INTRODUCTORY--

THE Christian doctrine of God as personal, ethical, and self-revealing, carries with it a second postulate as to the nature of man. The Christian doctrine of God and the Christian doctrine of man are in fact correlatives. For how should man know that there is a personal, ethical, self-revealing God,--how should he be able to frame the conception of such a Being, or to attach any meaning to the terms employed to express His existence,--unless he were himself rational and moral--a spiritual personality? The two views imply each other, and stand or fall together. We may express this second postulate of the Christian view in the words, Man made in the image of God.1

This truth of a natural kinship between the human spirit and the Divine is at once the oldest declaration in the Bible about man, and is implied in every doctrine of the Christian system. It is implied, as already said, in the knowledge of God, and in the call to fellowship with Him in holiness and love. It is implied in the Christian view of sin; for sin in the Christian view derives its tragic significance from the fact that it is a revolt of the creature will against the Divine will, to which it is by nature bound, that it cuts the soul off from its true life and blessedness in union with God. It is implied in regeneration, and in the capacity of the soul to receive the Spirit of God. For the Spirit of God does not enter the soul as something foreign and extraneous to it. He enters it as the principle of its true life. What, on the one side, we call the operations of the Spirit, or the presence of the Spirit in the 1 It does not denote a merely natural or physical relationships, but a moral bond as well. Deliberate and hardened transgressors are spoken of, not as children of Gods, but rather as children of the devil.2 But this is only because these wicked persons have turned their backs on their own true destination. As made by God, and as standing in his normal relation to Him, man is without doubt a son. Hence, in the Gospel of Luke, though not by Christ Himself, Adam is called "the son of God,"3 and Paul does not scruple to quote the saying of the heathen poet, "For we also are His offspring."4 The fact that the title "son of God" should belong to any, already implies a natural kinship between God and man, else the higher relationship would not be possible. If there were not already a God-related element in the human spirit, no subsequent act of grace could confer on man this spiritual dignity.5

Not only in the Christian view in generals, but specially in the great central doctrine of the Incarnation, is this truth of man made in the image of God seen to be implied. I have already referred to certain services which the German speculative movement in the beginning of the century rendered to Christianity, in laying stress on the essential kinship which exists between the human spirit and the Divine, a thought never since lost sight of in theology. So long as the world is conceived of in deistic separation from God, it is inevitable that the Divine and human should be regarded as two opposed essences, between which true union is impossible. Once this point of view is overcome, and it is seen that the bond between God and man is inner and essential--that there is a God-related element in the human spirit which makes man capable of receiving from the Divine, and of becoming its living image--a great step is taken towards removing objections to the Incarnation. A union between the Divine and human is seen to be possible, to the intimacy of which no limits can be set,--which, indeed, only reaches its perfection when it becomes personal. The Incarnation has not only this doctrine of man as its presupposition--it is, besides, the highest proof of its truth. Christ, in His own Persons, is the demonstration of the truth of the Bible doctrine about man. To get a knowledge of the true essence of anything, we do not look at its ruder and less perfect specimens, but at what it is at its best. Christ is the best of humanity. He is not only the Revelation of God to humanity, but the Revelation of humanity to itself. In Him we see in perfect form what man in the Divine idea of him is. We see how man is made in the image of Gods, and how humanity is constituted the perfect organ for the Revelation of the Divine.

It is evident that in the Christian view the doctrine of man links itself very closely with the doctrine of nature--of creation. It is not merely that man is related to nature by his body, but he is in Scripture, as in science, the highest being in nature. He is, in some sense, the final cause of nature, the revelation of its purpose, the lord and ruler of nature. Nature exists with supreme reference to him; is governed with a view to his ends; suffers in his fall; and is destined to profit by his Redemption.1 I propose to begin with the natural basis--the doctrine of creation.