1. The Nature of Man
1. The Nature of Man
1. According to Holy Scripture, of what does the nature of man consist?
The Scripture teaches:
a) That man consists of two parts, body and soul.
b) That the soul is a substance.
c) That it is a substance distinct from the body.
2. How does Scripture teach these truths?
Not so much explicitly as by assuming and presupposing them everywhere. More specifically:
a) In places like Gen 3:19; Eccl 12:7.
b) In places that depict the body as clothing, a tabernacle (2 Cor 5:1).
c) In all the places that teach that the soul exists and acts after death.
3. What does God’s word teach concerning the relationship between soul and body?
This is a mystery. The following, however, is certain beyond all doubt:
a) The union between them is a life-unity. The organic life of the body and the life of the soul are not in parallel. Only on the presence of the soul in the body does the possibility rest that the organic bond of the latter is maintained.
b) Certain conditions of the body are dependent on the self-conscious acting of the spirit; others are independent of this.
c) Some functions of the soul are bound to the body; others can be done independently of the body.
d) In antithesis to Materialism, Idealism, occasionalism, etc., one may call this realistic dualism. It is most closely connected with some of the principal doctrines of the Bible.
4. What does one mean by trichotomy?
The doctrine that man does not consist of two but of three specifically different parts, namely:
a) πνεῦμα, animus, the principal and most noble part; “the spirit” to which the capacities of reason, will, and conscience belong.
b) ψυχή, anima, the soul, the principle of animal, bodily life that ceases to exist with death. Animals also have a ψυχή.
c) The body, σῶμα, considered solely as matter.
5. What are the principal objections against this trichotomy?
a) It is philosophical in origin (Pythagoreans, Plato) and rests on a disparaging of the body and a one-sided elevation of the nonmaterial existence of man. Because one fails to appreciate the organic bond between body and soul, the functions with which the soul works within the body must be detached from the soul and viewed as a third, independent principle. This motif is completely unbiblical and anti-Christian. Christianity wants a redemption of the body as well as of the soul.
b) Genesis 2:7 shows how God created man consisting of two parts: dust of the earth that was first inanimate, and spirit blown into it, through which man became a living soul.
c) Scripture nowhere uses the terms רוּחַ and נֶפֶשׁ, πνεῦμα and ψυχή, arbitrarily, but where they are in contrast that contrast is not the trichotomic one given above but an entirely different one. רוּחַ, πνεῦμα, spirit, is the principle of life and movement in man, and is that insofar as it enlivens and moves the body. That, according to philosophical terminology, should be called ψυχή. Hence, according to Scripture, the animals have that just as well as man. This, of course, in no way means that there is no specific difference between a human spirit and an animal soul but simply informs that by רוּחַ the principal feature is expressed that is the higher principle common to man and animals, namely the enlivening and moving of the body. To indicate the distinction between the animals and the human soul, the Scripture has used other words (“heart,” etc.). So one sees how Scripture and philosophical terminology are diametrically opposed to each other.
Υυχή, נֶפֶשׁ, on the other hand, is not the lower part of man but the principle of emotion, desiring, self-conscious life, the entity that comprises the multiplicity of impressions in the unity of consciousness. In this way the soul is the seat of emotion, because all receptivity presupposes a receptive subject: In Scripture, I = my soul. The soul desires, hates, loves, wills (1 Sam 18:1, 3; Deut 13:7). Souls = persons in the OT, as it still does according to our modern use of language (Gen 12:5). It is characteristic that a deceased person can still be called a soul—insofar as something personal and individual still always clings to the body—but, of course, never πνεῦμα, רוּחַ, spirit; that would be a contradictio in adjecto. Hence also the close connection there is between soul, blood, heart.
d) Scripture mentions the soul in poetic language as the most precious thing someone can possess. It is called the “glory of man,” “his alone,” etc. (Gen 49:6; Psa 6:6).
e) From a comparison of the places in which spirit and soul alternate, every appearance of a basis for a substantive distinction must vanish. The soul is spirit and the spirit is soul, depending on whether one considers it from one side or the other. Spirit refers to the life-power that sets the body in motion; however, it also has in view the capacity for motion of the soul itself. God is called “God of the spirits of all flesh” [Num 16:22; 27:16] on account of His immanence in the world of living beings.
f) One should note that spirit has become a religious concept—or, stated more accurately, is so innately. That man consists of two parts, spirit and flesh, of which the one is dependent on the other for its mobility and functioning, has the deeper meaning that it pictures the dependence of man on God. Just as our spirit breathes into our body in order to make it an organic instrument, so God’s Spirit must breathe into the entire man in order to qualify him for spiritual good.
g) The trichotomy does contain an element of truth that may not be overlooked. It is to be absolutely rejected as an ontological theory of three specific and different constituent parts in man. It only contains truth as a formula for the empirical discord there is between the sensual impulses and the higher capacities of the spirit in man. Through sin, that part of the soul that is related to the sōma [body] has obtained independence in opposition to the higher inspirations of the soul. That is to say, there is discord in the spiritual life of man himself: the more spiritual sinful dispositions clash with the more sensual inclinations. But that higher part is also sinful and the lower part also belongs to the soul.
h) The trichotomy conflicts with the testimony of our self-consciousness. No mortal man is aware of possessing a psychē in distinction from a pneuma. What the philosophers call psychē is simply the manifestation of the spiritual principle in relation to the material of the body.
i) The places in scripture that seem to speak of a trichotomy may easily be explained differently. These are mainly 1 Thess 5:23 and Heb 4:12. The truth is that through Platonic philosophy, trichotomic usage was brought into the vernacular and so became common usage. If one wanted to indicate the entire man, one spoke of body, soul, and spirit, without thereby intending to present himself as a supporter of Platonic philosophy. Scripture makes use of human language and so appropriates this common usage. When it does that through the mouth of Paul, that in no way indicates that Paul taught a trichotomy. The expression is nothing else than a rhetorical form of enumeration.
6. What is Realism?
The doctrine that every man is the manifestation of one human race in relation to a bodily organism. That is to say, all souls are not merely individual but one and the same substance that can only be personal in relation to a body.
This great generic human soul is a reasonable, rational, volitional entity. When a man dies, the personal existence of the soul ends (at least according to consistent realists) and it returns to the generic substance of which it was an individuation.
This doctrine is advocated by many because it best explains, so it is thought, the imputation of Adam’s guilt. We were one with him when he sinned, actually in him.
7. What are the principal objections against this Realism?
a) It is a philosophic hypothesis, perhaps possible in itself but nothing more.
b) It finds no support in Scripture. One could call it one of the many ways by which one has tried to explain some scriptural facts, for example, original sin. Of these ways, however, it is by no means the best or what is presented to us by Scripture itself.
c) Our self-consciousness testifies against it, because it is a personal self-consciousness. The awareness that we possess a substantial soul is so interwoven with the consciousness of our personality, with our self-consciousness, that it is impossible for us to separate the two. From this it follows that we conclude that our soul can only exist as an individual and not generically.
d) It conflicts with the express teaching of Scripture, which tells us that our soul continues to exist personally after separation from the body. It is the consequence of a pantheistic Realism when Schleiermacher asserts that all philosophy testifies against the doctrine of immortality.
e) According to Realism, the entire human race was sinful as one substance. This substance Christ must have assumed when He became human, so that the man Christ became sinful. It is no wonder, then, when realists radically change the work of redemption. According to them, it occurs in Christ according to His human nature, not as a payment of debt by a surety but as an ethical purification process. Or, where one still wishes to retain the aspect of surety, one is forced to require justification as necessary for the human nature of Christ because it of course is under guilt, just as ours is. Shedd, who among recent American theologians advocates Realism, says: “Theologians have confined their attention mainly to the sanctification of Christ’s human nature, saying little about its justification. But a complete Christology must include the latter as well as the former. Any nature that requires sanctification requires justification, because sin is guilt as well as pollution. The Logos could not unite with a human nature taken from the virgin Mary and transmitted from Adam unless it had been previously delivered from both the condemnation and corruption of sin. The idea of redemption also includes both justification and sanctification; and it is conceded that that portion of human nature, which the Logos assumed into union with Himself, was redeemed. His own humanity was the ‘firstfruits’ of his redemptive work. Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ’s!” This is an unequivocal explanation that shows where Realism in soteriology must lead. If Christ needed a justification for the human nature that He Himself possessed, then for us the consolation of His suretyship is gone. One should therefore be warned.
8. How many theories exist with reference to the origin of human souls?
Three: that of preexistence, traducianism, and creationism.
9. Where, respectively, have the latter two theories been advocated?
The Greek Church has been creationist from the beginning. Tertullian in the West was traducianist. Jerome and Augustine were creationists. The latter, however, at the time of his conflict with Pelagius held more to traducianism. The Latin Church as a whole was creationist. That was so for the entire church of the Reformation up until the Formula of Concord. The Lutheran theologians of the seventeenth century first began to advocate traducianism. The Reformed maintained creationism. Most modern German theologians follow a middle course and teach that creationism is applicable to the soul and traducianism to bodily-animal life.
10. What does the traducianist theory teach and on what grounds?
That the entire person is generated by the parents, body and soul. Some even go so far as to assume the divisibility of the soul. Others speak in vaguer terms about the origin or derivation of one soul from the other. The grounds on which one appeals from a traducianist side are:
a) That nothing is reported about a creation of Eve’s soul. This is an argumentum e silentio [argument from silence] and lacks all force.
b) God rested on the Sabbath from creating. The creation was, as we have seen, ktisis, and as such closed, without the continuing creation of single souls thereby becoming impossible.
c) The transmission of Adam’s sinful nature to his posterity. We will return to this later, only noting for now that traducianism does not offer the only nor the best solution for this fact.
d) One points to Christ’s miraculous conception and birth and reasons as follows: If the soul were created immediately by God, then it is not to be seen why an extraordinary working of the Holy Spirit would be necessary to keep it pure at birth from Mary. We will also return to this later, and only say now in general that it is unscriptural and wrong and in part a consequence of realist-traducianist tendencies when one places all the emphasis of the incarnation on the moment of purification. The Holy Spirit also had entirely different activities to perform with regard to the incarnation.
e) Traducianists think their strongest ground is to be found in the transmission of ethical, national, familial, and other characteristics of spirit and character. In other words, traducianism is summoned to help explain the mystery of heredity. This, however, is an explanation that explains too much, for then the result would not only be partial but complete similarity between parent and child. Moreover, heredity is such a mysterious, and such a complicated, matter (one need only think of atavism = the reemergence of seemingly eliminated characteristics and dispositions in later generations) that one hardly can use an explanation as simple as traducianism.
There is another explanation that seems to us more likely. It leaves the empirical origin of heredity a mystery (what it will certainly always have to remain, as all reproduction is in its essence a mystery), but understands it to point to something better for the logical ground, namely the once-for-all established ordinance of God that like will originate from like. One has to concede to traducianists that all these phenomena cannot be accounted for by the influence of the body. Such an explanation sounds materialistic, and the traducianist explanation would be far more preferable.
11. What is to be said in favor of creationism?
a) It is more in agreement with the overall ideas of Holy Scripture. In that it gives us a doctrine concerning the origin of man, it gives us creationism. Compare Eccl 12:7; Zech 12:1; Heb 12:9.
b) It accords better with the nature of the soul. The difference between creationism and traducianism, as far as metaphysics and psychology are concerned, is as follows. It is either one or the other: Traducianism has to be explained in a realist sense or must seek help from creationism. That the soul is generated by the parents can mean only one of two things: that it separates from the soul of the parents (Realism), or that it is created by God in the actus generationis [act of generating]. If one chooses the former, one is saddled with all the objections to which Realism is subject, summarized above. If one chooses the latter, one is saddled with the impossible concept of a creatio mediato, a creation by means of the parents. This concept was already rejected earlier in considering the doctrine of creation. Moreover, it is no longer purely traducianist. And there is no escaping this dilemma. The substance of the individual soul is there in any case. If it was not there earlier, then it is created; if it was there earlier, then (according to the teaching of Realism) it had to separate from the soul of the parents. When many attempt to find a middle course between these two and speak about the origin of the soul of the child from the souls of the parents, as one flame is ignited by another, the entire explanation rests on a metaphor. In the case of the flame, nothing new results; the matter that burns, the flammable material through which it burns, the elements into which it changes through burning—all these were there earlier. Only a new chemical combination results. One need only attempt to apply this to the soul and one will see immediately to what untenable positions it leads. Taken strictly, it is materialistic to speak in this way about the soul in its generation. Even Shedd falls into such doubtful ways of speaking: “It is as difficult to think of an invisible existence of the human body in Adam as it is to think of an existence of the human soul in him.” We reply: it is not only difficult but even impossible and entirely unnecessary to speak about an existence of our souls in Adam. Only in a very figurative sense can that be risked. If the material of our bodies already changes during our short span of life, our material parts were certainly not present in Adam.
c) Also, traducianism is certainly not compatible with the dogma concerning the person and the natures of Christ. Like Realism, it makes His human nature sinful in the way it explains original sin. And one should certainly pay attention to this, that traducianism gives an explanation of original sin only when it adheres to Realism. If it goes its own way, it gives the empirical ground of the transmission of sin but not the legal ground that satisfactorily explains this empirical fact. Concerning this legal ground, it does not in any respect extend further than creationism does. In other words, it has no speculative but only empirical value.
12. What, finally, should be observed concerning this question?
a) That we must not be wise beyond what is written.
b) It is dangerous to say, as do some traducianists, that if traducianism falls, then the entire dogma of original sin falls. We have no right to hang the millstone of our philosophy around the neck of God’s truth in this manner.
c) The argument that God does no creative work after the creation Sabbath leads to a deistic worldview. What, then, is regeneration? Is it not presented in Scripture as a new creation? It is certainly true that it is a higher, spiritual creation, but by its occurring it shows sufficiently that God can also act creatively after the creation Sabbath. If He can do that in the higher sphere of grace, then surely also continuously in the sphere of nature.
d) Creationism does not presume to remove all objections and to resolve all difficulties. It only intends to warn against the following false positions:
1. That the soul is divisible.
2. That numerically all men are of the same entity.
3. That numerically Christ assumed the same humanity that fell in Adam.
13. What does one understand by the preexistence view?
The doctrine that the human soul has existence as an individual soul already before its joining with the organic body. In that lies the difference between Realism and the preexistence view, for the former denies an individual preexistence.
14. Who in theology has defended this doctrine of preexistence and from what motive?
Origen held the preexistence view. He assumed that in the beginning of the world in which we exist, souls were created by God and that they now, in succession, each in its time, unite with a natural product of generation. In modern times, this theory is defended, in connection with Kant’s teaching on intelligible nature, by Julius Müller in his work The Christian Teaching of Sin. He thinks he is able thereby to explain the empirical depravity (original sin) of man during this life. Individual souls sinned in an existence outside or above time, and for that they are punished by a phenomenal existence in time, full of sin and misery.
15. What is to be said against this preexistence view?
a) If we attribute to the soul a prolonged existence outside the body (in time, according to Origen), then its joining with and appearance in the body becomes something accidental. The preexistence view stems from the same disparaging of the body on which trichotomy rests. The body belongs to man, and man cannot exist prior to his body. If, with Kant and Julius Müller, we assume an act of uncaused freedom outside time, then man, in conflict with his own limitedness and destiny, is elevated above a form that, as far as we can judge, is inseparable from his life.
b) The preexistence view is related to and gives rise to all kinds of doubtful mythological notions of the prior state of the soul; it is related to pagan teaching of the transmigration of the soul, etc. The early Christian church already sensed that this view was more pagan than Christian and therefore rejected it (as Origenism) at the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553.
16. In how many different ways has the expression “image and likeness of God” been understood?
a) Some taught that “image” referred to the body and “likeness” to the soul.
b) Augustine said that “image” pointed to the intellectual and likeness to the “moral” capacities of the soul.
c) Bellarmine held that “image” designated the natural and “likeness” the supernaturally added.
d) Still others say that “image” expresses innate similarity to God, “likeness” similarity to God acquired by man.
e) The truth seems to be that both expressions form a ἑν διὰ δύσιν [a hendiadys], that is, they serve to describe one and the same concept from two sides. Or, if one wishes to make a distinction, one can do so in the way given above (in the section on creation). “Image” then becomes the impression in man, “likeness” the archetypical knowledge of the image of His nature that God bears in His own consciousness.
17. What conceptions have been formed concerning the scope and meaning of the image and likeness of God in man?
a) According to Reformed theologians, the image of God comprises both the intellectual and the moral nature of man.
b) The Greek Church, the Socinians, and the Remonstrants err by thinking exclusively of the intellectual capacities.
c) Others (the Lutherans) err by entirely excluding these natural qualities and only take into consideration the moral qualities.
d) The Reformed conception maintains a middle course when it distinguishes between:
1. The essential and amissible image of God, namely the possession of intellectual capacities and capacities for making ethical distinctions.
2. The accidental and losable image of God, namely the good moral quality of the capacities in view in 1.
e) According to the general Protestant conception, “the image of God” and “original righteousness” (justitia originalis) are the same. The Roman Catholics, as we will see, dissociate them.
18. Why is this doctrine of the image of God of such great importance for theology?
It is self-evident that by “image of God” is expressed what is characteristic of man and his relation to God. That he is God’s image distinguishes him from animals and all other creatures. In the idea that one forms of the image is reflected one’s idea of the religious state of man and of the essence of religion itself.
a) According to the Roman Catholic conception, as we saw, imago, “image,” has another meaning than similitudo, “likeness.” Man was created with the “image.” So by nature he is God’s image-bearer. Now we have already seen that with “image” is meant the metaphysical correspondence of the human spirit with God. According to Rome, the natural relationship to God exists in the fact that in this way he is similar to Him. There is no thought of a close relationship between man and God, of a similarity of communal endeavor by the human will being subject to God. For all this belongs to the similitudo [likeness], and this, otherwise called justitia originalis, “original righteousness,” is called an added gift, donum superadditum. Only by something that raises him above his created nature does man become a religious being, able to love, to enjoy his God, and to live in Him. Out of this follows entirely the externalist character of Roman Catholic religion. It becomes something added to man, that he has but is not identified with him, does not enter into his essence. That man is like God in this natural sense is a purely deistic relationship. There is room for something else if with the imago the similitudo would also be added as naturally belonging to the conception of man.
b) The Roman Catholic denial of the utter inability of man in his fallen state and its weakened conception of original sin is likewise connected to this teaching concerning the image of God. According to Rome, man can only lose what was not essential to him, namely the supernaturally added gifts, the dona superaddita. Because of his fall, these are lost. The essence of man, the imago, consisting in formal existence as spirit, in the liberum arbitrium [freedom of the will], remained. Because, however, there was no inner connection between the similitudo and the imago, the removal of the former cannot essentially change the latter. The liberum arbitrium might be weakened a little; in reality it is unharmed. In other words, by loosening the moral powers from the will, from the capacity of the will, and by denying that the former are natural in man, Rome has in principle appropriated the Pelagian conception of the will as liberum arbitrium. That capacity of free will has remained, and with that the possibility that man, even after the fall, can do something good.
c) In both respects mentioned, the Protestant, and more specifically the Reformed, doctrine of the image of God is different than the Roman Catholic doctrine. That man bears God’s image means much more than that he is spirit and possesses understanding, will, etc. It means above all that he is disposed for communion with God, that all the capacities of his soul can act in a way that corresponds to their destiny only if they rest in God. This is the nature of man. That is to say, there is no sphere of life that lies outside his relationship to God and in which religion would not be the ruling principle. According to the Roman Catholic conception, there is a natural man who functions in the world, and that natural man adopts a religion that takes place beyond his nature. According to our conception, our entire nature should not be free from God at any point; the nature of man must be worship from beginning to end. According to the deeper Protestant conception, the image does not exist only in correspondence with God but in being disposed toward God. God’s nature is, as it were, the stamp; our nature is the impression made by this stamp. Both fit together.
d) If then the image of God and original righteousness are to be identified, if life in communion with God belongs to nature of man and can nowhere be excluded, and if now by sin this original righteousness is lost, then the consequences will be twofold:
1. By falling away from something to which he was wholly disposed, which constitutes his proper and highest destiny, man will be changed in the deepest depths of his being; a radical reversal will take place within him. What clings to us outwardly can be removed without making us different inwardly. On the other hand, what coheres with every part of our spiritual organism can, if it is withdrawn, only bring about a powerful revolution by which the organism itself becomes disorganized. The loss of original righteousness follows spiritual death, because death in its essence is disorganization, a process of dissolution. From this one can assess most clearly the Protestant and Roman Catholic conceptions concerning the capability of man to do spiritual good in his fallen state. According to us, man is dead and therefore does no good toward God. According to Roman Catholics, he is weakened or ill but nonetheless still always capable with his free will to move himself to do good.
2. The fact that original righteousness belongs to the nature of man has yet another consequence. Because the being of man was placed from the beginning in a necessary relation with God, because he is made in the image of God in the stricter sense and this image is his nature, sin therefore cannot be just a mere privation. This would mean that something that belongs to his nature can be removed and the rest left undamaged. This is impossible. Man has to be in relation with God in everything he is and does. So, if original righteousness falls away, unrighteousness replaces it as the natural state. That is, sin is a positive principle of enmity against God, as Paul taught us about the mind of the flesh. If the image of God, original righteousness, had not been the nature of man, perhaps he might have been able to remain in a neutral standpoint. Now, the latter is cut off. He is either positively good or positively evil; there is no middle state. One can therefore say that the deeper conception of sin, especially of original sin, that rules in Protestant theology flows directly from the view one has of the original state before the fall.
e) If the question is posed how man can lose what belongs to his nature and whether he has lost his human nature by the fall, then that must be answered with a twofold observation:
1. The image in the broader sense has not been lost, and given also that his nature existed in that sense, it has remained at least to that extent.
2. The moral quality of the capacities of man is certainly fallen, but that it belongs to his nature is also seen in the fact that man could not remain neutral. He must either stand for God in original righteousness or against Him in natural unrighteousness. This characteristic of his nature does not take away that man in all his being and acting takes a position toward God. When he is sinful and in conflict with God, he is still morally toto genere [as to entire genus] something other than an animal that exists in puris naturalibus [in a purely natural state].
f) One will now, after all that has been said, understand why a diverging opinion concerning the image of God must be formed by the Socinians and Arminians. They could not choose the Roman Catholic supernaturalism. Neither was inborn virtue (= original righteousness) a concept that fit with their line of thinking. As a consequence of this, there was no other way out than to limit the image of God in a religiously neutral sense to dominion over the lower creatures. For, according to the Socinians and Arminians, the state of rectitude is a state of neutrality, of innocence, which had not yet been determined for virtue or for sin.
g) It requires no detailed demonstration that what has been said is of importance not only for determining the relationship of man to God in the abstract, but also is of the utmost moment for soteriology—what concerns God’s work of grace that must renovate the image in man.
19. What must be said concerning the question whether Adam was mortal or immortal?
The word “mortality” can be used in different, very divergent meanings, which one does well first to distinguish before being able to answer this question unambiguously.
a) Immortal can mean what cannot be destroyed but has to remain forever. In this sense there is nothing immortal except God, of whom it is said, “Who alone has immortality” (1 Tim 6:16).
b) Immortal can mean what in the course of things established by God cannot be destroyed but retains its being. In this sense Adam was immortal, fallen man is immortal, all spiritual beings (higher than the animals) are immortal, in every state, for none of these are abandoned by God to destruction.
c) Immortality can indicate that attribute of the soul as a consequence of which continuing personal existence is guaranteed to it. Not only so that it continues to exist as substance, but also that it abides as a substance conscious of its own identity. This immortality is like that mentioned above in b), belonging to all spiritual beings in every state. Only pantheists and materialists deny this.
d) By immortality one can understand not a condition but a state. That is, the suffix expresses the modality of the judgment, “man cannot die,” as an apodictic one. In this sense, before the fall Adam was not immortal. For him the abstract possibility existed that by the entrance of spiritual death into his soul the principle of death would also extend to his body. Both for his soul and for his body he was mortal in the sense that he was susceptible to change. And all change in the moral sphere, all apostasy, was death for him, for soul and body. One can attribute immortality in the sense meant here only to the blessed after the resurrection from the dead, to the angels that were confirmed in their state. For neither does the abstract possibility of dying exist any longer. Yet it is very difficult to decide whether a condition of immortality also corresponds to this state of immutability and immortality and if so, to indicate precisely in what it consists. One might be able to say that this immortality means nothing other than that by God’s grace both body and soul will be protected forever against the entrance of death. However, the intimations that Scripture gives us point further. If the body is resurrected in imperishability, then that certainly must be more than just that there is not a positive principle of corruption in it (a purely contradictory contrast). It will have to mean that it is changed and recreated in such a way that corruption no longer has power over it, that as a spiritual body it is not susceptible to chemical dissolution. And in accordance with this, the confirmation of the soul in its perfect state (= the non posse peccare) will also be a positive characteristic with which it will be endowed by God. Or better still, in accordance with all analogy, one will have to think of it as follows: that from the soul this condition of immutability and immortality will be communicated with the body. Still, it must be noted that this immortality, what concerns the soul, is already given to believers at bodily death, for in that crisis every principle of death is driven from the soul. Given, however, that the body belongs with the soul and because the latter is not complete without the former, in a strict sense one may have this immortality as a condition beginning only at the resurrection. As a state, one would be able to place it already before bodily death; for understood as the state of the soul, it is nothing other than the direct consequence of the perseverance of the saints, as we have seen earlier.
e) One can understand immortality as the absence in soul and body of every positive principle of death, from which it [i.e., death] would necessarily result. That a man is mortal would then mean that he must die, that the process of dying is already begun in him, although it is at work for the moment in secret. In this sense, Adam was immortal before the fall, not after the fall, and this is the principal point in dispute between us and others. The Socinians and Arminians consider bodily death as a natural characteristic of man understood as an ethically neutral natural being. They do not have an eye for the immense difference that exists between a solely animal natural being and man. That is why, on this point, they place man on the same line with animals—with this difference, however: that liberation from this nature is held in prospect for him as the higher destiny of man. Just as his ethical neutrality has to develop into positive virtue, so his bodily mortality has to develop into immortality. Modern science in recent times points out that the human organism as it now exists is completely oriented to dying. Some theologians have wanted to grant to science the right to decide concerning the condition of the body before the fall. One may read what Charles Hodge writes on this point. He asserts that Scripture nowhere teaches explicitly that Adam’s body was immortal in the sense in which the heavenly bodies [of believers] will be (see 1 Cor 15:42–52). One must of course concede this to him, and one could even go further and say that according to the representation of all the data of Scripture, Adam would have first received this immortality of 1 Cor 15 as the reward for perseverance in the covenant of works. The question, however, is not solved with this. Even after conceding this, two options remain: Adam was mutable with reference to his soul, and mortal insofar as he was also mutable with reference to his body, as described above, and at the same time immortal because there was no principle of death in his soul and in his body. This, however, is not what the Socinians and Remonstrants intend. This is also not what modern science means; and it seems that Hodge, too, does not mean this. The Apology for the Confession … of the Remonstrants for Confessions says, “It is untrue that Adam’s body was immortal, that is, imperishable, for sound reason teaches that every animal body is perishable.” And Hodge remarks that God knew beforehand how the testing of man would turn out and that therefore he could have created Adam with a mortal body. This strikes us as an anomaly for the following reasons:
1. As shown above, it does not follow from 1 Cor 15 and the covenant of works. No one can conclude from the denial that Adam had a body like believers will possess that his body was positively mortal, for there is a degree of difference between the two.
2. Bodily death is everywhere presented as a consequence of spiritual death. Yet according to this conception, we would have the consequence without the cause. One could, if necessary, defend this with supralapsarianism, but even supralapsarianism does not teach that the different purposes of God’s counsel that are subordinated to one another theologically are confused with each other temporally. When science thinks it is able to determine that the human organism has always been mortal, then it exceeds its rights. One may concede this: at this moment the body is per se mortal, that is, has to die, that even apart from its relation to the soul it must already be called a perishable body. But if we concede this, there is still nothing gained for the theory intended. From this would only follow that by its influence sin totally changed the bodily organism, so that it received into itself a seed of death that by extension is transmitted from parents to children. To that there is no objection, and a conclusion from it about the condition of Adam before the fall would not be justified. We believe, however, that even this concession does not have to be made. It is indeed true that the body exists of natural earthly matter, that in it a constant metabolism is taking place and that all those materials that constitute it are in themselves subject to decomposition. It always remains possible, however, that this natural tendency to decomposition, present in the material of our bodies, can be so neutralized by a wholesome (= not sinful) soul that the body would remain fresh and youthful forever. One can say one of two things: either before Adam fell the matter of which his body existed was essentially different than it is now but it has also been cursed because of sin, or although even then it already possessed a tendency to dissolution, this was neutralized by a wholesome soul. In both cases, this theory fails.
3. We know of only one instance of mortality of the body together with moral integrity of the soul. This is the instance of the human nature of the Savior before His resurrection from the dead. For in His case the carrying about of the seed of death in the likeness of sinful flesh, of which Paul speaks, indeed this animation in itself, showed that in Him the sinless soul had to dwell in the decaying tabernacle of the body in order in that way to come into the closest connection with death. This in itself made up an important part of His suffering. Because, however, the state of Christ’s humiliation was of an entirely unique sort, it does not permit drawing a conclusion about other cases. One cannot infer from it that Adam was mortal.
20. How does one prove the unity of the human race?
a) It is a generally accepted principle that the instances of the same species can have a common origin.
b) As a consequence of this, it is only necessary to show that the human races, notwithstanding all their diversities, form one species.
c) A species is determined by:
1. Organic structure. When differences in bodily organism appear for two animals that are not accidental divergences but apparently have a purpose, this difference proves difference of species. One does not find such differences among the human races. All points of difference between the races are accidental, not intentional.
2. Physiological characteristics, that is, everything related to the functions of the organism (blood circulation, digestion, etc., etc.). Even in this respect the human races do not show the slightest difference. They are physiologically alike.
3. Psychological predisposition. Neither here does a difference occur. All human races have the same mental capabilities.
4. The ability to procreate. Two species can frequently intermingle, but what is produced is infertile and does not reproduce. All human races can intermingle and still preserve their fertility in the offspring of this intermingling.
d) In addition, there is as well important linguistic evidence that counts not just for the possibility but also for the reality of common descent.