_Christian Theology by Milton Valentine, D.D., LL.D Copyright 1906, Lutheran Publication Society Printed Philadelphia, PA. by The United Lutheran Publication House_ Pages 380-415 ----------------------------------------------------- DIVISION II. THE DOCTRINE CONCERNING MAN. (Anthropology.) The doctrine concerning Man follows naturally the doctrine concerning God and creation. It stands be- tween these and the doctrine of redemption. Linked on the one side to the truth of creation, it is joined on the other to the whole scheme and work of salvation. We shall rightly understand man as the subject of redemp- tion only as we understand his place in the world-system and the essentials of the constitution, endowments, and relations creationally given him. We recognize the fact of a _scientific_ anthropology. Our directness of access opens man to an examination and study closer and more thorough than any other sub- ject of knowledge. And the various forms of scientific investigation, physiological, psychological, ethnological, and historical, have accumulated a large aggregate of well and firmly assured anthropological truth. What manner of being man is, in his physical, mental, and moral constitution, has thus, to a great extent, been made indubitably known. He is even shown to be a _religious_ being, with instinctive and almost ineradicable aptitudes to recognize a relation of amenability to some divine Power or powers above him. It is needful, how- ever, to bear in mind the limitations of scientific an- thropology. In no case does science alone explain be- ginnings. It investigates the facts and processes of ------------------End of Page 380--------------------- existence as established and seen in operation. It can tell us little or nothing about origins, because they lie back of its reach of observation and investigation. To such things as the origin of life, of sensation, of self- consciousness, it cannot extend its sight. For this reason the _origin_ of man is extra-scientific, as something beyond our range of observation and analysis. But _theologi- cal_ anthropology views him specially in his spiritual endowments and relations to God and a future life. Not less scientific in its methods than the secular sciences, and accepting all that philosophic anthropology can establish, this carries the view up to the human attributes in which the religious instincts are rooted and through which man is designed and adapted for fellowship with his Maker. It takes man, indeed, in all his nature, faculties, and con- dition as scientific examination shows him to be. The spiritual investigation always assumes and acknowledges the realities that are natural. But the whole view of man is secured only when, in addition to all that rational science can show of him, he is viewed also in the light of revelation--the revelation given for human duty and life by Him who knows what is in man. Our full an- thropology must be theological. It is `in God's light that we see light' as to what men are and are meant to be. It is to be observed, however, that theological an- thropology restricts its considerations of man to his con- stitution, endowment, and condition as nature presents him, and as he becomes a subject of divine care and providence. It omits those special characteristics which distinguish his life as regenerate and sanctified, since these things belong peculiarly to the action of a restora- tive supernatural redemption and are described under ----------------End of Page 381--------------------------- that division of theology. The subject embraces: I. His State of Integrity; II. His State of Sin; and III. Specific Truths Common to Both States. ------------------End of Page 382-------------------------- CHAPTER I. MAN'S PRIMITIVE STATE. This designates his original condition, as created by God. With the full consent of science, Christian theology holds man as presenting the highest crea- tional reach in the grade of being in this world. In him the process came to its summit and crown. The world was built and prepared for his habitation; and the whole work, in the long ages of its advance, was justified only when he appeared, as a being lofty enough in en- dowments to be given possession of and dominion over it. As basal for correct understanding of this state, we must remind ourselves of the chief facts which the Scripture revelation gives concerning his creation. The account of man's creation is given in Gen. i. 26- 27, ii. 7, and reflected in many passages throughout the Old and New Testament Scriptures: "And God said, let us create man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man after His image, in the image of God created He him; male and female cre- ated He them." "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Echoes of this account reverberate through the whole volume of revelation. It clearly covers the following -----------------End of Page 383------------------------- points: _First_, that man is _not a mere product of simply natural, i. e., precedently established, earthly forces_. His existence is referred to a cause directly moving from out- side of nature, a uniquely distinct creative act of God. The creative act is not, as in precedent creations, an appeal to the inanimate world: "Let the waters bring forth," "Let the earth bring forth," but is special and peculiar in divine counsel and plan: "Let us make man." _Secondly_, that while constituted in _individuality_, man was created also a _race_. The whole organization of man includes a structural continuity of the species. The term "Adam" is primarily generic, for the racially, or bisexually organized creature designated by that term, and of whom it is added: "Male and female created He them." Manifestly the truth here involved is that, in exalting the earthly creation into the lofty grade of _per- sonality_, God organized personal individuality into social life. _Thirdly_, that man, by creation, is a _compound being_. He is made of the "dust of the ground" and a life cre- ated by the `breathing' of God. He is composed in part of material from the physical earth, and in the higher and distinguishing reality which makes him _Man_, i. e., a rational "soul," of an immaterial part given by the divine spiration or direct action of creative power. We do not take the phraseology "breathing into him the breath of life" literally, but as a symbolism of expres- sion for a direct and positive gift of spirit-life. _Fourthly_, that he exists in a _single race_ or _species_. The Scrip- tures place this single pair at the beginning of the entire race descent (Gen. i. 28; iii. 20; ix. 19; Acts xvii. 26). This fact underlies the doctrine of original sin, and the adaptation and applicability of the provision of salvation for all men (Rom. v. I2-I9; I Cor. xv. 2I-22; Heb. ii. -------------End of Page 384--------------------------------- I6). The truth of the unity of the race is supported in manifold forms of natural evidence. For example: (_a_) Physiology exhibits the human organization as always and everywhere having specific sameness. (_b_) The prop- agation of fertile offspring by crossings between all varieties of the human race, in contrast with the law of infertility of hybrids of different animal species. (_c_) Psychology shows the identity of the mental faculties and laws throughout the entire race. (_d_) The historic pointings, as they are read in the earliest and remotest records and monuments, imply a common starting-point for the migrations of mankind, and (_e_) Philology, in the root forms of human language, suggests a common origin of all the most important tongues of the world. But this reminder of prelimanry facts in man's cre- ation opens the way to a proper understanding of the characteristic endowments and position given him, as expressed in the declaration that he was made "in the image of God" and "after His likeness." Despite fre- quent effort to distinguish between these two terms, "image" and "likeness," we must regard them as essen- tially synonymous. The duplication of terms has, rather, intensive force, making the idea emphatic. Quenstedt defines: "The image of God is a natural perfection, con- sisting of an entire conformity with the wisdom, justice, immortality, and majesty of God, which was divinely created in the first man, in order that he might truly know, love, and glorify God his Creator."[1] I. Beyond doubt, the fundamental characteristic of man's being, made in the image and likeness of God, consisted in his _personality_, i. e., his endowment with the powers of intelligence, sensibility, and self-determin- ----------------------------------------------------------- [1] II., 9. -----------End of Page 385--------------------------------- ation. He is made a rational, free, moral being, to know, to choose, and to direct his own way in his given relations. This was an endowment wanting in all the other grades of created existence on the earth. In it man is place not only immeasurably above, but in strongest contrast with nature about him. He stands apart from it, in that which constitutes his distinctive being, by the whole difference which separates _persons_ from mere things. This personality has often been designated a "_natural_ likeness," in contradistinction from "moral," since the designation is meant to denote simply _faculties_ creationally given, and not their ethical state. As faculties, however, these endowments are manifestly already the essential constituents of a _moral nature_, absolutely conditional for moral or spiritual action or character. In these lofty attributes of personality, faculties of knowledge, love, and freedom, God formed a being after His own type of existence, of kindred capac- ities, establishing a linkage of communion of life, thought, and blessedness with the earth. It is to be distinctly observed, also, that since God's personality is that of "Spirit" (John iv. 24), this human personality, made in His image, necessarily means _spirit-essence_ for the rational selfhood of man. His thinking self is that of a spirit. Materialism is excluded. This Scripture view is in accordance with all that we can know of man. For the elements of personality, intelligence, sensibility, and rational freedom have never been found scientifically explicable in terms of matter. The Biblical affirmation of man's formation in the image of God in this respect is at the same time one of the most direct deductions of reason and most assured realities of experience. It is a truth that underlies all -----------End of Page 386--------------------------------- scientific research, and is confirmed by its results. For nature is intelligible to man. God's thoughts, all through creation, are legible and impressive to the human mind. The human apprehension answers to the divine expres- sion, to the divine working. A certain community of natures unquestionably exists--as certainly as between man and his fellow-man. At the very basis of the trans- lation from one human language into another is the likeness of human mind to human mind. Man is "in the image" of man everywhere. Thought answers to thought and recognizes its own. In the same way the legibility of the meanings of nature, the purposes, adaptations, and aims of cosmic order and movement, the ideas, principles, and laws, everywhere luminous to the human mind, must rest upon a community of rational intelligence between man and the Author of all things. The great scientific and, at the same time, most practical truth of our lives, that we are able to "read God's thoughts after Him" in nature, is a synonym for the declaration that we have been created "in the image of God." And it is well to fix in mind how deep and far-reaching is this form of witness. For example, the human mind, in its purely subjective and idealistic action, creates the mathematical sciences, _.i. e._, of pure thought, determin- ing what can be real and true in the possibilities of space and time. The whole system of geometrical truth as well as arithmetical, is thus a creation of the human mind under its own laws. But it is startlingly significant of the likeness of the human mind to that of God when these truths of pure thought, if applied to nature, are found to tally with the actual facts and struc- tures of the universe. The mental order which, in us, fixes the mathematical formulae, mirrors exactly the ar- ---------------End of Page 387--------------------------- rangement which the Creative Intelligence has thought and wrought into the actuality of nature around us and in the movements of far-off worlds. There is an exact adaptation between the laws of mind and the realities of the objective constitution of things. We can take these creations of our pure thought and go out into the universe, and find that the same order and system have been there before us, rhythmic in the forces, motions, distances, and correlations of the great astronomical realm. The mind's products, as adjusted by _its_ laws, are found to be reflex of the realities of the universe as moulded under the `ideas' of the Creator of all. In man God has lifted the earthly creation up into the lofty position of fellowship with His own thought, and possible communion with His love and blessedness. It is only in this truth that we get a conception of the measureless value of man in His Creator's sight, or of the grounds of his destination to an immortal life--as, indeed, a "child of God" (Luke iii. 38). 2. The divine image in primitive man consisted also and especially in being created _holy_. As made by God, the nature given him was absolutely pure, free from moral evil, and adjusted in positive conformity to the law of righteousness. "God made man upright" (Eccl. vii. 29). The regeneration which redemption is to effect is to be a `_renewal_' into righteousness and true holiness (Eph. iv. 24). This is distinctively a _spiritual_ and _moral_ likeness, which is, indeed, the supreme thing in man's original excellence. It is to be clearly dis- tinguished from the first feature in this, that while the first refers to man's essential _faculties_ or _capacities_, this denotes the _state_ of those faculties, as in positive har- mony with righteousness. That state was not simply -------------------End of Page 388--------------------- negative, as an absence of evil, but positive, as in actual accord with holiness. It is not enough to say that man was created in "innocence." He was truly "good," "very good" (Gen. i. 3I). This feature of the divine image was specially accentuated by the early Latin Christianity; and rightly so, for holiness is the funda- mental and supreme attribute of man's Creator. There is, therefore, no room for the dogma of the _donum superadditum_, framed by Roman Catholicism in the middle ages, asserting the righteousness of the first man to have been, not a concreated excellence, a quality or state of his nature as originally constituted, but a gift of grace afterward supernaturally added.[1] The notion that human nature, as divinely given, was without real harmonization with righteousness, ethically non- adjusted, or mal-adjusted, is not only against the plain implications of the Scriptures throughout (Gen. i. 3I; Eccl. vii. 29; Eph. iv. 24; Col. iii. I0), but involves a charge of moral indifference or want of good- ness on the part of the Creator. For it implies that His creative work left man without a right moral dispo- sition, or a true setting of his conscience and affections with respect to right and duty. We must view the original holiness as so truly and thoroughly _natural_ that, but for the fall, it would have been a permanent feature of the race through propagation, as depravity or sin _now is_ through hereditary descent. 3. As a further and dependent fact in the "image and likeness," was _dominion_ over impersonal world-nature (Gen. i. 26-28; Ps. viii. 5-8). This dominion rests back upon man's endowment of personality, in intelligent, rational self-direction and control. By inherent consti- ---------------------------------------------------------- [1] Bellarmin, "De Gratia," p. 2I; Moehler, "Symbolism," pp. 25-35. -----------End of Page 389---------------------------------- tution he was exalted into a position of free-will and responsibility, made capable of receiving commission to enter into possession and right charge of the provision and possibilities given in lower physical nature. As the cosmic nature looked to man and was designed for him, he was placed in dominion over it. It had been created in forces and movement, under laws intelligible to the human mind and plastic to human will and handling. With man's _self-rulership_ of freedom in holiness was thus connected this further deputative and representative rulership over nature, manifestly intended to extend and establish the dominion of reason and holiness in the order and life of the earth (Heb. ii. 7-I0). Thus man was given a truly princely nature and position in the world-order. 4. Still further, we must connect with this reality of likeness to God in spiritual and ethical personality and economic activity _a bodily organism adapted to im- mortal life_, free from disease, and corrupted by no fleshly passion. Though this in itself can be regarded as no part of the "image and likeness," since God is pure Spirit, yet the spirit-essence, the center of the personality of man, created by the spiration of God, being designed to "live forever" (Gen. iii. 22), manifestly requires us to view the material side of His being also as constituted for permanent vital existence. We know not how this permanency was to be maintained--whether by the force of the internal pneumatic or psychic life, or by the ap- propriation of resources from without, or by the con- joined action of both. Before any hint of the fall into sin, the Mosaic sketch represents the fullness of the earth's food as given him "for meat" (Gen. i. 29-30), and immediately after the lapse points to a "tree of life" that has been made accessible for `living forever' (iii. --------------End of Page 390---------------------------- 22). But whatever natural external provision had been made, there seems to be much force in the suggestion offered concerning the potency of an unfallen, true spiritual life itself for the conservation of its physical organ and instrument.[1] The suggestion bases itself on the twofold contitution of man. In his physical organ- ism and life he is a _natural being_. As a material organ- ization he belongs to Nature. But in that part which constitutes his rational, personal self, he is a created spirit, with attributes, capacities, and activities in which he is an intelligent ethical being, linked in kindredship with God and competent for dominion over Nature, which was ordered in subservience to his higher life and destiny. In this reality of his being he stands above all the essences and forces that produce and maintain phys- ical organizations. It is to be conceded, indeed, as asserted by common experience and empirical science, that all physical organisms, after their growth to ma- turity, exhibit a tendency to wear out and decay, a ten- dency so actual and sure that the use of no externally provided nourishment can prevent their dissolution. So far as man is a natural being, a vitalized physical organ- ization, belonging to Nature, Nature may enforce its own law of temporalness and demand the body of man back to itself. But in man God created a being whose consti- tution and position were exceptional and transcendent, a being whose personality and life belonged to spirit-essence, and to whose destiny and blessedness all inferior Nature was meant to be tributary. And there is unquestionably reason in the suggestion that it belonged to the very life of the human spirit, as designed to be maintained in the pure vigor of _its_ holy powers, to preserve thereby to --------------------------------------------------------- [1] Dr. Dorner's "System of Christian Doctrine," II., pp. 7I-72. --------------End of Page 391---------------------------- itself its bodily organ and instrument, and immortalize it in its given relation of service in the divine teleology for man. Human experience is full of testimony to the susceptibleness of the body to the influence of spirit. The corporeal organism may be inspired and sustained to a most wonderful measure by the energy of mind and will. It is no unreasonable supposition, therefore, that in connection with the distinct provisions made for the sustentation of the human body from without, the un- broken inner spiritual life of man, if lived in its true fellowship with God and in the given energies for its appointed holy "dominion," would have sufficed to hold that body above the reach of the dissolution which marks all other types of animated Nature. But what- ever may have been the force and way through which the physical side of man was to have been preserved in the composite structure of his being, we may be sure that he, the "son of God" (Luke iii. 38), the one spirit- tual personality, for whose high position and welfare the entire earth-nature was created, "was not made to die," under the law of physical death which belongs to im- personal nature. The Biblical view requires us to rec- ognize for him a unique position and an immortal des- tiny; and without doubt the balance between the spirit- ual and material in him was divinely adjusted for a victorious life of the composite personality--not, indeed, in necessity, but in freedom. 5. The _holiness_ of this first estate, together with the full reality of dominion, was nevertheless dependent for continuance and confirmation on man himself. Being a moral trait, committed to a free agent, it was amissible, and needed to be made secure and permanent by habits of righteousness. Natural tendencies or adaptations ------------------End of Page 392-------------------------- acquire steadiness and momentum through activities in which life exercises and establishes itself. The law of habit is cumulative of facility and certainty. The primi- tive goodness may be conceived of as comparatively un- conscious goodness, spontaneously active in and out of the inner constitutional adjustment to holiness rather than as goodness which has established itself in con- scious conflict with evil. The concreated rectitude fur- nished the true initiation to the life of holiness, to be maintained, confirmed, and made victorious. It is the law of virtue or righteousness to grow strong and forever triumphant through its own action in the midst of moral conditions. 6. The Pelagian view, whether of ancient or modern type,[1] representing the primitive man as created a moral agent or with _faculties_ of moral agency, but in a state of moral indifference, must be condemned as at once with- out Biblical or rational warrant. It makes the image of God consist in mere personality. The grounds alleged for it are, primarily, that man could have been _free_ only if _no bias_ had been put into his nature, one way or the other; and, further, that personal character is reached only through the exercise of free powers--not at all in the possession of the faculties or any state of them, except as self-determined. But in truth, _freedom_ does not stand in indifference or an equipoise between good and evil, but in power for faculty of will, despite either internal adjustment or external motives, to choose be- tween them. The assertion that character was a thing wholly left to be yet formed out of a characterless state ---------------------------------------------------------- [1] As in Schleiermacher, "Christliche Glaube," p. 60; Julius Mueller, "Doctrine of Sin," ii., pp. II3-I33; Bishop R. S. Foster, "Sin," p. I5, seq. --------------End of Page 393------------------------------- by man himself, is altogether without proof and against proof. For God, infinitely holy and good, could not create a personal being indifferent to holiness, any more than He could create a sinful or wicked being. Moral indifferency in a moral being is of itself of the nature of sin. Character, being the sum of attributes or qualities of a personal being, may consist in the state or attitude of the faculties toward righteousness as well as in the exercise of these faculties. To maintain the contrary is to maintain that man's own acts and help are necessary to complete the Creator's work and make it good, or that God could not give a holy set to the creature's faculties. Moreover, unless we claim that God Himself is marked by moral indifference in the very attitude of His essen- tial nature, the fundamental affirmation of man's crea- tion, "in the image and likeness of God," forbids this negative theory. Man's original holiness must be viewed as positive (Eccl. vii. 29; Jas. iii. 9; Eph. iv. 24; I Cor. xv. 45). 7. The thory of man's _primitive savagery_, whether proclaimed by the Positive Philosophy or held as a con- clusion of Evolutionist Science, stands strongly in con- flict with the Scripture representations and implications concerning the origin and original status of man. The wide acceptance of the evolutionist theory among pro- fessional scientists and certain types of theologians requires some review of the facts, to enable us to reach a conclusion according to truth. The question, as it concerns theology, is not whether or not there may be in nature an evolutionary principle that, by self-contained forces and reactions, has produced the varieties and species of life-organizations inferior to man, but whether the origin of the human race is to be so explained. We -------------End of Page 394-------------------------------- are concerned here only with the formation of Man. And in considering the question, it is immaterial whether the evolutionist theory be based on atheism or on a theistic view of the world and a divine creation, _ex nihilo_, of the world-matter. And yet with this limitation of the question to the origin of man, it will be necessary to take into consideration some of the difficulties and weak- nesses of the evolutionist theory in its offered explanation as to the lower orders of animate nature and its lack of absolute conclusiveness even there. The effort will be, not to disprove the general evolutionist view, but to call attention to the fact that the theory is "not proved." It is not "science" (_scientia_), actual _knowledge_, but a speculative or tentative _hypothesis_. The theory is wont to be based back upon the nebular hypothesis of an immense mass or mist of glowing vapor filling the spaces of the universe, as the starting-point of world-structure. Thence, under the principle of gravi- tation, through a conjoined action of motion and cool- ing, worlds and systems are formed. Our world, as one of the planets, cooling and condensing, takes form, first in the earliest geological period, moving then successively through its later eras, marked by gradual advances in its conditions and forms of life and organisms. But for our present purpose we need go back no further than the beginnings of life on the earth, and start with Darwin's somewhat hesitating admission of a Creator and a direct creation of life: "I imagine that probably all organic being that ever lived on this earth descended from some primitive form, which was first called into being by the Creator."[1] ----------------------------------------------------------- [1] Quoted from Dr. Shedd, "Dogmatic Theology," I., p. 503. See also, "Origin of Species," pp. 422, 429 (D. Appleton & Co., I878). ------------------End of Page 395----------------------------- The most representative form of the theory is that shaped by Darwin, known as that of natural selection and survival of the fittest. It assumes and depends on the con- joint action of two leading principles--the principle of _heredity_ as inherent and active within the living organism, and the principle of _environment_, as modifying the action of heredity--the latter, _i. e._, environment, acting in two ways, viz.: as _stimulating and improving_, and as _elimi- nating and destroying_. And thus, it is alleged, under the continuous propagation of living organisms with accidental variations, amid different environments, all the so-called species of living beings, including man, have been produced. It involves the essential bestiality of primal man, as Darwin expressly tells us that he sees no distinction in "kind," but only one in "degree" be- tween man's highest intellectual faculties and the feel- ings of a brute. The competence of this evolutionist hypothesis for the proof of man's origin is rendered doubtful not only by the weakness and difficulties that appear in it at the point of transition from brute to human state, but also by all the mere assumptions, unfilled gaps, and varied difficulties in the offered account of the movement up to that point. These show it to be an _unproved_ explanation. The following points deserve to be noted. (_a_) At the very beginning the _ambiguous phrase_, "natural selection," is adopted to denote the explaining cause of the evolutionary advance. The word "selec- tion" expresses mental choice, something confessedly not present in the case. It is "selection that does not select, except metaphorically."[1] Its use tends to an ---------------------------------------------------------- [1] St. George Mivart, in The Forum, March, I889, p. I83. ---------------End of Page 396------------------------------ impression that it acts positively as a direct efficient cause, whereas the outcome of the explanation exhibits it mainly, if not entirely, in the form of a negative result, viz.: that in the struggle for existence the weaker organisms fail to survive and cease to exist. "Natural selection works not constructively, but destructively."[1] For the positive progress in the evolution, this showing that some weak organisms do not "survive," is not, as has been often pointed out, equivalent to an explanation how higher forms "_arrive_." The ambiguous phrase, with its simply surreptitious _active_ sense, is plainly and peculiarly weak when used, as it is, to show positively the way these higher and better forms appear. (_b_) To accomplish this task particularly, however, another working principle is invoked--"_accidental varia- tions_" through natural descent. But this is, if possi- ble, even less reliable and satisfactory than the other, to account for the rise of nature from its lowest organisms up to the human grade. For the "accidental variations" depended on, as between improvements and destructions, are too many-sided, uncertain, and shifting, to warrant rational faith that they will all, or a controlling majority of them, _unite_ in the formation of _Man_ out of the primordial life, or even from an ape--that is, that the "accidental," in the modifications in all the organs, sense, and complex adjustments will, in their particu- larities and combinations, move on to one point, the evolution of a human being. That all the needful modi- fications should take place by chance variations and chance destructions and chance preservations, and hold their own gains and carry them on through millions ----------------------------------------------------- [1] Prof. C. W. Rishell's "The Foundations of the Christian Faith," p. 428. ----------------End of Page 397----------------------- of years, is utterly incredible--as any calculation of chances will show. St. George Mivart justly styles the process: "The haphazard action of the destructive forces of nature on minute haphazard variations in all directions."[1] It simply relegates the life-forms of the earth to chance-work. Yet this is Darwinian evolution. (_c_) The addition of the affirmation of the "survival of the fittest," is not sufficient to carry the offered proof to its conclusion. The import of this phrase must be analyzed before we can see whether that which it stands for is assuring for the result. It is a correlate designa- tion to the failure and perishing of the weaker organisms in the struggle for existence in environment. The theory requires--for reaching the goal of the evolution--that those surviving be the more highly, finely, and effectively organized--a progress in excellence. But are these "the fittest," _i. e._, the _ablest_ to survive? In the struggle of existence, the _strongest_ live and the rest go under. Are not the higher and advancing forms of organization the more complex and susceptible to injury and destruction? Do not the conditions which kill off the feeblest harm the rest? Are severe conditions the best for the develop- ment of high organizations? Are not those that survive rather an injured class, with less fineness of structure and rank? When summer's drought destroys half of the vegetable organisms, the remaining half are not likely to be an improvement on the ordinary standard. Or if the improvements should be credited to the specially helpful environments, as these are also "accidental" in the variations of actual life, how shall their gains be continuously preserved and guided on the upward line? The strongest are not always "the fittest" for this ele- -------------------------------------------------------- [1] The Forum, March, I889, p. 99. -------------End of Page 398------------------------------ vating and spiritualizing process by which the complex and highly organized human race is to come from mol- luscs or amoebae.[1] (_d_) It is to be borne in mind that no new species has been discovered to have been actually produced by it. This is an impressive fact. Though the theory teaches us to think of "species" as an illusion, it yet admits the reality of present grades, lower and higher, in the forms of life. If these specific types are viewed, not as fixed, but each as in constant progress, the advance over the differentia between the so-called "species" becomes what has been meant by "transmutation of species." But no scientist has discovered an instance of such an advance. Only varieties within the species have been produced--even by artificial crossings and culture. So with Darwin's pigeons. Fossil geology gives indubitable evidence of new species appearing one after another, with no proof whatever of lineal descent or the evolu- tion of one out of the other. Prof. J. P. Cooke, of Harvard, though accepting the hypothesis, confesses: "It seems strange that with all the attention which has been directed to the point during the last twenty-five years the fact of a transition between two well-marked species has not yet been established conclusively.... We can in no case point unhesitatingly to other species in lower strata from which they descended, on the evidence of an unbroken series in the intermediate forms between the two. Take the case in which we are the most interested, that of our own race. Assume all that is claimed in regard to the antiquity of man. Still there is a definite horizon of the tertiary epoch below which man is not, but above which his remains are found in ------------------------------------------------------- [1] Quatrefages, "Human Race," pp. 94-95. ---------------End of Page 399-------------------------- ever-increasing abundance, with all the features of man and his works are strongly marked as they are to-day. Skeletons of these primeval men, and their belongings, are to be seen in our ethnological museums; and there are no greater differences of structure between them and ourselves than between the different races which inhabit the earth at the present day. But if man be descended from `an anthropoid animal of arboreal habits,' it is passing strange that, so far as any direct evidence goes, he should have appeared on the earth thus suddenly, and that we can find no traces of his progenitors of the first, second, third, or any other generation."[1] This is a far- reaching confession by an evolutionist. (_e_) We must add to it the further fact, that the asserted law of evolution has not been found effectual, within the world's historical period, for any such modifications as _promise_ transmutation of species. There is not an instance within these thousands on thousands of years, of animal forms having devloped new organs or improved the old. The ancient sculptures and pictures exhibit them as they are now. All this time the forms have been essentially stationary, except in modifications under domestication, from which they tend to return under the law of atavism. A process so slow as to have done nothing perceptible in forty or fifty centuries can- not be justly credited with having created all the earth's life forms, except upon the clearest and most positive evidence. This view of the question is fortified by the well- established fact that _species are held in fixed lines of descent_, with specific identity permanently continued, by a law of _sterility_ of offspring, where offspring have been --------------------------------------------------------- [1] "The Credentials of Science the Warrant of Faith," p. 244. ---------------------End of Page 400---------------------- obtained by enforced crossings between different species. _Varieties_, or _races within_ the species, have been secured, but no new _species_. The possibility of the last is barred by the scientifically certain fact that _hybrids_, the pro- duct of crossing between "species," are either utterly sterile, or so nearly so as to bring the descent to a quick and certain end. Hybridity makes a new line of con- tinuous evolution an impossibility.[1] This is very sig- nificant of the breadth of differentia between species and the persistence of their essential types--that each abides self-identical or perishes. Surely it does not suggest that the animal organizations are but the onward flow or evolution of a common bioplasm, differing simply by being in different stages of development. In such case it ought rather to show the supposed identity of life by uniting, blending, and continuous fertility at any and every point where crossings can be made to take place. The infertility of hybrids points to impassible specific differences and discredits the hypothesis of a simple, common and universal bioplasm. (_f_) Force is added to this difficulty by the theory, having best scientific support, that all animal organiza- tions, including that of man, are _psychogenetic, i. e._, that an immaterial _psyche_ (psuche, life) is the cause or expla- nation for each living individual, and a species of psyche (life) for each species. The matter of the body does not form or create the soul; that would be materialism. But the psyche (life) is organific for the body as its instrument. The psyche determines the organization-- never passing into another, or failing to secure its own organism unless by injury or death.[2] That the organ- ------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Quatrefages, "The Human Species," ch. viii. [2] Prof. Wythe's "Physiology of the Soul," pp. 72-78. -----------------End of Page 401----------------------------- ism is an effect of some psychic reality that we name life, whatever the mysterious reality may be--a series of activities resulting from a union of this reality with matter--is the idea almost everywhere dominant in human thought and in accord with scientific, especially with psychological, research. St. George Mivart says: "Just as an individual animal, in its process of develop- ment, generates by its internal force its own body, so specific changes must be above all due to the action of an organism's innermost life; that is to say, it must be a result of a process of _psychogenesis_."[1] But this runs into a further point, viz.: (_g_) The utter inconclusiveness of the argument, especially relied on by Darwinists, based on _embry- onic morphology_. The claim that the human embryo, in passing, prenatally, through semblance of the lower animals, fish, reptile, bird, mammal, etc., presents "a sketch of the past history of the race," an epitome of the evolutionary advance to man, needs only to be carefully examined to see its worthlessness. Even admitting the embryonic "appearances," there is no logic for the conclusion. The "appearances" are illusive; the conclusion built upon them is factitious. Though the human embryonic form looks succesively like lower animal organizations, it IS not any of them, and never mistakes its goal or loses its pure human self-identity. The principle or law of psychogenesis hold complete sway. The _life_ in the human embryo is not that of reptile, quadruped, or monkey, but is _human life_, the organizing life and action of a human psyche, a fixed species, unconvertible into another.[2] to build a bridge ------------------------------------------------------ [1] The Forum, "Darwin's Brilliant Fallacy," March, I889. [2] Ib., p. 98. ------------------End of Page 402--------------------- on these evanescent _physiological_ and material "appear- ances" to carry back the life of human beings into life- identity with that which was evolving along the lineage of countless animal progenitors, is pushing the interpre- tation of appearances too recklessly. The invalidity of this argument from morphology is seen when it is reduced to the form of syllogism, viz.: Whatever passing appearances are exhibited in the growth of the human embyro, present the genetic evolu- tion of the race. The embyro exhibits successively the appearances of fish, reptile, bird, quadruped, man. Therefore, the race was genetically evolved from fish, etc. Of this argument these facts are to be noted: (I) It begs the whole question by assuming the con- clusion in its first premise. It just says so at the start, and when it comes to the conclusion, just repeats the say-so. (2) Whatever force it has rests on analogy, _i. e._, the likenesses of appearances between embryonic growth and the different orders of animal organizations. The ques- tion arises, then, Is this assumed analogical basis suf- ficiently real and clear to assure the conclusion? That it is not, is easily made apparent. _First_. The supposed analogy is worthless in this case, because the conditions of the progress are utterly unlike. Between the conditions of the embryo in the womb, ad- vancing by the inner life-force in the same environment all the time, and the conditions of changing environment through which in immense geologic ages the animals had to progress in the struggle for life, as a "survival of the fittest," there is no similarity or equality. As the value of analogy rests on the principle of like cause -------------End of Page 403------------------------------ producing like results in equal conditions, the whole bottom for the conclusion drops out from the supposed analogy of these appearances. The embryological "ap- pearances" stand utterly dirempt from the logical prin- ciple that gives validity to analogical reasoning. Sup- posing these morphological resemblances really appear, the conditions of their occurrence preclude explanation in that way. It is simply gratuitous and unproved asser- tion that they are a record of the chief steps in an evolutionary advance from initial life-forms up to the human. Can any man even conceive of a way that would connect these ephemeral appearances, as the effects of movements and stages of movement superseded and lost millions of years ago, with the goal to which human bio- plasm in the embryo is evolving? Is there anything _reminiscent_ in the human life-germ, acting as a cause for such temporary diversion from the straight line, to make record of the forms it once had? In testing the offered theory, we must squarely face the difficulties involved. The embryo life in question is _human_ life from the start, by human propagation. Are we to conceive of this human life, at the very beginning of its embryonic state dropping back from the human grade into the fish or reptile life of ages on ages ago, thus becoming causal for the successive embryo "appearances" and, at last, before birth, attaining again the human type--either blindly or reminiscently repeating its old evolutionary accomplish- ment? Or are we to conceive of it, at the start of the embryonic development, as true and actual human life, with the _causal forces_ of the human rank, nevertheless beginning to build its embryonic structures after the forms due to the causal laws of the different ancient animal stages of bioplasm? How can we think of human --------------End of Page 404------------------------ life, instead of working according to its attained consti- tution or reality, as working according to a reality and state that no longer exist? The argument from mor- phology asks us in fact to set aside the law of causal- ity. The teaching that alleges these morphological semblances as at once a result and a proof of the evo- lutionary emergence of Man from the earliest forms of earthly bioplasm is not science, but a dreamy fancy. _Secondly_. The argument confounds two very different things--_ontogeny_, growth in an individual organism by which the organism is perfected, with _phylogeny_, the genesis of species, or the supposed development of species, in the course of geological or earth-time. But these two are not identical or necessarily parallel. _Growth_ is open to observation and scientifically understood. Its function is distinct and definite--to complete the indi- vidual being, after its kind. _Phylogenesis_, assumed to have taken place in prehistoric ages, is _not_ open to obser- vation, and if proved to be real, must find its proof in causes discovered in some way to have been operative in those ages. Its movement is altogether different from that of growth, and looks to an altogether different result. While growth finishes its work in completing the specific organism after its type, phylogenesis seeks for possible and effective causes for the origin of new and higher types or species. It is evident from the mere statement of the case that the development of the indi- vidual animal is not the same as, or equivalent to, the origin of a species through long geological ages. But this argument quietly and against right assumes them to be equivalent, and that the working of embryonic growth is still reflecting, in its successive physiological semblances, the phylogenetic movement which created ------------End of Page 405----------------------------- the succession of species.[1] A more illegitimate inference could hardly be conceived. (_h_) Against the notion of evolution as an improving or creative process stands the geological fact admitted by Le Conte: "Although species, so far as individual num- bers are concerned, come in gradually on the margin of their natural region, reach their greatest abundance in the middle portion, and again gradually die out on the other margin, yet in _specific characters_ we see usually no such transition. _In specific character they seem to come in suddenly, to remain substantially unchanged throughout their range_, and pass out suddenly on the other margin. ... The apparent _fixity_ of animal species within cer- tain narrow limits of variation is even more striking than in the case of plants."[2] This is directly in conflict with the hypothesis of a gradual evolution of species from one into another. The force and largeness of this fact is seen in Barrande's tabulated exhibit of his dis- coveries in the Silurian of Bohemia. After an accurate study of its 640 species of brachiapods in their geo- graphical and geological range, with respect to the ques- tion of evolutionary relation to each other, he gives his finding as follows: I. Species continued unchanged,. . . . . 28 per cent. 2. Species migrated from abroad, . . . . 7 per cent. 3. Species continued _with modification_, . 0 per cent. 4. New species _without known ancestors_, . 65 per cent.[3] Such absence of transitional forms in the supposed -------------------------------------------------------- [1] As by Haeckel in "The Evolution of Man." [2] "Elements of Geology," pp. I57-I58. [3] Given by Prof. J. W. Dawson, Princeton Review, November, 1880. ----------------End of Page 406--------------------------- linkage leaves the evolutional account by successive modifications simply an hypothesis, even as to the animal world.[1] (_i_) Evolution is incompetent to account for _instinct_. So long as this immense and wonderful phenomenon is left without solution, the theory cannot be held as proved. Every attempt evolution has made to explain instinct, especially in its higher forms, has broken down in con- tradiction and absurdity. As an unreasoning impulse that operates for ends which it knows nothing of, it cer- tainly looks like "lapsed intelligence," as Darwin and others have viewed it. The only account offered is that it is the fruit of intelligence, a habit formed by rational, purposive action, at earlier stage, the product of a process minus the process. But this explanation as "lapsed in- telligence" is in direct contradiction of the fundamental law of evolution, a progress from the lower to the higher, from the simpler to the more complex, attaining at last to the lofty and aspiring rational faculties of hu- manity.[2] And where are the traces, in all the past, of the intelligent ancestors of the bee or the sphex, or like types of instinct? Both Darwin and Romanes acknowledge that "many instincts are too low in the zoological scale to admit of our supposing that they can ever have been due to ancestral intelligence.[3] In so far as their origin and special forms have been credited to "accidental variations" and "natural selections"--or rather destruc- tions--the case is no better. For how could it be pos- sible for such variations and selections, in the realm of non-intelligence, in and of themselves, to construct ----------------------------------------------------------- [1] Nicholson's "Life History of the Earth," p. 373. [2] Duke of Argyll, "Unity of Nature," p. 92. [3] Francis H. Johnson, "What is Reality?" p. 30I. ----------------End of Page 407------------------------------- organisms or the instincts of organisms to do the _work_ of intelligence? (_j_) Evolution fails to account for _language_. The essential presupposition to language, as a characteristic of man, is the ability to think in concepts, abstract idealizations, expressed by general or class terms. It is a far other and higher reality than the cries by which physiological or instinctive action serves as a directive means among animal orders. There is no evidence of "language" in any creature of earth but man. It is said, indeed, that when the evolutional advance reached the ability to think in concepts and the human stage was attained--the transition made from the mechanical action of physiology and instinct into free rational thought and idealization--then emergent man began to build up regis- tering vocabularies and languages. But there is no assur- ing evidence either that any non-speaking animal, even at the highest point of reach, has ever crossed that line, or that there is a psychical possibility of doing so. Inasmuch as "no traces of man's progenitors, either of the first, second, third, or any other generation, have been found," there is an utter break, physiologically, of the linkage by which an actual physical descent with transition into capa- cities of thought and speech might be proved. But the difficulty becomes still more perplexing when, of the only asserted line of the supposed descent, some "_simian_ of arboreal habits," the confession has to be made that none of the simians yet discovered, whether fossil or living, are found with the requisite preconditions for the transition.[1] When Mr. Romanes says that "anthropoid ------------------------------------------------------ [1] The missing links not being found in fact, they have been in- vented. For example: "Haeckel claims that the species of ape to which man is traceable lived in the middle tertiary period, and disap- -----------------End of Page 408------------------------------ apes are the most intelligent and would, under training, probably show greater aptitude in sign-making than any other kind of brute," but yet confesses that "the species (or genus) which did give origin to it must have differed in important respects from any of its existing allies," in being "more social" in habits and "more vociferous" than any existing species, all of which "appear to be on the high road to extinction,"[1] there is no wonder that Prof. Max Mueller declares: "Against such argument the gods would fight in vain. We are told that man is de- scended from some kind of anthropoid ape. We answer that all anthropoid apes known to us are neither social nor vociferous. And we are told in that case man must be derived from an extinct ape who differed from all known apes, and was both social and vociferous. Surely, if this is a scientific argument, scientific arguments would in future rank very low indeed. I know of no book which has proved more clearly that language forms an impassable barrier between man and beast than the book lately published by Mr. Romanes on the "Origin of the Human `Faculty,' though his object was the very reverse."[2] --------------------------------------------------------- peared long ago. Out of this species was evolved the man-ape or anthropoid, and out of them the ape-man, or the speechless man, the progenitor of true or speaking man. These two missing links, together with the species of apes out of which they were evolved, are supposed to have existed on a hypothetical continent between Mada- gascar and the Island of Sunda. This continent, to which Haeckel has even given the name, Lemuria, sank into the sea and carried with it all those supposed men-apes and ape-men; so that we need hope for no discovery of them until the sea shall give up her dead, when progenitor and progeny shall have the joy of a happy reunion."-- Rishell's "Foundations of the Christian Faith," pp. 207-208. [1] "Mental Evolution in Man." [2] The Open Court, Chicago, December, I89I. ---------------------End of Page 409------------------ (_k_) Evolution has also failed to explain _Conscience_ or the _Moral Power_. This is too phenomenal a character- istic of man to be ignored in any view of his origin. It is to be fully admitted that the reality and authority of the conscience do not depend upon the _mode_ of God's creative action in incorporating it as constituent of man's endowment, but upon the _fact_ of it. But in claiming evolution as the mode, the hypothesis is logically re- quired to show evidence of it, or at least the possibility of it. Here is the point of failure. The incompe- tence of the only offered explanation in a positive way --the theory asserting conscience to be the "result of accumulated experiences of utility, gradually organ- ized and inherited"[1]--leaves no pending theory of it. That account misses the explanation of the moral faculty by the whole breadth of the essential difference between "utility" and "right" or ethical obligation. The for- midable difficulty of making credible even the possibility of such derivative origin is still pressing. Keeping in view the fact that the very center of the conscience func- tion appears in the regulation, and often denial, of in- herited feelings and habits, the difficulty of attributing its creation to hereditary action is palpably apparent. It has been well pointed out that the injunctions of the conscience do not run with the stream of our hereditary tendencies, but against them.[2] That a law of the work and victory of hereditary forces should issue in organ- izing an endowment for control and repression of hered- itary tendencies seems too much of a contradiction to be accepted. Even in the theistic form of the theory, in which evolution offers itself as presenting not the cause --------------------------------------------------------- [1] Herbert Spencer, "Data of Ethics," sec. 45. [2] "The Crisis in Morals," James T. Bixby, Ph. D., I889. ----------------End of Page 410--------------------------- but only the mode of creation, it is hard to conceive of the adaptation of such a process for the production of such a result--a result standing apart from the means by such a total difference in both their nature and direct- tion. Even Prof. Huxley, in one of his latest utter- ances, felt constrained to say: "The practice of what is ethically best, what we call goodness or virtue, involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion, it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside or treading down all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but help his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting as many as possible to survive."[1] The mil- lions of years of the battle of might and feebleness, nature "red in tooth and talon," is not the creator of the law of love, kindness, and generous helpfulness. (_l_) Nor can it account for _freedom_ in man, out of unfree causation. That the advance of physical life from protozoa, through ages, under reign of the law of cause and effect, in a chain of variations and survivals, all the links being locked up in necessary antecedence and consequence, should issue at length in the production of the opposite principle of _freedom_, and set _man_ forth a free self-determining being acting in liberty, seems to require us to believe that "the effect" shall not be _as_ the cause, but the reverse. How shall necessity give birth to freedom? How shall that which has no free- will confer it? How can the reign of fixed law, domi- nating every change or advance from protoplasm through the animal series, be conceived of as even the _carrier_ --------------------------------------------------------- [1] Lectures at Oxford on "Ethics and Evolution." ---------End of Page 411--------------------------------- of freedom up to the point of its human manifestation? Yet in accepting the hypothesis we should have to accept this contradiction--that causes acting in necessity estab- lish the higher and contrary reality of free choice. For it is to be borne in mind that the hypothesis is, from beginning to end, a protest against admission of _super- natural intervention_ or direct creation--except with such advocates of it as exclude the origin of Man from it save, perhaps, as to his physical organism, and confidently postulate a direct or supernatural divine act for the increment that appears in his endowment of rational soul and personal freedom. This exception, with its postulate, becomes in fact an abandonment of the evolu- tionary creation of man. These few considerations are recalled in evidence that the current theory of evolution is yet an unproved hypothesis--by no means established. We are not, however, to maintain that there is not a deep, far-reach- ing principle of evolution divinely embodied in nature and its movement. All geology, in its rocks and fossils, is a history of it. The Christian theologian finds a progressive movement, whatever it may have been, reflected from the Biblical creational progress and ascent from chaos up to material order, into forms of plant life and animal life. It is a question of true or mislead- ing interpretation. It is to be observed, too, that the Bible simply ascribes creation to God without defining the _mode_ of it. And should science ever be able really to show it to have been by a process of evolutionary action, the essential truth would still abide--that God created man, gave him his nature and position, his high endowments of moral personality and responsibility, supplying, by direct creative power, the increment of ----------End of Page 412------------------------------- rational soul at the point of transition, as making Man in His image for fellowship with Him and dominion over the earth. Christianity would not be proved false by a scientific demonstration of any Theistic form of evolution. But because of the rush of the foes of Christianity to shape and use the hypothesis for unbelief, and the uncalled-for precipitancy of many theologians in falsifying and destructive modifications of it, it is need- ful that the unproved status of the theory should be borne in mind. Within the animal kingdom there is no evidence whatever of an evolution across the wide differences that separate the _families_ or the _genera_ from one another. Whether across the smaller intervals between different _species_, is yet very doubtful. For the inclusion of _man_ in the genetic evolution, there is positively no proof. And this is manifestly the reason of the fact that so many of the most eminent, sober- minded, and careful scientists, while admitting and assert- ing a real evolutionary principle in nature, see its limits, and refuse its application to the origin of man--as A. R. Wallace, St. George Mivart, Principal J. W. Dawson, Quatrefages, the Duke of Argyll, Prof. James D. Dana, and others. We are not without warrant in taking it as good scientific thinking when we find Sir William Thompson writing: "That man could be evolved out of inferior animals is the wildest dream of materialism, a pure as- sumption which offends me alike by its folly and by its arrogance;" or when we read from Prof. James Dwight Dana: "The present teaching of geology very strongly confirms the belief that Man is not of Nature's making. Independently of such evidence, Man's high reason, his unsatisfied aspirations, his free-will, all afford the fullest assurance that he owes his existence to the --------------End of Page 413---------------------------- special act of the Infinite Being whose image he bears."[1] A further consideration of force in closing this sketch of the problem of evolution, is the unseemly, incongruous relation in which even theistic evolutionism necessarily places all primal creation in respect to God as Creator. It puts the widest conceivable chasm betwen the Creator as the Absolute Personal Reason and the initial form or rank of all created beings. It teaches that God, the Absol- lute Personality, the supreme perfection of Being, creates the universe only through the method of unfolding from the initial or homogeneous form to the heterogeneous, from the lowest and crudest beginnings of things to the final completion in the highest and best. Life, at the start, is only indeterminate, undifferentiated bioplasm, and is thence evolved through countless ages into all the suc- cessive actualized forms up to man. Immense periods of working were required to reach the creation of any lofty or noble type of being. "The lower order of being exists only in the process of evolution into the higher. It exists only in transitu, and its individuality is fleeting." "When the animal progresses beyond recol- lection and fancy to generalization, he becomes immortal as an individual."[2] But see in what relation all this puts all initial forms or orders of living beings with respect to God. For long aeons nothing intrinsically great or lofty appears--nothing suggestive of His "image or likeness." An infinite chasm yawns between Creator and creation. Things are not only started with a view--if there _was_ a view--to a realization of a justifying cosmos after millenniums of ages. How utterly incongruous, ------------------------------------------------------------ [1] "The Geological Story" (I895), p. 290. [2] Dr. W. T. Harris, "Introduction to Study of Philosophy," p. I60. --------------End of Page 414----------------------------------- that in the creation that starts closest to God, the most immediate to the productive impact of the _Absolute Intelligent Personality_, there should be found only what is most unlike Him; what is, indeed, the utmost antithe- sis to that which created it; what is able to reach "per- sonality" only after untold aeons of evolutionary working. This might fit Brahminism, in which Brahma, or the Divine, is only abstract unity, void of form or predicates. In it the idea of the prime existence is the negation of all intelligent personality and freedom. But it will not fit the Christian conception of God as the absolute and free Personality. And it is a significant phenomenon that under the tendencies and affinities of the acceptance of the evolu- tionist origin of man, we are having numerous writers, both philosophical and theological, who are abandoning Christian theism and urging monistic conceptions of the universe as being the necessary forms and parts in the evolution of the Absolute. The Divine and the human, God and nature, are one, and Christian theism is being confused and lost behind an ideal pantheism. --------------End of Chapter on Page 415------------------------ This text was converted to ascii format for Project Wittenberg by William Alan Larson and is in the public domain. You may freely distribute, copy or print this text. Please direct any comments or suggestions to: Rev. Robert E. Smith of the Walther Library at Concordia Theological Seminary. E-mail: smithre@mail.ctsfw.edu Surface Mail: 6600 N. Clinton St., Ft. Wayne, IN 46825 USA Phone: (260) 452-2123 Fax: (260) 452-2126