“The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”—GEN. ii. 7.
DR. DAVID SMITH, lately United Free Church minister of Blairgowrie, and now Professor of Theology in the Presbyterian College, Londonderry, in a recent number of the British Weekly, makes this confession: “Heaven would be a poor place for me, lacking dogs and horses and the rest of the dear tribes.” One has, before now, met occasionally with eccentric persons who seemed to believe in the immortality of the lower animals; but Dr. Smith’s extravagance appears to surpass that of all his predecessors, when he proposes to introduce dogs and horses into the realms of eternal bliss. Dr. Smith’s attitude to this question is not only un-biblical but anti-biblical. His utterance is sadly only one, however, of many which may be heard or read nowadays, revealing how far from their former moorings the children of what was once the Free Church of Scotland have drifted.
The utterance adverted to is a fresh call to us to consider what God in His Word teaches us as to the constitution of human nature, and as to the impassable gulf which divides mankind from dogs and horses and such like. We shall find that the keynote of the worth of the human soul is struck with great distinctness at the very openings of the oracles of God; and that, with an insight which, in its consistency, its solemnity, its essential beauty, is divine, that worth of the human soul is insisted on by prophets and apostles throughout the entire length of the Old and the New Testaments. Dr. Smith’s way of looking at the questions now under consideration, we believe, only reveals the wreck which the adoption of the evolutionary hypothesis is bound to make of definite Christian doctrines. For our own part, we consider that next in importance to the urgency of retaining correct, that is, Biblical, conceptions of the Triune God, is the importance of retaining correct, that is, Biblical, conceptions of man, and of what is essential to the constitution of human nature, and hence our present protest.
The words of our text teach us that man draws one part of his nature from the earth, for “the Lord God,” we read, “formed man of the dust of the earth.” But there is a part of human nature which is not, and, in the nature of things, could not have been, derived from the earth, but which entered into his constitution, according to the teaching of our text, by the Lord God breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, or more literally, lives. It was in this way that—to use the words of the Apostle in 1 Corinthians, xv.—“The first man, Adam, was made a living soul.” It is true that, since the Fall, mankind have become corrupt in the faculties of their soul and in the members of their body, but although the Fall has changed much in human nature—and that for the worse—it has not made a change in the essential constitution of human nature. Man fallen, like man in innocence, is, as to the constitution of his nature, made up of spirit or soul and body.
The body of sinful man, when death intervenes, returns to the dust whence it was derived; the spirit of sinful man, which in its very nature is not derivable from the earth, returns unto God, its Creator, its Judge, its true Source. It is in this connection, we believe, with some of the most accomplished and solid Christian scholars of modern times, we ought to interpret the words of Genesis ii. 4, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created.” For the word “generations” has not here respect to the origin or the creation of the heavens and of the earth, as the destructive Higher Critics—contending that at the fourth verse of the second chapter, a second account of creation commences—would wish us to believe. No; the word “generations” here most certainly means not origins—it means offspring. That the understanding may be established in the sureness of the truth of what we assert, consider that Genesis altogether consists of an introduction, extending from Genesis i. 1 to Genesis ii. 3, together with ten sections following that introduction, every one of which sections commences with a formula like to that with which the first of the ten sections, in chapter ii. 4, begins, to wit: “These are the generations.” Compare Genesis v. 1; vi. 9; x. 1; xi. 27; xxv. 12; xxv. 19; xxxvi. 1; xxxvi. 9; xxxvii. 2. Now, we are not left in doubt as to the meaning of the word “generation” or “generations” at the head of the nine sections which follow that section beginning with the words, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth,” in Genesis ii. 4. Everyone must see that the generations of Adam, in chapter v. 1, look forward to his offspring in Seth, Enos, etc. Similarly, in chapter x. 1, the generations of the sons of Noah—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—are Gomer and Magog and Madai, etc. The generations of Jacob are not the parents of Jacob, but the children of Jacob. The case is equally obvious in the other six cases in which the formula occurs. We are bound, therefore, to construe the words with which Genesis ii. 4 opens by no means as announcing that here commences a somewhat diverse account of the creation of the heavens and of the earth from that which is given us in Genesis i., but rather as announcing that here we have an account of the history of the offspring of the heavens and of the earth, of whose creation, indeed, we have a most sublime account given us in that portion of Genesis which we have ventured to speak of as introductory. It is, in a word, the history of man, created in the image of God, ruined through the abuse of his free will, and redeemed through sovereign grace, which is here about to be given. Man, in this account, appears as the offspring not of earth only but of heaven also. It is this that makes him to differ from the lower animals. When God created fish and fowl, He but commanded the waters to bring forth those creatures abundantly (Genesis i. 20); when He created cattle and creeping things and the wild beasts of the earth, He but commanded the earth to bring forth those creatures after their kind. But it was otherwise in the case of mankind. Mankind is not the offspring of the waters and of the earth, as the lower animals may be taken as being. Mankind is the offspring of the earth and of the heavens. As we have said, he derives, in virtue of divine power, part of his nature from the earth, but the nobler part of his nature he did not and could not derive from the earth. He is, on the higher aspect of his nature, related to the world of spirits, to immortality; yea, to God Himself. It is this fact that constitutes the awful solemnity attaching to our belonging to the human race. It is from this the necessity of a never-ending self-conscious existence arises. It is in the light of this that the worth of the human soul can be appreciated; it is in this light that the horribleness of a lost soul is seen.
Reason itself corroborates what the Scriptures teach, not only of the value of the human soul, but of the essential difference that exists between human beings and the very highest of the lower animals. Indeed, I have often thought that there is a sense in which mankind is capable of making a nearer approach to affinity with the Creator, than the lower animals can make in regard of affinity to man. Let me briefly explain what I mean. Sun and moon and stars are placed under laws which they obey. These laws are, to use an expression of Dr. John Duncan’s, “not over God but still are from Him.” These laws are from God and they are on the material universe; but, of course, that material universe is not conscious of those laws which it obeys, nor of Him whose laws they are. But it is not those inanimate objects alone that are under laws which are from God. God has made the lower animals under laws, but they as little perceive the laws under which they live and move and have their being, or Him whose laws these are, as do the inanimate objects—sun, moon, and stars. But it ought not to be so with man. Differently from the lower animals he is capable of something better than this. Even in his fallen, natural state, he, if he be not under a perverse, malign influence, is capable in a logical sense, of rising from the laws under which he himself is as to his body in common with irrational, yea, inanimate creatures, of rising, we say, from these laws to the Creator, from whom they come. And man restored, that is, regenerate, not only, as a logical inference, rises from the laws to the Lawgiver, but, through these very laws, has fellowship with the Creator. Was it not so with Job when he said of wisdom (Job xxviii. 23-27) “that God understood the ways thereof and knew the place thereof. For he looketh to the ends of the earth and seeth under the whole heaven; To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure. When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder; Then did he see it; and declare it; he prepared it, yea, and searched it out.” Man may thus be seen to recognise that he himself, as to his bodily frame, is under laws which are identical with those which obtain in the irrational and inanimate world. And, by this recognition, he virtually acknowledges that he derives his nature in part from the earth, from the material world. But the very fact of his being capable to rise, by means of these laws, to fellowship with the eternal Lawgiver, proves that his whole nature has not been derived from the material world; that, in a word, by the higher aspect of his nature, he is properly related to the world of spirits. Nay more, may we not, with the second chapter of 1 Corinthians before us, say, that man, through the teaching of the Holy Spirit, is capable of having sympathy with the deep things of God, although that God is infinitely above him; whileas none of the lower animals are capable, by the very nature of their creation, of having sympathy with the deep things of man, although man be not infinitely above them?
Inasmuch as a correct view of the words of our text is fitted, not only to expose the fallacy which is at the root of those unworthy notions concerning the constitution of human nature which are so rampant at the present hour, but also to expose the presently prevalent perverse views of the beginnings of the oracles of God—views which are so much akin with degrading conceptions of human nature—we shall take this opportunity, as we have already indicated the scope of the actual words of the text, of now indicating their connection with the Bible as a whole. The view that the section of the Bible, beginning with verse 4 of chapter ii., presents us with an account of the creation, which, in many respects, differs from the account of creation given in Genesis i., we have seen to be based upon an interpretation of the word “generations,” which, in this case, is an impossible one. With the destruction of the basis of the false theory, the theory itself is destroyed as a matter of course. If, then, the writer does not intend to give herewith a new and diverse account of creation, what is his aim? What plan is he pursuing? In order to answer that question we have to observe the purpose of Moses in the opening introductory section of Genesis. His intention there is to state the doctrine of man, as the direct product of God’s creation at its highest level. This he effects in two ways. (1) He represents mankind as the apex of God’s work of creation on this earth. Starting from the inorganic material base, he lifts tier upon tier, the vegetable world, the irrational animate world, with its fish and fowl, its creeping things, its wild beasts of the earth and domestic animals, and finally, places mankind as the uppermost tier, as the summit of the whole. (2) He effects the same purpose, when he intimates to us that the project of the creation of man called forth the counsels and consultations of the Triune God, and that man thus consulted about appeared when created in the image of God, according to the likeness of God. But man, who was created in such an exalted condition, brought himself very low. And there can be no question that as it was the Writer’s purpose in the introductory section to represent mankind to his readers at their highest level according to the scheme of creation, so it is his purpose in the first of these ten sections, which, together with the introduction, constitutes the whole of Genesis, to give a vivid and most profoundly interesting account of the fall of man, with its doleful consequences. Nay, the view point is still vaster. For we may well believe that sinners of mankind had not been favoured with Divine oracles, opening up so marvellously the dignity of our origin and the shame of our self-destruction, if it had not been the Divine purpose from these ruins to redeem man, to connect him with an order higher than the order of the natural creation at its highest apex, and thus exalt him to a state of exaltation to which he should never have been raised if he had not come in need of redemption, and if he had not been actually redeemed. Viewed in this light, the section beginning Genesis ii. 4, appears as one of remarkable beauty, and as one the significance of which is extraordinary. It begins to dawn upon us why this section, the first objective of which is the Fall, and the further objective of which is Redemption, should make so much of the locality where man, under probation, was placed, of the inter-dependence and intimacy of relationship subsisting between Adam and Eve, and to come nearer to the words of our text, of the essential constituents of human nature, the dust of the earth and the breath of lives. The living soul, which is man, may thus be more easily understood by us as one whom death temporal or death eternal could never molest, did not death spiritual, in the form of sin, take the precedence.
The oracles of God make much of the transcendent worth of the human soul. We see that in Christ’s own valuation of the life of man when He tells us that the whole material world would not counterbalance it. We see it in the several places in which the downward course of those who mind earthly things, whose glory is in their shame, whose God is their belly, whose end is destruction, is contrasted with the upward course of those whose affections are set on the things that are above, whose not-to-be-disappointed hope is, that when Christ shall appear the second time they shall be like Him, not only in spirit, but even in their very bodies. The lower animals are not capable of going down to the bottomless pit of self-destruction as mankind are capable, neither are the lower animals capable of rising to the third heavens as mankind are capable. Destruction as well as salvation throws a light upon the capabilities of human nature, and certainly if we should maintain the truth of the impassable gulf between mankind and the lower animals, we should need to measure the capacity of human nature by the difference which is between the lowest hell and the right hand of God. But upon this essential worth of the human soul the oracles of God laid emphasis from their very beginnings. That conception and feeling about man runs through the whole Scriptures, and it is a conception and feeling that has taken hold of the mind and heart of every true ambassador of God from the days of the Apostles down to the present day.
The Scriptures have much to say of the effects of sin both upon the soul and upon the body of man; they have much to say of the ways in which the effects and fruits of sin are seen in the soul and body even of the redeemed for a season, but all that the Scriptures have to say of these matters would for us have but a confused meaning, if what the constitution of the nature of man amounts to were not clearly set before us at the outset. But this desideratum is exactly what our text supplies.
Man is a living soul, but he is that, not in the sense in which that is said of fish, fowl, and land animals, wild and tame; he is a living soul, which became so by the Lord God breathing the breath of life into the nostrils of that which had been formed from the dust of the ground. This living soul would therefore never again have been broken up into its elements of body and spirit, had not sin entered into the world, and death by sin. This view of the matter must be held by us, if we perceive the significance of the separation of soul and body which took place when Christ Himself died, and in dying bore the penalty of sin. Man is a living soul made up of spirit and body, and inasmuch as through sin these two elements are in death separated from one another, redemption takes to do with spirit and with body in turn, and with their both being finally brought together again in a union never to be put asunder.
If we do not get a glimpse of what man was intended to be as having fellowship with his Maker, we shall never be suitably affected by the awfulness of the ruin which we have brought upon ourselves. When we are suitably affected by the ruin which we brought upon ourselves, we are in a fitter frame of mind to appreciate that great salvation which, as we have said, is the further objective of Moses in opening this section, as he has done by giving this account, to which our attention is being drawn, of what constitutes human nature. When man fell there was no ray of hope as to a way of deliverance out of our misery. When the first ray of hope dawned upon us, it was like a thing taking an absolute beginning. In the history of redemption, there was never such a time again, never such an absolute beginning again. We find the tide of gracious life, to use a different metaphor, becoming very low, as before the flood and as at the time of the calling of Abraham, but through Noah and Abraham a new impulse was imparted to this tide of life, which, for the regeneration of sinners of mankind, was flowing down through the ages. In the bringing up of the children of Israel out of Egypt, it received an impulse greater than ever before in the history of the race, and in the coming death and resurrection of the Lord of Glory, it received an impulse which caused it to spread unto the ends of the earth, and caused that these glad tidings of salvation should be still with us. This is the only fact that prevents us from falling into despair when we realise what a high end it was for which we were created, and how deplorably we have fallen from this end. But if we be found embracing Christ in the Gospel as our Deliverer from despair, we shall wonder more at the kindness of God towards us than though we had never fallen. May He bless to us our meditation upon His Word!