[0:00] Well our theme tonight is the doctrine of man, what is man? And it is by any standards a very important area of the Bible's teaching.
[0:13] Important because it impinges at so many points upon our own responsibilities and our own daily behaviour. I think that many of our current problems stem from defective understandings, not simply of God and of Christ, but even more obviously of man himself.
[0:41] Only as we see him in the Bible's own perspective can we honour him as we ought and educate him and make law for him in a way that befits his position in God's creation.
[1:01] I want first of all to reflect for a moment on the origin of man. We find that the three great creation worlds are used to bring out for us the way that God brought man into being.
[1:19] We are told first of all in Genesis chapter 1 and verse 27 that God created man. And this is the word bara, this distinctive word referring to God's own divine activity.
[1:38] A word which in itself reminds us of the momentousness of this new development, the emergence of man.
[1:49] We find that right through Genesis 1, the narrative moves on rapidly through the various days.
[2:01] And then we come to this great pause in verse 26. Then God said, let us make man. There is some momentous development.
[2:13] There is some new departure. And this word bara used only of God. Used as we saw very, very sparingly.
[2:24] It's used of God's action at this point. Because here God brings into existence something which is new. Now of course as we see man wasn't made by fiat or immediate creation.
[2:42] He was made using pre-existing material. And yet he is so brilliantly new. So spectacularly different.
[2:54] That the Bible speaks of man in terms of this great divine activity. God created him. There is this dramatic pause.
[3:07] There is this conference between the persons of the Godhead. And then there is this divine activity. According to which God brings this new thing into being.
[3:18] God creates man. We find again that God is said to for man. We find this in Genesis 2 and in verse 7.
[3:30] Now again we saw this word last time we met. And I don't want to spend too much time over it. We're told that the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground.
[3:42] A reminder as I said that man is not simply the result of God saying let there be man. God made light in that way.
[3:56] God said let there be light. But the creation of man is a process by which God uses pre-existing materials.
[4:07] And in fact uses materials which seem to us to be so commonplace and so humble. The very dust of the ground itself.
[4:18] A reminder to us that although man is the result of God's creative initiative. Man also has close affinities with the rest of creation.
[4:32] With the rest of the organic creation. He is made from the very dust itself. A reminder that man in his biochemistry.
[4:44] In the chemical composition of his body. Is not different from other organisms in the creation. So God forms man from pre-existing materials.
[5:00] God gives him a chemical composition similar to that of other organisms. And yet this word formed is a word reminiscent of the artistic involvement of God.
[5:18] Reminding us of the love and care. Shall I say the imagination. And the dedication that have gone into this new creature man.
[5:30] This word formed is the word used for the work of the potter. It is in itself redolent of creative process of great care and great skill.
[5:46] In other words God took great trouble over this creature man. God formed and fashioned him lovingly. As God moulded him in accordance with the concept of his own creative imagination.
[6:05] And then it culminates you see in this verse 7. In this marvellous idea here. That God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
[6:16] And man became a living being. I suggested already that the very word formed itself reminds us of the involvement creatively, directly, even emotionally of God in this particular activity.
[6:36] But here there is this very, very striking reminder of the immediacy and directness of God's involvement. That he breathes being.
[6:49] He breathes breath and life into man. There is no room here for a remote, shall I say, deistic activity.
[7:02] As if God wound up the universe and that universe precipitates man. There is no room for a distant or inherently self-controlled evolutionary process.
[7:19] By which again man happens. But there is God breathing. So that we may say that in the very first breath man draws.
[7:31] He is in fellowship with God. The moment he opens his eyes, he is looking to the face of his own maker and his own creator.
[7:44] Now I am sure that here there are levels of poetry. I am sure there is more here than simple propositional truth. But there certainly is not less.
[7:57] God making man with loving artistic care of the dust of the ground. And then breathing animatedness into to indicate how directly God is involved in this great process.
[8:12] And then we find of course the third word in Genesis 1.22. With regard to the creation of the woman. Then the Lord God made a woman.
[8:24] The Lord God built the woman. And in good to that being what I said last time we met. And so we find God created man. God formed man.
[8:36] God built man. God built man. God built man. Now I needn't labour the point that this portrayal is fundamentally different from modern anthropology and its view of the origin of man.
[8:55] The Bible cannot allow that man is simply the precipitate of a process of evolution. He is not the result of the minute mutation of the gene of some other animal.
[9:13] Man's emergence is due to the activity of God himself. Let me remind you as I tried to bring out last week.
[9:25] I have no great quarrel with a time scale demanded by modern science. I have no quality idea that creation was sometimes mediate.
[9:38] It was process. It used pre-existing materials. But there is no way that a biblical theologian can get over this fact.
[9:48] That between man and the nearest other form of creation. There is a gap that can be bridged only by the creative action of God.
[10:05] You cannot get from the so-called higher animals to man. By a minute genetic adaptation. By some small change rendering this creature fitter for survival.
[10:22] That is not the biblical teaching. The Bible argues that God specifically intervenes in the creative process.
[10:34] He creates the man. He forms the man. He builds the man. That does not mean that there are not close affinities between man and other animals.
[10:51] There is a close anatomical affinity between man and the ape. There is a close affinity between man and the dog.
[11:05] There is a close genetic affinity between man and the chimpanzee. All of that fits in my view perfectly well into the Bible's own portrayal.
[11:20] The Bible doesn't allocate to man a separate creation day. The Bible doesn't argue that man is the product of fiat or immediate creation.
[11:32] It argues that he is made from pre-existing elements. The Bible doesn't put man in a separate category. It says man is a living being, a living creature.
[11:47] All that would lead me to expect affinities between man and other creatures. It would lead me to expect that science could conduct humane experiments on animals and extrapolate from them to conclusions relevant to the human being.
[12:12] None of that is precluded by anything the Bible says. What is precluded is the notion that man is the result of an evolution itself guided by natural selection and taking place through the minute mutation over many millions of years of the genes of other animals.
[12:46] Because the Bible portrays man as de novo, as new, as the specific product of divine activity.
[12:59] My personal view of the creation week is something like this. But within it there were long periods during which the procedures defined in Genesis operated in terms of the Lord's word, let the waters bring forth, let the earth bring forth.
[13:21] These processes went on over many millennia, over maybe many millions of years. The waters kept bringing forth, the waters kept bringing forth. But there are specific points in the process.
[13:36] When God intervenes, when God specifically initiates a new departure. Now of course God is imminent, God is operated in the whole process.
[13:50] The whole sequence is under God's control. But there are points when God's intervention is cataclysmic.
[14:01] When he intervenes to initiate some great new departure. And that's what he does specifically in the creation of man. At this point God pauses, God delivers.
[14:16] And God proceeds to create, to form and to build. I want to provide you with a foundation for intellectual security.
[14:33] When you are told, ah but man is like the chimpanzee. When you are told, man's, the valve of a human heart is similar to the valve of a pig's heart.
[14:48] That is no contravention of biblical teaching. That is what the Bible's teaching would lead us to expect. Because man is placed in such close affinity to the rest of creation.
[15:06] But those affinities do not by any logical process require the conclusion that man is simply a development along naturalistic and deterministic lines from those other animals.
[15:26] The similarities are due not to evolution or to development or dependence. They are due to the fact of a common creator duplicating his systems in more than one form of his creation.
[15:45] I often say that it is in many ways to a double-decker bus.
[15:55] That is not proof that it has evolved by spontaneous mutation from a double-decker bus. Although the same systems are used and the same basic laws are in operation.
[16:12] Because they both go back to the same creative discovery, the internal combustion engine. So much then for the origin of man.
[16:23] The second area I want to look at is this. What are the main features of the Bible's answer to the question, what is the nature of man?
[16:37] What is the nature of man? There are three things I want to look at briefly. The first, and this will sound rather intimidating I know, but I must use these words for a moment.
[16:52] It's this. That man is a psychosomatic unity. He is a unity of soul and body. That means that man has a soul, man has a body, but these do not function as independent entities, but they function in the closest possible union, the one with the other.
[17:18] Man has a body. Man has a body.
[17:50] They give us access to the physical world with all its beauty and all its complexity and all its dangers. There is nothing evil about the body.
[18:01] It isn't the cause of sin. There is nothing contemptible about the body in the Bible. The Bible has a view of the body which confers upon it immense dignity.
[18:14] Dignity because God formed it of the dust of the ground. God. God. God so closely involved. And in fact, God in the incarnation, God took the body in him that dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
[18:35] There is an entity in the universe tonight called the body of God. God. Now I know that sometimes we have difficulties because of a foolishness in coming, get into grips with this fact of our own physicalness.
[18:52] But there it is. Man as a body and in that body we are called upon to serve God and called upon to keep that body in a condition which will fit it for the service of God.
[19:08] We aren't to pamper it or to indulge it. We aren't to abuse it or to exhaust it. We are to endeavor to keep it at a pitch of maximum efficiency because we have nothing else with which to serve God in our current condition.
[19:26] But man also has a soul. He has a psychological side to his humanness according to which he is able to think and decide.
[19:41] And above all, he is subject to a whole range of emotions. Man is an emotional and affective creature.
[19:58] He is a creature of feelings. We do ourselves great injury by denying our physicalness.
[20:09] We do ourselves great damage by denying our own emotional nature. Our own affectionate nature.
[20:20] To be human is to have feelings of joy, of sorrow, of fear and apprehension and hope, of elation and of disappointment.
[20:34] To be human is to love and to need to be loved. And these things are not weaknesses.
[20:47] These things are what God conferred upon us when he gave us a psychological dimension to our own existence. We are not meant to face bereavement with impossibility or stoicism.
[21:05] We are not meant to face exposure and condemnation and guilt without shame.
[21:17] We are not meant to hear good news and experience success without joy and without elation. And as a very typical Westerner myself, I think it is so important for us to accept that it is an unfortunate part of our Western legacy and inheritance that we find it is an unfortunate part of our own emotions.
[21:42] We are not meant to face our own emotions. And even more so to express our own emotions. But we are body and we are soul and so we are emotional.
[21:55] We are not meant to face our own emotions. We are not meant to be stoical in the face of trauma and alteration in our circumstances. But the most important part of our own emotions is that for all the validity of the distinction between the body and the soul, yet they constitute one human being.
[22:17] and they affect one another most intimately and they interact upon one another most directly.
[22:29] And we must ourselves, in engaging in the great act to exercise and process of self-management on a lifelong basis, we must come to grips with this fact that we are a unity of body and of soul.
[22:48] And the neglect or abuse of either of those components is going to have disastrous effects on the other component and on our personhood in its totality.
[23:02] A great deal of our own emotional problems are caused by physical factors, caused by overwork, by lack of sleep, by lack of exercise, by physical exhaustion.
[23:19] We owe to God, if we have a proclivity to worse emotional loss, to exercise the most prudent management over our own bodies, because if we don't, then we shall reap an emotional consequence, and not only shall we suffer, but those dependent upon us will suffer too, and even the kingdom of God and the church of God will suffer.
[23:50] We must remember the impact of the physical upon the emotional. For the same reason, we have to face that there are certain emotional disorders for which it is a responsibility before God to accept medication, because these disorders have an organic base or at least an organic dimension.
[24:21] There are forms of depression, for example, which yield very, very readily to chemical control. It is dishonoring to God and cruelty dependents to refuse to accept such medication on the basis of the arrogant principle, I do not take drugs.
[24:45] If the alternative is mystery for those you live with and incapacity for the work that God has called you to, then it is our responsibility that we bear before God to manage our temperaments through those medications to the utmost of our own ability, because the body has such a direct impact upon our emotional state.
[25:17] And in the same way, of course, our emotional state will impact upon our physical condition. And there is no doubt again that very often if we go through emotional loss and emotional traumas, there will be a physical consequence.
[25:37] And it isn't of all that much personal importance, to my point of view, except this, that very often our physical condition should not worry us too much. If we can remind ourselves that we have been through some trauma which can explain the way that we feel, and maybe that gives us some peace of mind you learn to expect, that under certain stress there are certain kinds of physical consequences, man is psychosomani.
[26:06] Well, I say that for this reason, you see, from Genesis 2-7. Man became a living soul. I don't know what the NIV puts being there, but that's the way it is.
[26:17] A living nefesh. Nefesh Chayim. He's a living soul. And you see, we say that we have a soul as if it were some kind of a pertinence that one carried around with one.
[26:31] A possession. An external adjunct to our personalities. In actual fact, in the Bible, man is a soul.
[26:42] Now I know that sometimes the Bible also says, my soul. There is that possessive dimension there too. But the teaching of Genesis here is to the effect that man is a soul.
[26:56] He is, shall I say, an embodied spirit. And the combination of the physical and the spiritual, the physical and the psychological, that unity is what makes us human beings.
[27:14] And those two aspects of our humanness impact very directly upon one another. We are all familiar with psychosomatic illnesses.
[27:28] It's a great pity that we tend very often to attach an element of guilt to such a condition. That is, when you say it's psychosomatic, you are not saying it's a pretend.
[27:44] You are saying it is a physical condition resulting from an emotional state. That doesn't mean that there is no physical problem.
[27:56] There is a physical problem. But it is rooted in a psychological problem. And very often aggravated by the psychological problem.
[28:07] And what I am saying, I hope, fundamentally is this, this whole area requires the sympathy of Christians and the understanding of Christians.
[28:19] Because those who go through this area of life face so much trauma and so much solitude and so much hostility. And they can do without the suspicions of the Christian church.
[28:35] So this is my first concern here. Man is a unity of body and soul. Those two fused and acting together in the most intimate way imaginable.
[28:50] The second intriguing point is this. The Bible's emphasis on human sexuality. Now, I can consider this as a very delicate point.
[29:04] But the advantage of this kind of gathering is we can at least ventilate some of the Bible's teaching in this particular area. You see, it's emphasized very, very firmly there in Genesis 1.27.
[29:17] Male and female created evil. This sexual differentiation. Now, I'm not sure exactly how closely this ties up with the fact, which we shall look at next, that man is made in the image of God.
[29:37] I mean that at the very heart of God himself, there is differentiation between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. At the very core of our humanness, there is also differentiation.
[29:54] The sexual differentiation, the complementarity of the sexes. And this differentiation is God's will for mankind.
[30:08] It is an inescapable factor. And for all that Freud, in some ways using language very, very loosely and specialistically, gave undue prominence to this whole dimension of human existence.
[30:28] He was substantially correct in saying to us that there is no area of human activity or relationship that is not affected in some way by this sexual differentiation.
[30:45] It is something of enormous potency, obviously, in our human existence. It is rooted in the will of God. All I want to do for the moment is bring this down into the contemporary field if I can.
[31:00] And I can do so by maybe keying on into a very widely prevalent assumption derived from the more popular journals, the journal is spread from the women's journals, that sexuality is a matter of almost infinite gradation from absolute maleness to absolute femaleness, with all kinds of shadings in between.
[31:27] And, of course, the intention is to suggest that the sexual aberrations and what I may guardedly and without hostility call sexual deviantness, which is having such high profile in our society, is in fact itself a result of this fact, that sexuality is a matter of degree.
[31:56] Partial maleness mixed with partial femaleness, even that we are all mixture of maleness and femaleness. Now, I do not profess to be fully conversant with this problem in terms of its physiology and its genetic background, but it is, I think, safe to say that human sexuality is a matter of genetics and that it is absolute.
[32:32] There is maleness and there is femaleness and that depends simply and absolutely upon the chromosomal composition of the gene.
[32:45] And there is not in genetics any more than there is in theology any room for the idea of a mixing up or a gradation from the one to the other.
[33:03] Now, part of the difficulty is, of course, the very stereotyping of which we are accused by contemporary feminism.
[33:15] We are told often that we are told often that women are gentle and men lead. It is undoubtedly true that there are some gentle men and that there are women made for leadership.
[33:30] that does not in itself modify the factor of sexuality. We are male or we are female.
[33:42] Now, I know that there are certain anatomical problems which arise in certain instances, as medical practitioners would be aware, and these raise problems in the same way as other obstetric problems, raise theological problems of what a human being is.
[34:07] It is a monster, a human being. Maleness, femaleness, I know these problems can't exist. But the presence of the one XY chromosome is what makes that sexual differentiation.
[34:24] Now, with regard to the ethical problem that I'm obviously impinging upon homosexuality, it has to be accepted on strictly biblical grounds that there are some human beings born with no interest in the other sex.
[34:42] That is, what the Lord himself allows, some are born eunuchs. There is no moral judgment or disapproval to be passed upon a human being with that kind of personality.
[34:59] The ethical problems only arise when a person who is so wilt seeks illicit outlets in actual practice.
[35:13] The Bible is saying to us, God made man male and female male or female. There may be homosexual males, homosexual females in terms of their actual temperament.
[35:30] That is not an ethical problem. It is only homosexual acts and practices that create those ethical problems. And I am told that there is no genetic predisposition to such practices, although there are genetic dispositions which leave some people without their interest to refer to in the opposite sex.
[35:57] Well, let me continue to move through this, obviously through a bit of a minefield, but an area in which guidance is hard to find for Christians, and I must at the risk of saying something on it.
[36:12] If Jesus Christ became man as he did, he became not mankind, not the human race, he became a specific human being, and his humanness has specificity and individuality.
[36:34] He became a Jew of the first century, born in Bethlehem to a particular set of parents. He is specific racially, he is specific in terms of family ties, he is specific and unique in his genetic composition.
[36:59] It is also implied in this that he is specific in his sexuality. He is either male or female, and in the Bible, of course, clearly the Lord is male.
[37:13] That fact should serve to make us very, very careful in what we say sometimes in response to sensational films that seek to exploit for commercial gain one aspect of the Lord's life.
[37:34] What I mean is that in our concern to defend the purity of the Lord, we must be careful not to deny his sexuality.
[37:48] Because you then run the very grave risk of portraying the Lord in homosexual terms. The Lord was not only human, the Lord was male.
[38:04] Though I know that this is very much up in the air, I am sorry that people felt that they should comment on this recent film, because very few of us have seen it, and I haven't seen the film either. But we must not in our comments upon it overlook this fact.
[38:20] God made man male or female. Christ was a male. And I have no doubt that as such he would face temptations in this area as he would face in every other area of his humanness.
[38:39] He was tempted without sin. I just want to keep this thing under some kind of control. So the Bible says that man is a psychosomatic unity.
[38:55] It says that man is by creation sexual. And it says thirdly that man is made in the image of God. So God created man in his own image.
[39:12] That is what man was like at the point of his origin. He was modelled upon his creator and he bore the image of God.
[39:23] Now the same meaning attaches to that idea here as attaches to it when we are told that Christ is the image of the invisible God.
[39:38] It means that there are resemblances between God and man. It is, I think, crucial to our understanding of this whole issue to remind ourselves that this statement is not made about any other creature but man.
[40:05] We seem to me to have inherited the idea that the angels are somehow superior to man. The angels are never said to be made in the image of God.
[40:20] The angels are the servants of the redeemed. The image of God. And virtually all the biblical indicators point to the conclusion that man is the apex of God's creation.
[40:34] Not only in the physical terrestrial but also in the spiritual realm. There is nothing higher than man because he bears the image of God.
[40:45] the image of God. Another remarkable fact which sometimes causes our evangelical people a great deal of trouble is that the Bible never suggests that man lost this image. In fact, the Bible itself never even says that this image was marred in man. Now let me say that I would yield to no one in my delineation of the reality and the enormity of indwelling sin, the reality of total depravity, the extent and power and pervasiveness of corruption in the heart of a human being. I happen to regard that doctrine as the single most important doctrine in the whole area of practical religion. And that the view we hold with regard to the extent of human sin will determine whether we are evangelicals or non-evangelicals. As Anselm said, the whole reason why people have low abuse of the person of Christ and low abuse of the cross is because they haven't pondered the gravity of sin. The reason why the Bible is a closed book to the natural man is that the Bible is addressed to sinners. Unless you are a sinner in your own consciousness, it will make no sense whatever to me. So I want to say that I believe in total depravity, I believe in the pervasiveness of sin, I believe in the spiritual powerlessness of man, and I believe that original sin is a fundamental doctrine, may be the fundamental doctrine of evangelical religion.
[42:58] I also believe that man still retains the image of God. And I maintain that not on any grounds of pure logic, but on grounds of explicit biblical teaching.
[43:14] If we come to Genesis 9, for example, in the post-flood situation, when God, responding to the violence that prevailed in the world before the flood, God moves in to protect human life, to assert the sanctity of human life. And God lays down that very solemn ordinance, he who sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be shed. Why? Because in the image of God made he man. In other words, the whole logic behind the principle of the sanctity of human life, and behind the ordinance of the covenant of the covenant of the covenant of the covenant of the covenant of God, was that even man in the person of Noah and his descendants was deemed to bear the image of God.
[44:10] And we find the same thing in the epistle of James, when James is talking, I think in the third chapter, about the evils of the human tongue, the damage the tongue, and the damage the tongue does. And he says, how amazing it is, he says, with this tongue we bless God, we eulogize God, we say great things about God, and with that same tongue, we revive and blaspheme man who is made in the image of God.
[44:41] We find in Psalm 8, we find the psalmist saying, what is man? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.
[44:52] Well really in fact, a little lower than God. That's what the psalmist viewed, man after the fog, a little lower than God. You remember again, the first Corinthians 11 passage with regard to women's head covering whatever the teaching is specifically, I don't happen to think that I know the answer to that problem, but it does come across very clearly that the logic behind Paul's argument is that the head of the man must not be covered because he is the image and the glory of God.
[45:36] Now there is a great problem in that passage because it is to the male of the species that the idea, the concept of divine image bearing is referred.
[45:48] And the ladies don't on the face of things, the passage with as much credit as the men come out of it. I don't know the answer to that for the moment either.
[46:01] But the point is that even man after the fall esteemed to bear the image and the glory of God. I think that here is something of enormous practical importance.
[46:17] The way we view our fellow human beings, our fellow men and women, that we should view them as bearers of the image of God.
[46:28] They are gifted with rationality. They are gifted with an aesthetic sense, able to appreciate beauty, able to create beauty.
[46:48] They are gifted with a capacity for fellowship. Let us make man in our image. Not let me make man in my image.
[47:00] Made in the image of the withness, the togetherness, the socialness of God himself. It is not good for the man to be alone. Now there is tremendous teaching there.
[47:12] I see it in the distance. God lives and is blessed in relationships.
[47:24] He is blessed in the togetherness of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He makes you in his image. Which means that you too are made for relationship.
[47:39] And yet in this dark world of ours, how many human beings are frightened of relationships.
[47:50] Are seeking security by avoiding relationships. Are frightened of bonding. Of emotional dependence.
[48:03] Of social dependence. The great teaching of the second chapter. It is not good for the man to be alone. The human tragedy is this.
[48:16] That you can avoid all the pain in life. By avoiding relationships. And you also avoid all the joy in life.
[48:28] By avoiding relationships. It is the curse. But at the very point, withness, where man ought to have found his fulfillment.
[48:40] There man finds frustration and finds pain. I must put it to you. Because even in evangelical churches, there is this drawing away from relationships.
[48:56] This fear of getting hurt. This emphasis on individualism. And on solitude. This reluctance to commit ourselves to anybody.
[49:09] That is violation of the image of God. God made us in our image. In his image, even after the fall, we bear his image.
[49:20] That image is shown in our rationality. Our creativity. Our sense of beauty. Our need for relationships. Our joy in relationships.
[49:32] And much more besides. But I want to put it to you this way. A man or woman can never lose this image. It's so important as you teach your children in your homes.
[49:46] As you teach them in your schools. As you serve them in the various caring professions. As you meet them in the courts.
[49:58] As you see them in the gutters. As you legislate for them. As you rescue them. At those points at which you attempt to despise them.
[50:10] To despise him. To remind yourself. This is the image of God. Is it not the horror of fascism in all its forms?
[50:24] Of apartheid in all its forms? Of anti-Semitism in all its forms? And it forgot that all men bear the image of God.
[50:37] And that man can never lose it. A few days ago, I had the privilege of visiting the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.
[50:50] And to stand close to the overwhelming evidence of the inhumanity of man to the Jew.
[51:03] The destruction in circumstances of unspeakable horror. The destruction of the world's 14 million Jews.
[51:18] A policy of total extermination. Because the fascists forgot. That these Jews bore the image of God.
[51:32] You see behind it. There is something more awesome and more moving still. That it's this.
[51:43] That the death squads. And the doctors. Who committed those appalling experiments. on Jewish men and women and boys and girls.
[51:56] The attendants at the crematoria who move the corpses into the pits and the living humans into the incinerator and shovel the dust and the ashes into the receptacles.
[52:18] That these two bore the image of God. And that because they bore that image they shall answer and have answer for what they did.
[52:31] Because the man never ceases to bear that image. The man never ceases to be answerable. Never ceases to be responsible for his conduct.
[52:44] The Nazi cannot turn to his God and say our Lord but that day I was an animal. That day he was a human being.
[52:58] And that day he acted as one who was made in the image of God. I worry that many evangelical pronouncements and judgments reflect the security born of self-righteousness.
[53:23] of self-righteousness. I have only remembered always what we ourselves have sunk to and would have sunk to but for the grace of God.
[53:39] It would temper many of our generalizations and our sweeping judgments. I want just as I close to make a brief comment on the directives that God gave to man and I have time only to mention them.
[54:02] He told him to be fruitful and to multiply. That is to procreate intelligently responsibly and believingly trusting God to provide.
[54:19] The sexuality not used irresponsibly but not suppressed because of unbelief and unfaith.
[54:29] I have no time to go into that. He told them to fill the earth. That was the second point. In other words they were meant to move over the horizons over the hills and the rivers into the unknown.
[54:50] To be creative to be adventurous to want to know to be unable to be content with not knowing.
[55:00] God put that drive in every human being. in all authentic humanism. The young never discourage them if they want to experiment if they want to innovate if they want to explore to move out.
[55:16] Let them live on the frontier. Let the church of God and the people of God live on the frontier creatively imaginatively. That's what were meant to move fill the earth.
[55:30] Eden was a great place. And yet as I read this they weren't meant to stay there. They were meant to move out fill the whole earth not stay in this familiar corner that they knew so well.
[55:46] And they were told to subdue and dominate their own environment. I can put it to you this way through the procedures of pure science and the procedures of practical science or technology subdue and dominate the cosmos.
[56:06] Understand it. Harness it. But I can put it to you this way too God were told put the man into the garden to till it and to keep it.
[56:22] I love to think that God put the first human pair not into university or even into the free church college but into a garden and that they were to express their divine image bearing by digging and by delving by the great conjoint operations of conservation and improvement.
[56:53] That's what man was meant to do and that's your responsibility too. I know there's a lot of nonsense in conservation. I know there is suspicion of it often beyond reason in some of our circles.
[57:10] There is enormous damage being done and has been done irreparably to the world and to our environment. we are in this world to conserve to keep it but we aren't only in the world to conserve.
[57:27] God said to Adam dig it and prove it. It's a great garden but I want you to make it better and everything you get whether it's your literary heritage your architectural heritage heritage your garden or your free church theology whatever else it is you don't simply conserve it you dig it and you make it better and you hand it on and prove to those who come after you.
[57:55] I close by saying one thing more which is the most important thing I have said but which I can't develop and that is this Christ is the true definition of man I wonder what we think you know he's a real man a real man he is he's manly or she's really feminine she's a real woman a real human being a warm human being a real human well what is a real human Christ is for me the definition of God Christ is also and equally the definition of man and if I were asked in a sentence well what do I mean by that and what is most precious about Christ to me in that whole area it is quite simply this for even the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life for ransom for many to know what picture you have of a really great human being great man a great man is the
[59:23] Christ who was willing to bear the burden of our sin to suffer what we deserve willing to be and to be thought a slave and I commend it to you that you model your humanness on the man Christ Jesus well so much and if there are questions I shall try to deal with them well there's an opportunity for questions now for those who would like to ask them yes when you were talking about the nature of man you said that man was a unity of soul and body and I've heard it argued that man is a unity of soul and body and mind do you see that there's a three part division or a two part division and where does the mind fit into the scheme of things well it certainly is debated in theology whether man is dichotomatic or trichotomatic that's the double technical terms for this particular discussion and it is argued by some that man is a threefold entity of body soul and spirit sometimes mind rather than spirit as you say in my own view man is a dichotomy composed of two elements body and soul and I think that in the bible the term soul and spirit are used more or less interchangeably and that the same emotions are ascribed to the two entities sometimes the soul is cast down sometimes the spirit is cast down sometimes the mind is cast down and one can't distinguish those two elements sharply
[61:33] I think they are to some extent synonymous the main difference is that the soul is often used for the totality of the human being for example seven souls in Noah's Ark the word spirit is never used of the individual at all but always of this aspect of man's humanness so I certainly am a dichotomist and my view is that soul and spirit overlap to a very large degree talking about the Holocaust and the effects upon the Jews wouldn't you say that Hitler was the natural instrument of God in this case from the point of view that at last he was going to make the remnant of the Jews think of Palestine as the one place where they could be saved from their enemies as they get back to a nation and also they respect it in respect of shall we say the sympathy of the world for the remnant of the Jews that they should have a place in Palestine would you not say that Hitler was an instrument of God?
[62:52] well my current feelings on the matter are such that I would distance God as far as I could from Hitler but obviously it is all controlled by God's great parables that much I would accept at the moment the Jews certainly don't feel that they have the word sympathy they feel utterly and totally paranoid because the Holocaust governs their whole psychology and they mistrust everybody even nice free church professors and they gave me a real rough time going in and even rougher coming out because they thought that maybe I was dangerous too it is so difficult for us to relate it to God's purpose I would accept that yes it is part of God's purpose but it is also that which absolutely ought not to have happened and which nothing can explain or justify
[64:01] I do also could remember that in Russia Stalin liquidated to use the euphemism three times as many of his own people as Hitler did of Jews and we must I suppose keep a sense of proportion but it seems to me that that episode if it had a purpose as it had obviously in God's overarching decree was to bring to an end the optimism of Western Europe and to underline in a highly dramatic and traumatic form just how bankrupt and how vicious humanity is and it's very very difficult to see that there was any good in it or that any good came out of it and yet one knows that God does work all things together for good to them that love them
[65:11] I wouldn't like any Jews who are present to misunderstand our brother's question I can see what is in his mind and I think that certainly I am quite prepared to bear my share of the alien guilt for anti-Semitism and that all of us in this audience are probably also going to bear the burden of that guilt it is an appalling bloat on the human record Are there any other questions?
[65:54] Do you wish to say anything on the human need or desire for solitude in the context of the very strong spread on the human need for relationships?
[66:06] Well, I have never heard you, Donald, ask me such a simple question before I was terrified when I saw your hand going up If I can again be personal One of my abiding memories of this reel is the prevalence of noise and the impossibility of finding peace and solitude There is something in the oriental mind that compels them, as I can see, to talk all the time And they also have transistors which operate a three-shift system 24 hours a day And it was amazing even in the Holocaust Memorial to see large numbers of school children in the most solemn part of the sanctuary making the most appalling racket
[67:15] And I spent some days at Tiberias and I can really understand so well, I think, now how the Lord wanted to go to the desert and onto a boat to get away from the people And I think that that is a very valid point I think that both points are true There must be space for solitude We all need, I think, a chamber and a sanctuary But the problem lies, I think, in opting for the extremists And there are some people who can't bear to be alone and some who can't bear not to be alone And I think that in Christ we find that he was exceedingly gregarious I think we would agree with that But we find him periodically going off to escape from the multitude And I think that that is a very valid collective to my own emphasis tonight That's a alert to me to something that I thought of while you were speaking
[68:19] I wonder if I could ask a question Would you have anything helpful to say to those who find singleness a problem? I've come across a number of single Christians who find singleness a problem And I think it does fit in with what you were saying about relationships and the context in which you mentioned it And I think it's especially a problem in that there's really quite a strong emphasis on family and in the modern church And I think some single people get difficulties Well, I think, again, that's a very helpful question to correct omissions in my own presentation I think that in our circles, certainly, where women don't find very much of a role in the church's public life They are often told that they find fulfillment of the home as home-makers and so on And that's okay except for the many who do not have homes to make in the sense of not being wives or mothers
[69:23] And for them, I'm sure, it's a very painful presentation It does seem to me to be clear in the New Testament that singleness is God's will for some Christians And that in the Bible it is approached positively as a great asset That such a person is in many ways more free to serve God and should capitalize on singleness as a spiritual asset On the other hand, singleness and solitude don't necessarily go together And there can be a relationship without marriage necessarily There is room for involvement in the life of the church There is room for friendship at a very profound level Both the Lord and the Apostle Paul were single and lived lives of total fulfillment My worry is that there are some people who are frightened of any relationship
[70:28] And who don't have a commitment to their homes, their parents, brothers and sisters Or to any circle of friends that one can identify So again I've got to try to strike a balance on this I do want to say that the single people should rejoice that they're in the same state as the Lord Jesus Christ himself And they're in the state that Paul commended as most fitted to many forms of Christian labor But I'm also saying even to the single that they must not be frightened of relationships And it may be worth my wife saying that many of those who are single have been scarred and traumatized by some past experience And they may have to work that through in terms of understanding it of forgiving it, of forgiving it, and of escaping from it and overcoming it
[71:35] If that fits, maybe somebody can think it through for himself or herself But most single people I think do bear the scars of difficult relationships And they must watch lest those scars are the reason for their continuing singleness Because they become frightened of becoming hurt Can I just remind you that you are free to ask questions that may have lingered from a fortnight ago And you're also free to come back on any of the questions or answers that have already been put Anyone else like to... Yes?
[72:17] Well, I'll take you up on the questions that were lingering Although I also have a question with regard to tonight And it's quite possible that I might ask Professor MacLeod two questions But with regard to the last subject, the biblical idea of creation From what you said on that evening and indeed this evening It would appear that you have, to say at least in some sympathy With a periodic view of God's creational activity As opposed to a six day creational view Now some people would say that the evidence for the six day creation is very strong Whereas the evidence for the periodic non-six day creation is very weak And for example they would point to the fact that the days are described as evening and morning
[73:18] That certainly on the... after the third day that the sun was fixed in its orbit if you like And therefore we certainly had solar time and 24 hour time And they would point to Genesis 2-4 as indicating nearly the summing up of the history of God's creation of antiquity In the same way that we could speak of Britain's day of imperialism That that is merely... that the usage of the work that the Genesis 2-4 merely describes the historical period of God's creational activity Which seems to be clear to some people as six days How would you comment on that?
[74:16] And if it is possible for you to answer this second question That you mentioned that homosexual acts tonight are worthy of condemnation I'm not quoting you exactly But I think you said the disposition Or at least what's to that effect, weren't it?
[74:41] How does that relate, if at all, to the Lord Jesus' thinking When he said that people lust within their minds Certainly he was addressing it to a woman But how would you comment on that, for example, a homosexual lust?
[75:06] Well, these are two fairly massive questions My response to the first would be that it is perfectly permissible within the Church to hold that these days were literal 24 hour days That view is held by many Christians and can claim biblical support It has disadvantages in that it is a fairly novel view, as I argued last time we met And more important, it brings the Bible into conflict with the conclusions of modern science Now, I indicated last week that those conclusions may themselves be subject to massive revision But it seems to me that they may also be correct And that if they are correct And that if they are correct And this world is 4.4 billion years old
[76:07] That the Bible itself must be harmonised with that particular fact And the interpretation adopted by Hugh Muller and Charles Hodge and William Cunningham and Archibald Hodge and B.B. Warfield That those days were periods rather than literal solar days Going back to Augustine and the Fathers That interpretation does allow us to understand Genesis fairly literally And yet to live at peace with modern science It does seem to me that, so far as I understand it The processes by which the Earth has been dated are reliable But I also said that in principle there may be a place yet for a revolution in methodology Which might overthrow all those conclusions And I am simply saying at the level of theology
[77:11] That I do not want to be tied to the idea that this world is, shall I say, 6,000 years old Or that this world is 4.4 billion years old I want to say that whatever the truth is scientifically, the Bible will accord with that And my view is that if the world is all that old Then these days can't mean anything but periodic as you put it You grant yourself, of course, that the first three days were not solar days Solar days, solar days of some other kind of unspecified length But there are monumental metaphysical difficulties And scientific ones in the idea that this is a young Earth But I frankly am not prepared to endorse theologically the current scientific consensus
[78:16] I am not prepared to endorse theologically the Whitcomb and Morris form of science Because that is what it is As a theologian I want to stand apart from both those constructions But so far as I do understand my sympathy is with the modern rather than the Whitcomb and Morris point of view And as I said, my views with regard to the length of the days Corresponds to the historic view of British Evangelicals With regard to the other question I would really have to point out first of all That I phrased myself rather differently from your question I don't think I said that homosexual disposition was innocent But I did say I think that to be uninterested in the opposite sex That some men could be born that way And that that was not as a disposition, a sinful disposition
[79:20] On the other hand, I would say most emphatically that homosexual lust is sin Because lust itself belongs to the realm of actual sin Not of predisposition or proclivity And it is as wrong for a male of homosexual disposition to lust for another male As for a heterosexual lust for a woman They say lust in all its forms is sin But my position is based on the words of the Lord himself That there are some who are born eunuchs Who do not have a heterosexual interest That position is one that I am quite happy with But if this person who is born a eunuch If he progresses to homosexual lust To wanting another man Then that is most emphatically sin And it is so good that you should raise that point
[80:23] I think before these two questions There was some movement over here That I had to choose between the two Is that correct? But a question from this area How does the long term view The creation fit in with the ordination of the Sabbath?
[80:38] God sanctified the seventh day Well, it's true, but that had your mind for 14 days And I am glad you raised it My answer broadly to that is this That God is still living in his Sabbath And my father worketh hitherto And the Lord argues in that passage That God himself works on God's Sabbath So that God's Sabbath is certainly not a 24-hour Sabbath And so I would respond to his children But I am really trying to get across the message if I can That to a large extent we have two bodies of scientists here One saying to us, who happen to be Christians That this world is 6,000 years old roughly And other scientists saying this world is 4.4 billion years old And as a theologian I am caught in between And I am asked, well, how do I harmonise Genesis with the first option
[81:40] Which is not all that difficult But what about the second option? And I am taking the course adopted by my eminent predecessors in Scottish theology And I feel quite secure under them But I have said before many a platform That it is very difficult to believe that God would make a world that looks 4.4 billion years old If it wasn't that old And when I speak of the metaphysical difficulties that is my basic one What Hugh Miller said And I am not trying I think this is a very difficult and delicate issue And I sympathise with all those scrupules here Hugh Miller said, we are living in a graveyard The place is full of gravestones It is full of lichen Or lichen And every other evidence of decay and of maturity
[82:44] This world is full of fossils We see the light that comes from stars so far away That that light would have 2,000,000,000 years to reach us That is the kind of world it is Now the question before us is Is the world as old as it looks?
[83:07] Or does it just look old? That is the difficulty And I am not sure that there is any exit in principle from that dilemma We have to take your choice And my own view is that the scientific evidence Which everybody agrees is pretty massive That that evidence is in fact pointing to the truth And the only alternative is that God made the world to look old Which means to me, made this world to deceive us And I have difficulty with that Any final questions?
[83:48] Yes The same sort of question The same sort of problem would arise with Adam himself How old did he look when he was creating this?
[84:01] And that wasn't the real question The real question is The bible tells us that death Entered the world as a result of Adam's sin Whereas if there were animals in the world For millions of years before animals creation Were they subject to death and they are so white?
[84:22] Well I suppose I would rather not be asked that question But since I am asked I must be consistent And I would have to agree again with Hugh Miller and the others That those fossils are fossils of animals that did antedate man And that died before man was created And I would therefore need to conclude that death is the punishment of sin only in relation to man And that when God said the day that you eat of that fruit you will die He was indicating to Adam a phenomenon with which Adam was familiar in creation around him And you know more science than I do Mr. Berry And I am sure that you will be aware that whenever you eat any fruit you are actually eating a large number of microbes at different forms
[85:25] Which I assume were there before the fall And were devoured by Adam even as a vegetarian And again it is going to involve a massive readjustment of creation to believe that the lion for example was a vegetarian before the fall Would he be a lion at all I am reluctant to pursue those things to the ultimate logical conclusion But the view that I was nurtured in the night of the country called what the particular cradle was on this But the view was that death was sin's punishment as far as man was concerned But that there was death in creation as part of the biological cycle before man came on the scene It is time I was restless I did want to give one last opportunity in case there was another question on tonight's lecture Yes
[86:27] You've often said that in relation to Hebrews 2 You spoke of one as being the apex of creation Then you spoke of in your experience with the world Something you said about that Well what I tried to say was that man was the apex And that angels were the servants of the redeemed community And in Hebrews 2 the impression I have is that Christ as the son of man, the last Adam Is the head of the new creation The world, the age to come as the writer calls it And my own view is that the creation mandates which were given to the first Adam And which he failed to implement Are re-promulgated And they devolve on the second or the last Adam Christ And he as the last man Dominates and subdues the world to come And I suppose I am saying really from that point onwards
[87:29] That I expect heaven Or the world to come to be a very active place Where led by Christ We shall resume and pursue our cultural mandate And engage in scientific, technical and aesthetic pursuits There is a very deliberate tie-up Between Hebrews 2, Psalm 8 and Genesis 1 That keys Christ directly into the first Adam and his responsibilities And in my view the head of the new creation is not any angelic being But Christ himself as the last Adam Am upon God Am upon God God.