PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY ARE PHILOSOPHICAL TERMS. THEY HAVE A PROFOUND SIGNIFICANCE FOR RELIGION, BUT they do not express the full Christian conception. The real nature of man is to be discerned only in the light of God. Seen in relation to God two truths become apparent.

Man's Kinship with God

1. Man belongs with God to the realm of personal being. As a person he has reason, the awareness of right and wrong, the power to choose. More than that: he has the capacity to know God and to live in fellowship with him. Old Testament and New clearly assume this. God speaks to men as those who can hear him and know him. And however serious the consequences of sin may be in darkening the understanding and separating man from his Creator, God can reach sinful man and man can return to God.

2. The second truth is that man, who is like God in being a person, is to become like God in spirit and character. That is implied in the Old Testament in the ethical summons of the prophets. The God of righteousness and mercy asks of men that they "do justice, and ... love kindness" (Mic. 6:8). "I desire steadfast love," he says, "and not sacrifice" (Hos. 6:6). Men are to have the moral quality which belongs to God himself. The New Testament clarifies and deepens this thought. We are children of God not just by his creation but by likeness of spirit. "Love your enemies, . .. that you may be sons of your Father" (Matt. 5:44, 45). Likeness to God in this second sense becomes the great goal of life. The gospel is not only God's forgiving mercy receiving sinful man; it is God's renewing, recreating power making men over by his Spirit. There is a "new nature, created after the likeness of God" (Eph. 4:24). Our divinely ordained destiny, Paul declares, is "to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Rom. 8:29). And then he points out how men may have this spirit that was in Christ by receiving God's Spirit. Thus the true nature of man lies not just in that with which he begins but in the divinely intended goal.

The question of man's nature as seen in his relation to God is brought out again in the term "children of God," or "sons of God." Are all men children of God? What does it mean to be a son of God? Here again the twofold meaning appears. Used in its highest and fullest meaning, only those are children of God who are like him in spirit, who have been received by him, "adopted," become members of the family of God, sharing the spirit of the Son who is "the firstborn among many brethren." It is in this sense that the New Testament uses the phrase "children of God." Yet in a broader sense there is a Father-son relationship which not even the sin of man destroys. God remains Father in his spirit and attitude always and toward all. His love goes out after them as the shepherd after the lost sheep; he waits to welcome them as the father who goes out to meet the returning prodigal.

In traditional theology the discussion of this general theme of the likeness of man to God has been mainly connected with the phrase "the image of God," and Gen. 1:26-27 has been the classical reference. Interestingly enough, the term does not occur in the Old Testament outside of Genesis. What does the Genesis writer mean when he says, "God created man in his own image"? What was this image of God in the first man? Was it lost in the Fall? Are we to conceive salvation as the restoring of this image?

We must recur to these questions again when we consider the question of sin in its origin, its nature, and its consequences, with the traditional doctrine of the Fall and total corruption. Traditional theology, Roman Catholic and Protestant, held to the perfection of primitive man, Catholic teaching distinguished two aspects in this perfection. First, God created man as a rational being, a person. This is the image of God, and man did not lose this in the Fall. To this God added as a supernatural gift, or gift of grace, the spiritual likeness to himself. Image and likeness are here distinguished. It was the likeness that was lost in the Fall, and this is similarly restored in man's salvation by a supernatural gift.

The Reformers included all aspects of this primitive perfection under the one term "the image of God." There was place here for the distinction between man's rational nature as man (his humanitas) and his spiritual likeness to God, but they were not separated and both were included in the image of God. The fall brought the total loss of the image of God in man and total corruption. The difficulty faced by the reformers in this absolutist doctrine of total corruption lay in the fact that the human race had really retained its humanitas, a measure of reason and freedom, of moral perception and responsibility. So it was conceded that a relic of this aspect of the image of God remained.

As a matter of fact, scholars have never reached agreement as to the meaning which Genesis gives to the term, whether it refers to man's nature as a free and a rational being, to a power of rule over creation which he shares with God, or to spiritual likeness.

The New Testament uses the term a number of rimes, together with other terms conveying the same idea and commonly rendered "the likeness of God." In a few passages this image of God is ascribed to all men (so in 1 Cor. 11:7; Jas. 3:9). In most cases the image, or likeness, is seen not as native endowment but as spiritual goal. Christ is "the image of the invisible God," and we are to be "conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brethren" (Col. 1:15; Rom. 8:29). More strictly, we "are being changed into his likeness," into a "new nature, which is being renewed" (2 Cor. 3:18; Col. 3:10). So the image of God has the same double reference as the idea of sonship and that of the likeness of God.

The essential Christian position can be briefly summarized. We are not concerned with a supposed perfection of primitive man of which we have no knowledge. Two facts stand out for us and are of deep import. First, man is a rational, moral, spiritual being, belonging to the world of truth and good and God, made to know this and receive this. Second, man has sinned; evil has perverted him but not destroyed his capacity to know and respond. With these facts goes our Christian conviction: the real man, the true man, is not to be found by looking back. The true humanity lies before us; it is found in the Son to whose spirit we are to be conformed. God's creative-redemptive work began when that being appeared for whom this higher life of oneness with God was possible. The creation of this man in the real likeness of God, the overcoming of evil, the molding of man by God's Spirit, this lies ahead.

Human Nature in Its Possibilities

Is human nature good or evil? The question is not an academic one, nor is it narrowly religious. It is vital to the educator, the social worker, the legislator and statesman—to everyone who is concerned with human welfare. Two facts are obvious. First, evil is here, widespread, deep-rooted, tragic. Second, evil in its most tragic forms has its source and being in men. That is not to minimize the suffering which springs from nature or which is related to our "natural" life, but this too springs largely from man's sin and folly and could be dealt with if the problem of man himself were settled.

The really vital question, however, is not whether human nature is bad or good, but rather this: What are the possibilities in human nature? Can anything be done with man?

1. The answers to this question vary widely. One is given in the doctrine of total depravity as represented by Augustine and Calvin. They held that since God was perfect at once in goodness and power, the world as it left his hands was perfectly good, and this included man. Adam's sin altered this totally. By that one deed Adam's nature was changed from wholly good to wholly evil, and that nature was passed on to his descendants. In that deed not simply Adam but the whole race was made evil. Sometimes it was assumed that Adam acted for mankind as its "federal head"; sometimes the race was conceived as really present in Adam. In any case the effect was absolute, and it reached every last descendant. It involved not only the total absence of good but the active presence of evil in every impulse, desire, and deed, beginning with infancy. As the Westminster Confession put it: "We are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil."

The religious motive back of this doctrine is obvious. It was an effort to assert the seriousness of sin, the fact of man's utter dependence upon God as the source of all life and help, and the doctrine of salvation by grace as against all thought of man's deed or merit. But historically, biblically, psychologically, and religiously the doctrine demands criticism. Historically there is no evidence of a primitive man, perfectly good, succeeded by a race wholly evil. Biblically the doctrine rests on an assumption of verbal inspiration, a misconception of the nature and purpose of the Genesis stories, and the failure to seek the doctrine of man and sin at its proper place in the gospel of Christ and the New Testament faith. Further, the Genesis story indicates no such absolute change; Old Testament and New both assume the presence in man of some knowledge of God, some capacity to respond when God speaks to man, and a desire for God which appears in man even in the midst of dominant evil. Psychologically we cannot conceive how one deed could utterly transform not only a man's own nature but that of a race. Finally, the morally evil is handed down through the social heritage, not by biological heredity.

Our most serious criticism is the religious one. If man were totally depraved, he would be not only wholly given to evil and averse to all good, but wholly lacking in capacity for apprehension of the truth, for the knowing of God, and for response to him. Salvation would then be solely a matter of divine decision and deed. It would not be the God of truth speaking to man's mind, or the God of righteousness speaking to conscience, or the God of mercy speaking to the heart, but the God of sovereign and irresistible power. So we have as a necessary concomitant Calvin's "irresistible grace," with its inner contradiction of meaning; for grace is a term that belongs to the realm of spirit and freedom, and irresistible to the world of the physical, of force or external compulsion. Similarly involved was the idea of double predestination. Since salvation rests wholly on God's determination, the fate of the lost as of the saved is fixed from eternity by his decree.

At the opposite extreme are certain modern positions which contravene vital elements in the Christian position. There is the romantic optimism, not so apparent as a generation ago, which sees human nature as inherently good, needing only freedom of action. There is the naturalism which repudiates the "repressions" of religion and ethics as at once impossible and evil. The "natural" is good; the watchword is self-expression. The revolt, especially pronounced in the field of the sexual, is against all authority, whether external or inner and ethical. The criticism of John Dewey is in point: "Although appetites are the commonest things in human nature, the least distinctive or individualized, they identify unrestraint in satisfaction of appetite with free realization of individuality." ¹ In sharp contrast is the pessimism, widely current today, which looks at the widespread evils, finds their source in man, and sees the state of man as hopeless because of his incurable stupidity, selfishness, and folly.

The common error of these last views, alike optimistic and pessimistic, is the failure to see the divine dimension of life, the world of the eternal Spirit to which we belong, in the light of which our sinfulness is judged and the reality and power of evil in our life are seen, but in whose light there is hope for man.

2. Traditional theology has tended to think of human nature almost solely as a problem, concerning itself with man's evil nature, with the fact of sin and its power. But human nature represents possibilities, not simply a problem. That is the assumption of educational leaders. "Rules can be obeyed and ideals realized only as they appeal to something in human nature and awaken in it an active response." ² It is the presupposition, too, of all who work for social change in the democratic spirit, seeking for justice and peace and freedom, believing that high social ends can be achieved only through intelligent, free, and devoted co-operation on the part of the common people of all nations. In neither case is there a blinking at difficulties. In both there is a basic confidence in the possibilities that lie in humanity, the alternative to which is a defeatist pessimism or recourse to an autocracy which sacrifices the highest goods.

The Christian religion shares this confidence in man. Its unique contribution is twofold: a deeper insight into the power and meaning of evil (its doctrine of sin); faith in a God who lifts men into fellowship with himself and gives direction and power to their life (its doctrine of God and salvation). But while it sees the evil and the need of saving help, it affirms the presence in man of that to which God speaks, which makes answer to God, and in and through which God can work. While it recognizes the utter dependence of man, affirming that all is of God, it sees in man not a passive object upon which God works with resistless power, but the personal being who can respond to God.

3. In considering man as the possible subject of salvation our first concern is with the impulse-instinct side of his nature. It is this that comes first to development alike in the race and in the individual. Here we are linked to other forms of life. Here is the driving power that has assured man's survival in the struggle for existence. The powerful biological urges are here. There is truth in Schiller's word: "While philosophers are disputing over the government of the world, hunger and love are performing the task."

But there are other drives than the biological. There is the craving for fellowship, a "togethering impulse" which is more than sex appeal or the herd instinct, which appears in the relations of home, community, friendship, and endless other associations. There are other hungers than that for food, and in these other cravings man's distinctive nature is seen: the hunger for beauty, goodness, truth, justice, and God. The cave drawings of the Cro-Magnon race show how early the sense of beauty and creative art appeared. We know, too, that we cannot posit any time in recorded history when these higher impulses were wholly wanting.

How shall we evaluate this impulse-instinct side of man's nature with its powerful drives? First, it must be said that none of these impulses or instincts as such is either good or bad. Here are the impulse to self-centeredness and the urge to self-preservation. Their biological role is apparent; they are the condition of life preservation and advance. They appear in infancy; for the babe the mother is first of all the source of needed food, and it probably thinks of nothing else as it clutches the mother's breast. There is a natural and quite naive egocentricity here. But this is a needed first stage. Soon other appeals will come, that of mother love first of all. The child will learn that self-assertion is to give place to self-achievement, to loyalty to a higher self. There is a fighting instinct which seems wholly evil. It is commonly stirred in men when others oppose them or block the way to the satisfaction of some desire. Anger, hate, cruelty, and other passions unite with it, but it may take another form. It may aim at high goals. It may use the weapons of the spirit. It may mean that we "watch and fight and pray" to overcome evil and achieve a higher life. It may be a warfare directed against great social evils. On the other hand, the impulses which we think of as spiritual, as against those which belong to the "natural" man, may suffer perversion and work evil. Sympathy may become maudlin sentimentalism. Affection, weak and unwise, may bring harm to its object. The religious sentiment, the sense of the holy, may take the form of enslaving superstition and may be wholly divorced from the ethical.

We cannot then say that human nature as such is bad or good. Man is a being in the making. In his capacities and possibilities he bears the image of God, but the real image of God, the full personality, waits to be achieved. And that comes through conflict: conflict with the world about him, tension and conflict within himself. The elements needed for this struggle, on the human side, are found in man.

(1) There is the drive that impels to action. It appears as the will to live, seeking food, shelter, safety, and other satisfactions. But more and more it takes the form of an awareness of higher goods and the desire for them. There is a higher "will to live in us." Truth, right, beauty, love, God are not merely ideals above us; they are felt needs and impelling desires within. (2) There is the capacity to discern values, to distinguish higher and lower and choose between them. (3) There is the capacity to know a world of higher power, of needed help, the God who is at once supreme power and highest good. And with this higher world man can enter into living relation. Here are more than "natural" urges blindly followed.

To this recognition of man's capacity for higher life certain other truths must be added. (1) All man's life is from God. These capacities are the gift of the creator God; wherever there are vision of truth, knowledge of God, high ideal, and real achievement, this is the work of the redeemer God. (2) Sin has entered into this scene, and sin is more than occasional failure or individual misdeed. Sin is a spirit and a power of evil, something which affects the "nature" of man, corrupting and destroying, and which shapes the social order in which he lives.

Yet even here there remains that distinctive character which sets man off from other creatures. No beast can sink so low as man, yet at his lowest he can know his need, answer the God who speaks to him, and rise to a life with God. Man is a creature in the making. That is true of primitive savage and present-day sinner, of the individual and the race.

1) Human Nature and Conduct, p. 7.

2) Ibid., p. 2.