Study of the Confessions, Study 5: Confessions and the Doctrine of Man

By an overwhelming majority vote in June 1994, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations rejected congregation Beth Adam’s application seeking affiliation with Reform Judaism. The reason: Beth Adam is a humanistic Cincinnati congregation that has eliminated the word “God” from its liturgies. “I believe that the concept of God is the very foundation of Judaism,” said Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the union. “The quest for God defines us as a people. It is our mission, our historic calling.”

The Presbyterian Church today encounters myriads of philosophies and ideologies that have the appearance of “religious” or “theological” but do not conform to the biblical definitions of man.1 Once the thin veneer of religion or theology is stripped, it exposes a godless doctrine of man. This is a kind of atheistic anthropology that defines humanity by a human standard while pronouncing the death of the God who has been revealed in Scripture.

There is a Beaten Path

In the early twentieth century, Mildred Cable and Francesca French, missionaries with China Inland Mission, frequently traveled across the Gobi desert to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. As a seasoned veteran in the desert terrain, Mildred shared her experience in desert travel. Caravans don’t wander randomly through the sands but follow clearly defined and well-known roads. When a road is obscured by sand from sandstorms, the traveler waits until the road reemerges. After centuries of countless sandstorms and sand drifts, the ancient roads for the caravans are still visible, still in use by modern travelers.

Most people are familiar with the infamous “mirages” in the desert, but they are unfamiliar with the false sounds heard by desert travelers. Some of these sounds are perceived as urgent calls for help, so the traveler is tempted to stop or digress to investigate. Unknown numbers of travelers have strayed from the beaten path and walked straight to their own death while attempting to track down the source of those deceptive sounds. But the wise desert guide discourages the traveler from chasing down every urgent sound and keeps the traveler on the road.

As the culture of the 1990s elevates the status of “victims” to “heroes,” the Presbyterian community of faith has heard many sounds, sometimes called voices. Many of these sounds imitate calls for help: the marginalized women crushed by emotional pain, the disenfranchised ethnic minority damaged by inequality, and the discriminated homosexuals clamoring for equal rights. Indeed, the followers of Jesus Christ are called “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”2 However, the desert traveler who wanders from the beaten path ultimately looks to man as the source of help, forgets that “God is my help”3 and ignores Jesus Christ who is “the Way.”4

What Are the False Sounds of Our Time?

Today there are numerous popular teachings sold under the brand name “Christian” that bear no family resemblance to the Christian view of man. These teachings formulate a humanistic doctrine of man, sharing several common threads:

1. They presuppose the autonomy of man. They ignore God’s standards and discard God’s law revealed in Scripture.
2. They assume the perfectibility of man. They depend on human effort to alleviate the imperfections of the human condition.
3. They measure spiritual success by socioeconomic equity. Scripture is dismissed and God is reconstructed when they stand in the way of the goal of equal access to the socioeconomic pie.
4. They divorce personal piety from social transformation. Social progress is achieved by structural change apart from personal change of heart and character.
5. They dismiss the Christian doctrine of sin because such doctrine is incompatible with the idea of perfectibility of man. Therefore, the only sin they recognize is “social sin,” or sinful structures and systems. There is no such thing as sinful lives but only the sin of intolerance of such lifestyles.

How Did We Lose Our Way?

Disguised as a theological doctrine of man, this type of secular humanism was not kept outside the church’s doors. Instead, professing Christians embraced these humanistic thought patterns.

“The 1960s crisis of values within the Western intelligentia ought to have elicited a clear polarization between religious and secular attitudes on such fundamental matters as the doctrine of man. In practice this did not happen, and at least part of the explanation is to be found in the willingness of Christian thinkers to adopt the same moral and intellectual outlook as the Humanists.”5

While Scripture and the Confessions teach that man is alienated from God, secular humanism teaches that man is alienated from himself. For the secular humanist, salvation comes exclusively in the form of “social salvation” and is devoid of any personal dimension. “Man can only fulfil his potentialities, realize himself, in harmony with others, and his ‘salvation,’ as it were, can only be truly realized in the salvation of all.”6

To the secular humanist Karl Marx, it is quite evident that the sole cause of man’s alienation is the capitalist social system. The cure, therefore, as the Communist Manifesto of 1848 made clear, is to alter the economic and social structures. By the same token, the religious humanist believes that the sole cause of man’s alienation is the social system. The social system is what germinates and perpetuates patriarchal domination, heterosexual domination, and white ethnic domination. The cure, needless to say, is to overthrow such patriarchal constructs, heterosexual systems, and white ethnic structures.

The core problem of religious humanism is not its commitment to social justice. The core problem of religious humanism is that it uses God as a tool rather than surrenders to God as the Ultimate Ruler. As a result, religious humanism targets a very narrow agenda of penultimate issues and misses the ultimate solution altogether. It never even got on the beaten path.

How Can We Return to the Beaten Path?

Written over a span of many centuries, both Scripture and the Confessions teach a consistent and coherent doctrine of man that provides ultimate answers to the ultimate questions. This truly Christian doctrine of man pivots upon God and emerges from God’s revelation. To the extent that man cannot know God or Jesus Christ except through God’s written revelation, Scripture is the final arbiter of what qualifies as Christian doctrine of man. In other words, God defines man.

The creeds, catechisms and confessions reveal a consistent doctrine of man which employs the following approaches:

(1) Relational Approach

As created beings, humans cannot attain to genuine self-knowledge unless we define our humanness in relation to God our Creator. The confessions consistently usher man onto the stage by identifying man as a creature created in God’s image.7 John Calvin teaches the necessity of this relational approach, “Man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself…the Lord…is the sole standard… .”8

Theologians of this century echo Calvin’s teaching. Emil Brunner writes, “From the outset the human ‘I’ is limited by a concrete ‘Thou’, and only so does it become a concretely responsible Self… .”9 John Leith also writes about this “I-Thou” relationship, “… most human beings have at the boundary of their existence, on occasion at least, encountered a mystery, however vague and diffused, that can only be understood as a ‘Thou’ and for which the word God has seemed the most appropriate response.”10

(2) Historical Approach

The primeval history of man is the history of the “I-Thou” relationship between God, the Creator, and man, the creature. His story (history) is the story of man—told by God. Thus the confessions consistently identify these historical events:

Creation

Humankind was created in God’s image to reflect, among many things, God’s own righteousness and holiness.11

Fall

Adam and Eve, the first parents of the human race, disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit. They fell from the original state of righteousness and holiness. The image of God in man was thus marred.12 By this first disobedience of the first parents, all humans “became by nature hostile to God, slaves to Satan, and servants to sin.”13 “Our human life is so poisoned that we are all conceived and born in the state of sin.” However, “no mere creature can bear the burden of God’s eternal wrath against sin and redeem others from it.”14

Redemption

Being incompetent to save himself, man needs a Savior. God provided the Mediator and Redeemer who is fully human and fully God. This Savior must be fully human so that as a true and righteous man he can pay the price for sin as a man. He must also be fully God “so that by the power of his divinity he might bear as a man the burden of God’s wrath, and recover for us and restore to us righteousness and life.”15 Therefore, we “openly profess and preach that Jesus Christ is the sole Redeemer and Savior of the world… so that we are not now to look for any other.”16 By repentance, a sinner recognizes sin as contrary to the holy nature and righteous law of God, turns away from sin and to God, and resolves to live a new life in obedience to God’s commands. Although salvation is not effected by repentance—because it is an act of grace—no sinner may expect forgiveness without repentance.17

(3) Theocentric Approach

When defining the Christian view of man, acknowledging God as the center is more than just acknowledging his existence. The theocentric approach to the doctrine of man requires us to hold up God’s law as standard. Man is incapable of accurate self-assessment unless he places God at the center and adopts God’s law as binding for his life. John Calvin writes, “…man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God’s majesty.”18

When God is removed from the center, man replaces God. The one true God becomes just a hopeful candidate applying for the job. In spite of its God-talk, this anthropocentric approach to the doctrine of man is no more and no less than religious humanism. The problem with this man-centered approach is the callousness to and the denial of sin.

“Self-deception about our sin is a narcotic, a tranquilizing and disorienting suppression of our spiritual nervous system…Eventually, we make ourselves religiously tone deaf so that we miss both the exposition and the recapitulation of the main theme God plays in human life. This music of creation and the still greater music of grace whistle right through our skulls, causing no catch of the breath and leaving no residue. Moral beauty begins to bore us. The idea that the human race needs a Savior sounds quaint.”19

(4) Teleological Approach

Man is created for a purpose: to glorify God and enjoy him forever.20 By the first disobedience of the first parents, the entire human race has become incapable of achieving this purpose. Through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God regenerates man and restores his ability to live according to God’s purpose. “To meet man in his sinful condition and recreate in man God’s idea is a well-authenticated actuality of the Christian gospel.”21

Unlike religious humanism, the biblical doctrine of man teaches that God is man’s telos (destiny). This explains why Scripture and the Confessions consistently and insistently highlight human accountability (instead of human autonomy), personal repentance and transformation (instead of social restructuring), and human responsibility (instead of human rights). Alexander Solzhenitsyn hits the bull’s eye when he says, “The West has finally achieved the rights of man … but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer.”

Conclusion

Those who confess Jesus is the Christ must match their doctrine of man with the biblical doctrine of man. They must demonstrate a readiness to relate to God as the Sovereign Creator, a keen awareness of man’s history as told by God, a willingness to make God the center of their lives, and a commitment to God’s purpose for man. Plantinga summarizes this calling in these words:

The gifts of God—vitality, love, forgiveness, courage against evil, joy at our depths, and everything else that flows from the terrible work of Christ—may be found only in the company of God. And we keep company with God only by adopting God’s purposes as our own and following through on them… .Despite certain modern assumptions, life with God isn’t mainly a matter of knuckling under to our superior, the image that modernity so much detests. We do have to trust and obey, not first of all to be ‘happy in Jesus’, but rather to rise to the full stature of sons and daughters, to mature into the image of God, to grow into adult roles in the business of redeeming the world…God wants not slaves but intelligent grownup children who show enthusiasm for the family business.22

Questions

1. What are the distinct qualities of a truly theological doctrine of man?
2. Why is it critical to distinguish “man’s story as told by man” and “man’s story as told by God”?
3. What is the place of God’s revelation in the formulation of the doctrine of man?
4. Identify some safeguards that will protect us from wandering off the beaten path?
5. Articulate the relationship between personal salvation and social transformation.
6. Compare and contrast: (a) Secular humanism and religious humanism; (b) Religious humanism and the biblical doctrine of man.

This study first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Jul/Aug 1998).