SCIENCE AND RELIGION ARE ALIKE CONCERNED WITH THE ORIGIN OF MAN THOUGH THEIR PROBLEM IS NOT THE SAME. Modern science sees man, with all other animals, as the fruit of a long process of biological evolution stemming from one or a few primary forms of life. The theory, of course, cannot be demonstrated, and opinions differ as to the causes operative in this development. The grounds for its almost universal acceptance are twofold. The first is really more rational, or philosophical, than scientific. Science believes in order, an order extending back in time just as it obtains in space. True, there is the fact of change, often inexplicable, and there is increasing recognition of the element of contigency ("chance," "fortuitous variation"). Yet there remains that basic order of events, or of the operation of forces, which makes possible the generalizations of science (natural laws) and man's control of nature for his ends. There is change, but there is continuity too. Nothing that appears comes de novo; ex nihilo nihil fit. That which is, is related to what went before. Second, this theory like all scientific hypotheses is an effort at interpretation, seeking to give unity and meaning to a mass of facts presented by the record of past life and its heritage as found in the present.

What bearing does this theory have upon religious faith? Certainly it does not reduce man to the level of the brute. Newness is just as essential for a theory of evolution as is continuity, and continuity does not mean identity. Not the road by which man came is decisive but the point at which he has arrived. The case of the individual, in fact, is much like that of the race. The germ from which the individual man develops is without one trace of what we know as the distinctive human qualities, but the man that comes from it is no less truly man. Our age is genetically and historically minded. It assumes that it has accounted for something (man, religion, ethics, the idea of God) when it has traced its development. This common error, which we may call evolutionism or historicism, does not discredit the facts of evolution or history, but it misinterprets them. It confuses ratio fiendi with ratio essendi.

The Origin of Man

For Christian thought the decisive element in its conception of the origin of man is the fact of God's creativity; the question of method is secondary. What modern science has brought has not ruled out the idea of a divine creative power. Indeed, some of its findings point that way. Such are a dependable universe whose order can be comprehended by reason; an ongoing development in which there appear successive levels of meaning and worth, rising from the physicochemical to the organic and finally to the rational-moral-spiritual; and a purposive, or telic, quality when the movement is viewed as a whole. But to hold to a divine creation, whether of man or the universe, does not necessarily mean a creation out of nothing at some one moment or period of time. God's work of creation is related to natural processes just as his work of revelation and redemption is related to man's nature and the movement of history. Nor can we return to the biblical literalism which saw the first chapter of Genesis, not as a great hymn of faith in a creator God, but as a literal account of the method of creation. We see man as the last stage in a long creative process which in turn leads to a second process, creative-redemptive, a movement in history whose goal is the kingdom of God and the God-intended destiny of man.

When human life appeared on this globe, was it by imperceptible degrees or by some sudden and significant change? We cannot say, and the matter is not vital for religion any more than is the parallel question in relation to the individual: When does the growing life in the womb become a human being or have a "soul"? Or when does the growing infant become a real human personality? The increasing opinion of scientists would seem to be that man appeared through some specially significant mutation, "a discontinuous variation of a considerable magnitude." Nor are other significant variations excluded. H. F. Osborn holds that such a variation marked the rise of the Cro-Magnon man, who flourished between 25,000 and 40,000 years ago, and who was probably the equal of modern man in mental capacity as he was in his physical development. The important matter for us is not when or under just what conditions man appeared on earth, but the fact that such a being as man is here. Time and mode of appearance do not alter the fact that man is something new and different.

Nor are we especially concerned as to the age of the race. Estimates by scientists are of necessity largely conjectural. They run from a hundred thousand to a million years. In any case the period of which we have historical knowledge, the period of what we call civilization or culture, is but a small fraction of the many millenniums since our race appeared on earth. And we must keep this in mind in our thought about man and God's way with man.

Allied to the question of the origin of the race is that of the origin of the individual soul, a matter much debated by traditional theology. Three different positions were maintained. The creationist theory held that each soul was a distinct creation of God, joined by him to a body which was "naturally" conceived. The theory of pre-existence held that the spirits of men existed before their life on earth, indeed, before the creation of the visible universe. The traducian theory held that the souls of men, like their bodies, came from Adam by propagation or generation, and not by immediate and individual creation; and this seemed to many of the Reformation theologians to give a better ground for the doctrine of the total depravity of the race as coming from Adam's fall

These are speculative theories. The most obvious mistake is to think of the soul as a kind of spiritual entity joined to the body in more or less external fashion. Man is a psychophysical unity. The individual person comes by a process of growth, in which body and spirit share, in a manner not unlike that of the race. The traducian theory rightly gives place to the fact of heredity, to man as member of a race; in its extreme deterministic form, however, it tends to suppress the equal significance of the individual and his freedom.

The positive conclusion may be put thus: The individual, like the race, is a creation of God. God has created him as a body-spirit being. Like the race, the individual comes by growth. Every man is linked by heredity to the age-old past of the race, just as in his personal development he is linked with an inherited culture and a social-material environment. God is creatively at work in all these relations but most significantly in the personal life of the self as man comes into conscious relation with his Maker. For God does not create the spirit of man (man the personal being) in some pre-temporal act, nor in and with the soul of Adam, nor yet as something added to the body at conception or birth. The creation of a human personality is an ongoing work, which is at once creation and salvation, which goes on through man's whole life on earth and whose completion looks to the life beyond. The higher meanings of this creative-redemptive process we study in the doctrine of salvation.

The Distinctive Mature of Man

Our great concern as we think of man is not the road by which he has come but the place at which he has arrived. More important than his kinship with the lower animals is his difference from them. Where does this difference lie?

The physical difference of man from other animals is not without significance. His erect posture sets free the fore limbs for tool-making and using. He looks not merely downward and outward but upward. He is the creature with a forehead, and the brain development of the prefontal region has to do with a rational life rather than with one of mere sense impressions and instinctive reactions. But these physical characteristics are less important than the inner differences which they suggest.

1. Man is a thinking and speaking animal. The two are inseparably joined and probably developed together. The lower animals receive impressions, form percepts and associations, and have a certain intelligence and memory; they do not form general ideas and do not reason. Whatever the origin of man's first words, his speech is the use of more or less arbitrary symbols for expressing and communicating ideas. Animals express emotions but not ideas, and the expression is by action and sounds, not by spoken word. Rational development is conditioned by language development. Language is at once the instrument of thought and the spur to clearer and deeper thinking. ¹

2. Man is a social being. The gregarious instinct is common in life; animals live in droves, herds, flocks, covies. But only man lives in a society. A true social life requires reason, speech, and some consciousness of personality in one's self and in others. Conversely, it is only in social relations that these indispensable elements of human life can be achieved. If there is to be a society in the true sense, man must first learn to say "I" with an awareness of himself as person, he must learn to say "thou" with a realization of the nature of others as persons, and he must learn to say "we" with a sense of common interests and mutual obligations. Martin Buber defines human society when he says, "By We I mean a community of several independent persons who have reached a self and self-responsibility. ... Only men who are truly capable of saying Thou to one another can truly say We with one another." ² To which we may add, no man can truly say "I" who has not learned to say "thou" and "we."

3. Human life in its more advanced stages is marked by the possession of a social-cultural heritage. Each generation begins with an inheritance from the past, not just of buildings and tools and roads and tilled fields, but of knowledge, ideas, ideals, and social institutions. Reason, language (spoken and written), and society (home, church, schools, state, and other associations) make possible the handing down of the riches of the past and thus the maintenance of civilization, or culture. The Christian religion is the notable example of how a great tradition of the past lives on as an abiding source of light and power.

4. Man is marked by his power to rule. All life involves some power over environment; man stands apart in the scope and degree of this power. The Genesis story declares that he was created to "fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion." He transcends other creatures by his intelligence, his skill as a toolmaker (homo faber), and his capacity for co-operation with his fellow men. In modern times he has enlarged his power over nature almost inconceivably by science, invention, and the machine. His highest creative power, however, has been in the field of the spirit, in the realm of truth and beauty, of social ideals and institutions, of religion and ethics.

Man's power has, indeed, marked limitations. With all his advance he remains a finite and dependent creature and one whose action is conditioned at every step by his environment, natural and social. The most serious limits to his power, however, have their source within himself: in the failure to rule himself, in the failure to see that the highest freedom and power can come only through obedience to God and right, in the failure to see that the way to true power with men is not through self-assertion but through the giving of self in love and united service.

5. Man is a becoming creature, distinguished by a plasticity, a capacity for change and growth which continues through his lifetime. In contrast with other creatures man comes into the world least determined, most helpless. He has a far longer period of infancy. This means not only protracted psychophysical development, but a long period of learning and of profound influence through his social environment—impressing upon him habits, ideals, and character. He belongs to the human race, indeed, from birth; but in a profound sense his real life as man is an achievement calling for a lifetime of endeavor. The rule for man is, "Never leave growing till, the life to come!" ³ Men are often untrue to this law of becoming. With nations as with individuals the growth of youth may be succeeded by inertia, stagnation and decay, or by tragic downfall. But even here there is the chance for new vision and endeavor. Nations and individuals may be reborn and live and grow again.

6. Man is a self-transcending being. That is made possible by the fact of the many worlds to which he belongs. The lesser animals live in the narrow world of the seen, of the here and now. Man transcends time by his memory of the past and by the imagination with which thought and hope and purpose reach into the future. He transcends space, not only by the instruments which extend the range of his senses, but by the imagination and sympathy with which he may become a citizen of the world. He transcends the visible. He can know the world of the unseen, the world of spirit: the world of truth and beauty and goodness and love in human life, the eternal Spirit upon whom all things, visible and invisible, depend.

Here man meets the challenge to his life, the world of "ought" speaking to the world of "is." He knows that he is a dual creature, the man that is and the man that is to be; and that his true life lies in this world of "ought" with its ideals and values. To transcend himself, he now sees, is his very life. As one of George Bernard Shaw's characters puts it: "As long as I can conceive something better than myself, I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it. That is the law of my life." He transcends the limits of self by means of fellowship. True, there is an apartness in his life; he lives in an inner world which he can never wholly share with others. But he can and does transcend this separateness. There are warm and intimate ties as in home and friendship. There are ties resting on common interests and loyalties and endeavors. There is the broad tie of a common humanity and the closer bond of a common faith and service which unites in a world fellowship the followers of Jesus Christ. Man lives in a multidimensional world, and his life is unique in the relations which he may establish in these many dimensions. This is what salvation means; it is setting man right in all these relations so that he may have life. This is the Christian insight, that man's central and supreme relation is to God and that only from this center can all the rest be rightly determined.

7. Man is a self-conscious being. He knows that he is a person; he is the creature that says "I." This "I" is the subject to which all his inner states and outer activities are referred. It is always "I think," "I act." Feelings, thoughts, purposes, deeds, all belong to this "I." The unity is as real as is the complexity of his life. It is, indeed, more real. In feeling, thought, and action there is constant change; but the self always persists through this change. The man of fifty differs from the boy of ten. Yet he says as he looks back: I did that; that was I. In this self-consciousness he knows himself as a being apart. However closely he may be joined to others in love and sympathy, there is an inner citadel which neither foe nor friend can wholly penetrate. "My mind to me a kingdom is."

8. Man is a self-determining being. He is not only a rational being and one that can discern ideals and values; he is able to choose between alternative courses, to set goals for himself, and to shape life and character in the light of these ends. He is a morally free and responsible being.

9. Man is a personal being. That is involved in what has already been said. A person is one who is rational, free, morally responsible, and self-conscious. The concept of personality is basic for the Christian faith. Our God is a personal God. Religion is an I and Thou relation; it is the answer of the human person to the divine Person, a life of fellowship between child and Father. Faith is the word for our answer to God, and faith means a personal response in trust. Love is the word for our life with men, and love means personal fellowship in a life of reverence for other persons and of good will. The circle of religion is determined by these personal pronouns: the I of a conscious personal being, responding to a Thou of holiness and mercy, saying You to our fellow men of every class and color in recognition of their like status as persons, saying We in expression of our human fellowship.

The Principle of Individuality

The terms "individual" and "individuality" call for definition here in relation to the idea of personality. In its primary sense the term "individual" carries no meaning of quality. The individual is literally the indivisible; it is a particular unit, a distinct or discrete being of any kind. When we speak of individuality in man, however, we commonly have in mind those characteristics or qualities which cause one individual to stand out from his fellows. In broad contrast one may say that the individual is that which distinguishes one man from another, the personal is a quality which we share with others.

God is concerned alike with the personal and the individual in man. It is the personal which comes first, and it should be so with us. That which unites us with our fellows as persons is more important than that which distinguishes us. The law of reverence for human personality comes first, and it must transcend every distinction of individuality as well as group differences of class, color, or race. But this does not exclude the significance of the individual man. As person man is sacred in God's sight; as individual he has his distinctive character and his particular place in God's plan. To get the Christian position we must join the two terms and say individual person, or personal individual.

It is interesting to note how widely the principle of individuation obtains in God's creative plan. In the world of life there is not only the vast number of varying species and genera but the variation between members of the same class. On the wide-stretching prairies no two flowers are exactly the same, nor any two leaves in all the trees of the forest. But the real meaning of this principle appears only when we come to man, when we have to do not just with the individual but with the individual who is person.

It is now no mere matter of variety. The two words suggest a higher significance of a twofold character. There is first the worth of the individual as a person. That is what lies back of Jesus' warning to those who would bring harm to even one little child. Here is the basis of judgment against all those social ways of our day, seen in their extreme in the totalitarian state but present also in our Western capitalistic order, which treat men as tools or possessions or pawns in the world game of rival state powers or competing economies.

There is, second, the significance of the personal individual. God deals, indeed, with mankind in groups; races and nations have their significance for him. But the home offers us the best analogy for God's attitude. The home is a unit, but in the home each child has a place which no one else can take. In the highest act of religion, that of prayer, each soul knows itself as alone with God and one with hka in the meeting of I and Thou. In God's creative love he has made each one different, and he calls upon me to be, not a replica of my neighbor, noble saint though he may be, but my own self, realizing the qualities and capacities with which he has endowed me. This individuation is vital to God's plan for his world. In my part in that plan I am to render a distinct service, just as I am to achieve individual character. My role in home and community and church is different from that of any other, and it will remain unfulfilled unless I fulfill it.

This principle of individuality has to be safeguarded against abuse, and on two sides.

There is a religious individualism which sees only one essential relation in religion, that of the individual soul and God. It is the error into which mysticism and pietism are prone to fall, as well as that monasticism whose essential element is suggested by the root meaning of the term monastic. Pietism is least at fault here, for it has always emphasized religious fellowship and traditionally has given a large place to the love and service of fellow men. Nevertheless its tendency has been to think of the knowledge of God and the life with God almost solely as a matter of inner and individual experience. As to mysticism one may find this limitation in so fine a work on the spiritual life as the Theologia Germanica, which Luther praised so highly. The question is not, as with this unknown writer, whether "man should claim nothing for his own, nor crave, will, love or intend anything but God alone." Nor is it the conviction that the knowing of God in immediate and individual fellowship is at the heart of religion. We can still say with the Johannine mystic: "This is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God." Knowing God is an individual experience, whatever knowing about God may be.

The real question is that of the nature of the God in whom we believe, what it means to know him, and where we are to find him. God is a God of love, and a God of love is found not in solitude, remote from men, but among his people. Not only does a true knowing of God show itself in the spirit of love but to love is to know God. "He who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" (I John 4:16). Personal and social are not identical, but they are inseparable. As there is no society apart from persons, so there is no personal life apart from social relations. To seek life in the individualistic way is to lose it. Religious individualism is the defect of a virtue. It stresses the fact that we must find God and our own self in individual relation to the Infinite. It fails to see that we tend to miss God and lose our own life when we take the solitary way.

Naturalistic and secularistic individualism is the far more serious danger of our time. It lacks, first, the dimension of God. It is an individualism which knows no authority higher than its own will, no goal save its own desire. It lacks equally the social dimension in any Christian sense. Alike for the cult of the superman and in the idolatry of supernationalism, the common herd is simply to be ruled and exploited. Here the superindividualism of the few means the denial of the rights of the individual in others. A true individualism is possible only through that God who knows me as a person, and in fellowship with my brother men whom I recognize as persons.

Finally, we need to note the powerful social forces at work today which make for the suppression of the individual-personal-human. These are seen in the modern development of industry and the state. Industrial progress has its value for human welfare. Science and the machine can cause nature to serve man's needs, supply him with comforts, and give him leisure for higher pursuits. But we need to see what this has brought in its train: mass industry, centralized control, city-massed populations, man becoming a part of the machine, turning in his leisure to mass recreation in which he becomes a passive spectator of sports or of moving pictures and television, a passive listener to the radio, or a reader of mass-produced journals. The individual tends to disappear while men become stereotyped specimens, like the products of their machines.

A second tendency working toward this end is the growth of the state in its power and its ever-extending control of human life. This does not necessarily mean totalitarianism. It is found in our Western democracies, and it has its ground in the conditions of modern life. In principle we have long recognized that there are large areas of human concern which cannot be left to private action. So the state has looked out for mail service, highways, currency, sanitary conditions, education, the care of dependents, and other needs. These needs have been increasing rapidly of late years, and there is no indication that democracies like those of western Europe will retreat from this general position. What concerns us is the simple fact that here is another condition of modern life tending to limit rather than advance the free and full expression of individual life. The task of religion in this situation is only the more urgent.

1) "The real distinctiveness of man from his nearest allies depends upon his power of building up general ideas and of controlling his conduct in relation to ideals." Patrick Geddes and J. A. Thomson, Evolution, p. 99.

2) Between Man and Man, pp. 175,176.

3) Browning in Bishop Blougranfs Apology. 26