Apologetics Session 19 - Anthropology

Christian Anthropology Versus Secular Anthropology

This time of fellowship where we can come together to study your Word and study what it means to be human. Father we pray that as we open your Word and as we look at what the world says about what our nature is and what makes us human that we rely entirely on you and what you have said so we would trust you to see you as you are and us as we are and that through it all you'll be glorified.

We All right so let's start with the secular anthropology because there is a difference between Christian anthropology and the social science of anthropology. So anthropology is really a broad definition.

It basically means the study of humanity. So it's been around since almost the beginning of humanity because ever since we've been around people have sought to understand why we are around and more like anything really related humans.

So it really started as a philosophical study in ancient Greece because that's all we did and then in the past couple hundred years it's become more of an empirical data-based study where people do multiple research studies to come to a conclusion.

So the original notion that the ancient Greeks had and what philosophers through centuries have had that humans have a human nature that is gone. It's been replaced with a more modern interpretation of view and it's been pretty much shifted entirely to there is no human nature.

Everything is the result of your surroundings. So let's go over the definition again. Is the science of humanity or the study of human societies and cultures and their development using empirical data.

So because it has such a broad definition there are multiple different fields that come under this umbrella term of anthropology. So each of these fields focuses on smaller more specific things such as the study of the thought processes of people, functionalism, cultural conditioning, cultural relativism, cultural determinism, culture and personality.

You've seen a theme here. A lot of culture. A lot of culture. And again because it is this big umbrella term of the study of humanity, human evolution and archaeology also technically fall under this banner.

And we all have heard of those too. We've even gone over those briefly. We're going to in the future as well. Or you guys will. I won't. You might be back by then. Who knows. But what's being peddled across America probably the most are two other ones.

Cultural relativism and cultural determinism. It's a quick aside. In all four years of my high school time I went to public school and I took a history class every year. In two of those history classes I had a Marxist teacher.

And in the other two years I had sociology and a class called contemporary world issues. And this is all that I heard all year round. Even in history they just bring it all back to these two things. So cultural relativism is the theory that really dominates anthropology.

It was coined by a man named Franz Boas and he's considered the father of modern anthropology. So this goes to show how high of a regard scholars hold this man. And the theory is essentially there is no moral or ethical standard across the world.

That everything is the result of the culture they come from. So as an example there'd be 1741 in Northampton Massachusetts where Jonathan Edwards was pastor. That culture was focused entirely on living a godly lifestyle and glorifying God.

And a person that believed in cultural relativism would say that that is the result only because of their belief in the Bible. Or vice versa where if we were to look at a Campbellistic tribe somewhere in Polynesia that is the result of their belief in many gods or pagan gods.

So everything is determined exclusively by the culture that you're in. So the relativist would say that neither of those cultures is right nor wrong. And that it is relative to that specific culture. And something that my teacher had once told me too when we were going over that is that I only think the way I do because I'm a Christian.

So they're not even really hiding it. It's kind of just down your throat think this way because this is what we think. So the other one that really permeates through anthropology is cultural determinism which is exploring why cultures are different.

And this gets into more specifics like the day-to-day practices of peoples within a society, the religious beliefs, their political structure, and it's all influenced of course by the cultural systems.

So for us we are influenced according to the determinists. We're influenced by our democratic structure. We're influenced us specifically by this church and our belief in God. And even on a more personal level we're each influenced because of our family structure.

So all of that comes in it accumulates as this person would say into what shapes us and what makes us who we are. So as an example this is again something I've heard. They would say that the Israelites could not make sense of why people got sick from eating raw pork.

So they explained it away by saying that God had made the pork unclean and that's why they couldn't eat it. But really that's just so these are the ideas that are all over secular anthropology. But we all know the truth and we want to learn the truth so we're going to turn to the one place where we can find the truth which is the Bible.

The Image of God and the Composition of Man

So Christian anthropology is again the study of humanity but this is where it gets different because it's all about it's humanities relation to God. So where as a secular anthropologist would focus on the social structures or the culture we would focus entirely on God and what God has said about us and what God has done for us.

So we can see this in both natural and divine revolution. First we're going to look at what the Bible says obviously because that is what we hold so dearly to. So when we look into the Bible we can come up with several questions about what it means to be human.

The first obvious one jumps out on page one of the Bible. What does it mean to be made in the image of God? The second would be what is man's composition or how many parts does it have if any? Third would be what happened to the composition of man as a result of the fall?

Was it changed at all? Fourth, if humanity's nature was altered by the fall to what extent was it? Do we still bear God's image? Fifth, what happens to man's composition as a result of regeneration in Christ?

What happens to those who are never regenerated when they die? What happens to those who were regenerated when they died? Eighth, are human sinners because of a natural disposition to sin? If so, to what extent are they in that sin?

And finally, if humans are really composed of different parts, what's the difference between those parts? So we're going to start with the image of God, the imago Dei. I like my Latin terms so I wrote it big up there for everybody to see.

So most of us come from a Christian background or if you're like me from a Catholic background where you still read the Bible but you don't really understand. So from the time we're young we hear that we are made in the image of God and although we can't really understand fully what it means when we're five years old, we can really see the difference and see that we are separate and special among creation.

And it comes through the study of God's Word that we can see what truly means beyond merely a physical resemblance. So here are a couple of views that some theologians have had through history. Some are as simple as, again, the physical resemblance and most are a little more complex.

So here's what Augustine thought. The human mind is Trinitarian, comprised of memory, understanding, and will. Luther said that man has a public and a private image, each relating to the state of the individual in sin.

And John Calvin said that the image of God referred to the soul of man, which he said is what distinguished man from the rest of creation, from animals. And others have also completely twisted what it means to do something like, like God, we have free will and we have complete sovereignty over our own lives, which we've already gone over so I can step on toes.

So when we look to see what it means to be made in his image, first we're going to go to his Word. And then once we've done that, we can look at our secondary source of revelation to add to the already strong foundation that we have in the Bible.

So let's turn to the beginning, Genesis 1. Would someone like to read Genesis 1, 26 and 27?

And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he was created male and female. He created them. All right, so the first two words that are.

Going to jump out to us when we're looking to understand this, obviously, are image and likeness. Two different Hebrew words here. The first one is Salem and the second one is D'muth. Salem is translated in English as image.

D'muth is translated as likeness. So Salem is occurring in 15 different verses in the entire Old Testament. The first four are referring to the creation itself. We just read two of those. The other two are Genesis 5 .3 and Genesis 9 .6.

Mr. Thompson, could you read Genesis 5 .3 and Brad, could you read Genesis 9 .6?

When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by.

Man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. Again, quite clear.

About the image referring to the creation. Now, of the other 11 verses that it appears in, 9 render Salem referring to a graven image or an idol. An example would be 1st Samuel 6 .11 or 2nd Kings 11 .18.

Rich, if you want to turn there. I'm sorry, what? 2nd Kings 11 .18. 2nd Kings 11 .18, okay. And Dave, could you turn to.

Ezekiel 7 .20? 2nd Kings 11 .18. So, they laid hands on her and brought her to the horse's entry of the royal palace, where she was put to death. Is that right? I don't think so.

2nd Kings 11 18. Yep. Maybe I wrote down the wrong one. No, no, it wasn't the same one.

Okay, I'm sorry. The verse that I had. You want me to read it? Which one? What? Oh, then yeah.

It says, then all the people of the land went to the house of Baal and tore it down. His altars and his images, they broke in pieces. And they killed Matan, the priest of Baal, before the altars, and the priest posted watchmen over the house of the Lord.

What verse is that? That was.

7 .18. 7 .18? 11 .11. What was the verse I had? Ezekiel 7 .20. 7 .20, okay. His beautiful ornament they used for pride and they made their abominable images and their detestable things of it. Therefore I make it an unclean thing to them.

So it's clear that these are only two of the nine.

Verses, but it's clear that in these ones it's referring to an image or an idol, mainly in a pagan community around Israel. Now in the other two verses that Solemnus translated, they're both in the Psalms, and these two are different from the rest because these two are both separate words entirely.

Ivan, if you could turn to Psalm 39 .6. And Bob, if you could turn to Psalm 73 .20. 20? Yes.

And Psalm 39 .6 says, Surely a man goes about as a shadow. Surely for nothing they are in turmoil.

Man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather. So the word translated there is shadow. And then Psalm 73 .20. They are like a dream when one awakes. When you arise, Lord, you will despise them as fantasies.

What translation was that on? ESV. ESV. All right. I don't know which one I had, but it was phantoms. It's the one that I had rendered as. So it's clear that through all of those it's referring strictly to a physical resemblance, a physical image of God.

Now the word dimuth, or likeness, occurs in 22 verses in the Old Testament. And we're not going to look at all those because they're quite a bit. But if we want to look at a few, Isaiah 40 .18. It says, To whom then will you liken God?

Or what likeness can pair him with him? Or Ezekiel 1 .10. As for the likeness of their faces, each had a human face. The four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle.

Again, referring to likeness. In each of the verses, it renders dimuth as either likeness, the word like, or another synonym of the kind. So it's clear that from these verses, every single verse that these two words appear in the Old Testament, it's referring to a physical image, a physical resemblance of God.

That's why in the Septuagint, the Greek translators rendered it all as icon, which is the word that we get the English word icon from. I-C-O-N. And in fact, because they are so similar, they're used interchangeably in the Old Testament as well.

So that's one thing that we can learn from Genesis 1. Now let's look to natural revelation before we move on, because we can draw the same conclusion from nature as well. So I don't know how many of you are really into math, but I am terrible at math and I hate it.

So this was a struggle for me. But I'll see if I can teach it someone. So there is a ratio that occurs in nature called the golden ratio. It is where the ratio of the sum of two quantities is the same as the ratio of the same two quantities.

So that has my head spinning. So I wrote it down for you in its algebraic form. And here I even gave you a chart of a pie graph where A is two-thirds of the whole and B is one-third of the whole. And together they make that perfect one.

And I did my best to draw a human hand skeleton, but I'm no artist, so excuse me for that. But these are supposed to be the bones in the human head. So the bone for two represents, in the graph that I found, it was two centimeters for this bone here, three for the bone below it, five for the bone below that, and eight for the bone below that.

So these top two are a perfect ratio to this middle one. These middle two are a perfect relation to the bottom one. And the same thing can be seen all over the human body, between your legs, from your toes to your head, in fact, and even from your elbow to the tips of your fingers.

From the tip of your fingers to your wrist is one third of the distance approximately from the tip of your fingers to your elbow. It's clear throughout your entire body, too. My uncle has gone into it, he loves math, and he's gone into this for hours, and I'm just sitting there like this.

But I think you're getting the point. All over the human body, it seemed that, really, we have a divine proportion, as some have called it. And this was first discovered thousands of years ago by the Greeks, and it baffled them.

It still baffles mathematicians today. Really, there's only one explanation, and I'm sure we can all see it staring you in the face. It's an intelligent Creator. Amen. In fact, the very existence of this ratio, I think, is more than enough evidence to disprove Darwin's evolution.

But that's a different subject. So, from this, again, this just adds to what we've already seen in Scripture, that we bear a physical resemblance to God. So, we can clearly see that we stick out among creation, but let's go back to Genesis 126.

It said that we have been created to have dominion over the earth, over all the birds, all the fish, and all the beasts. Now, this is absolutely not because we're the strongest or the biggest of any animal.

Off the top of my head, I can think of scores of animals that could squash me like a bug and not blink an eye. It's by no means because of our physical strength. What separates us from the rest of creation, though, is that humanity possesses a spirit, the one thing that allows us to commune with the God of creation.

Now, this spirit is what James Montgomery Boyce wrote about in his book, The Foundations of the Christian Faith. He said the same word, creative, is used at only three points in a creation narrative. First, when God created matter from nothing, Genesis 1 .1.

Second, when God created conscious life, Genesis 1 .21. And third, when God created mankind, Genesis 1 .27. And Boyce pointed out that the progression is from the body or the matter, to the soul or the personality or mind, to the spirit, which could be seen as the God consciousness in that.

Now, Francis Schaeffer used this as well to declare that it's as though God put exclamation points here to indicate that there is something special about the creation of man. We have dominion over the earth, and yet we're very small in comparison to many of the beasts of the earth.

So it's this spirit that separates us from the rest of creation. So now we're moving into a different realm of debate among theologians, and this is the debate between the soul and the spirit. It's got some fancy theological names for it.

There is monism, dichotomism, and trichotomism. So let's look at each of those. Monism is the belief that there is no distinction between the soul and the body, or the immaterial part of man and the material part.

This is not really a theological view that someone would get after reading the Bible. This is more of a philosophical view that people held hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. And atheists also will hold to this today, just for different reasons.

Two of the most famous monists from ancient Greece were Thales and Anaximenes. From the 7th and 6th centuries BC, they thought that everything was derived from water, and the other thought that everything was derived from air.

So this goes to show the level of thinking that these gentlemen were at. And next one would be dichotomism, because we don't need to spend too much time on monism. It's pretty clear. They think it's just the body.

So dichotomism is the most prevalent out of the three views. So this is the belief that humans are comprised of two parts, the immaterial and the material, the body and the soul. And at first glance, any Bible-believing Christian would just hear that and say, oh yeah, that's me.

But we're going to take a look at all three before we can truly see. So the debate between the difference of a soul and spirit, or the trichotomism versus the dichotomism, that's not really as intense as either is between the monists, because it's very clear that we have more than one part of us.

It's not just the body. There is something that goes on after death. So the debate isn't really as fierce, but there is the debate nonetheless. And it starts with the language of the Old Testament. Now I'm going to block it with my head.

I definitely am. So the words in the Old Testament are nephesh and ruach. And the words in the New Testament are syke, I mispronounced that, and then pneuma for the spirit. Spirit, soul. And the dichotomist points out that in some verses in the Old Testament, these words are used interchangeably.

And same in the New Testament. And Millard Erickson, who is one of the more prominent dichotomists out there, he wrote in his book Christian Theology that if passages such as 1 Thessalonians 5 .23 or 1 Corinthians 2 .9 -16 are always to indicate a distinction between the components of man, then passages such as Luke 10 .27 would imply that there are several parts of man, not just three.

So we're going to take a look at each of those verses to see what Erickson is talking about and to see if he is wrong. So, Phil, if you could turn to 1 Corinthians 2 .9 -16. Mr. Thompson, if you could turn to Luke 10 .27, and then I'll read 1 Thessalonians 5 .23.

Okay. 1 Corinthians 2 .9 -16. Yes. For as it is written, what no eye has seen nor ear heard nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the Spirit of that person which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given to us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.

For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? For we have the mind of Christ.

Now we'll go more in depth into that passage in a minute too when we get to trichotomism, but the distinction is quite clear that Paul is made between a soul and a spirit. And also in 1 Thessalonians 5 .23, Paul makes the same distinction.

Now may the God of peace sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, and soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. In unis leki in summa. Now, Mr. Thomas, could you read Luke 10 .27?

And he answered, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

So, Erikson points to Luke 10 .27 as the reason why he doesn't rely on 1 Thessalonians 5 .23, or that section in 1 Corinthians 2. He says that if we are to take all of them at their word, then Luke 10 .27 would imply that there are not just three, but several parts of man, with all of your mind, with all of your soul, all of your strength.

That's a whole lot more. So, the fallacy here is that Erikson is taking Paul's words and really demeaning them. And he turns to Jesus' words where he's speaking in a hyperbole, essentially saying, love the Lord with all your being.

That's how much you should love him. And he's taking that as a reason for why we should not follow, or not hold to what Paul says in that distinction. So, as I'm sure you might have guessed, I hold to the third deal, which is tricognosis.

And that is the belief that man has three distinct parts, the body, soul, and spirit. And as we just looked in those two sections of Scripture, it is quite clear that Paul has made that distinction, but let's look even further into it in 1 Corinthians 2.

So, in verses 10 -12, Paul distinguishes between the spirit of man perceiving the spirit of truth and the soul of the natural man who cannot accept that spirit of God. Rich, can you read those three verses?

I'm sorry, where? 1 Corinthians 2. 1 Corinthians 2. Verses 10 -12.

Okay, 10 -12. I gotta get new glasses.

Okay, for to us God revealed them through the spirit, for the spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among people knows the thoughts of a person except the spirit of the person that is in him?

So also the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God.

Now, the key verse there is in the middle of verse 11, where Paul says, for who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person? Now, the thoughts, I'm sure as you might have seen, the word soul doesn't appear there, but in the Bible, when they're referring to the soul, they're really referring more to the mind or the personality or even person of the individual.

So the spirit and the soul have this distinction right here. And then we can see also in verses 14 -16, Mr. Hogue, if you could read those.

Sure. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are followed to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.

For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Again, distinction made between the mind and the Spirit. The Spirit is the one who accepts the Spirit of God, and the mind is the one who understands it. And the one that does not accept.

That, it is foolishness to him. And there's also an indication there that the natural man is not born again. It's the spiritual man who has the Holy Spirit in him that can only discern if the.

Natural man can't. You're stealing this week's. So someone such as myself would assert that these two pastures are really so clear that we can build upon this and say that the Spirit is what distinguishes us from animals.

Without the Spirit, there is no distinction between us and, let's say, a dog or a cat. Do dogs and cats have souls? That's a good question. I would say that they have a mind, but we do have a spirit that lives on afterwards.

So when most people would ask, do they have a soul, because most people only think in a dichotomous sort of way, a body and a soul. What most people take that as is, do dogs live on after death, or do cats live on after death?

According to my kids, they do. Yeah, according to my family, they do as well. I got a lot of heat for saying that my dog won't.

I say it tells them. Animals are in the millennium.

Animals are going to be in plenty in the millennium, so it's not too much to worry about there. So this viewpoint can even, you can draw parallels to the Trinity of God. Now let me make this disclaimer now.

This is not an analogy between our components or our nature and God's nature as he exists in the Triune Godhead. So he exists in three distinct persons, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. We are one person, we just have three different parts.

So really the parallel here, or what can be drawn, is just the three, the number three. I saw that and it jumped out at me. So we do not exist as the Trinity. Let me just say that. But we do have three components, the body, the soul, and the spirit.

The Fall, Original Sin, and Total Depravity

So now let's look at the impact of the Fall in Genesis 3 on our being, on our components. So going back to Dr. Boyce, he said in the same book that when man was created in the garden, in God's image, they were perfect.

And when they sinned against God, that perfect likeness was marred because they rebelled against God. So that perfect resemblance was marred beyond recognition. And the promise that God made in Genesis 2 verses 16 through 17 did come true.

So let's turn there. Ivan, if you would like to read those two verses. Genesis 2, 16, 17? Yes.

And it said, And the Lord God commanded the man saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. For in the day that.

You eat of it, you shall surely die. Now we all know this very well. And as we've gone over in our soteriology class too, this can be seen as a foreshadowing of the grace to come. Because God has promised, or he did promise, death to Adam and Eve when they would sin.

And then when they did sin, he did not immediately smite them. So that is a picture of the grace to come through Jesus. But there's also more that can be seen here. So when God promised that they would die when they ate of the tree, he would surely die.

That is what he said. They did. They experienced spiritual death in that moment. So the effects of the fall start at the spirit of the trichotomy and then move their way down. Boyce wrote, again go back to Boyce, further the soul, which is the seat of intellect, feelings, and identity began to die.

So men and women would begin to lose a sense of their own identity, to give vent to bad feelings, and to suffer the decay of their intellect. Now we can see this again in scripture, in Romans 1, 21 through 23.

Bob, you could read that for us. So the decay of the soul, the decay of the mind, they did not honor him, they did not give thanks to him. They became futile in their thinking. Those words right there encapsulate the whole thing.

Their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. And obviously what happened to the body as a result of the fall, we all know that we die. As time goes on, the body decays and withers away.

As clearly seen in Genesis 3, 19, you are dust, and to dust you shall return. So now that we've separated all three parts, the body, the soul, and the spirit, and we've looked at the results of the fall on each of those parts, let's bring it all back together and how it relates.

So the best illustration I found was by Donald Gray Barnhouse, and he used the picture of a three-story building which was bombed during war. So the top floor is the spirit, the middle floor is the soul, and the bottom floor is the body.

So the bomb falls, hits the top, and just as the original soon hits, the spirit falls, and is completely destroyed. And the rubble from the spirit or the top floor is so much so severe that the floor or the ceiling of the second floor starts to fall in on the second floor onto the soul, and the mind starts to decay.

They become futile in their thinking. And then because of all that added weight, and the foundations are crumbling, the walls of the bottom floor of the body are cracking, and they're crumbling. And over time, as the spirit has been entirely destroyed, soul has been ruined, the body is destined to final collapse and ruin.

That's the result of the first sin, and that has been seen through all the generations of man. So now we see the results of the fall, what about the results of salvation? So when God saves us from the bondage of sin, we know that he makes us a new creation as a part of it.

So first things first, where does he start? With the spirit. He first gives us an entirely new spirit so that we can commune with him once more, and he fills us with a heart that would desire to follow him, and to please him, and to know him.

Second comes the reconstruction of the soul or the mind, and this comes through the sanctification process. As Romans 12 says, by the renewing of your mind, you become more like him, and you grow to know him and to love him.

And then of course, what happens to the body? Though we die, we live. At the resurrection of the bodies, we get a new glorified body, as 1 John 3 says. So to conclude what we've just gone over, yes, we do bear physical resemblance to God, obviously.

We can see that in Christ. When he came to earth, did he come into our image, or were we made in his first? So we see that physical resemblance, but we also see that we have that spirit, which is what distinguishes us from the rest of creation.

And of course, we also have a mind and a body like the rest of creation, but that spirit is what separates us. So with all three parts, with our body, with our mind, and with our spirit, we are to glorify God in all things.

Human Sinfulness, Original Sin, and the Need for Grace

So let's move on to our nature. As we've gone over, the secularists would deny human nature outright. They would exchange that for some other ridiculous theory about how our parents shaped our nature more than anything.

They exchanged it for a lie. Yeah, nurture. So what is essential to the Christian anthropology is the natural disposition of man, or the nature of man. And while secularists would deny that, we can see clearly by reading scripture, we do have a nature, and it is to sin.

That sinfulness is what separates us from God. So now I have a question for each of you that I want you to think about, and then we'll come back to it. Do we sin because we are sinners, or are we sinners because we sin?