Themes From Genesis with R. C. Sproul, “The Dignity of Man,” 2

The Question of Human Dignity and Human Origins

Modern historians have told us that perhaps the most serious philosophical problem of the twentieth century is the question of the dignity of man. And that question is linked very closely to things that we've already examined in terms of where man's place is to be found in the cosmos.

It's also a question of origins. Whenever I meet someone for the first time, usually the first thing I ask them is, what is your name? And then the second thing I ask is, where are you from? That question, the from whence you come, is very important to man's self-understanding.

It's a question of origin, because we understand somehow that who we are and where we are going is all bound up with from whence we have come. Our destiny is linked to our origin. That's the impression that we all seem to feel intuitively, and the philosophers of course speak of consistently.

We remember a few years ago a phenomenon that took place in this country in the television industry with an experiment, the results of which completely baffled, much to their delight, television programmers and producers.

I'm thinking of course of the television classic Roots. No one expected the overwhelming response to that program that emerged, and social analysts have scratched their heads and say, what was it about Roots that provoked such a positive response of the American public?

Was it simply our preoccupation with the race question? Hardly, but rather Alex Haley was doing something that we're all concerned about. He was going back into his own family, into his own genealogical background, back beyond his immediate background where dignity was lost in slavery, and he went back to his forefathers and ancestors in Africa where he found princes and heroic characters about whom he could be proud, and he could say, here are my roots.

I am somebody. The only disappointment I had with Haley's excursion into the past was that he didn't.

Go far enough.

But if man is to discover who he is, he must trace his roots back to his ultimate origins. Now the question, what is man?

Who am I?

Though it is a pressing question in our day, it's really not a new question. Sometimes, we think that it's because we've become so sophisticated in our understanding of the expanse of the universe that man seems to be appearing more and more and more minuscule, and therefore more and more and more insignificant.

But we're not the first generation to be overwhelmed by the immensity of the universe. David, for example, in the Old Testament when he wrote the Psalms, I think of Psalm 8 in where he begins with the praise of God by saying, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth.

What starts with the praise of the glory of God moves rather quickly to a consideration of the identity of man, where David says, When I consider your heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the stars, and all that thou hast ordained, I ask, what is man that thou art mindful of him?

In all of this expanse and immensity of the universe, where does man fit in? Of what significance is he? Is he again a cosmic mistake, a grown-up germ, one who fortuitously and chaotically emerges from the slime, or does he have an origin of dignity?

Now we're concerned not simply with an exposition of the book of Genesis, but we want to know what Genesis has to say to the modern predicament in which we find ourselves. In other contexts, I've been exercised over what I see to be a radical and tragic inconsistency with the doctrines and philosophy of humanism, humanism which exalts man, which speaks of the greatness and the grandeur of the human species, and has as its most important priority on the humanist agenda the dignity of man.

And I ask this question, and it's a troublesome question I know. How can a creature have dignity if his origin is in chaos? If he comes originally from insignificance and he moves inexorably to more insignificance, how can he possibly have dignity in between?

And yet that's precisely what humanism offers us. They tell us that man is this exalted creature of dignity who has emerged from nothing and who is destined for nothing, and yet in between some magical, mysterious way he is the supreme creature of dignity.

Dear friends, I honestly believe that that kind of philosophy of man is based on preference,.

On emotion.

We like to believe that we have significance and dignity because we're human beings. But sooner or later we have to face these considerations as existentialist philosophers did, and they made fun of the naivete of humanism who wanted to have its cake and eat it too.

Genesis 1 and the Imago Dei

But the Christian responds to humanism from a historic base, going back to creation, very much concerned, intimately concerned with man's origins. Let's look at it as we find it in Genesis chapter 1, beginning on the accounts of the sixth day as we pick it up in verse 26 of the book of Genesis.

Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

And God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created him. Male and female, He created him. Now, there's some very troublesome dimensions to this text. In the first place, we find that God speaks about the creation of man by referring to Himself in the plural.

The text reads, let us make man in our image. And the word for God there is the plural form of the God that's found in the ancient Hebrew. And some commentators have looked at the text and they say, well, here is an expression obviously of primitive and naive polytheism where the early writers of Scripture were caught up in a primitive understanding of religion whereby they believed in many gods, and so the idea here is of the gods plural creating man.

But that runs into the teeth of the rest of the chapter and the rest of the entire New Testament which is thoroughly monotheistic in its approach. And so most scholars have rejected the idea that the plural form of creation refers to many gods or polytheism.

Some have said it's simply an editorial device, the editorial we or the imperial we, but that's straining the problem too as those are very uncommon in Hebrew literature. Some particularly conservatives have jumped to the conclusion that what we have here is a veiled hint at the Trinity whereby the triune God says within the persons of the Godhead, let us make man in our own image.

Perhaps that's why it's there. It would be very strange this early in the unfolding of God's divine revelation. There's another possibility and the ones that I happen to prefer but certainly wouldn't push dogmatically is that what we have here perhaps is an example of the Hebrew literary form that is called the plural of intensity that calls attention to the fact that God, though God is one, He is not a one-dimensional being but He has a fullness of character and a fullness of personality by which it's perfectly appropriate to use this plural of intensity to describe Him.

But whatever the case is, God says, I'm going to make man or let us make man in our own image and likeness. Two words, image and likeness. Again, some interpreters have tried to find two separate and distinctive qualities about man that correspond to the nature of God, that man is both in the image and in the likeness.

Of God.

I prefer to follow what I would consider the consensus virtually here of Old Testament interpretation, that these two words are used as synonyms linked together by a literary form called a hendieties, which means simply you take two words to refer to one aspect.

So that really what we're saying is that image and likeness refer to substantially the same thing that there is some way in which man is made special, that he has a peculiar and unusual and extraordinary link to his Creator, and that the uniqueness of man, indeed the basis ultimately for the dignity of man is found in that he is the image bearer of God.

Theologically, we call this the concept of the Imago Dei, that man is made in the image of God, and this sets him apart from every other creature. Well, what does it mean to be created in the image of God?

Again, as soon as we ask that question, we open up the door to a very, very complicated history of controversy within theology. Some have taken a very crass view of it that have indicated that God must be physical.

Since man is physical and man looks like God, then we must just bear a physical or corporal resemblance to the deity. But of course, that concept has been basically repugnant to classical Christianity, and we have sought to locate the point of likeness or similarity between man and God in some other spiritual dimension.

And so it was fashionable in the Middle Ages to locate the image of God in the sense that man is a rational animal, that just as God has the capacity for thinking, so does man have the capacity for thought.

And just as God has the capacity for making moral judgments and behaving in a moral way, so man is given a will so that he also can be a moral creature and so on. Well, I think that the classical thinkers at this point were very close to the mark in understanding that it is more the internal, the willing, the believing, the thinking dimensions of man that make up the image.

But I think we would be remiss if we tried to imagine that only part of human nature was created in the image of God, the non-physical part. That separation of man's body from his spirit would be foreign to the Scriptures themselves.

And I think if we're going to take the Bible seriously, we must include the mind and the will and the heart and so on in our understanding of what it means to be in the image of God. But if we're faithful to the text, I think we're going to have to see that not only the spiritual side of man, but his physical life is also in the image of God.

Well, what does that mean? Again, we don't want to fall into the crass or crude idea that therefore God has a body. No, God doesn't have a body. God is a spirit. We have bodies, but the image of God is stamped on our bodies as well as our soul.

That is, the whole of man is the image bearer of God. Again, what does it mean to be created in His image and in His likeness? One thing it means is that man has a unique capacity to mirror and to reflect the character of God, that I am set in this world by God, and I am given a human nature by which I have an ability and a responsibility to live in such a way that my life resembles the character.

Of God.

We see this not only buried in the opening chapters of Genesis, but we see it running through the Old Testament, the command that God gives to man early and then to the nation Israel later, where God says, you shall be holy, for I am holy.

He calls man to be a light to the whole world, not just to people, but to the animal kingdom to reflect and to mirror the character of God. So, in a word, I am created as a human being with a capacity and a duty in a certain sense to resemble God, to show the animal world what God is like.

So there's a sense in which a transfer takes place by the imprinting of the divine image on the human creature. Now, I'm going to take a moment here to go to the board and make a distinction that I think is important for us to keep in front of us with respect to this great issue of dignity.

The humanist, I'll put him over here, argues that man's dignity is intrinsic. The Christian maintains that man's dignity is extrinsic. Now, what's the difference? What's the difference between a dignity that is intrinsic and a dignity that is extrinsic?

Well, an intrinsic dignity would be a weightiness or a significance or an importance that's built in. To say that man has dignity intrinsically is to say that dignity goes with our humanity. It's part of the given of our humanity, and it's precisely at that point that the humanist labors with that problem of origin and destiny because, again, if the origin is in indignity and the destiny is in dignity, how can we say that the present state of man carries intrinsic built-in dignity?

Where'd it come from? Christianity is equally, if not more, concerned about human dignity. The agenda of the church has always been and must always be a passionate concern for human dignity. Yet, Christianity teaches that human dignity is extrinsic, which means what?

That it's not built in. It's not eternally found in the liver or in the bloodstream, but rather our dignity is.

Derived.

It's dependent.

It's been assigned to us by God. For we believe that God alone is eternal, and God alone has intrinsic dignity. But the whole point of the creation of man with respect to the value of man resides in this, that the Christian church is saying, look, you as a human being are important.

You are of incalculable value because the one who is eternal, the one who possesses intrinsic dignity has stamped his dignity on your person. You are created in the image of God. You bear his character.

You are to mirror and reflect his dignity. It's for that reason that life, for example, is seen as so precious and that even the power of sin, which corrupts and defaces this creature who's made in the image of God, the mirror is cracked, but it's still a mirror.

The mirror is debased, but it's not erased. Our image of God is distorted by our sin and our corruption, but man's dignity even by sin is not destroyed. That's why we care about every human being on the face of this earth, no matter how corrupt, no matter how sinful, no matter how impenitent they may be, we must care, for in caring we at that point are fulfilling the Imago Dei because God's redemptive activity that follows through the rest of biblical history shows us that God is the kind of God who is so concerned about the value of human beings that even when we misrepresent Him to the world and we disobey Him and rebel from Him, He pursues us and embarks upon a cosmic plan of redemption.

So let's understand that redemption, which is the heart of the Christian faith, flows not out of a vacuum, but that redemption flows out of creation. It's because of creation that we care about redemption.

If you have no creation as the humanists, then in the first place you have no possibility of redemption because frankly there is nothing of ultimate value to redeem, and you certainly have no hope of redemption, no power for redemption, and really no reason apart from sentiment or emotion to even be concerned about redemption.

But I have been made by God. That means I am somebody. My roots go back not simply to someone like Quintuquinte. My roots go all the way back to Eden. My roots go back to that moment when God scooped up the dust, and He tenderly condescended to lean over that dust and to breathe into that dirt the breath of life so that man became a living soul.

The inanimate earth was animated. What does the Latin animus, or from which we get the idea of animation, means? It means it comes from wind or breath or spirit. I am alive because of the breath of God.

You are alive because of the breath of God. The humanist never gets us out of the dirt. He says we emerge spontaneously by chance from the dirt, and from that dirt we come, and to that dirt we return.

Yes, we agree with the humanists that dirt was involved, but not a dirt that on its own power, on its own steam, through a, you know, this accidental chancing collision of atoms suddenly began to be animated, but we're saying that our life, the very principle of our being comes from the being of God.

God breathes into us His animus, His Spirit, by which we live and move and, as the New Testament says, have our being. There's a couple of other matters that I want to cover quickly about the creation of man, and God created man in His own image, and we see that God says, let them rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, over the cattle in the earth, and every creeping thing, that man in creation is given the responsibility of having dominion over the earth, that He's given not only a unique nature where He stands with the image of God, but He is also given a unique role of authority in the universe, where divine authority is transferred to Him, not in the absolute sense, but in the secondary sense, that man becomes God's viscergent, that is His vice king on this planet, and we are to have dominion over the earth and to subdue it.

That's an exalted position for the human race over the rest of the creaturely elements that make up this world. And then we read, and God created man in His own image, and in the image of God He created him, male and female He created him.

Now it may seem like a subtle distinction, perhaps even a distinction without a difference, but I think it's important that in the text here that doesn't say that God creates man and woman, but He says He creates man, the generic term, mankind or human beings, and He gives to mankind His divine image, and He says, male and female He creates them.

Male and female, clearly referring to different role descriptions, different sexual functions, male and female, and that at the beginning of the creation of the race, God builds in unity and diversity, a shared humanness, a shared participation in the divine image, and a shared dignity so that we see a clear equality in creation of dignity between the male and the female.

Different tasks are assigned. Different responsibilities are given. It's not the man's responsibility to bear children. That gift and duty is given to the woman. There are certain characteristics and distinctives to the male and other characteristics and distinctives to the female, and some have tried to wrest out of the differences a hierarchy.

Of values.

Men throughout history have said, well, we're the stronger sex, and we're the superior sex, and women are inferior because they're physically weaker, and statements like that. Or they note the fact that in creation, as we will see in a later lecture, woman is made to be the helpmate of the man, and there is a kind of role subordination at certain points along the way, and that men have jumped to the conclusion that that must mean, again, superiority.

No wonder women have reacted because the lie that the man has perpetrated is that subordination means inferiority. The only reason God would give me the assignment He gives me rather than to the woman is because I must be superior, says the man, and the woman rebels against it, and rightly so.

For we see here in the text that participation in this exalted dignity of having the image of God stamped upon our humanness is male and female. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning, God created us, male and female. And with that act of placing upon us a divine, a divinely originating value, we stand for the importance and the significance of every human being, not out of preference or out of sentiment, but out of history, because God has done it.