THE ESTIMATE OF MAN
Having thus far laid the foundations of our study by a discussion of its
presuppositions and sources, we are now prepared to consider man as the
personal subject of the new life. The spirit of God which takes hold of
man and renews his life must not be conceived as a foreign power breaking
the continuity of consciousness. The natural is the basis of the
supernatural. It is not a new personality which is created; it is the
old that is transformed and completed. If there was not already implicit
in man that which predisposed him for the higher life, a consciousness to
which the spirit could appeal, then Christianity would be simply a
mechanical or magical influence without ethical significance and having
no relation to the past history of the individual. But that is not the
teaching of our Lord or of His apostles. We are bound, therefore, to
assume a certain substratum of powers, physical, mental and moral, as
constituting the raw material of which the new personality is formed.
The spirit of God does not quench the natural faculties of man, but works
through and upon them, raising them to a higher value.[1]
I. But before proceeding to a consideration of these elements of human
consciousness to which Christianity appeals, we must glance at two
opposite theories of human nature, either of which, if the complete view
of man, would be inimical to Christianity.[2]
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1. The first view is that man _by nature is morally good_. His natural
impulses are from birth wholly virtuous, and require only to be left to
their own operation to issue in a life of perfection. Those who favour
this contention claim the support of Scripture. Not only does the whole
tone of the Bible imply the inherent goodness of primitive man, but many
texts both in the Old and New Testaments suggest that God made man
upright.[3] Among the Greeks, and especially the Stoics, this view
prevailed. All nature was regarded as the creation of perfect reason,
and the primitive state as one of uncorrupted innocence. Pelagius
espoused this doctrine, and it continued to influence dogmatic theology
not only in the form of Semi-Pelagianism, but even as modifying the
severer tenets of Augustine. The theory received fresh importance during
the revolutionary movement of the eighteenth century, and found a strong
exponent in Rousseau. 'Let us sweep away all conventions and
institutions of man's making and get back to the simplicity of a
primitive age.' The man of nature is guileless, and his natural
instincts would preserve him in uncorrupted purity if they were not
perverted by the artificial usages of society. So profoundly did this
theory dominate the thoughts of men that its influence may be detected
not only in the political fanaticism which found expression in the French
Revolution, but also in the practical views of the Protestant Church
acting as a deterrent to missionary effort.[4] This view of human
nature, though not perhaps formally stated, finds expression in much of
the literature of the present day. Professor James cites Theodore Parker
and other leaders of the liberal movement in New England of last century
as representatives of the tendency.[5] These writers do not wholly
ignore moral effect, but they make light of sin, and regard it not as
something positive, but merely as a stage in the development of man.
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2. The other theory of human nature goes to the opposite extreme. Man
by nature is _utterly depraved_, and his natural instincts are wholly
bad. Those who take this view also appeal to Scripture: 'Man is shapen
in iniquity and conceived in sin.' Many passages in the New Testament,
and especially in the writings of St. Paul, seem to emphasise the utter
degradation of man. It was not, however, until the time of Augustine
that this idea of innate depravity was formulated into a doctrine. The
Augustinean dogma has coloured all later theology. In the Roman Catholic
Church, even in such a writer as Pascal, and in Protestantism, under the
influence of Calvin, the complete corruption of man's nature has been
depicted in the blackest hues.
These theories of human nature represent aspects of truth, and are false
only in their isolation.
The doctrine that man is innocent by nature is not in agreement with
history. Nowhere is the noble savage to be found. The primitive man
exhibits the same tendencies as his more civilised neighbour, and his
animal passions are indulged without control of reason or consideration
for others. Indeed, Hobbes's view of early society as a state of war and
rapacity is much truer to fact than Rousseau's. The noble savage is
simply a fiction of the imagination, an abstraction obtained by
withdrawing him from all social environment. But even could we conceive
of a human being kept from infancy in isolation, he would not fulfil the
true idea of virtue, but would simply develop into a negative creature, a
mutilated being bereft of all that constitutes our notion of humanity.
Such experiences as are possible only in society--all forms of goodness
as suggested by such words as 'love,' 'sympathy,' 'service'--would never
emerge at all. The native instincts of man are simply potencies or
capacities for morality; they must have a life of opportunity for their
evolution and exercise. The abstract self prior to and apart from all
objective experience is an illusion. It is only in relation to a world
of moral beings that the moral life becomes possible for man. The
innocence which the advocates of this theory contend for is {58}
something not unlike the non-rational existence of the animal. It is
true that the brute is not immoral, but neither is it moral. The whole
significance of the passions as they exist in man lies in the fact that
they are not purely animal, but, since they belong to man, are always
impregnated with reason. It is reason that gives to them their moral
worth, and it is because man must always put his self into every desire
or impulse that it becomes the instrument either of virtue or of vice.[6]
But if the theory of primitive purity is untenable, not less so is that
of innate depravity. Here, also, its advocates are not consistent with
themselves. Even the systems of theology derived from Augustine do not
contend that man was created with an evil propensity. His sin was the
result of an historical catastrophe. In his paradisiacal condition man
is conceived as possessing a nobility and innocence of nature far beyond
that even which Rousseau depicted. Milton, in spite of his Calvinistic
puritanism, has painted a picture of man's ideal innocence which for
idyllic charm is unequalled in literature.[7] Nor does historical
inquiry bear out the theory of the utter depravity of man. The latest
anthropological research into the condition of primitive man suggests
rather that even the lowest forms of savage life are not without some dim
consciousness of a higher power and some latent capacity for good.[8]
Finally, these writers are not more successful when they claim the
support of the Bible. Not only are there many examples of virtue in
patriarchal times, but, as we have seen, there are not a few texts which
imply the natural goodness of man. Our Lord repeatedly assumes the
affinity with goodness of those who had not hitherto come into contact
with the Gospel, as in the case of Jairus, the rich young ruler, and the
Syrophenician woman. It has been affirmed by Wernle[9] that the Apostle
Paul in the interests of salvation grossly {59} exaggerates the condition
of the natural man. 'He violently extinguished every other light in the
world so that Jesus might shine in it alone.' But this surely is a
misstatement. It is true that no more scathing denunciation of sinful
human nature has ever been presented than the account of heathen
immorality to be found in the first chapter of Romans. Yet the apostle
does not actually affirm, nor even imply, that pagan society was so
utterly corrupt that it had lost all knowledge of moral good. Though so
bad as to be beyond hope of recovery by natural effort, it was not so bad
as to have quenched in utter darkness the light which lighteth every man.
3. Christianity, while acknowledging the partial truth of both of these
theories, reconciles them. If, on the one hand, man were innately good
and could of himself attain to righteousness, there would be no need of a
gospel of renewal. But history and experience alike show that that is
not the case. If, on the other hand, man were wholly bad, had no
susceptibility for virtue and truth, then there would be nothing in him,
as we have seen, which could respond to the Christian appeal.[10]
Christianity alone offers an answer to the question in which Pascal
presents the great antithesis of human nature: 'If man was not made for
God, how is it that he can be happy only in God? And if he is made for
God, how is he so opposite to God?'[11] However, then, we may account
for the presence of evil in human nature, a true view of Christianity
involves the conception of a latent spiritual element in man, a capacity
for goodness to which his whole being points. Matter itself may be said
not merely to exist for spirit, but to have within it already the potency
of the higher forms of life; and just as nature is making towards
humanity, and in humanity at last finds itself; as
'Striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form,'[13]
{60} so man, even in his most primitive state, has within him the promise
of higher things. No theory of his origin can interfere with the
assumption that he belongs to a moral Sphere, and is capable of a life
which is shaping itself to spiritual ends. Whatever be man's past
history and evolution, he has from the beginning been made in God's
image, and bears the divine impress in all the lineaments of body and
soul. His degradation cannot wholly obliterate his inherent nobility,
and indeed his actual corruption bears witness to his possible holiness.
Granting the hypothesis of evolution, matter even in its crudest
beginnings contains potentially all the rich variety of the natural and
spiritual life. The reality of a growing thing lies in its highest form
of being. In the light of the last we explain the first. If the
universe is, as science pronounces, an organic totality which is ever
converting its promise into actuality, then 'the ultimate interpretation
even of the lowest existence of the world, cannot be given except on
principles which are adequate to explain the highest.'[13] Christian
morality is therefore nothing else than the morality prepared from all
eternity, and is but the highest realisation of that which man even at
his lowest has ever been, though unconsciously, striving after. All that
is best and highest in man, all that he is capable of yet becoming, has
really existed within him from the very first, just as the flower and
leaf and fruit are contained implicitly in the seedling. This is the
Pauline view of human nature. Jesus Christ, according to the apostle, is
the End and Consummation of the whole creation. Everywhere in all men
there is a capacity for Christ. Whatever be his origin, man comes upon
the stage of being bearing within him a great and far-reaching destiny.
There is in him, as Browning says, 'a tendency to God.' He is not simply
what he is now, but all that he is yet to be.
II. Assuming, then, the inherent spirituality of man, we may now proceed
to examine his moral consciousness with a view to seeing how its various
constituents form what we have called the substratum of the Christian
life.
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1. We must guard against seeming to adopt the old and discredited
psychology which divides man into a number of separate and independent
faculties. Man is not made like a machine, of a number of adjusted
parts. _He is a unity_, a living organism, in which every part has
something of all the others; and all together, animated by one spirit,
constitute a Living whole which we call personality. While the Bible is
rich in terms denoting the different constituents of man, neither the Old
Testament nor the New regards human nature as a plurality of powers. A
bind of unity or hierarchy of the natural faculties is assumed, and amid
all the difference of function and variety of operation it is undeniable
that the New Testament writers generally, and particularly St. Paul,
presuppose a unity of consciousness--a single ego, or Soul. It is
unnecessary to discuss the question, much debated by Biblical
psychologists, as to whether the apostle recognises a threefold or a
twofold division of man.[14] Our view is that he recognised only a
twofold division, body and soul, which, however, he always regarded as
constituting a unity, the body itself being psychical or interpenetrated
with spirit, and the spirit always acting upon and working through the
physical powers.
Man is a unique phenomenon in the world. Even on his physical side he is
not a piece of dead matter, but is instinct through and through with
spirit. And on his psychical side he is not an unsubstantial wraith, but
a being inconceivable apart from outward embodiment. Perhaps the most
general term which we may adopt is _psyche_ or Soul--the living self or
vital and animating principle which is at once the seat of all bodily
sensation and the source of the higher cognitive faculties.
2. The fact of ethical interest from which we must proceed is that man,
in virtue of his spiritual nature, is _akin to God_, and participates in
the three great elements of the divine Personality--thought, love and
will.[15] Personality has been called 'the culminating fact of the {62}
universe.' And it is the task of man to realise his true personality--to
fulfil the law of his highest self. In this work he has to harmonise and
bring to the unity of his personal life, by means of one dominating
force, the various elements of his nature--his sensuous, emotional, and
rational powers. By the constitution of his being he belongs to a larger
world, and when he is true to himself he is ever reaching out towards it.
From the very beginning of life, and even in the lowest phases of his
nature he has within him the potency of the divine. He carries the
infinite in his soul, and by reason of his very existence shares the life
of God. The value of his soul in this sense is repeatedly emphasised in
scripture. In our Lord's teaching it is perhaps the most distinctive
note. The soul, or self-conscious spiritual ego, is spoken of as capable
of being 'acquired' or 'lost.'[16] It is acquired or possessed when a
man seeks to regain the image in which he was created. It is lost when
he refuses to respond to those spiritual influences by which Christ
besets him, and by means of which the soul is moulded into the likeness
of God.
3. A full presentation of this subject would involve a reference even to
the physical powers which form an integral part of man and witness to his
eternal destiny.
(1) The very body is to be redeemed and sanctified, and made an
instrument of the new life in Christ. The extremes of asceticism and
self-indulgence, both of which found advocates in Greek philosophy and
even in the early Church, have no countenance in scripture. Evil does
not reside in the flesh, as the Greeks held, but in the will which uses
the flesh for its base ends. Not mutilation but transformation, not
suppression but consecration is the Christian ideal. The natural is the
basis of the spiritual. Man is the Temple of God, every part of which is
sacred. Christ claims to be King of the body as of every other domain of
life. The secret of spiritual progress does not consist in the
unflinching destruction of the flesh, but in its firm but kindly
discipline for loyal service. It is not, therefore, by {63} leaving the
body behind but by taking it up into our higher self that we become
spiritual. As Browning says,
'Let us cry all good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now
Than flesh helps soul.'
Without dwelling further upon the physical elements of man, there are
three constituents or functions of personality prominent in the New
Testament which claim our consideration, reason, conscience and will. It
is just because man possesses, or _is_ mind, conscience and will, that he
is capable of responding to the life which Christ offers, and of sharing
in the divine character which he reveals.
(2) The term _nous_, or reason, is of frequent occurrence in the New
Testament. Christianity highly honours the intellectual powers of man
and accords to the mind an important rôle in apprehending and entering
into the thoughts and purposes of God. 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind,' says
Jesus. Many are disposed to think that the exercise of faith, the
immediate organ of spiritual apprehension, is checked by the interference
of reason. But so far from faith and reason being opposed, not only are
they necessary to each other, but in all real faith there is an element
of reason. In all religious feeling, as in morality, art, and other
spheres of human activity, there is the underlying element of reason
which is the characteristic of all the activities of a self-conscious
intelligence. To endeavour to elicit that element, to infuse into the
spontaneous and unsifted conceptions of religious experience the
objective clearness, necessity and organic unity of thought--is the
legitimate aim of science, in religion as in other spheres. It would be
strange if in the highest of all provinces of human experience
intelligence must renounce her claim.[17] The Ritschlian value-judgment
theory in its disparagement of philosophy is practically a dethronement
of reason. And the protest of Pragmatism and the voluntarists {64}
generally against what they term 'Intellectualism'[18] and their distrust
of the logical faculty, are virtually an avowal of despair and a resort
to agnosticism, if not to scepticism. If we are to renounce the quest
for objective truth, and accept 'those ideas only which we can
assimilate, validate, corroborate,'[19] those ideas in short which are
'practically useful in guiding us to desirable issues,' then it would
seem we are committed to a world of subjective caprice and confusion and
must give up the belief in a rational view of the universe.
(3) In spite of the wonderful suggestiveness of M. Bergson's philosophy,
we are unable to accept the distinction which that writer draws between
intuition and intelligence, in which he seems to imply that intuition is
the higher of the two activities. Intelligence, according to this
writer, is at home exclusively in spatial considerations, in solids, in
geometry, but it is to be repelled as a foreign element when it comes to
deal with life. Bergson would exclude rational thought and intelligence
from life, creation, and initiative. The clearest evidence of intuition
is in the works of great artists. 'What is implied is that in artistic
creation, in the work of genius and imagination, we have pure novelty
issuing from no premeditated or rational idea, but simply pure
irrationality and unaccountableness.'[20] The work of art cannot be
predicated; it is beyond reason, as life is beyond logic and law.[21]
But so far from finding life unintelligible, it would be nearer the truth
to say that man's reason can, strictly speaking, understand nothing
else.[22] 'Instinct finds,' says Bergson, 'but does not search. Reason
searches but cannot find.'[23] 'But,' adds Professor Dewey, 'what we
find is meaningless save as measured by searching, and so instincts and
passions must be elevated into reason.'[24] In the lower creatures
instinct does the {65} work of reason--sufficiently for the simple
conditions in which the animal lives. And in the earlier stages of human
life instinct plays an important part. But when man, both as an
individual and as humanity, advances to a more complex life, instinct is
unequal to the new task confronting him. We cannot be content to be
guided by instinct. Reason asserts itself and seeks to permeate all our
experiences, and give unity and purpose to all our thoughts and acts.
The recent disparagement of intellectualism is probably a reaction
against the extreme absolutism of German idealism which, beginning with
Kant, found fullest expression in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. But the
true way to meet exclusive rationalism is not to discredit the function
of mind, but to give to it a larger domain of experience. We do not
exalt faith by emptying it of all intellectual content and reducing it to
mere subjective feeling; nor do we explain genius by ascribing its acts
to blind, unthinking impulse. 'The real is the rational,' says Hegel.
Truth, in other words, presupposes a rational universe which we, as
rational beings, must assume in all our thought and effort. To set up
faith against reason, or intuition against intelligence is to set the
mind against itself. We cannot set up an order of facts, as Professor
James would have us do, outside the intellectual realm; for what does not
fall within our experience can have for us no meaning, and what for us
has no meaning cannot be an object of faith. An ineradicable belief in
the rationality of the world is the ultimate basis of all art, morality
and religion. To rest in mere intuition or emotion and not to seek
objective truth would be for man to renounce his true prerogative and to
open the door for all kinds of superstition and caprice.
III. In the truest sense it may be claimed that this is the teaching of
Christianity. When Christ says that we are to love God with our minds He
seems to imply that there is such a thing as intelligent affection. The
distinctive feature of our Lord's claim is that God is not satisfied when
His creatures render a merely implicit obedience; He {66} desires also
the enthusiastic use of their intellect, intent on knowing everything
that it is possible for men to know about His character and ways. And is
there not something sublime in this demand of God that the noblest part
of man should be consecrated to Him? God reveals Himself in Christ to
our highest; and He would have us respond to His manifestations with our
highest. Nor is this the attitude of Christ only. The Apostle Paul also
honours the mind, and gives to it the supreme place as the organ of
apprehending and appropriating divine truth. Mr. Lecky brings the
serious charge against Christianity that it habitually disregards the
virtues of the intellect. If there is any truth in this statement it
refers, not to the genius of the Gospel itself, nor to the earlier
exponents of it, but rather to the Church in those centuries which
followed the conversion of Constantine. No impartial reader of St.
Paul's Epistles can aver that the apostle made a virtue of ignorance and
credulity. These documents, which are the earliest exposition of the
mind of Christ, impress us rather with the intellectual boldness of their
attempt to grapple with the greatest problems of life. Paul was
essentially a thinker; and, as Sabatier says, is to be ranked with Plato
and Aristotle, Augustine and Kant, as one of the mightiest intellectual
forces of the world. But not content with being a thinker himself, he
sought to make his converts thinkers too, and he does not hesitate to
make the utmost demand upon their reasoning faculties. He assumes a
natural capacity in man for apprehending the truth, and appeals to the
mind rather than to the emotions. The Gospel is styled by him 'the word
of truth,' and he bids men 'prove all things.' Worship is not a
meaningless ebullition of feeling or a superstitious ritual, but a form
of self-expression which is to be enlightened and guided by thought. 'I
will pray with the understanding and sing with the understanding.'
It is indeed a strong and virile Christianity which Paul and the other
apostles proclaim. It is no magic spell they seek to exert. They are
convinced that there is that in {67} the mind of man which is ready to
respond to a thoughtful Gospel. If men will only give their unprejudiced
minds to God's Word, it is able to make them 'wise unto salvation.' It
would lead us beyond the scope of this chapter to consider the peculiar
Pauline significance of faith. It is enough to say that while he does
not identify it with intellectual assent, as little does he confine it to
mere subjective assurance. It is the primary act of the human spirit
when brought into contact with divine truth, and it lies at the root of a
new ethical power, and of a deeper knowledge of God. If the apostle
appears to speak disparagingly of wisdom it is the wisdom of pride, of
'knowledge that puffeth up.' He warns Timothy against 'science falsely
so called.' On the whole St. Paul exalts the intellect and bids men
attain to the full exercise of their mental powers. 'Be not children in
understanding: but in understanding be men.'[25]
If, as we have seen, the body be an integral part of man, and has its
place and function in the Christian life, not less, but even more, has
the mind a special ethical importance. It is to the intelligence that
Christianity appeals, and it is with the rational faculties that moral
truth is apprehended and applied to life. Reason in its broadest sense
is the most distinctive feature of man, and by means of it he exerts his
mightiest influence upon the world. Mental and moral growth are closely
connected, and personal character is largely moulded by thought. 'As a
man thinketh in his heart so is he.' Not only at the beginning of the
new life, but in all its after stages the mind is an important factor,
and its consecration and cultivation are laid upon us as an obligation by
Him in whose image we have been made, and whom to know and serve is our
highest end.
[1] See Author's _Ethics of St. Paul_.
[2] Cf. Murray, _Sandbank of Christian Ethics_. See also Hegel, _Phil.
der Religion_, vol. ii. p. 210 ff., where the antithesis is finely worked
out.
[3] Gen. i. 26; Eccles. vii. 29; Col. iii. 10; James iii. 9.
[4] See Hugh Miller's _Essays_, quoted by Murray, _op. cit._, p. 137.
[5] Cf. W. James, _Varieties of Religious Experience_, pp. 81-86.
[6] Cf. Goethe's _Faust_. See also Nietzsche, _Götzendämmerung_ for
trenchant criticism of Rousseau.
[7] Murray, _idem_.
[8] Max Müller, Fraser, _Golden Bough_, and others.
[9] Anfänge des Christentums.
[10] Cf. Ottley, _Christian Ideas and Ideals_, p. 52. 'Christianity does
justice both to man's inherent instinct that he has been made for God,
and to his sense of unworthiness and incapacity.'
[11] _Pensées_, part ii. art. 1.
[12] Emerson.
[13] Ed. Caird, _Critical Philosophy of Kant_, p. 35.
[14] See Author's _Ethics of St. Paul_.
[15] Ottley, _idem_, p. 55.
[16] Luke xxi. 19.
[17] Cf. John Caird, _Introd. to the Philosophy of Religion_.
[18] Cf. Wm. James's _Pragmatism_ and _A Pluralistic World_.
[19] _Idem_, p. 201.
[20] Cf. Bosanquet, _The Principles of Individuality and Value_.
[21] Bergson, _Evol. Creat._, p. 174 f.
[22] Cf. E. Caird, _Kant_, vol. ii. pp. 530 and 535.
[23] _Evol. Creat._, p. 159.
[24] _Hib. Jour._, July 1911.
[25] Some sentences in the above are borrowed from the writer's _Ethics
of St. Paul_.
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