisposition toward the good can properly be called character, since it is the germ from which all holy action springs.
In addition to what has already been said in support of the opposite view, we may urge against this theory the following objections:
(a) It is contrary to analogy, in making man the author of his own holiness; our sinful condition is not the product of our individual wills, nor is our subsequent condition of holiness the product of anything but God's regenerating power.
To hold that Adam was created undecided, would make man, as Philippi says, in the highest sense his own creator. But morally, as well as physically, man is God's creature. In regeneration it is not sufficient for God to give power to decide for good; God must give new love also. If this be so in the new creation, God could give love in the first creation also. Holiness therefore is creatable. “Underived holiness is possible only in God; in its origin, it is given both to angels and men.” Therefore we pray: “Create in me a clean heart” (Ps. 51:10); “Incline my heart unto thy testimonies” (Ps. 119:36). See Edwards, Eff. Grace, sec. 43-51; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 290—“If Adam's perfection was not a moral perfection, then his sin was no real moral corruption.” The animus of the theory we are combating seems to be an unwillingness to grant that man, either in his first creation or in his new creation, owes his holiness to God.
(b) The knowledge of God in which man was originally created logically presupposes a direction toward God of man's affections and will, since only the holy heart can have any proper understanding of the God of holiness.
[pg 520]“Ubi caritas, ibi claritas.” Man's heart was originally filled with divine love, and out of this came the knowledge of God. We know God only as we love him, and this love comes not from our own single volition. No one loves by command, because no one can give himself love. In Adam love was an inborn impulse, which he could affirm or deny. Compare 1 Cor. 8:3—“if any man loveth God, the same [God] is known by him”; 1 John 4:8—“He that loveth not knoweth not God.” See other Scripture references on pages 3, 4.
(c) A likeness to God in mere personality, such as Satan also possesses, comes far short of answering the demands of the Scripture, in which the ethical conception of the divine nature so overshadows the merely natural. The image of God must be, not simply ability to be like God, but actual likeness.
God could never create an intelligent being evenly balanced between good and evil—“on the razor's edge”—“on the fence.” The preacher who took for his text “Adam, where art thou?” had for his first head: “It is every man's business to be somewhere;”for his second: “Some of you are where you ought not to be;” and for his third: “Get where you ought to be, as soon as possible.” A simple capacity for good or evil is, as Augustine says, already sinful. A man who is neutral between good and evil is already a violator of that law, which requires likeness to God in the bent of his nature. Delitzsch, Bib. Psychol., 45-84—“Personality is only the basis of the divine image,—it is not the image itself.” Bledsoe says there can be no created virtue or viciousness. Whedon (On the Will, 388) objects to this, and says rather: “There can be no created moral desert, good or evil. Adam's nature as created was pure and excellent, but there was nothing meritorious until he had freely and rightly exercised his will with full power to the contrary.” We add: There was nothing meritorious even then. For substance of these objections, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:346. Lessing said that the character of the Germans was to have no character. Goethe partook of this cosmopolitan characterlessness (Prof. Seely). Tennyson had Goethe in view when he wrote in The Palace of Art: “I sit apart, holding no form of creed, but contemplating all.”And Goethe is probably still alluded to in the words: “A glorious devil, large in heart and brain, That did love beauty only, Or if good, good only for its beauty”; see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 331; Robert Browning, Christmas Eve: “The truth in God's breast Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed: Though he is so bright, and we so dim, We are made in his image to witness him.”
B. The image of God as consisting simply in man's natural capacity for religion.
This view, first elaborated by the scholastics, is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. It distinguishes between the image and the likeness of God. The former (צלם—Gen. 1:26) alone belonged to man's nature at its creation. The latter (דמות) was the product of his own acts of obedience. In order that this obedience might be made easier and the consequent likeness to God more sure, a third element was added—an element not belonging to man's nature—namely, a supernatural gift of special grace, which acted as a curb upon the sensuous impulses, and brought them under the control of reason. Original righteousness was therefore not a natural endowment, but a joint product of man's obedience and of God's supernatural grace.
Roman Catholicism holds that the white paper of man's soul received two impressions instead of one. Protestantism sees no reason why both impressions should not have been given at the beginning. Kaftan, in Am. Jour. Theology, 4:708, gives a good statement of the Roman Catholic view. It holds that the supreme good transcends the finite mind and its powers of comprehension. Even at the first it was beyond man's created nature. The donum superadditum did not inwardly and personally belong to him. Now that he has lost it, he is entirely dependent on the church for truth and grace. He does not receive the truth because it is this and no other, but because the church tells him that it is the truth.
[pg 521]The Roman Catholic doctrine may be roughly and pictorially stated as follows: As created, man was morally naked, or devoid of positive righteousness (pura naturalia, or in puris naturalibus). By obedience he obtained as a reward from God (donum supernaturale, or superadditum) a suit of clothes or robe of righteousness to protect him, so that he became clothed (vestitus). This suit of clothes, however, was a sort of magic spell of which he could be divested. The adversary attacked him and stripped him of his suit. After his sin he was one despoiled (spoliatus). But his condition after differed from his condition before this attack, only as a stripped man differs from a naked man (spoliatus a nudo). He was now only in the same state in which he was created, with the single exception of the weakness he might feel as the result of losing his customary clothing. He could still earn himself another suit,—in fact, he could earn two or more, so as to sell, or give away, what he did not need for himself. The phrase in puris naturalibus describes the original state, as the phrase spoliatus a nudodescribes the difference resulting from man's sin.
Many of the considerations already adduced apply equally as arguments against this view. We may say, however, with reference to certain features peculiar to the theory:
(a) No such distinction can justly be drawn between the words צלם and דםות. The addition of the synonym simply strengthens the expression, and both together signify “the very image.”
(b) Whatever is denoted by either or both of these words was bestowed upon man in and by the fact of creation, and the additional hypothesis of a supernatural gift not originally belonging to man's nature, but subsequently conferred, has no foundation either here or elsewhere in Scripture. Man is said to have been created in the image and likeness of God, not to have been afterwards endowed with either of them.
(c) The concreated opposition between sense and reason which this theory supposes is inconsistent with the Scripture declaration that the work of God's hands “was very good” (Gen. 1:31), and transfers the blame of temptation and sin from man to God. To hold to a merely negative innocence, in which evil desire was only slumbering, is to make God author of sin by making him author of the constitution which rendered sin inevitable.
(d) This theory directly contradicts Scripture by making the effect of the first sin to have been a weakening but not a perversion of human nature, and the work of regeneration to be not a renewal of the affections but merely a strengthening of the natural powers. The theory regards that first sin as simply despoiling man of a special gift of grace and as putting him where he was when first created—still able to obey God and to coöperate with God for his own salvation,—whereas the Scripture represents man since the fall as “dead through ... trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1), as incapable of true obedience (Rom. 8:7—“not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be”), and as needing to be “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph. 2:10).
At few points in Christian doctrine do we see more clearly than here the large results of error which may ultimately spring from what might at first sight seem to be only a slight divergence from the truth. Augustine had rightly taught that in Adam the posse non peccare was accompanied by a posse peccare, and that for this reason man's holy disposition needed the help of divine grace to preserve its integrity. But the scholastics wrongly added that this original disposition to righteousness was not the outflow of man's nature as originally created, but was the gift of grace. As this later teaching, however, was by some disputed, the Council of Trent (sess. 5, cap. 1) left the matter [pg 522]more indefinite, simply declaring man: “Sanctitatem et justitiam in qua constitutus fuerat, amisisse.” The Roman Catechism, however (1:2:19), explained the phrase “constitutus fuerat” by the words: “Tum originalis justitiæ admirabile donum addidit.”And Bellarmine (De Gratia, 2) says plainly: “Imago, quæ est ipsa natura mentis et voluntatis, a solo Deo fieri potuit; similitudo autem, quæ in virtute et probitate consistit, a nobis quoque Deo adjuvante perficitur.”... (5) “Integritas illa ... non fuit naturalis ejus conditio, sed supernaturalis evectio.... Addidisse homini donum quoddam insigne, justitiam videlicet originalem, qua veluti aureo quodam fræno pars inferior parti superiori subjecta contineretur.”
Moehler (Symbolism, 21-35) holds that the religious faculty—the “image of God”; the pious exertion of this faculty—the “likeness of God.” He seems to favor the view that Adam received “this supernatural gift of a holy and blessed communion with God at a later period than his creation, i. e., only when he had prepared himself for its reception and by his own efforts had rendered himself worthy of it.” He was created “just” and acceptable to God, even without communion with God or help from God. He became “holy” and enjoyed communion with God, only when God rewarded his obedience and bestowed the supernaturale donum. Although Moehler favors this view and claims that it is permitted by the standards, he also says that it is not definitely taught. The quotations from Bellarmine and the Roman Catechism above make it clear that it is the prevailing doctrine of the Roman Catholic church.
So, to quote the words of Shedd, “the Tridentine theology starts with Pelagianism and ends with Augustinianism. Created without character, God subsequently endows man with character.... The Papal idea of creation differs from the Augustinian in that it involves imperfection. There is a disease and languor which require a subsequent and supernatural act to remedy.” The Augustinian and Protestant conception of man's original state is far nobler than this. The ethical element is not a later addition, but is man's true nature—essential to God's idea of him. The normal and original condition of man (pura naturalia) is one of grace and of the Spirit's indwelling—hence, of direction toward God.
From this original difference between Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrine with regard to man's original state result diverging views as to sin and as to regeneration. The Protestant holds that, as man was possessed by creation of moral likeness to God, or holiness, so his sin robbed his nature of its integrity, deprived it of essential and concreated advantages and powers, and substituted for these a positive corruption and tendency to evil. Unpremeditated evil desire, or concupiscence, is original sin; as concreated love for God constituted man's original righteousness. No man since the fall has original righteousness, and it is man's sin that he has it not. Since without love to God no act, emotion, or thought of man can answer the demands of God's law, the Scripture denies to fallen man all power of himself to know, think, feel, or do aright. His nature therefore needs a new-creation, a resurrection from death, such as God only, by his mighty Spirit, can work; and to this work of God man can contribute nothing, except as power is first given him by God himself.
According to the Roman Catholic view, however, since the image of God in which man was created included only man's religious faculty, his sin can rob him only of what became subsequently and adventitiously his. Fallen man differs from unfallen only as spoliatus a nudo. He loses only a sort of magic spell, which leaves him still in possession of all his essential powers. Unpremeditated evil desire, or concupiscence, is not sin; for this belonged to his nature even before he fell. His sin has therefore only put him back into the natural state of conflict and concupiscence, ordered by God in the concreated opposition of sense and reason. The sole qualification is this, that, having made an evil decision, his will is weakened. “Man does not need resurrection from death, but rather a crutch to help his lameness, a tonic to reinforce his feebleness, a medicine to cure his sickness.” He is still able to turn to God; and in regeneration the Holy Spirit simply awakens and strengthens the natural ability slumbering in the natural man. But even here, man must yield to the influence of the Holy Spirit; and regeneration is effected by uniting his power to the divine. In baptism the guilt of original sin is remitted, and everything called sin is taken away. No baptized person has any further process of regeneration to undergo. Man has not only strength to coöperate with God for his own salvation, but he may even go beyond the demands of the law and perform works of supererogation. And the whole sacramental system of the Roman Catholic Church, with its salvation by works, its purgatorial fires, and its invocation of the saints, connects itself logically with this erroneous theory of man's original state.
[pg 523]See Dorner's Augustinus, 116; Perrone, Prælectiones Theologicæ, 1:737-748; Winer, Confessions, 79, 80; Dorner, History Protestant Theology, 38, 39, and Glaubenslehre, 1:51; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 376; Cunningham, Historical Theology, 1:516-586; Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:140-149.