14. Orr. God's Image in Man, and its Defacement, in the Light of Modern Denials
By James Orr, D.D. London: Hodder & Stoughton. 1905. 1 r. Orr's "Stone Lectures" were listened to in Princeton with great
D pleasure. Their publication in this handsome volume will carry to a wider audience their fine exposition of the fundamentals of Christian anthropology and their vigorous protest against a tendency, apparently growing among us, "to wholesale surrender of vital aspects of Christian doctrine at the shrine of what is regarded as 'the modern view of the world'
" (p. vi.). What renders this protest most valuable is that it is particularly directed against weak evasions of the issue raised by the conflict between the Christian view of the world and that "congeries of conflicting and often mutually irreconcilable views" which is commonly spoken of as the "modern view." Dr. Orr has the courage to recognize and assert the irreconcilableness of the two views and the impossibility of a compromise between them; and to undertake the task of showing that the Christian view in the forum of science itself is the only tenable one. This task he
accomplishes with distinguished success: and this is the significance of the volume.
The material is divided into six lectures. In the first of these the issue is stated, and the actual irreconcilability of the two views demonstrated. The Biblical doctrine of God, man, and sin is set sharply over against the "evolutionary" view of them, the exaggerations sometimes found on both sides are cleared away, and the residuary conflict made plain. The second lecture, proceeding to details, sets the Bible and the new views of the nature of man over against one another, and shows that no scientific facts really endanger the Bible doctrine that man differs in kind and not merely in degree from the lower creatures. In the third lecture it is shown that the extreme evolutionary theories have broken down before the advance of knowledge, and that, on the data of science itself, man stands forth as the product not of nature but of a Higher Cause intruded into nature. The fourth lecture extends this argument with especial reference to the mental nature of man. In the fifth lecture the great question of sin is grappled with, and the Biblical view of sin as a racial fact rooted in voluntary action on the part of the creature is powerfully commended. Finally, in the sixth lecture, the Biblical account of death as non-natural to man and the result of sin is defended: and the bearing of the whole discussion on the entirety of the Christian system explained. At the end a body of valuable material is collected in a series of Appendixes which support, and in some instances advance, the positions taken in the text of the lectures.
What impresses the reader of these admirable lectures most is their fine balance. In the statement neither of the Biblical doctrine nor of the "modern view," nor in their comparison, is there any exaggeration. The two are just calmly set over against one another and investigated in their bases and relations. Perhaps the most striking feature of the exposition of the Biblical doctrine is the just insistence upon the unity of man as "a being
composed of body and soul in a unity not intended to be dissolved." A firm grasp upon this element of the Biblical doctrine notably clears the air. It not only puts in their right aspects death and the resurrection—the former as the product of sin and the latter as the necessary fruit of redemption from sin: but it throws the whole question of the origin of man into a new light.
It perhaps may not be too much to say that the hinge of the Biblical anthropology lies here: and that the argument of Dr. Orr turns upon his clear appreciation of it. Next to this, we are struck perhaps by the searching analysis and account of sin given in the fifth lecture. The question arises, as we read, why sin cannot be characterized, in contradistinction to that "love" in which the fulfillment of the law consists, as just "lovelessness" or, in its positive manifestation, "hate." This would be only another way— whether a better way or not may be open to question—of reducing sin to the principle of selfishness.
Some striking minor points in Dr. Orr's arguments should also be mentioned. Among these is his suggestion (p. 152) of the impossibility of disparate development of mind and body, with the inference he draws from it that, therefore, it can scarcely be credited that the body of man was formed by the accumulation of insensible variations from a brutish original, and the soul made all at once by a divine fiat for the completed man. Body and mind must go together: and a great brain with a little mind is just as unthinkable as a little brain with a great mind. The argument does not seem to be available, however, as against a theory of evolution per saltum. If under the directing hand of God a human body is formed at a leap by propagation from brutish parents, it would be quite consonant with the fitness of things that it should be provided by His creative energy with a truly human soul. And this leads us to say that the precise point in the question of evolution is, after all, not whether the new forms proceed from older ones, whether by or without the directing hand of God; but
whether the forces concerned in the production of the new forms are all intrinsic in the evolving stuff. Man may "breed" many varieties of pigeons, fowls, sheep; and the varieties he "breeds" may often come per saltum. But they all find their account in the forces operating in the materials dealt with: his directing hand cannot be traced in the chain of efficient causes, all of which are discoverable in the evolving stuff. Accordingly, under man's hand we can have nothing but an "evolution," an unrolling—a drawing out into new forms of what was potentially present in the evolving material from the beginning. If this were all that God does, there would be no "creation" in the case whatever. We do not quite understand, therefore, Dr.
Orr's remark on p. 87, to the effect that "evolution" and "special creation" are not mutually exclusive, whether as terms or as things. Surely "evolution" means just "modification"; and "creation" just "origination": and surely
"modification" and "origination" are ultimate conceptions and mutually exclude one the other. You cannot "originate" by "modifying"; you cannot
"modify" by "originating." Whatever comes by "evolution" that certainly cannot arise by "creation"; and whatever is "created" certainly is not "evolved." The old definition of "creation" as the making of something partim ex nihilo, partim ex materia naturaliter inhabili—ex materia inhabili supra maturæ vires aliquid producere,—is certainly the sound one.
Unless the thing produced is above what the powers intrinsic in the evolving stuff are capable of producing (under whatever divine guidance), the product is not a product of "creation" but of "providence." And "providence" can never do the work of "creation." Dr. Orr fully understands this and argues therefore that the apparition of man implies the intrusion of a new cause, that it is a creation, strictly so called: and this is what makes the remark on p. 87 inexplicable. Let man have arisen through the divine guidance of the evolutionary process, there is no creative act of God, but only a providential activity of God, concerned in his
production, unless there has been intruded into the process the action of a cause not intrinsic in the evolving stuff, causing the complex product to be something more than can find its account in the intrinsic forces, however divinely manipulated. Evolution can never, under any circumstances, issue in a product which is specifically new: "modification" is the utmost that it can achieve—"origination" is beyond its tether.
One of the most pregnant passages in the volume is that (p. 188) in which it is briefly demonstrated that for a moral being to exist in a nonmoral condition is really for it to exist in an immoral condition. We may in the abstract distinguish actions into those that are right, wrong, and indifferent. But there are no indifferent acts: in the concrete all acts are good or bad. So we may in the abstract speak of conditions which are moral, non-moral, and immoral. But for a moral being, a state of nonmorality is a state of immorality. Such a being is either good or bad; never neither good nor bad. This simple demonstration cuts up by the roots the whole Pelagian standpoint.
As we have already pointed out, Dr. Orr's whole treatment of sin is very sane and satisfactory. Only, we demur to what seems to us the overemphasis of the fact of "heredity," taken in the strict sense, in this connection. We hear indeed of "the representative principle" (p. 277), and the "inheritance" of death is apparently hung upon it. But the transmission of sin appears to be hung at least mainly upon the principle of "heredity"
(e.g. pp. 235, 242). This seems to us a mistake, and to involve us in many unnecessary difficulties, as, for example, the difficulty of accounting for our
"inheritance" of specifically Adam's first sin (why not Eve's? and why not the sins of all our ancestors?) and the difficulty of accounting for our Lord's failure to "inherit" sin. We are burdened with the guilt of Adam's first sin and have received its penalty. Surely that is enough. We do not need to defend the theory of the "inheritance" of acquired qualities in order to
account for it; the principle of representation is enough. And we do not need to insist that a son tends to inherit the moral character of his parents, which (on the broad question) certainly is not borne out by common experience: the children of the pious are not uniformly pious nor are those of the vicious uniformly vicious, and assuredly few would contend that the specific forms in which piety and vice are manifested are on the average transmitted. It seems much better, then, to follow what appears to us the simple Scriptural representation, and to say that we partake in Adam's sin because he was our representative, and that he was constituted our representative because he was our father and was naturally indicated as such for that office.
We have in these remarks, we think, noted everything with respect to which we should feel disposed to question even Dr. Orr's modes of developing his subject. Perhaps a query may be placed also against his remarks (pp. 153–154) on the difficulty created for a purely evolutionary theory by the necessity of the production of not a single instance, but of a pair of human beings. We do not feel this difficulty as strongly as Dr. Orr appears to feel it. Why should there be a pair? Nothing is more common in the experience of breeders than the origination of a new type through an individual sport. And what is the difficulty of obtaining a pair or more of the same fundamental type? Ex hypothesi the new variation is slight; and that implies the coexistence of many individuals of almost equal advantages.
And nothing is commoner in the experience of breeding than the production from the same parentage of a succession of individuals of the same or nearly the same "sporting" characters. Perhaps also a query may be placed over against the strong statement (p. 257) to the effect that "there is not a word in Scripture to suggest that animals … came under the law of death for man's sin." The problem of the reign of death in that "creation" which was cursed for man's sake and which is to be with man delivered
from the bondage of corruption, presses on some with a somewhat greater weight than seems here to be recognized. But these are matters of no importance to the march of the general argument of the book. The book is a distinct contribution to the settlement of the questions with which it deals, and to their settlement in a sane and stable manner. It will come as a boon to many who are oppressed by the persistent pressure upon them of the modern point of view. It cannot help producing in the mind of its readers a notable clearing of the air.
1. 1 The Princeton Theological Review, iv. 1906, pp. 555–558.