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THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING
OF MAN

VOLUME II
The Official
Oxford Conference
Books

THE OFFICIAL OXFORD CONFERENCE BOOKS

1. THE CHURCH AND ITS FUNCTION IN SOCIETY

by Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft and Dr. J. H. Oldham

2. THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF MAN

by Prof. T. E. Jessop, Prof. R. L. Calhoun, Prof. N. N. Alexeiev, Prof.
Emil Brunner, Pastor Pierre Maury, the Rev. Austin Farrer, Prof. W. M.
Horton

3. THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND HISTORY

by Prof. C. H. Dodd, Dr. Edwyn Bevan, Dr. Christopher Dawson, Prof.
Eugene Lyman, Prof. Paul Tillich, Prof. H. Wendland, Prof. H. G.
Wood

4. CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THE COMMON LIFE

by Nils Ehrenstrom, Prof. M. Dibelius, Prof. John Bennett, The Arch¬
bishop of York, Prof. Reinhold Niebuhr, Prof. H. H. Farmer, Dr.
W. Wiesner

5. CHURCH AND COMMUNITY

by Prof. E. E. Aubrey, Prof. E. Barker, Dr. Bjorkquist, Dr. H. Lilje,
Prof. S. Zankov, Dr. Paul Douglass, Prof. K. S. Latourette, M. Boegner

6. CHURCH, COMMUNITY, AND STATE IN RELA¬
TION TO EDUCATION

by Prof. F. Clarke, Dr. Paul Monroe, Prof. W. Zenkovsky, C. R. Morris,
J. W. D. Smith, “ X,” Prof. Ph. Kohnstamm, J. H. Oldham

7. THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH AND THE WORLD OF
NATIONS

by the Marquess of Lothian, Sir Alfred Zimmern, Dr. O. von der
Gablentz, John Foster Dulles, Prof. Max Huber, Pastor W. Menn, the
Rev. V. A. Demant, Prof. Otto Piper, Canon C. E. Raven

THE OXFORD CONFERENCE: Official Report

Including the full text of the reports issued by the five sections of the
Conference, Oxford, England, 1937. With an introduction by J. H.
Oldham

WORLD CHAOS OR WORLD CHRISTIANITY

A popular interpretation of Oxford and Edinburgh, 1937
by Henry Smith Leiper

THE CHRISTIAN
UNDERSTANDING OF MAN

Vs’ 'JL, .

T. E. JESSOP
R. L. CALHOUN
N. ALEXEIEV
EMIL BRUNNER
AUSTIN FARRER
WALTER M. HORTON
PIERRE MAURY

Willett, Clark & Company

CHICAGO NEW YORK

1938

Manufactured in The U. S. A. by The Plimpton Press
Norwood, Mass.-La Porte, Ind.

SEP

-3 \938

1 2302S

CONTENTS

General Introduction

vii

PART I

The Scientific Account of Man

By T. E. Jess op

The Dilemma of Humanitarian Modernism

By Robert L. Calhoun

The Marxist Anthropology and the Christian Con¬
ception of Man 85

By N. N. Alexeiev

PART II

The Christian Understanding of Man 141

By Emil Brunner

The Christian Doctrine of Man 181

By Austin Farrer

The Christian Understanding of Man 217

By Walter Marshall Horton

The Christian Doctrine of Man 245

By Pierre Maury

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Few will question the significance of the issues which en¬
gaged the attention of the conference on Church, Commu¬
nity, and State held at Oxford in July, 1937. More impor¬
tant than the conference itself is the continuing process, in
which the conference was not more than an incident, of an
attempt on the part of the Christian churches collectively
— without, up to the present, the official participation of
the Church of Rome, but not without the unofficial help
of some of its thinkers and scholars 1 — to understand the
true nature of the vital conflict between the Christian faith
and the secular and pagan tendencies of our time, and to
see more clearly the responsibilities of the church in rela¬
tion to the struggle. What is at stake is the future of Chris¬
tianity. The Christian foundations of western civilization
have in some places been swept away and are everywhere
being undermined. The struggle today concerns those
common assumptions regarding the meaning of life with¬
out which, in some form, no society can cohere. These
vast issues are focussed in the relation of the church to the
state and to the community, because the non-Christian
forces of today are tending more and more to find embodi¬
ment in an all-powerful state, committed to a particular
philosophy of life and seeking to organize the whole of life
in accordance with a particular doctrine of the end of
man’s existence, and in an all-embracing community life

1 A volume of papers by Roman Catholic writers dealing with subjects
closely akin to the Oxford Conference and stimulated in part by the pre¬
paratory work for Oxford will be published shortly under the title Die
Kirche Christi: ihre heilende, gestaltende und ordnende Kraft fur den
Menschen und seine Welt.

vii

General Introduction

viii

which claims to be at once the source and the goal of all
human activities: a state, that is to say, which aims at being
also a church.

To aid in the understanding of these issues the attempt
was made in preparation for the conference at Oxford to
enlist as many as possible of the ablest minds in different
countries in a common effort to think out some of the
major questions connected with the theme of the confer¬
ence. During the three years preceding the conference
studies were undertaken wider in their range and more
thorough in their methods than any previous effort of a
similar kind on the part of the Christian churches. This
was made possible by the fact that the Universal Christian
Council for Life and Work, under whose auspices the con¬
ference was held, possessed a department of research at
Geneva with two full-time directors and was also able, in
view of the conference, to establish an office in London
with two full-time workers and to set up an effective agency
for the work of research in America. There was thus pro¬
vided the means of circulating in mimeographed form (in
many instances in three languages) a large number of
papers for comment, of carrying on an extensive and con¬
tinuous correspondence, and of maintaining close personal
touch with many leading thinkers and scholars in different
countries.

Intensive study over a period of three years was devoted
to nine main subjects. The results of this study are em¬
bodied in the six volumes to which this general introduc¬
tion relates and in two others. The plan and contents of
each, and most of the papers, were discussed in at least two
or three small international conferences or groups. The
contributions were circulated in first draft to a number of
critics in different countries and comments were received
often from as many as thirty or forty persons. Nearly all

General Introduction

the papers were revised, and in some instances entirely
rewritten, in the light of these criticisms.

Both the range of the contributions and the fact that the
papers have taken their present shape as the result of a wide
international interchange of ideas give these books an ecu¬
menical character which marks a new approach to the sub¬
jects with which they deal. They thus provide an oppor¬
tunity such as has hardly existed before for the study in an
ecumenical context of some of the grave and pressing prob¬
lems which today concern the Christian church through¬
out the world.

The nine subjects to which preparatory study was de¬
voted were the following:

1. The Christian Understanding of Man.

2. The Kingdom of God and History.

3. Christian Faith and the Common Life.

4. The Church and Its Function in Society.

5. Church and Community.

6. Church and State.

7. Church, Community and State in Relation to the Eco¬

nomic Order.

8. Church, Community and State in Relation to Educa¬

tion.

9. The Universal Church and the World of Nations.

The last six of these subjects were considered at the Ox¬
ford Conference, and the reports prepared by the sections
into which the conference was divided will be found in
the official report of the conference entitled The Oxford
Conference , Official Report. (Willett, Clark & Company) .

A volume on The Church and its Function in Society ,
by Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft and Dr. J. H. Oldham (Wil¬
lett, Clark & Company) , was published prior to the con¬
ference.

Three of the volumes in the present series of six have to

General Introduction

do with the first three subjects in the list already given.
These are fundamental issues which underlie the study of
all the other subjects. The titles of these volumes are:

The Christian Understanding of Man.

The Kingdom of God and History.

The Christian Faith and the Common Life.

The remaining three volumes in the series are a contribu¬
tion to the study of three of the main subjects considered
by the Oxford Conference. These are:

Church and Community.

Church , Community and State in Relation to Education.

The Universal Church and the World of Nations.

The subject of church and state is treated in a book by
Mr. Nils Ehrenstrom, one of the directors of the research
department. This has been written in the light of discus¬
sions in several international conferences and groups and
of a wide survey of the relevant literature, and has been
published under the title Christian Faith and the Modern
State (Willett, Clark & Company) .

The planning and shaping of the volume is to a large
extent the work of the directors of the research depart¬
ment, Dr. Hans Schonfeld and Mr. Nils Ehrenstrom. The
editorial work and the preparation of the volumes for the
press owes everything to the continuous labor of Miss Olive
Wyon, who has also undertaken or revised the numerous
translations, and in the final stages to the Rev. Edward S.
Shillito, who during the last weeks accepted the responsi¬
bility of seeing the books through the press. Valuable
help and advice was also given throughout the undertak¬
ing by Professor H. P. Van Dusen and Professor John
Bennett of America.

J. H. OLDHAM

CHAIRMAN OF THE INTERNATIONAL
RESEARCH COMMISSION

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Jessop, Thomas Edmund, m.a., b.litt.

Ferens Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Arts in the
University College of Hull. Formerly Assistant Lecturer in Logic and
Metaphysics in the University of Glasgow.

Publications: Lugano and its Environs; Montreux and the Lake of
Geneva; Locarno and its Valleys; Bibliography of George Berkeley,
Bishop of Cloyne.

Calhoun, Robert Lowry, b.d., m.a., ph.d.

Professor of Historical Theology, Yale University, New Haven. For¬
merly instructor in philosophy and education, Carleton College, North-
field.

Publications: God and the Common Life. With others: Religious
Realism; The Nature of Religious Experience; Church and State in
the Modern World.

Alexeiev, Nicolas N., doctor juris.

Formerly Professor of the Philosophy of Law at Moscow University;
Professor of the Philosophy of Law at Sympherol University (Cri¬
mea) ; Professor of Constitutional Law at Russian Juridical Faculty,
Prague; Professor of Law, Russian Scientific Institute, Berlin.
Publications: Natural Science and Sociology; Introduction to the
Study of Law; General Theory of Law; Introduction to the Study of
the State; Introduction to Law of Philosophy; Property and Socialism;
General Theory of the State; Ways and Aims of Marxism.

Brunner, Emil, d.d.

Professor of Systematic and Practical Theology, University of Zurich.
Publications: Die Mystik und das Wort; Religionsphilosophie; Der
Mittler (tr. The Mediator) ; Gott und Mensch; The Word and the
World; Das Gebot und die Ordnungen; Der Mensch im Widerspruch,
etc.

Farrer, rev. Austin Marsden, m.a.

Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. Speakers Lecturer in the Univer¬
sity of Oxford.

xii List of Contributors

Horton, Walter Marshall, a.b., m.a., ph.d., b.d.,

S.T.M.

Fairchild Professor of Theology in the Oberlin Graduate School of
Theology, Ohio. Formerly Instructor in Philosophy of Religion and
Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary, New York.
Publications: Philosophy of the Abb? Bautain; Theism and the Mod¬
ern Mood; A Psychological Approach to Theology; Theism and the Sci¬
entific Spirit; Realistic Theology; Contemporary English Theology;
God.

Maury, Pierre, L. es l., b.theol.

Pastor of the Reformed Church at Paris-Passy. Formerly Secretary of
the World’s Student Christian Federation.

Translators

Professor Alexeiev’s paper was translated from German by the Rev.
G. V. Jones; Professor Brunner’s, also from German, by Miss Olive
Wyon; M. Pierre Maury’s paper, from French, by the Rev. D. G. M.
Patrick.

PART I

THE SCIENTIFIC ACCOUNT OF MAN

T. E. Jessop

THE SCIENTIFIC ACCOUNT OF MAN

If anything in the history of human effort has succeeded it
is science. In many respects it has even exceeded the high
hopes set upon it. Regarded theoretically, it has fashioned
systems of description and explanation of vast comprehen¬
siveness and astonishing exactitude, organized logically
and confirmed by observation and experiment. Regarded
practically, it has given us a control over the forces of na¬
ture which has lifted us far above the helplessness of ani¬
mals, thereby intensifying our humanity. We rise and
sleep, work and play, in the keeping of science. We are
almost dominated by it. This is one of the distinguishing
marks of modern civilization.

This dominance is being interpreted in many quarters
as a challenge to religion. It is an old interpretation.
Every major advance in science has been pressed to put re¬
ligion on the defensive — in the seventeenth century the
Copernican theory as revised by Galileo and Kepler, in
the eighteenth Newtonian mechanics, in the nineteenth the
theory of evolution. In the present century biochemistry
bids fair to become the new weapon. At the moment psy¬
chology is a fashionable basis of attack, but since it has a
very elusive subject matter and no agreed technique with
which to subdue this, it cannot yet be allowed the author¬
ity which belongs by achievement to the material sciences.
From one side or another science has been repeatedly put
before us as an intellectual attitude, a method of inquiry,
and a body of tested knowledge, having an at least prima
facie opposition to the spirit and content of religious belief.

4 The Christian Understanding of Man

Is the opposition real and deep? If it is, which of the two
is to be preferred? If it is not, how does the appearance of
opposition arise?

By the scientific account of man is in fact meant some¬
times the knowledge of man that is found within the
sciences (knowledge scientifically evidenced) , sometimes a
speculative extension of this knowledge. The two must be
sharply distinguished. The latter is a form of philosophy,
but it is popularly accepted as scientific because it is based
on science, is put forward in the name of science, and comes
to us sometimes — by no means always — through scien¬
tists. It is difficult to state, for it is rather a body of sup¬
positions than a developed doctrine. It may fairly be
summarized by saying that man can be sufficiently de¬
scribed and explained with nothing but the ideas and prin¬
ciples of the natural sciences, or at any rate that we have
nothing but these at our disposal. A concrete expression
of it by one of its most distinguished advocates will be the
best illustration:

That man is the product of causes which had no prevision
of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his
hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome
of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no
intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life
beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devo¬
tion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human
genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar
system — all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet
so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can
hope to stand.1

What sort of life such a view of man — here very nobly
and movingly stated — would require us to live is not at all
clear. Russell himself would have us “ maintain our own

Bertrand Russell, Philosophical Essays (1910) , pp. 60 f.

T. E. Jessop 5

ideals against a hostile universe,” which is undoubtedly
heroic and undoubtedly illogical, an unexcused and unex¬
amined dualism. Other advocates have other precepts
ranging from the recommendation of the Christian ethic
without its Christian grounds to the call for eugenic breed¬
ing or psychoanalytic catharsis. The aim is to exclude any
religious view of man. A man’s significance and obliga¬
tions are exhausted in his relation to his fellows; there is
no “ supernatural ” environment or order or person to pro¬
vide a higher explanation of his being, a higher object of
obligation, and a higher ground for the obligations he is
under anyhow as a member of society.

Any examination of this philosophy of man must ob¬
viously begin with the properly scientific doctrine of man
on which it is based. Of the latter I shall first give some
samples, partly to give concreteness to the discussion but
chiefly to show that it does appear to provide strong
grounds for the philosophy; and then pass from statement
of content to an analysis of its authority. Finally, I shall
consider whether the authority which belongs to the doc¬
trine qua scientific remains when the doctrine is specula¬
tively generalized into a philosophy.

The background of the scientific view of man is the
scientific view of the physical universe. It was in the new
astronomy of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton that
science gave the first shock to the religious conception of
man. Before Copernicus the universe was conceived as a
series of concentric crystalline spheres — the largest bear¬
ing the fixed stars, the rest each bearing a planet — with
God encompassing the outermost one and with the earth at
the center of them all. The most prominent positions, it
will be noted, were occupied by God and man. Besides,

6 The Christian Understanding of Man

everything beyond the earth and its atmosphere was
thought to be made of one ethereal substance and to be
eternally regular in its operations, whereas the earth, made
of the four “ elements,” was the one sphere of chance,
change and decay. This Aristotelico-Ptolemaic astronomy,
obviously adaptable to the Christian world view, received
the sanction of the scholars of medieval Christendom. But
when Newton, gathering and mathematically organizing
the conclusions of his predecessors, had finished his work,
we were shown a universe with neither assignable bound¬
aries nor an assignable center and with no distinction of
stuff or law between its celestial and its terrestrial parts:
the earth was thrust out of the center, the stars were seen to
be themselves suns, and the orbits of the heavenly bodies
were understood through the study of a swinging pendu¬
lum and a falling ball. Subsequent investigations have
widened our conception of the immensity of the universe,
emphasized the cosmic triviality of our earth, and con¬
firmed in astonishing detail the material and formal ho¬
mogeneity of the whole. The dawning of this new world
view roused some of the thinkers of the Renaissance to pan¬
theistic intoxication; in the eighteenth century the mathe¬
matical systematization of it led to deism; and in the middle
of the nineteenth, fortified by new triumphs in physics and
chemistry, it supported a brief though influential material¬
ism. A more recent physics has substituted probability for
the confident finalities of Buchner and Tyndall, and has
deeply modified the Newtonian theory, but the modifica¬
tions are highly technical and so far as our present point is
concerned leave the scheme essentially the same — the
physical universe is describable and “ explicable ” through
a mathematics which never uses the hypothesis of God, the
earth is a trifle in it, and the whole career of man, being far
shorter than that of the earth, less than a trifle. The simple

T. E. Jessop 7

picture which for centuries provided the cosmology of
faith, investing the theater of man’s life with cosmic cen¬
trality and placing it under the irregular influence of a
God just beyond the relatively near stars, has been de¬
stroyed by science.

The next shock came from biology, within living mem¬
ory. The theory of evolution was directed against the age¬
long supposition of the fixity of living kinds — that rabbits
have always been born of rabbits and monkeys of monkeys.
Its extension to man was both antecedently probable and
soon called for by special evidence. The evidence is cir¬
cumstantial, cumulative, convergent. Fundamentally it
consists in showing that virtually continuous chains of only
slightly differing structures between long extinct and pres¬
ent living things are not merely imaginable but largely
verifiable in fossil remains. What the natural factors were
that produced the successive differences — that is, how
heritable novelties of structure and function arose — is
still a matter of controversy. Darwin’s version of the evo¬
lutionary theory does not seem to touch effectively the
question of originating factors; it is concerned chiefly with
survival. The question answered by his doctrine of nat¬
ural selection was: how, taking a group of features as
given, did the organisms that first got them come to es¬
tablish themselves as a self-perpetuating stock? If an in¬
dividual appears with features differing markedly from
those of its species, it is not likely to survive if the new feat¬
ures place it at a disadvantage in that adjustment to envi¬
ronment which alone maintains life; and if they make it
less able to win a mate, either by direct attraction or by
combat with rivals, they and it would disappear together.
Those types of organism survive which are equipped for
the struggle on the one hand for individual existence, on
the other hand for mates. The process of survival and

8 The Christian Understanding of Man

elimination has, of course, a different incidence from place
to place and from time to time, following differences in
the balance of environmental factors.

All this has no less and no more reference to man than
to any other living being. The formulae of the transforma¬
tion of species and the survival of the fittest cover every¬
thing that has a bodily life. The evidence of a man’s
special affinity with the apes is of exactly the same kind as
the evidence of the affinity of lions with cats and of rabbits
with mice, that is, the presence of deep structural resem¬
blances. Until a quite late stage the human embryo has
the same sequence of developing formations as the embryo
of a gorilla or a chimpanzee; when adult it has the same
sort of skeleton (even to the number of spinal vertebrae) ,
a very similar arrangement of teeth (dentition has been
found to be of great importance in zoological classifica¬
tion) , and a very similar brain. In skeleton, muscles and
organs there seems to be no greater difference between man
and gorilla than there is between the gorilla and the lower
apes. To construct a zoological class which includes all
the apes and yet excludes man would therefore be a howler,
a classificatory scandal. And to regard the accumulation
of anatomical and physiological similarities as merely coin¬
cidental, independent, would be to renounce the business
of science. Some hypothesis has to be found. For the hy¬
pothesis of man’s community of descent with the other
members of his zoological class the zoologist has the evi¬
dence for evolution in the other classes, the embryological
similarities, and the approximation to the ape-like stock in
the oldest skeletons of prehistoric man.

The case for evolution rests on a huge mass of similari¬
ties and serial relationships for which a biological textbook
must be consulted, and no one who is unwilling to work
in some detail through this mass of interlocking details has

T. E. Jessop 9

any right to pass a public judgment upon it. To pick out
from the general doctrine the one article that man arose
from a subhuman stock and either except this from the
theory or deny the whole theory because of this is to attack
a large scientific issue from a ground which is both narrow
and extraneous. Man’s sense of his significance is irrele¬
vant to biology, falling outside both the sphere of its prob¬
lems and the sphere of its evidence, for biology is only the
study of the bodily structures, observable activities, and
vital relations of all living things regarded simply as living;
like each of the other sciences, it isolates its own field. The
evolutionary theory was designed to meet, and must first be
judged by, its success in solving or at least mitigating the
problems within this field, and the persons competent to
judge it have accepted it because it brings together facts
which otherwise would be left in a heap, and relates more
comprehensively and verifiably facts which hitherto had
been related by mere static similarity; because the difficul¬
ties it in turn raises are both fewer and less important,
within biology, than those it removes; and because it gives
guidance and stimulus to research. These are the general
marks of any good theory within any branch of inquiry.

Zoologists, then, have shown us that we have descended
from brutes. But they are as little blind as the rest of us to
the immense distance that divides us from the highest of
the brutes. What is it that makes man, for all his animality,
a class apart? His erect posture, his consequently free fore¬
limbs making possible the fashioning and use of tools, and
his large brain, are present with a difference of degree only
in the higher apes. So long as we keep to the level of struc¬
ture we remain within the domain of zoological compari¬
son. Is mind, then, peculiar to man? The general body of
competent opinion affirms that it is not. The opinion rests
on the impossibility as yet of describing and explaining the

io The Christian Understanding of Man

total external behavior of many animals in purely physi¬
ological terms such as tropisms and reflexes activated by
physico-chemical stimuli either from within or without;
we cannot go far without terms like perception and emo¬
tion, which, of course, refer to a psychological order. In
other words, some of their behavior shows so close a re¬
semblance to the simpler forms of human behavior as to
give us reason for inferring that the mental factor known
to be operative here is operative there also. Is there, how¬
ever, some one function of mind that only man possesses,
for example, intelligence? If intelligence means the ability
to behave appropriately in situations not completely pro¬
vided for by reflex and instinct, some animals below man
certainly possess intelligence. Kohler’s experiments with
chimpanzees amount to a demonstration of this, though
they show that the most intelligent of brutes rise no higher
than a three-year-old child. But if intelligence means free
or abstract thinking, the conscious analysis of complex
things and situations and the conscious recognition of their
elements and relations in other contexts, it belongs to man
alone. The clearest sign of abstract thought is speech: the
two are invariably correlated, arise simultaneously, and
develop pari passu. Man emerged when an animal spoke.

Thought and speech are not, of course, man’s only pe¬
culiarities; and if speech were our only criterion we should
never be able to get direct evidence whether prehistoric
man was really man or not. Why, then, do we call him
man? Because he could kindle fires, make and use tools,
draw pictures on tusks and cavern walls, and because he
buried his dead with attentions that can only be construed
as an expression of belief in another life after the eclipse of
this one. In a word, he had a culture, meaning by this or¬
ganized and persistent activities that require for their ex¬
planation developed mental powers and transmission not

T. E. Jessop ii

by animal heredity but by tradition; all almost certainly
involving speech. The detailed and overwhelming simi¬
larities of man’s body to that of the anthropoid apes only
serve to throw into more impressive relief these peculiari¬
ties of man’s behavior.

Science gives a very distant date for the appearance of
man. The literal interpretation of Genesis makes of man
a primeval kind, originated at a stroke, and Archbishop
Ussher’s computation dates his creation to six thousand
years ago. Anthropologists date the first fairly certain re¬
mains of man to anywhere between a whole and half a
million years ago, and the first traces of the anthropoid ape,
a stock not ancestral to but collateral with man, to several
million years earlier. Old as he is, then, man is a relatively
late comer in the world. And, slow in appearing, he was
slow in developing; for nearly the whole of the period
since his emergence he remained at the prehistoric stage,
rising no higher than the neolithic type of culture. To the
slowness of this prehistoric era the swift development of
historical times is an astonishing contrast. But the root of
it all, slow or quick, is the supersession of reflex and instinct
by thought, and the differentiation and refinement of emo¬
tion and desire which thought makes possible. Reflex and
instinct are effective in an animal’s normal environment
but inept outside of it. Conscious thought, on the other
hand, does not have this fixity as the condition of its effi¬
ciency; it is stimulated by change of environment, and has
proved itself able within very liberal limits to reverse the
order characteristic of the biological realm by adapting the
environment to itself. In addition, it has devised a new
mode of transmission to succeeding generations: man can
embody and perpetuate what he has learned in words and
works and institutions. It is this preservation and accumu¬
lation of achievements through the generations that gives

12 The Christian Understanding of Man

to the pace of culture its increasing acceleration. Man
should develop more in the next than he has done in the
past ten thousand years.

The distance that divides the modern man from the neo¬
lithic man of nearly ten thousand years ago, and the vaster
distance that divides even the latter from the highest of the
brutes, is a measure of our dignity within the natural order
open to scientific investigation. The scientific study of
man, far from denying this dignity, has confirmed it, ana¬
lyzed it, traced the history of it, and discovered some of its
promoting and obstructing conditions.

But only some of those conditions. In man’s dignity it
finds no cosmic significance; that is, such remarkable phe¬
nomena as art, social institutions, morality, religion and
science itself are not taken as data revelatory of an aspect,
sui generis , of the ultimate nature of things. They are
interpreted as simply resultants of the physico-chemical
and biological factors in the comprehension of which
science has won its spurs. This for several reasons: firstly,
because these factors are relatively well understood and are
still open to investigation; secondly, because of the cosmo¬
logical assumption that there was a time when there was
nothing but physical elements in very simple combina¬
tions; and thirdly, because of the general postulate of the
causal continuity of nature. It must be admitted that the
attempts that have so far been made to exhibit how the cul¬
tural behavior of humans can have evolved by “ natural
necessity ” out of animal behavior, and this out of physico¬
chemical reactions, have been too speculative to deserve to
be called scientific. Nevertheless there is a mass of evi¬
dence, not easy to organize logically, pointing to the earth-
bound nature of man. Much of it does but amplify, clarify
and more widely confirm what is familiar to us in the ordi¬
nary course of experience. We all know, for example, that

T. E. Jessop 13

it is by an animal process that human individuals are gen¬
erated, and that the generation is often accidental in the
grave sense of being unintended. When science adds that
we begin our life not as infants but as tiny and brutish
germcells, it adds plausibility to its theory, which has
abundant evidence of its own, that our race originated in a
brutish stock. We are learning that we inherit our stature,
the color of our hair and eyes, and other bodily features,
by the same mechanism, operating with the same regular¬
ity, by which mice and sweet peas inherit their color. Like
animals, we have to eat, and sleep, and exercise in order to
live at all. We know too that we hold our life by material
threads which material agencies can only too easily sever: a
flash of lightning, a sunless summer or a severe winter, or
a few microscopic germs can carry us off without the slight¬
est respect for our super-animal attainments. And these
attainments sometimes leave us; in panic and extreme
anger and hunger and pain we can and do sink back to the
level of animal behavior — except that we are aware of
the lapse and can condemn it.

But our specifically human mental life? That the char¬
acter as well as the existence of this is not merely connected
with but conditioned by the body is a commonplace of ex¬
perience. Catarrh impairs the memory; indigestion deter¬
mines a mood, and when chronic one’s philosophy; and a
tumor on the brain may bring the mental ruin we call in¬
sanity. Of such bondage to the body science has enlarged
the tale. One of the most interesting of recent investiga¬
tions deals with the functions of a certain type of gland,
called ductless or endocrine, which pours secretions into
the blood. Cretinism, a form of infantile idiocy, has been
known for some time to be due to congenital deficiency in
the secretion of the thyroid gland. More recently an inti¬
mate relation has been discovered between the suprarenal

14 The Christian Understanding of Man

glands (above the kidneys) and our emotional life. In an
angering situation they are stimulated, and far-reaching
changes — such as tenseness of the muscles, changes in the
pulse and pressure and distribution of the blood, dilatation
of the pupils — of which anger is largely the mental rever¬
beration, are due to the action of the suprarenal hormone.
It seems likely that all emotions have glandular conditions,
at any rate so far as their bodily accompaniments are con¬
cerned — and any emotion without its characteristic bodily
accompaniment would be so weak and colorless as to have
neither the feel nor the efficacy of an emotion. Of course,
the endocrine glands do not work alone; they condition
and are conditioned by one another and the other struc¬
tures of the body. Investigation of them is still immature.
But enough is known to oblige us to regard them as power¬
ful determinants of emotion, mood and temperament. To
be concrete, a person who finds it easy, without prior disci¬
pline, to be cheerful and patient, has probably a fortunate
glandular endowment. Corpulent people, for instance,
are usually of a happy disposition, and corpulence, when
natural, seems to be due to the glandular economy. Much
of the material of the moral life, then, appears to rest on a
physiological accident. There is a cheerfulness which is
not a virtue, and an irascibility which is only a disease —
a scientific ground for the extension of charity. Still, this
subjection of ours to our glands may be overstressed. It is
not the direct action of circumstance on the suprarenals
that makes us angry, but our interpretation of the circum¬
stance; the glands are activated by a mental act. Never¬
theless, it seems probable that people who are characteris¬
tically emotional and those who are characteristically emo¬
tionless are what they are because of glandular unbalance.
Like other physiological structures, the endocrine glands
partly serve the mind and partly determine it.

T. E. Jessop 15

When we leave this borderland between physiology and
psychology for psychology itself, we leave the realm of gen¬
eral agreement for one of general controversy. It is not yet
able to stand as an equal alongside the older natural
sciences I have been drawing upon, for its exponents differ
not only about specific points but also about such funda¬
mental matters as its boundaries, methods and criteria.
It is still an incoherent aggregate of many theories. In
consequence it is meaningless to appeal, as is now fashion¬
able, to the “ modern psychological theory of man.”
There isn’t one. Most people appear to mean by the
phrase the psychoanalytic theory. This also is not one but
many, being torn by major domestic controversies; and it
is still far more a speculative (if not fanciful) handmaid to
medicine than a science. Psychology deserves, indeed, to
be considered, but it can be neither presented nor exam¬
ined as the older sciences can be. This short chapte-r, to
maintain any sort of unity, must omit it; and it must omit
also, for somewhat similar reasons, the rich material of the
science of history.

A summary statement of scientific doctrines is a poor
way of bringing out their real worth, for summaries are
dogmatic and so far unscientific. The cogency of science
appears not in its gross conclusions but in the detailed
linkages that lead up to and establish them. To accept a
summary without knowing what makes it credible is to be
credulous, and the readiness with which the public will
now believe almost anything if it be called scientific is mak¬
ing this age, in which science most prevails, the most un¬
scientific age of all. Of course, other ages have had their
credulities, but to be credulous of that which exists to dis¬
pel credulity is the peculiar cultural vulgarity of these days.

14 The Christian Understanding of Man

T. E. Jessop 15

When we leave this borderland between physiology and
psychology for psychology itself, we leave the realm of gen¬
eral agreement for one of general controversy. It is not yet
able to stand as an equal alongside the older natural
sciences I have been drawing upon, for its exponents differ
not only about specific points but also about such funda¬
mental matters as its boundaries, methods and criteria.
It is still an incoherent aggregate of many theories. In
consequence it is meaningless to appeal, as is now fashion¬
able, to the “ modern psychological theory of man.”
There isn’t one . Most people appear to mean by the
phrase the psychoanalytic theory. This also is not one but
many, being torn by major domestic controversies; and it
is still far more a speculative (if not fanciful) handmaid to
medicine than a science. Psychology deserves, indeed, to
be considered, but it can be neither presented nor exam¬
ined as the older sciences can be. This short chapter, to
maintain any sort of unity, must omit it; and it must omit
also, for somewhat similar reasons, the rich material of the
science of history.

16 The Christian Understanding of Man

If science could communicate to the public less of its con¬
tent and more of its standards of thinking, the talk about
the conflict of religion and science would be raised to a
decent level of effort and insight.

To discover the authority of science we must ask the
question what it is that makes a scientific conclusion scien¬
tific. What is meant by a scientific doctrine? Not a par¬
ticular body of results, since these are ever changing, and
not, as is popularly supposed, whatever scientists say even in
their professional moments. Science is a spirit articulated
in a set of methods and criteria and such knowledge as
exemplifies and satisfies these. Take an intense curiosity
and redeem it of flabbiness and waywardness by concen¬
trating it on a demarcated field of objects; combine with it
a refusal to conclude without evidence; refine this demand
for evidence into a conscious realization of what evidence
consists in and of the need for method as well as patience to
reach it: and you have the mentality that creates science. It
is the exercise of this mentality that makes a man a scientist,
not the mere possession of knowledge which that mentality
in other minds has won.

Objectively, the fundamental marks of science are clar¬
ity, system and evidence. These are a trinity of cognitive
values, ideals or ends implicit in the cognitive impulse
when this is considered in itself, divorced from the influ¬
ence of emotion and the needs of action. They are the
marks of science in a sense of this term wider than is now
usually understood; the limitation will be made shortly.

Clarity is definiteness, unambiguity. In a fully scientific
inquiry every important term is either defined or referred
to a definite datum. Consider the striking contrast be¬
tween a layman’s notion of common salt and the chemist’s
notion of it as composed of the elements sodium and chlor¬
ine in a certain proportion; or the orderly explicitness of

T. E. Jessop 17

the zoologist’s conception of an animal as a material body
that has sensitivity, grows and maintains itself and repro¬
duces its kind by converting organic compounds into its
own substance and by reconverting them into energy and
waste. Probably the most perfect conceptual clarity is to
be found in mathematics, and it is the ease with which the
subject matter of physics lends itself to mathematical state¬
ment (through measurement) that has made physics the
clearest of the sciences that deal with empirical fact. Clar¬
ity is required because it is the first condition of efficiency
— in obscurity and vagueness thinking loses its way. Start
on a clear plane and you have every chance of remaining
on it; begin in a muddle and you will probably end in one.
For this reason the scientist will sometimes procure a defini¬
tion at almost any cost, even at the cost of making one
arbitrarily. Adequacy can come only at the end of the in¬
quiry, but the beginning must be at least clear. Those
who cannot see this, who cannot sympathize with the scien¬
tist’s frequent preference, for reasons of method, of defi¬
niteness to adequacy, of clarity to truth, lack a primary
qualification for the appreciation of science. The charac¬
teristic way to clarity is analysis and abstraction: a complex
phenomenon is split up into its elements, which are then
studied piecemeal and so far abstractly. If any are confus¬
ing they are ignored for a while. When, for instance, the
scientific study of motion was begun, friction and air resist¬
ance were left out as disturbing factors and not reintro¬
duced until the laws of motion in a supposititious vacuum
had been worked out. In its early stages every science has
to make such abstractions, such simplifications, for the sake
of clarity. It is still impossible for economics, for example,
to be at once clear and concrete.

Clarity achieved, system becomes possible (since only a
determinate proposition has determinate relations) , and

18 The Christian Understanding of Man

the achievement of system is the perfection of clarity. That
clarity and system are the really fundamental marks of
science must be stressed, for there is a widespread suppo¬
sition, curiously silly, that loyalty to fact is the mark and
monopoly of science. It is, of course, the mark of nothing
more than common sense, of which scientists have no mo¬
nopoly. Where facts are concerned, what distinguishes a
scientist’s knowledge from an intelligent layman’s is not
his adherence to them but his organization of them. Cer¬
tainly the long tradition of self-conscious thought has al¬
ways meant by a science a body of propositions that stand
together by intrinsic logical bonds. This is why pure
mathematics ranks as a science, although it may not have a
single fact in it; and why theology is a science, or at any
rate was in the hands of such logical masters as Aquinas and
Calvin, although its dominant content is not fact in the
usual sense of the word. An intellectual conscience which
cannot bear to leave anything in isolation, unrelated, un¬
derlies them all. It works through generalization and de¬
duction repeated on mounting planes — Tycho Brahe es¬
tablishing the primary facts of planetary motion, Kepler
discovering laws from which they can be deduced, Newton
rising to more general laws from which Kepler’s and yet
other laws can all be derived. As a science advances the
idea of system becomes increasingly operative, and as it
gains dominance it acts not simply as an organizing concept
but also as a source of evidence: when laws or theories each
of which has its own empirical grounds are seen to be con¬
vergent, interlocking, or all deducible from a more general
law, their systematic interconnection is regarded as addi¬
tional evidence for them, compensating for any deficiency
in the empirical evidence for each taken separately. The
strength of a theory lies as much in its relation to other
theories as in its relation to the facts it immediately covers.

T. E. Jessop 19

All laws of fact are imperfectly established by fact, but
when they fall together into one system their amenability
to logical fellowship is a further symptom of their truth. It
is for this reason that the piecemeal criticism of an ad¬
vanced science such as physics or of a widely based and
widely organizing theory such as that of evolution, is unin¬
telligent. Only of undeveloped sciences such as psychology
and anthropology — undeveloped because the basis of ac¬
credited fact is too small or still unclear, or the higher or¬
ganization of it wanting or too speculative — is the piece¬
meal method of criticism at all fair. The protagonists of
religion have not always been mindful of this. Always
criticism should remember the double obligation of a sci¬
ence of fact — its fidelity to system as well as to fact.

Clarity and system are the constitutive ideals of science
as such. It is they that convert knowledge into scientific
knowledge. Any narrower definition of science would ex¬
clude pure mathematics and would thereby be paradoxical.
But the degree to which clarity and system are realized in
the several branches of expert study is very different. Why?
Not because of differing range but because of differing kind
of subject matter. This introduces the third ideal, evi¬
dence. The differences of subject matter that have forced
us to have not science but sciences, the really divisive differ¬
ences, are differences in kind of evidence. The deepest
way of distinguishing mathematics, physics, psychology and
ethics is not to name their respective subject matters but to
say that while all require logical evidence (this being
largely, if not entirely, synonymous with system) pure
mathematics requires nothing else, physics must have sen¬
sory evidence, psychology must be content with a more
fugitive and less patent kind of evidence, while ethics seeks
evidence of value. Each of these sciences is typical of a
group, and the groups may for convenience of identifica-

20 The Christian Understanding of Man

tion be called respectively abstract, objective natural, sub¬
jective natural and philosophical sciences.

Now by the scientific doctrine of man is usually meant
so much of the knowledge of man as is gained through the
sciences of the second group, namely, physics, chemistry,
biology, and certain derivatives or mixtures of these (e.g.,
geography) . When we say that their specifically defining
feature is the admission of only sensory and logical (includ¬
ing mathematical) evidence we mean that the only data
they will recognize are perceptual data and the only infer¬
ences they will allow from them are logical ones. An ob¬
jective natural science is the study of a definite field of per¬
ceptual existents under the ideal of logical system. The
nature of its authority follows from this definition. For
the distinctive feature of both sensory and logical evidence
is that they are public, public in the twofold sense that they
are accessible to everybody and that they are independent
of private prejudice; and it is this patent publicity which
makes possible that fruitful cooperative study and that ex¬
posure of assertions to an irresistible check which are among
the most striking features of scientific work. What is
square to you is square to me. Area and volume, density
and weight, the pattern and dimensions of the solar system,
the structure of the human brain and its relation to the
brain of an ape, whether a particular gland is at work when
we are angry — all these are questions that can only be set
and only be settled in the long run through direct percep¬
tual vision. Personal conviction and idiosyncrasies of ex¬
perience are irrelevant. Every statement about the per¬
ceptual aspect of a perceptual thing is in principle, and to
a remarkable degree in practice, susceptible of clinching
verification and refutation. The accumulating agreement
within and the authority of the objective natural sciences
are due to their keeping to the perceptual, to the sphere of

T. E. Jessop

public demonstrability. Any form of inquiry that admits
nonperceptual data and any verification other than per¬
ception and logical coherence departs from the type of sci¬
ence set by physics, chemistry and biology, and to that ex¬
tent is scientific in a sense that lacks the authority attaching
to these. Psychology, and the social sciences in so far as
they are directed upon or presuppose mental experiences,
fall greatly below the rigorous standard of the material sci¬
ences because the facts from which they start and to which
for verification they return are indefeasibly private: in a
case of dispute a thought, emotion or impulse cannot be
torn out of the arcanum of a mind and set for common in¬
spection in front of the disputing investigators. And the
impossibility of settling questions of value in the way that
questions of fact can be settled, the deep and persistent dis¬
agreement about them, and that intimate, perhaps essential,
connection of values with emotions which makes the impar¬
tial study of them supremely difficult, remove the philo¬
sophical disciplines (in which clear, systematic and evi¬
denced knowledge of values is sought) still further from
the type of science exemplified most fully in physics. The
popular convention which means by a scientific conclusion
a conclusion that settles the question arose out of and is
relevant to this type only.

Using the term science henceforward to cover this type
only, we have to define it and appraise it as clarity, system
and public verifiability pursued through centuries with
international cooperation and persisting when all other
forms of cooperation have broken down. Its content is so
much of knowledge about sensory objects as can at a given
time be established and organized with universal agree¬
ment. In spirit and content alike it is a spiritual achieve¬
ment of the first order. Its most obvious glory is the con¬
trol it gives over natural forces: it has made habitable parts

22 The Christian Understanding of Man

of the earth that formerly were waste or pestilential, made
the air and under the sea navigable, enabled us to travel a
couple of thousand miles in a day and send a message round
the earth in a fraction of a second, mitigated the pains and
prolonged the span of man’s life, increased the supply of
his necessities and invented a host of comforts and enter¬
tainments. Yet these applications of scientific knowledge
are less remarkable than the knowledge itself, the knowl¬
edge that can reach millions of light years into the sky (a
single light year is nearly six million million miles) and
penetrate to the ultra-microscopic. Most remarkable of all
are the rigorous cognitive ideal, the vast imagination, the
technical ingenuity, the minute care, the unwearying pa¬
tience, the superb detachment, the raceless and timeless
fellowship of thinking, out of which that knowledge has
sprung. The scientific enterprise is exceeding precious,
too precious to disparage in the name of anything, even of
religion. It is indeed as precious as religion itself, in the
sense that it is an equally authentic expression of mind; a
source of light and life, and brings healing in its wings.
“ The world was made,” said Sir Thomas Browne, “ to be
inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man:
’tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the hom¬
age we pay for not being beasts.” 2 But this fine saying has
reference to theology and philosophy as well as to science
in the narrow sense, of which there was little in Browne’s
day.

Small wonder that the Christian attitude toward science
has not been so prevalently negative as it is often repre¬
sented to be. The very vanguard of science has had in it
in every generation men of avowed and sincere religious
conviction. In Britain the names of Newton, Priestley and
Faraday at once spring to mind. Those who emphasize the
2 Religio Medici (1643) * First Part, sec. 13.

T. E. Jessop 23

religious resistance to science tend to forget that Coper¬
nicus was a canon, Mendel an abbot, and Malthus an An¬
glican priest. It has been said with forgivable exaggeration
— forgivable because provoked — that if science had been
left to the “ ungodly ” it would be much less advanced than
it is. As a sublime and sustained effort of the spirit it has
been congenial to countless Christians; the universities
were opened to it before they were secularized; and the
church corporately and her members severally have re¬
peatedly thanked God for it. When the attitude of the
church toward science has been negative, there have usually
been other reasons besides the apparent incompatibility of
a given theory with Christian dogma. It is a lack of his¬
torical sense that makes us suppose that the ideas of Coper¬
nicus and Galileo, for example, should have been as obvi¬
ous to the older ecclesiastics as they are to us today; and the
ignorance of the Dark Ages is still often laid entirely at the
door of the church as though little were due to the eastward
movement of Greek science, the collapse of Rome, and the
dominance of new peoples too barbarian either to desire
science or to understand it. Some chapters in the history
of the relations between religion and science badly need to
be rewritten.

Is the sense of conflict which has developed around these
two equally natural expressions of the human spirit, science
and religion, justified, and if it is, is it really science, or
instead something which the public confuses with science,
that is inimical to the religious view of man? For the dis¬
cussion of this problem the preceding analysis of the nature
of science was necessary, to set the stage. We have seen,
first, how science considered in its broad traditional sense as
expert thinking is distinguished from lay or popular think-

24 The Christian Understanding of Man

ing; second, that within expert thinking there are impor¬
tant differences of kind, based on differences in the kind of
evidence admitted; and third, what the defining marks are
of that special kind to which within the last hundred years
the designation “ science ” has come to be almost exclu¬
sively restricted. The unity of science even in this nar¬
rower sense is an ideal not yet even remotely approximated
to, and one of the reasons is that not all its forms have
reached anything like the same level of certainty and clarity.
When we free ourselves from the journalism in which sci¬
ence has become involved we see that in respect of authority
its different types have to be considered separately. In
scientific circles this is freely, often tartly, recognized: for
example, there are physicists, chemists and statisticians who
refuse to regard anything in biology as scientific that is not
expressed in precise quantitative terms, and, of course,
there are biologists and “ behavior ists ” who attach no scien¬
tific value whatever to introspective psychology. Since,
then, by the ethics of controversy, it is right to take a rival
theory in its strongest form, I have taken as the scientific
doctrine of man that which is found in the physico-chemi¬
cal and biological sciences. Is there any conflict between
this doctrine and the religious doctrine of man?

In treating this question there are several possibilities
of procedure. We could take the scientific doctrines one
by one and try to pick holes in them. This seems to me to
be tactless and fruitless, tactless because the content of the
sciences is changing rapidly and also because only a physi¬
cist can directly criticize a particular doctrine of physics
(and so on) , and fruitless because I do not believe that
man’s true nature and the possibility of God are to be
found in the gaps within the sciences. It is better to con¬
sider the whole kind of knowledge exhibited in science,
and to ask whether its content, and with this its authority,

T. E. Jessop 25

covers specifically religious matters. The analysis in the
preceding section has been badly expressed if it has not
shown that that very clarity, system and cogency which give
to science its obvious authority rest entirely on the exclu¬
sion from science of any consideration of transcendental
entities and of values. It keeps to sensory facts, analogues
of sensory facts, mathematics and logic. Why? First be¬
cause clarity and system are more attainable in a limited
and homogeneous field than in an unlimited and hetero¬
geneous one, and second because the sensory field lends
itself with unique facility to public demonstration. Homo¬
geneity makes possible the standardization of method; sen-
soriness provides a plain and unescapable point for both
the beginning and the end of an inquiry, defining both a
patent kind of problem and an irresistible form of solution.
It is the consistent acceptance of these limitations that gives
science its strength. Whatever falls beyond them is not de¬
nied but simply ignored. Science is a technique, and so
much knowledge as the following of that technique brings.
The religious interpretation of man is simply left out of it
as being foreign to its technique. The scientific and the
religious interpretations are reached from distinct points
of view and by different methods. In principle, they are
complementary.

But are they in fact antagonistic? Are their contents in¬
compatible? They certainly have been in the past, but for
an unfortunate reason, namely, that religious apologists
have included in their interpretation statements the proof
or disproof of which is achievable only by scientific meth¬
ods — for example, that the earth was made in seven days,
that it is but six thousand years old, that man’s brain is
thoroughly different from that of any other known crea¬
ture, and that the male skeleton lacks the rib which was
taken from Adam for the fashioning of Eve. Now the bril-

26 The Christian Understanding of Man

liant success of the physico-chemical and biological sciences
all but proves that their methods of dealing with their type
of subject matter are the right ones for that type, that is,
for whatever is or would under favorable conditions be
sensorily perceived. I mean that any question about struc¬
tures and relations within the sensory order of fact is a
scientific question, to be defined and solved by the methods
and criteria evolved by the natural sciences, without inter¬
ference from the side of religious interest even when the
question is about something now beyond direct observa¬
tion, such as the beginning of the earth or the natural fac¬
tors involved in man’s origin and early development. We
cannot leave present facts to science and reserve remote
ones for theology when both sets of facts are of the same
order. Any theorizing about what cannot in fact be per¬
ceived involves conjecture, but when the matter is in prin¬
ciple or nature perceptible the conjecture is better, is re¬
sponsible in the sense that it is open to a generalizable test,
when it is guided throughout by what we do perceive. It is
by a reasonable extension of this principle that we have
come to consider the date and authorship of the books of
the Bible to be questions of scholarship, not of religion,
the only objective and cooperative way of investigating
them being the one followed in like questions about any
other anonymous, pseudonymous, and undated books. A
religious man’s philology, textual criticism “ higher ” or
“ lower,” and his natural science, should be the same as
anyone else’s. But the truth or otherwise of the Bible’s
transcendental affirmations and of its and your and my
spiritual values are extra-scientific matters; and so too are
the questions whether the natural process of evolution was
initiated and is supported by a cosmic purpose, whether
man’s mind is simply coeval with his body, and whether his
values have any abiding validity. A form of investigation

T. E. Jessop 27

that does not, and cannot without forfeiting its peculiar
virtues, study these, cannot pronounce on them.

If this definition of a meum and a tuum within the gen¬
eral controversy had always been appreciated, we should
not have had theologians making a b extra judgments on
matters that require scientific competence, or, conversely,
scientists illicitly lending the prestige of science to opinions
about matters which science cannot assimilate to its tech¬
nique. Much of the overt conflict has consisted in mutual
trespass. Science and religion have different fields, or,
where they overlap, different tasks. I am not sure that a
direct contradiction can arise between them.

But they are not disembodied things. They live in the
minds of men, and men can contradict one another. The
real conflict is between two human attitudes or biases. We
may now leave science proper and examine the scientific
bias — a mentality, not a doctrine, and therefore difficult
to define and argue against, so that in dealing with it argu¬
mentatively I shall at times have to harden it into a doc¬
trine. It is the mentality of the man who has become so
habituated to or fascinated by scientific methods and stand¬
ards that he either refuses altogether to carry the business
of thinking beyond the natural sciences, or, if he does, finds
himself unable to adapt his way of thinking to the peculi¬
arities of the new subject matter. The first of these two
forms only barely deserves to be mentioned. In the nine¬
teenth century, when scientists were fighting for recogni¬
tion, it formulated itself in the dogma that the scientific
form of knowledge is the only form, everything that cannot
fit into it being just unknowable. This agnosticism of the
nonperceptual is foolish, because when a man steps out of
theory into life he has to repudiate it. In the actual busi-

28 The Christian Understanding of Man

ness of living we are unable to treat ideals and value judg¬
ments as mere opinion and all examination of them as idle
guesswork. We do and must distinguish between respon¬
sible and irresponsible action and thinking upon action,
and the only name I can find for apprehension that is more
than guessing or private opinion is not ignorance but
knowledge. Fortunately, complete agnosticism about
everything outside empirical fact has ceased to be fashion¬
able or even respectable.

The second form of the scientific bias is the enduring
one. The possessor of it knows he has left science proper
behind, that he is transferring its methods to an outer field
in which they can never be completely carried out, but he
feels that it is better to be imperfectly scientific than to
leave the scientific way altogether. The instinct is sound,
for we leave that way at our peril, the peril of falling into
egoism and Schwarmerei (though the best things usually
lie in the perilous regions) . The result is — when articu¬
lated, which is rare — a philosophy , which, to avoid coining
a word, I shall call naturalism. Its general content appears
to be that the material universe needs nothing but material,
at any rate purposeless, factors for its explanation; that
man is simply the creature of these factors and is completely
destroyed by them; that his values are at best biological
conveniences, entirely relative to his time and circum¬
stance; and that every trace of his achievements will one
day be annihilated. With such a philosophy no Christian
can be friendly. This is the so-called science with which
religion is and must for ever be in conflict. We must ex¬
amine its grounds.

The scientist who carries his bias into the larger field
tends to deal with the* transcendental by the simple process
of denying it. The artificially closed system — that is,
closed by definition and restriction of method — of his sci-

T. E. Jessop 29

ence is now regarded as naturally and finally closed. The
reason appears to be a complete satisfaction with the scien¬
tific way of explaining phenomena by factors within their
own order. He just cannot see that anything else is re¬
quired for the explanation of, e.g., the astronomical world
when its plan has been discovered and shown to follow
from the laws of geometry and mechanics: space, time, and
energy being what they are, the world could not help being
what it is. Since the “ secondary ” causes account for the
facts, the search for “ more ultimate ” causes is simply not
called for. What could cause motion but a force, or rest
but forces in equilibrium? The natural order explains
itself. Not that every detail has yet made itself clear, but
that whatever has revealed its ground has revealed only a
natural ground, a ground immanent in its own order and
entirely sufficient.

My answer to this will come later. Here I can only note
that there is a marked movement away from this attitude
among the leaders of physical science, of the science which
created it and gave it all its strictest reasons. In other
words, the reasons for it are becoming out of date. The
radical reinterpretations effected or required in physics
and astronomy by the relativity and quantum theories are
bringing about the admission that the strictest scientific ex¬
planations are too much infected with arbitrariness and
abstractness to be really true, that the very type of explana¬
tion is subjective and not merely incomplete. Very oddly,
there is in biology an increasing effort to reduce specifically
biological laws to the laws of that physics for which dimin¬
ishing claims are being made.

Another habit which gives a characteristic bias to “ scien¬
tific ” philosophy is the practice of conceiving everything
complex as simply the resultant of its elements. If you
spend your life analyzing, it is natural that you should at-

30 The Christian Understanding of Man

tribute to the technique a wider applicability, and to its
results a greater weight, than they can bear. Here again,
however, a reaction is setting in within science itself. In
physics the analysis of space into points and of time into
instants has given way to the analysis of space-time into
point-instants — still analysis, but refusing to go further
than a conjunction and thereby repudiating the old prin¬
ciple of analyzing until the conceptually simple is reached.
In biology the unity of the living organism is being stressed,
the effect of the whole on the parts being recognized almost
as much as the contribution of the parts to the whole. And
in psychology it is being found more fruitful to examine
the unitary pattern, the purposive organization, of a piece
of experience or behavior than to follow the old way of
analyzing a state of mind into sensations, images, meanings
and whatnot. In the sphere of specifically human creations
the method of analysis is often merely inept, the results
being irrelevant or trivial even when they are true. The
least illuminating thing you can say about a cathedral is
that it consists of pillars, vaulting ribs and connecting walls,
and these of sandstone, this of quartz, this of silicon and
oxygen, and these of protons and electrons. Add even the
physical pattern (the statics of it) and you still fail to de¬
fine the nature of a cathedral; you must bring in the pur¬
pose or end of it all. Neither are poems and music under¬
stood through analysis into letters and notes; the wholes
are prior, in the sense that the elements derive their sig¬
nificance from them, not vice versa. Students of language,
by the way, generally agree that the sentence is prior to the
word, the latter arising out of the decomposition of the
former, not the former out of the composition of pre-exist¬
ent words. Few if any things are understandable as the
resultants of their parts. They are more than the stuff they
are made of — for the analytic interest all too easily mate-

T. E. Jessop 31

rializes its objects, reducing cathedrals to stone, music to
sound, and mind to body or an effluvium of this. Some¬
times a misgiving appears, as when it is said that the analysis
of matter into points or fields of electro-magnetic force has
brought it nearer to mind — as though it were grossness
that made matter matter, and thinness that made mind
mind. It is pathetic to hear the eager echo in religious
circles of this mentalizing of matter by the materialization
of mind.

The scientific interest in origins is another habit which
becomes a bias when pressed beyond the boundaries of
natural science. A genetic inquiry, like an analytic one,
may issue in truth without relevance. To assign an origin
is often nothing more than to assign an origin; I mean that
to answer the question how a thing began may answer no
other question. Yet frequently one finds the assumption
that it does answer other questions. For instance, I have
seen it written that because religion began with fear (a
dogmatic premise) it is fear. The principle of this sort of
thinking, which is all too rife nowadays, is that a thing is
what it sprang from, and if we accept it here we should ac¬
cept it elsewhere and hold that an oak is an acorn, and man
simply an animal. It is also written that because religion
was spanked into me — against my rule I am straying into
psychology — my religion is based on fear. The principle
here is that the basis of a belief is the emotion or circum¬
stance that first evoked it, which is an elementary confusion
between causes and reasons and which, generalized, would
compel us to find the basis of nearly all our believings, sci¬
entific ones not excepted, in the behests (with their cor¬
poral sanctions) of our parents, nurses and teachers. If
religion is fear, science is magic; and spanking has propa¬
gated science as well as religion. Arguments that cut both
ways are useless. Behind these howlers arising out of an ex-

34 The Christian Understanding of Man

much larger and surer than it is at present, he could show
us how to produce such and such a type of race, but he has
no special fitness for pronouncing any type to be desirable.
His science, like every other natural science, gives no clue
to its right moral application. He is, of course, entitled to
an opinion on what sort of human stock should be devel¬
oped and whether marital affection and the family as we
now know them should be given up, just as a chemist is
entitled to an opinion whether chemistry should be further
exploited to make war more effective; but his opinions on
these matters are not and cannot be scientific. They are
valuations, which he makes not with the authority of a sci¬
entist but with the responsibility of a citizen. They are
matters which have to be judged with a wider area of refer¬
ence than biology, by different methods and by different
criteria. It was in order to make this position clear that I
had to give so wearisome an exposition of the nature of
science. Science praises nothing, disparages nothing,
values nothing. In its theoretical aspect it is knowledge of
facts without reference to its human use; and when this
reference is brought in it becomes a knowledge of means
only. The sole legitimate meaning, then, of “ scientific
civilization ” is a civilization which, whatever its ends or
values , uses in the pursuit of these the knowledge of the
interrelations of things which science so abundantly sup¬
plies. Given its own ends, a religious civilization may be
as scientific as any other.

So far I have tried to define the real nature of the con¬
troversy over the scientific and the religious views of man.
From an examination of what makes science science I have
attempted to show that from its own side science is in¬
competent to pronounce on religion in so far as religion
includes affirmations about transcendental entities and val¬
ues; also that the speculative extension of science which is

T. E. Jessop 35

sometimes called scientific philosophy cannot, just because
it is a speculative extension, claim to retain the authority
of science, and that its apparent principles — for example,
that the natural can have only a natural explanation, that
the nature and value of a thing are revealed in its elemen¬
tary constituents or its originating circumstances — are
too dogmatic and too inapplicable to specifically human
achievements to pass as even tolerable philosophical prin¬
ciples. In all this I have simply been pleading for what
seems to me to be an axiomatic position, namely that the
total doctrine of reality in general and of man in particular
must be reached from and tested by man’s total experience.
This is not to pit feeling against reason — science includes
brute fact as well as reason, and theology reason and fact as
well as feeling — but to insist that reason shall operate on
all the available data, none of the data being ruled out of
court from the start. The scientific bias as I understand it
is the tendency to take nothing but our perceptual experi¬
ence as the determinant of theory, the latter being then
not retested in but simply imposed on the rest of our expe¬
rience, this rest being thereby not explained but explained
away. I have to confess that my scientific as well as my re¬
ligious conscience is disturbed by the sweeping and unveri¬
fied extension to the distinctively human aspects of mind
of principles and theories devised for and only verified in
the study of matter. The subhuman is studied with prodi¬
gious patience and marvelous competence, the peculiarly
human is then impatiently pictured as analogous with or
consequential upon it. From physics, chemistry and bi¬
ology clouds of matter are trailed into mind, and in the
dust we cannot see. Those who, for example, turn phys¬
ics into philosophy used to conclude to the determinedness
of mind from the determinedness of atoms and are at pres¬
ent inferring the freedom of mind from the unpredictabil-

36 The Christian Understanding of Man

ity of the behavior of individual electrons. Presumably
mind is not competent to deliver its own evidence about it¬
self; you may make portentous declarations about it with¬
out even looking at it; it itself is not to be allowed to suggest
the categories, principles and methods by which it should
be investigated. The scientific spirit, when let loose into
philosophy , is not the spirit of open-mindedness. It in¬
volves the claim that a stage of maturity has been reached
when fidelity to system may override further fidelity to fact;
in every extension to a new field it may now predetermine
its conclusions by taking as standard the knowledge ac¬
quired in the old fields; the ideas and methods which have
been vindicated so remarkably in physics and chemistry
and biology (many scientists would exclude the last) are
eo ipso the best for any field whatsoever. Put succinctly,
it is the spirit that looks at an electron and then makes a
pronouncement on the will of man. The so-called con¬
flict between science and religion is in part between those
who approve such procedure and those who find it intel¬
lectually scandalous.

And yet, these many considerations of procedure not¬
withstanding, can anything be said about the content of
the “ scientific ” philosophy? Is it true that man is nothing
but an ephemeral incident on one of the minor planets of a
system in an uncounted aggregate of overwhelmingly vaster
systems and that he should accordingly take a humble view
of his affinities, his values and his destiny? The most ob¬
vious answer is that spatial and temporal smallness need
not carry any other kind of smallness with it: the man that
knows the stars is “ bigger ” than they. But I wish to argue
the answer that all such naturalism is logically incoherent.
My ground is that the only creature that can prove any¬
thing cannot prove its own insignificance without depriv¬
ing the proof of any proof value. Any radical depreciation

T. E. Jessop 37

of man involves an equally radical depreciation of the
scientific thinking which supplies the supposed evidence.

It is obviously pointless and valueless to draw any con¬
clusions at all about man, or anything else, from scientific
knowledge unless we claim that this knowledge is true (or
probable, for the qualification makes no difference to the
argument) , and the content of any form of knowledge
whatever that claims to be true must be compatible with
this claim. Inconsistency here would be a radical incon¬
sistency amounting to absurdity. Now I find this incon¬
sistency in any generalization of the scientific view of man.
For instance, anyone who asserts that man is completely de¬
termined contradicts himself, for if his assertion is true it is
determined, and if it is determined it cannot be true, can¬
not indeed be false, for what is necessitated is simply a hap¬
pening, like a cough or a sneeze. The old tag that the brain
secretes thought as the liver secretes bile similarly refutes
itself, for then thought would just be something, not know
something else. Any doctrine of natural determinism is
thus either meaningless or absurd, meaningless if it does
not claim to be true, absurd if it does claim to be true, since
its content contradicts the claim made for it. For the de-
terminist has to believe not only that he himself cannot
help thinking man is determined but also that those who
think man is free cannot help thinking so; indeed, he has
to put on the same plane of inevitability all affirmations and
negations whatever, the whole medley of thoughts men
have ever believed and disbelieved and quarreled over.
With what right he can pick out from this one plane his
own thoughts (and only some of these) as alone the true
ones is utterly obscure. If all thoughts were necessitated,
the distinction of truth and falsity could not arise or be
sustained. Take as another example the psychoanalytic
doctrine of man. Psychoanalysts regard, and are obliged

38 The Christian Understanding of Man

to do so by their presuppositions, even the most serious
thinking as instinctive. But by their argumentation this
very statement, the whole of psychoanalytic theory, and all
scientific and nonscientific and contradictory statements
must be all equally instinctive. And by “ instinctive ” the
psychoanalyst means being determined by hereditary
causes. Either, then, the doctrine leaves no room for dis¬
tinguishing itself as true from other expressions of the same
or any other instinct, or else the picking out of some only
of our instinctive activities as true involves the admission
that being instinctively determined or not has nothing to
do with their being true or not — an admission which, by
the way, would take the bottom out of an all too current
inference that religious belief is not true because it is said
to be traceable to instinctive pressure. If thinking were
merely instinctive it would be merely a process, a phase in
the natural sequence of cause and effect, like an eclipse or
an earthquake, nest-building and migration, digestion and
pain. To think this and claim truth for the thinking is
absurd. Every form of determinism robs all thinking,
therefore its own assertions and any assertions alleged as
evidence for these, of any ground for claiming to be true.
If, per impossibile, we were in fact completely determined,
we could never logically believe it. Indeed, there would
be no logic.

The argument is not tied to determinism, though every
natural science is deterministic except (and perhaps only
temporarily) physics. It covers every attempt to envisage
human thinking under the category of causality even when
the note of necessity is left out of this. Whatever else the
natural sciences do, they regard their object as elements
or factors within a causal system: of any object they inquire
what its causes are and what its effects. Accordingly, when
our cognitions are made the object of scientific study they

T. E. Jessop 39

too are looked upon simply as processes, happenings, events.
Now happenings simply happen; only assertions about
them can be true or false; and when these too are reduced
to happenings they lose all assertive, all cognitive, mean¬
ing. But every scientist has to assume that his own think¬
ing about his field is more than a mere event or process
within that field; he has to believe that it is an event which
besides any causal relations it may have to other events has
the further relation of apprehending the nature of other
events. For this peculiar relation there is no room, no
ground of conceivability, in his causal world. His outlook
is so completely objective that he always leaves himself out
of the world he is studying (even when, as in psychology,
this is the world of mind) , unconsciously exempting him¬
self from the conditions he finds in or lays down for it.
His self-forgetting thinking seeks consistency of content
only, of object with object, ignoring the further need for
consistency with its claim to be true; and this further con1
sistency cannot be secured so long as the content sets forth
man as nothing but a part of the web of cause and effect.
The acid test of any concrete theory of man is that the
theorizer should be able to insert his theorizing activity
into the world he claims to delineate and explain. By this
test naturalism falls, and always must fall; the contradiction
is inherent in the very type of thinking naturalism repre¬
sents. The scientist’s world, or any merely naturalistic ex¬
tension of this, cannot hold a single scientist or a single
truth; it has room for nothing but events related spatially,
temporally, mathematically and causally, never cogni¬
tively. It is a contradiction to assert both that man is sim¬
ply a member of a spatio-temporal system, and that the
events in his mind that issue in the event of thinking this
are true. Take out the “ simply ” and the contradiction
disappears.

40 The Christian Understanding of Man

To retain, therefore, the distinction of truth and falsity
even for science alone we have to enlarge the scientific
world, and in enlarging it modify it deeply, for what is
added is not something of the same order but something
different in kind, not having even an analogy with the rest.
Knowing, the process that has to other events the unique
relation of apprehending them, is above the causal order,
in the sense that, although in it, it also knows it. Science
as knowing transcends the scientific world; its claim to be
true lifts it above the type of order its content depicts.
Deny the claim and the content is worthless; admit the
claim and the content is set in a larger context. Science
can explain things naturally, but never itself. It cannot be
true in a purely scientific world.

With all their rigid exclusion of values, then, from their
content , the natural sciences rest on a value claim. So does
all knowledge. By that claim we rise out of the world of
mere cause and effect. Nothing can be true unless this is
true. It is the hidden presupposition of all discourse. It
is also the minimal and irrefutable ground of the transcen¬
dental interpretation of man, the open gate which can
never be closed, so long as we claim to know at all, from the
causal to what I can only call the spiritual order. My prob¬
lem was science and I have kept to it, and shown that in
the light of it alone the naturalist philosophy falls. But
man is more than a thinker, and if it is a postulate of all
discourse that some of his activities have a noncausal
character, an undeniable value aspect, the possibility is vin¬
dicated that they may have further values, further trans¬
cendent properties, as integral to them as truth is. And
finally, the whole reality in which they stand, since it in¬
cludes beings who can know nothing about it and do
scarcely anything in it without postulating the spirituality
of their own relation to it, must be interpreted in the light

T. E. Jessop 41

of this remarkable inclusion. What includes man is not a
purely causal system; from this man as a valuating being
who cannot deny his values cannot be derived; therefore
the ground and significance of his nature must be a spirit¬
ual order, presumably even more dominant, through
knowledge and purpose and fiat, over the causal system
than man is showing himself to be.

THE DILEMMA OF HUMANITARIAN
MODERNISM

Robert L. Calhoun

THE DILEMMA OF HUMANITARIAN
MODERNISM

Let us first define our terms, roughly and concretely, by
pointing out the facts to which they refer. Modernism as
used here means neither a formal school of thought, nor a
vague whole that takes in all civilized life of recent date.
It means a particular recurrent mood of temper which in
essence is very old, which during the past two hundred
years has become more widespread than ever before, but
which has never been in any sense universal. Its keynote
is active, conscious preoccupation with the present, that is,
with affairs in the forefront of one’s own time, and com¬
parative disregard for their larger backgrounds. Its disre¬
gard extends both to supra-temporal being, the very
existence of which it commonly denies, and to the more
fateful and tragic aspects of temporality itself. The past,
especially the obstinate, urgent past embodied in living tra¬
dition, is disparaged; and the incessant sweep of temporal
process toward the future is treated as though it were, in all
essential respects, compliant to human understanding and
control. A tendency to glorify man and his works, though
not indeed universal, is typical of the modernistic temper.
A strong sense of emancipation pervades it; a sense of hav¬
ing outgrown traditional ideas and obligations by new
critical insight. Such insight may issue at the moment in
dogmatic rationalism, in positivism or in skepticism. But
in each case, the modernist takes pride in having cut away
spiritual bonds which else would hold the present and fu¬
ture to the past. This cutting of bonds affects also group

46 The Christian Understanding of Man

solidarity in the present, and modernism usually tends
away from the more exacting kinds of group loyalty toward
self-reliant individualism and cosmopolitan tolerance. All
this converges, for awhile, into an expansive kind of opti¬
mism, which may be thought of as modernism in its more
naive, “ healthy-minded ” phase. Among the most
thoughtful modernists, however, skepticism and disillusion
grow; and a phase of world weariness or pessimism sets in,
to be succeeded by a new period of more radical dogmatic
self-commitments.

Modernism has found voice more than once in Western
civilization: for example, in Greek cities of the fifth and
early fourth centuries b.c., when the Sophists thrived; in
Italian, French and English cities of the Renaissance, when
Ockhamist moderni and neo-pagan humanists made com¬
mon cause against traditionalism; and most widely of all in
the cities of Europe, the Americas and the Antipodes, from
the rationalistic-romantic eighteenth century until now.
This mood flourishes in urban settings where the tempo of
life is quick and artificially portioned out, and the works
of man are much in evidence: not ordinarily in rural parts
where nature sets a slower pace, tradition is stubborn, and
men are kept in mind of real time, continuous and inex-
plorable, by the treadmill of the seasons. It follows, more¬
over, on epochs of swift expansion, when discovery,
conquest and new cultural contacts have stretched old
habits of thought and conduct in such wise as to make room
for new ones; when expanding trade or improved produc¬
tion has brought new standards of living; and when a “ ris¬
ing class ” has made decisive headway against its traditional
masters. The actual drive forward is in each case imbued
with some strong, impulsive faith, of which the ensuing
mood is in part an afterglow. The mood centers, finally,
among the beneficiaries rather than the victims of such

Robert L. Calhoun

expansion; among the conquerors, the exploiters, the mem¬
bers of an insurgent class which has successfully con¬
solidated its new gains. In Periclean Athens, at the
Renaissance, and from the French Revolution to the first
World War, this has always been the bourgeoisie: city¬
dwelling merchants, bankers, professional people and other
middle-class folk who have gained power at the expense of
land-owning aristocracies. Since 1917, spokesmen for the
wage-workers have begun for the first time to reach the top.
Their fighting creed has been Marxism, and they may be ex¬
pected to develop a collectivistic, rather than the more in¬
dividualistic sort of modernism. The latter remains typi¬
cally a middle-class temper, whose social outlook in our day
is apt to be more or less definitely humanitarian but not
radical. Genuinely radical thought and behavior goes
better with a driving religious or quasi-religious faith not
yet cooled into modernism; such faith as original Chris¬
tianity or unrevised Marxism involves. Modernists indeed
often help to clear the way for a new revolution, by under¬
mining traditional beliefs and mores. Further, modernism
has in it always the seeds of its own disruption, and in that
sense also points beyond itself toward new radical commit¬
ments. But its own characteristic habit is moderation, not
revolutionism of any sort.

The term humanitarian as used here refers also to a cer¬
tain social temper. It means, however, not a recurring
phase of Western culture, but a perennial attitude which
has persisted through many successive cultural phases, and
characterized many diverse movements. Its keynote is
conscious effort to relieve the suffering and to promote the
welfare of less fortunate fellow men. Its forms are many
and its expressions range from calculated beneficence to
fervent reforming zeal. The more ardent sort of humani-
tarianism has often been a factor in radical movements, re-

48 The Christian Understanding of Man

ligious or secular; perhaps even defining at crucial points
their objectives and character. But we are concerned with
it here in a much less heroic form. The form of it now
most widely associated with modernism is the attitude dis¬
played, typically, by members of a favored group who are
not unwilling, within limits, to champion the cause of
those less favored, and to make some concessions in their
behalf. This does not imply readiness to give up one’s own
basic privileges, nor deliberately to help to displace an ex¬
isting social order which for the time guarantees them. It
does, however, imply awareness of human wants and possi¬
bilities outside one’s own special group. It implies, more¬
over, a comparatively high valuation of man and his earthly
life, to which religious and ethical insights, intellectual
criticism and scientific study, technological advance and
many other factors contribute.

In present-day humanitarian modernism this temper
has taken a characteristic and, as I shall hold, a very un¬
stable form. For some it has become a religion, “ the reli¬
gion of humanity ” in Comte’s sense; for others within and
without the churches, a substitute for religion. The for¬
mer group are, one may suspect, much the less numerous;
followers of Comte and other Positivists, members of the
various Ethical societies, certain pragmatists, religious hu¬
manists and other like groups of intellectuals. These are
the reflective minority in humanitarian modernism, and in
due course we shall examine a contemporary instance of
their understanding of man. But by far the greater num¬
ber who practise, roughly and not too consistently, “ the
service of man,” do little theorizing about it. They are
people in and out of the church whose belief in God and an
unseen world has grown dim or quite vanished; but who
have a diffuse faith in themselves, their neighbors, and the
manifest destiny of some sizable portion of mankind, and

Robert L. Calhoun

a desire to help make this world a better place. They sup¬
port the Red Cross, help fill community chests and engage
in many sorts of social welfare programs; vote by millions
for Mr. Roosevelt and the New Deal, or, alternatively, for
the League and limited sanctions, on behalf of the down¬
trodden; and in general try to lend a hand toward making
life more secure here and now for those who seem to them
most obviously in need of help. Their positions are not
clearly thought out, and their actions all too often are self¬
contradictory. But they exemplify well the strength and
the weakness of humanitarian modernism.

Its main strength resides, indeed, less in the theories of
intellectuals than in the habits of these laymen, who have
progressed beyond unquestioning conformity, but not up
to the level of sustained, systematic reflection and consis¬
tent behavior. We shall begin our analysis, therefore, with
that contemporary modernism which is mainly a fabric of
conduct and custom; proceed next to examine a typical
modernist theory; and consider finally the bearing of Chris¬
tian faith upon such ways of life and thought.

1. UNREFLECTED MODERNISM

(a) The more important roots of contemporary mod¬
ernism are social forces and these may be noted first.
Among them is organized Christianity. The social behav¬
ior patterns of the partly Christianized West result from a
long interchange of influence among Christian and non-
Christian ways of life, which a slowly growing tolerance has
permitted to develop side by side. To the rise of present
day modernism Christianity has contributed first through a
long and powerful, though by no means a clear and consis¬
tent, practical attack on archaic sources of fear and other
irrational compulsions to inhumane, destructive behavior.
That institutional Christianity has itself fostered an appall-

50 The Christian Understanding of Man

ing amount of “ demonry ” should not blind one to the
fact that its central gospel has been a message of deliverance
from all created powers of evil, and that through the dark¬
est ages of Western civilization the church and its sects
have in fact labored, if often with discouragingly dim vision
and dull tools, to bring order out of what they have be¬
lieved to be demon-inspired chaos. In fighting these un¬
seen devils, they have fought among other evil things the
divine pretensions of human tyrants, including many
holders of their own high offices. And against such claims
to divine right by despots, they have defended the worth
of ordinary human persons, with plentiful inconsistency
but with recurrent vigor. These influences are among the
practical roots of recent modernism.

But the larger part of its derivation is from sources not
specifically Christian. In the forefront are applied science
and technology, which have exorcized some devils more ef¬
fectually than could the church, and have made life in
many ways far easier, more various and more secure for the
economically fortunate than in any previous age of which
we know. At some points, notably in the development of
the medical sciences and their application to problems of
individual and public health, such improvements have
been made available in substantial measure for people of
all social groups. Advances like these, even though offset
by new perils from machinery in war and in peace, could
scarcely have failed to increase confidence in human knowl¬
edge and skill.

Modern capitalism, next, has contributed indirectly
through its encouragement of technology and of scientific
enterprise. Directly, by its achievement of large-scale pro¬
duction of goods through more systematic organization of
men and machines, it has added to the sense (albeit a partly
illusory sense) of security shared by the owners of business

Robert L. Calhoun

and industry and members of the “ upper middle class ” by
and large. It is among these groups that modernism has
always found most of its exemplars, chiefly in times of rela¬
tive prosperity and peace after conquest.

The spread of political democracy and of popular educa¬
tion has helped to extend the borders of those groups in
Western society whose members are at least nominally, and
in part actually, participants in the life of free men. Both
these movements have encouraged the growth, among
larger numbers of people, of an attitude of self-conscious
autonomy. Popular education, moreover, has opened the
minds of an unprecedented number to the influence of
modernistic ideas and theories, some of which will be no¬
ticed in a moment.

Finally a temporary dominance of the white peoples in
world trade and politics, made possible mainly by the tech¬
nological, economic and political processes just mentioned,
has furnished during four hundred years an important part
of the framework for the newest modernism. Beginning
with discovery of the New World and circumnavigation
of the Old, European and American imperialists have felt
free to exploit the vast territories thus opened up; and to
subjugate, for their own profit, the “ backward ” (i.e., un¬
mechanized) peoples whose homelands they have invaded.
So long as this white dominance continued without serious
challenge, even after it had become more obviously an eco¬
nomic compulsion than a high adventure, the sense of
power, security and hope enjoyed by considerable groups
in the West was augmented and bulwarked by another
factor, pride of race, sustained by what seemed for a time
the clearest practical proofs of superiority — military con¬
quest and economic success.

The more theoretical patterns of popular modernism
are complex and none too clear. One major part of these

52 The Christian Understanding of Man

also derived from Christian tradition. The idea of an
orderly universe, and the conception of a moral law im¬
planted in the nature of man, were transmitted from their
Greek sources to the modern world by Christian theolo¬
gians. The four “ natural ” virtues of Greek moral theory
(courage, self-control, wisdom, justice) and three “ super¬
natural ” virtues (faith, hope, love) have survived in like
manner, as the seven “ cardinal virtues ” of medieval mor¬
alists. In attenuated form, and without the corresponding
table of seven deadly sins (headed by pride!) , all these
persist in modernist ethics today. More basically still, the
appreciation of man recently in vogue has arisen in a cul¬
ture long undergirded by Christian belief in man’s son-
ship to God and God’s love for man, which set human
personality in a perspective unknown, so far as I am aware,
to pre-Christian thought. In short, modernist ideology
even in its most healthy-minded form is historically unin¬
telligible apart from Christian ethics and dogma.

Yet the prevailing thought forms of modernism, like its
practical behavior patterns, are derived mainly from other
than specifically Christian sources. One of these is the
growing popular stock of scientific and near-scientific ideas,
particularly such as bear most directly on the nature of man.
Garbled but still recognizable versions of the Darwinian
theory of human origins and evolution, the Mendelian
theory of transmission of characters from parent to off¬
spring and the Freudian theory of individual motivation
have become a part of our intellectual climate. These and
numerous others influence directly the thinking of many
laymen who have some first-hand acquaintance with them,
through reading or radio addresses or museum displays or
other public education programs. They influence indi¬
rectly a very much larger number, through infiltration into
popular journalism, fiction, propaganda and political de-

Robert L. Calhoun

bate, often as unexamined presuppositions. Not only do
they provide detailed categories for popular thought about
man, but their dissemination has helped to develop a gen¬
eral enthusiasm for “ science,” most often thought of, one
must suspect, as a wonderful device for securing human
ends rather than as an austere quest for truth. This tend¬
ency to glorify “ science ” is apt to issue in a romantic nat¬
uralism, in which nature (both human and extra-human)
is vaguely thought of as genial and complaisant to the well¬
being of men.

Two other convictions, more definitely philosophic in
origin, are current likewise. One springs from “ the idea
of progress,” developed since the Renaissance: the convic¬
tion, articulate or not, that we live in an open world whose
future will be indefinitely better than its past, and that so
long as the earth continues habitable, the way is clear for
advance through steadily growing and essentially adequate
human competence. The other springs in part from the
ethic of utilitarianism, though it finds a ready ally also in
easy-going common sense. To many who have never heard
the word utilitarianism in its technical meaning, “ the
greatest happiness of the greatest number ” seems a sensible
and usable formulation of an ethical goal to which all de¬
cent folk can subscribe. It must be construed, no doubt,
in conformity with another half thought out notion de¬
rived from popular science: “ the survival of the fittest,”
among whom oneself and one’s own group, nation, race —
economic class — naturally belong. The upshot is that
concern for one’s neighbors is acknowledged within limits
to have a claim upon one’s conduct as a member of a human
community. This is in general the outlook described
above as humanitarian. It associates itself, easily as we
have seen, with “ the religion of humanity ” in which man¬
kind is presented as a modern substitute for God.

54 The Christian Understanding of Man

(b) The understanding of man which prevails among
unreflective modernists is displayed primarily in practical
behavior, not in theoretic formulations. The behavior in
question, moreover, is not self-consistent, but such as to
suggest that contradictory estimates of man are operating
side by side in the conduct of both individuals and groups.
These estimates relate to man as animal, as social being,
and as person.

Man as animal is thought of more or less uncritically,
in lay circles, as at once a child of nature and its destined
lord. In contrast to the traditional view of man as sprung
directly from a supernatural source, the tendency now cur¬
rent among modernist laymen is to think of man as part
and parcel of the natural order, arisen in the midst of it,
not come down into it from above. Man thus viewed is not
“ the debris of an Adam ” created in the image of God and
fallen into ruin, but the hero of a long upward climb
which is still going on. The evolution which has exalted
him above the plants and simpler animals and put all
things under his feet is thought of usually in the simple,
dramatic terms of struggle for existence and survival of
the fittest. The word “ fittest ” carries, for the layman, a
moral connotation that is foreign to strict biological theory
but almost unavoidable in popular discourse. It seems to
him to follow, then, directly from the “ laws ” of organic
evolution that mankind, and more particularly his own
group among men, has proved title to whatever eminence
it now holds, and a clear right to any further gains it may
be able to achieve. These convictions take practical shape
in the serious cultivation of bodily health, mental self-
improvement, and practice of the strenuous life in many
forms. The more aggressive virtues tend to be exalted
above those which have less obvious competitive value.
Not only is success measured in terms of prestige, but a new

Robert L. Calhoun

sort of justification for this ancient prejudice is now read
off directly from the nature of animal life itself.

But if modern man thinks of himself as a child of nature,
and finds his right in its laws, he thinks of himself also
as its master, potentially and in large part actually. Francis
Bacon’s word, “ Knowledge is power,” fits the modernist
mood in our day as well as at the Renaissance; with the dif¬
ference that we now have accessible an immensely greater
body of systematized knowledge, and the concrete results
of its application. If some find these results not funda¬
mentally reassuring, the unreflective modernist is not of
their number. To him the ultimate ascendancy of that
part of mankind with which he identifies himself seems
assured.

What this part is, is determined mainly by the culture
in which he has grown up. Just as man the animal is a
child of nature, so man the social being comes to birth and
is nurtured within a folk or community which is at once
his home for life and, in a quite literal sense, the parent
for and against whose authority he must exert his own will
if he is to become a mature self. Loyalty to the social
order in which one is born and reared may take either a
mainly emotional or a critical intellectualized form. The
investment of civic status with emotion-stirring religious
sanctions is as old, presumably, as civilization. It wanes
as rationalism grows, but when human reason suffers tem¬
porary bankruptcy, as may happen under the stresses of un¬
relieved misfortune, folk worship is apt to be revived with
devastating force. The social loyalty of modernists, need¬
less to say, is normally of the more critical type. Their
membership in a community and their sharing of its folk¬
ways are tempered by recognition that folkways change,
and persuasion that they can and should be changed for the
better, through the efforts of individuals and groups within

56 The Christian Understanding of Man

society. Accordingly, they have supported major reform
movements against chattel slavery, cruel treatment of crim¬
inals and of psychopathic patients, political tyranny, eco¬
nomic inequity and war. Patriotism means for them, ex¬
cept when they are carried away by social pressure, a
discriminating loyalty which expects the future to be better
than the past. They are distinctly more at home in the at¬
mosphere of rational discussion and adjustment than when
the gales of archaic passion are rising.

Their loyalty is directed perhaps most characteristically
toward human beings as persons, who are felt to be of in¬
trinsic worth, in some sense ends in themselves. As Kant
used this phrase, it signalized his reasoned conviction that
man’s essential being is supra- temporal. In modernist
hands, it has become a way of voicing a practical concern
for man’s present and future well-being within the time
order. This concern gets expression, on the one hand, in
philanthropic activities which seek amelioration of life for
the less favored among the present generation. Such activ¬
ities are the outcome, needless to say, of very mixed mo¬
tives, some merely habitual, some prudential, some still
more crudely egoistic. There is no way of measuring the
proportion in which genuine concern for the less fortunate
just because they are human persons, and therefore deserve
a chance to live normally, is present. In some instances it
may be a considerable factor, in others a very small factor
indeed. But where present at all — and my impression is
that by and large it is by no means negligible — it involves
in so far a high practical valuation of man.

An especially notable modern tendency is the concentra¬
tion of effort on the welfare of children and youth; in es¬
sence an attempt to insure human well-being in the future
which shall surpass that of the present and past. Again
motives are mixed, but at least some of the behavior which

Robert L. Calhoun

results is unmistakable in its intent. Thus, there is grow¬
ing advocacy and practice of birth control among thought¬
ful people who do not shirk parenthood, but who seek to
provide for their children as good a chance as possible for
healthy life before and after birth. A dominant note in the
vigorous modernist movements for educational reform has
been stress on the need for “ child-centered ” rather than
book-centered schools, and for the extension of opportu¬
nities for learning to all children and youth who can profit
by them, with special provision for those who are “ back¬
ward ” or subnormal. This note is echoed in the familiar
present stress laid both by parents and by others upon adult
responsibility to children and youth, reversing the long
dominant patriarchal emphasis of children’s responsibility
to their elders. The very excesses to which these recent
tendencies have been carried serve to underscore the point
of chief interest here: the widespread eagerness to provide
for a better future, which children and children’s children,
not men and women of the present, are to enjoy. However
utopian, nay illusory, such eagerness may seem, in the light
of ominous present realities, and however defective may
be its chosen methods, it embodies an authentic and valu¬
able kind of self-transcendence. In its exaltation of per¬
sonality, and its effort to adapt institutional patterns to
human needs, modernism makes its closest approach to
Christian faith. Its mistake is in taking human persons as
ultimate.

2. PRAGMATISM AS AN EXAMPLE OF
MODERNISTIC PHILOSOPHY

Among the reflective minority of modernists, philo¬
sophic labels and emphases differ considerably. Perhaps
the keenest of all become skeptics or pessimists who exem¬
plify modernist thinking in process of dissolution before

58 The Christian Understanding of Man

the onset of a new dogmatism. Among the rest, for whom
modernism is still unspoiled, certain common tendencies
of thought are easily recognized. The most obvious is a
strong tendency to seek principles of explanation within,
rather than beyond, what is empirically given. This means
preference for monism rather than dualism, immanent-
ism rather than belief in transcendent reality, optimism or
meliorism instead of pessimism, gnostic assurance rather
than doubt-harrowed faith. Such thought usually takes
one of three main directions: metaphysical idealism of an
oversimplified sort which minimizes the tragedy of exist¬
ence; romantic naturalism; and positivism or “ radical
empiricism ” which oscillates between naturalistic and hu¬
manistic poles. Pragmatism is a form of this third alterna¬
tive, developed mainly in the United States. Its founders
and framers include, in America, the logician Charles
Peirce, the psychologist William James, the social philoso¬
pher George Mead, and the educator John Dewey; and
its proponents now number a vigorous company of
younger men all over this country, both in the field of
philosophy and in the related fields of education and the
social studies.

(a) As the name suggests, instrumentalism or pragma¬
tism claims affinity with the life of action, and disparages
the looker-on. Homo faber is its hero, and “ learning by
doing ” one of its watchwords. Traditional philosophy, it
holds, has been mostly pretentious mythology, laying claim
to knowledge value which it has not possessed. The genu¬
ine philosopher must take his cue from the common sense
of men who get work done, instead of pretending to think
high thoughts. Pragmatism professes to align itself, in
short, with homespun practical activity as against abstract
theory and wishful fancy, and for progressive experimenta¬
tion as against rehearsal of sacrosanct tradition.

Robert L. Calhoun

Among the philosophic theories in the textbooks, there
are several with which pragmatism has obvious affinity.
It shares the antimetaphysical bias and the social emphasis
of Comtean positivism, and the ethical temper of English
Utilitarian thought. Herbert Spencer’s combination of
these tendencies with evolutionism produced what may be
the nearest European analogue to American pragmatism,
but he did not share the distinctive pragmatic conception
of truth as successful action. Hegelian idealism was
Dewey’s point of departure, and from it he set out — some¬
what as Marx did — to find a more concrete program for
action, without losing the sense of a fluid wholeness of all
things which Hegel’s system so vividly conveys. Marxism
itself, as American interpreters are making plain, has a
family likeness to pragmatism in that both are activist phi¬
losophies of strongly monistic temper; though Marxism
has a drastic sense of reality which pragmatism often does
not display. Finally, the current tendency to “ existential
thinking ” with its clear-cut stress on decision or act as in¬
dispensable to knowing, repeats in another key the prag¬
matic insistence that thinking is integral to action. But all
these are, in the main, analogies to rather than sources of
pragmatism, which is itself a fresh movement, a living gos¬
pel, rather than a systematic philosophy in the classical
sense.

More properly to be accounted sources of this movement
are certain nineteenth century trends in biology and psy¬
chology. The more exact physical sciences, and especially
the mathematical disciplines which define their basic out¬
look, have never figured much in pragmatist thought.
Neither have the recent applications of mathematical anal¬
ysis in biochemistry, biophysics and genetics, nor the re¬
cent studies of behavior in terms of conditioned reflexes
(a fresh version of associationism) . The more precise

60 The Christian Understanding of Man

kinds of analysis and the more atomistic conceptions of
reality are out of key with the genius of pragmatism. On
the other hand, the importance of Darwinian biology and
functional psychology for its development can hardly be
overstated. To pragmatists, both these movements have
seemed to break away, in the name of science itself, from
the outgrown notions of fixed forms and logical or me¬
chanical determinateness; and to lay primary stress on pro¬
cess, fluid development, novelty, concrete becoming.
Both, moreover, have conspired to make thinking itself
appear in a new light: as a process primarily instrumental
to the survival of a growing organism or an evolving spe¬
cies, in interaction with a variable environment. “ The in¬
fluence of Darwin on philosophy ” has been felt at many
points but nowhere more obviously nor more fundamen¬
tally than in the rise of American pragmatism.

A still more concrete source of the movement is the half
ideal, half actual fabric of American democracy and educa¬
tional reform. The temper of pragmatism, indeed, cannot
be understood at all without reference to what has been
called “ the American dream ” — the hope for a common¬
wealth of individual freemen. As interpreted by Dewey
and Mead, a democratic order is one in which the individ¬
ual lives and has his being wholly within the community,
while the community is constituted and molded by the
living of its individual members. In this view economic
and political liberalism combine with vigorous, though
mostly conventional, moral idealism and social meliorism.

Closely related to this interest in a democratic common¬
wealth is a characteristic, determining interest in educa¬
tional aims and procedures. The catch-phrase: “ Educa¬
tion for democracy, and democracy in education,” gives
voice to a central aim of the pragmatic movement. Indeed,
the movement in its present phase might be regarded, not

Robert L. Calhoun

unjustly, as concerned above all with the practical task of
inducting children and young people into a better and
better corporate life. John Dewey, who has dominated the
movement since James’ death, is first of all an educator of
originality, boldness and persuasive power. His thought
presupposes the nineteenth-century development of sense
realism in educational theory, and carries much further
its stress on manipulative behavior and, more generally,
on activity in contrast to receptivity. Far more than the
older education, it exalts the educative value of actual par¬
ticipation in social enterprises, both in the schoolroom and
out of it. From beginning to end, the learning process is
conceived and practised as a social adventure, part and
parcel of the whole life of the community and of mankind.

The theory of pragmatism, thus rooted, may be charac¬
terized roughly by reference to three major tenets.

(1) First and most basic is a distinctive theory of knowl¬
edge, to which “ experimental logic ” is the key. All genu¬
ine thinking is a grapple with concrete problems, which
arise as obstacles to action. Concepts and judgments are
plans of attack on such obstacles, nascent movements to
free the temporarily impeded drive toward desired objec¬
tives. The “ meaning ” of a concept and the “ truth ” of a
judgment can be significantly defined only within the
limits of such experimental behavior, actual or possible.
A concept always “ means ” some experienceable datum
toward which (or away from which) it serves to direct the
activity of the questioning organism. It never “ means ”
some extra-experimental reality. A judgment is “ true ”
when, and just in so far as, the overt activity in which it
issues is successful in surmounting the obstacle and achiev¬
ing the desired experience. Such practical verification is
truth, which is always relative to a particular concrete situ¬
ation, and always a practical characteristic of behavior,

62 The Christian Understanding of Man

rather than an abstract, theoretic character of “ pure
thought.”

This tenet is so fundamental as to deserve some further
comment. Obviously it involves high valuation of sense
experience and manipulative activity. Hence the famil¬
iar labels “ experimentalism ” and “ operational philoso¬
phy.” It is not merely sense empiricism, nor physical
behaviorism, but it has close affinity with both. Abstract
logic, contemplative intuition and the forms or essences
usually claimed as their objects, are disparaged by prag¬
matists, as in no proper and distinctive sense modes of cog¬
nition. Likewise, belief which affirms the existence or
predicates a given character, of some supposed reality out¬
side the range of what can be experienced, is rejected as
unverifiable and meaningless. It is usual among prag¬
matists to speak of their theory of knowledge as scientific,
in contrast to what they regard as empty speculative flights
of the classical philosophies. They even equate their
theory, often enough, with “ the scientific method,” which
alone can provide significant knowledge of (i.e. practically
testable and exploitable adjustment within) the realm of
experience. By “ the scientific method,” however, they
usually mean something much more like the rough and
ready experimentalism of common sense than like the pre¬
cise analytic, deductive procedure eulogized by Descartes,
and practised by leaders in the more exact sciences, from
Galileo to Weyl and Schrodinger, as an indispensable part
of the intricate techniques which they know as scientific
method. The desire of pragmatism to be scientific, and at
the same time to employ concrete rather than abstract pro¬
cedures, leads directly to the disparagement of both formal
logic and faith referred to above.

(2) A second major tenet is lively confidence in man
as arbiter of his own destiny. Pessimistic views of man-

Robert L. Calhoun 63

kind, whether the logical, materialistic or skeptical, are re¬
jected, and “ the idea of progress ” strongly championed.
Man is thought able to change both his environment and
himself, beyond any specifiable limit, so as to resolve frus¬
trations that block, for a time, the free run of instinctive
and habitual behavior. This is the work of “ creative in¬
telligence,” which acts in the experimental manner just
discussed, and which can be developed by proper educa¬
tion to levels as yet unachieved. Such education must be
at once intellectual and moral, individual and social, con¬
ducted wholly within the concrete flow of “ experience.”
Whether human experience is itself the whole of reality,
or whether it involves interaction between human beings
and an environment larger than all that they directly ex¬
perience at any time, is a question with which Dewey’s
following, in particular, has never clearly come to grips.
Dewey himself has written now in the vein of subjectivism,
now in that of a somewhat vague realism. But in any
event, there is no ambiguity about his confidence in man.

(3) A third characteristic of pragmatism goes with this
vagueness about external reality: a strong bias toward
metaphysical simplicity. Its preference, indeed, would
be not to bother with metaphysical problems at all. But
since this sort of issue cannot be wholly avoided, the alter¬
native is chosen which prima facie is the simplest possible,
a one-story metaphysic in which everything is treated as
some variant of an epicene stuff called “ pure experience.”
Dualisms of subject and object, mind and body, value and
fact, God and the world, are smoothed out or entirely dis¬
carded. There is especially vehement and sustained po¬
lemic against what is called, somewhat loosely, “ the super¬
natural.” This may mean a transcendent God, timeless
forms, or noumenal minds, souls or spirits. Traditional
theology is condemned as irrational, unscientific, and anti-

64 The Christian Understanding of Man

social, somewhat in the tone of familiar Marxist discourse
on “ the opium of the people.” But whereas Marxism re¬
jects all religion, including the religious attitude as such,
pragmatic humanists are more likely to reject only that sort
of religion which points beyond nature to God. The re¬
ligious attitude, conceived as devotion to whatever within
nature (including man) works most strongly for the in¬
crease of human welfare, they warmly affirm.

“ Pure experience,” then, is a universal matrix, coex¬
tensive with nature or reality, within which all particulars
arise and pass away. It is described as though having at
once the vivid concreteness of individual experiences and
the generality of a public environment; everywhere fluent,
and in the fullest sense continuous. In the midst of it the
human race arises, without break of any kind, and within
the race individuals, each fully continuous with his cul¬
tural and physical milieu. All is in flux. Physis, not ousia,
is the universal reality. The notion of substance is dis¬
carded, as a vestige of outgrown scholastic metaphysics.
Fixed forms — even logical or mathematical forms — are
acknowledged only as methodological fictions or instru¬
mental concepts which, if taken as referring to permanent
objective entities, become a fruitful source of illusion.
There are, indeed, relatively long-enduring arrangements
in the flux of experience, but no unchanging forms any¬
where. Ideals of all sorts arise in the stream, are part of it,
and having their turns as plans of action, pass on with all
else that perpetually perishes. The present is the only
locus of actuality; a better future, imaginable now, the only
proper goal of knowledge and action. Except as tran¬
scribed into present experience, and continually modified
into an ever new present, the past is null. Eternity is a
meaningless word.

(b) Man like everything else is a part of this flux. In the

Robert L. Calhoun

course of organic evolution, man the animal emerges in
essentially the same way as any other species. This is
simply accepted as a fact, not explained, nor discussed in
detail. Like other animals, men respond to environmental
stimuli in various instinctive ways, driven by natural hun¬
gers. In the process, both the environment and the human
organisms are changed. The environment is used and
made more useful; while within human organisms, adap¬
tive behavior brings about the growth of habit systems in
which man’s responses are schematized, and gain in ease
and precision. Thus far we are concerned with the “ bio¬
logic individual,” in the midst of a biologic social group.

Among the habits which men, and many other animals,
develop are more or less complicated habits of gesturing,
and signaling, by cries, grimaces and other movements. It
is decisive for man’s development that the signals which
he exchanges with his fellows do not remain mere gestures
or signs, but become true symbols, to which the one who
initiates them and the one to whom they are addressed may
respond in essentially the same way. The snarl of an angry
dog will guide the behavior of his intended victim, but not
in the same way his own. He reacts to the behavior of the
other dog, not to his own. Or at least not in the same way.
He is not, for example, frightened by his own growl. But
the word spoken by a human animal, able to become a hu¬
man self, serves not merely to guide his neighbor’s reac¬
tions but to shape his own also. He responds internally
to his own gesture, as his neighbor is to respond to it overtly;
thus himself “ taking the role of the other ” in the course of
his own symbolic behavior. The “ meaning ” of any such
gesture is simply the acts or portions of acts which it serves
to stimulate; and when these responses are prompted not
only in one party to the gesture but in both, the gesture
becomes not merely a signal but a symbol. In such inter-

66 The Christian Understanding of Man

course, the meanings of words and other gestures become
“ internalized ” in the individuals who employ them, and
these individuals become selves, personae , performers of
roles; in short, human persons. For what we mean by a
person is precisely one who is able to “ put himself in the
place of another.”

Within the complete stimulus-response cycle which we
call an act, a subjective or private moment thus becomes
distinguishable from the objective or public moment of
overt action. The subjective moment is the relatively in¬
choate, incipient phase of readiness and of nascent activity
which issues in the completed, eventually objective action.
Subjectively, the individual “ knows what he is about to
do,” in the sense that through “ internalized ” symbolic
stimuli the projected action, though still future, controls
his present behavior. He takes now, anticipatorily, the
role of the one (viz. himself) who will shortly perform the
action, and in some measure also the roles of those who will
respond to it. But this is to be conscious , to have mind, to
be a self. And the group within which behavior of this
sort has emerged is no longer a merely biologic, but a hu¬
man social group, made up of persons or selves, who come
to be and have their being only within such a group.

Their intelligence, further, is creative at the level of
human intercourse, in the sense that it makes possible in¬
tentional modifications both of one’s environment and of
one’s own behavior patterns. The animal modifies its en¬
vironment, but not with deliberate foresight; and its own
behavior patterns are relatively fixed in instinctive chains
and habit systems. Man can change both environment and
self with deliberate intent. The plans which guide such
intended change are called concepts or ideals; and they are
controlled by experienced values, i.e., those characteristics
of objects which satisfy human interests. In each human

Robert L. Calhoun

group, the moral task of each self is to realize progressively
in successive concrete situations the utmost attainable
range and sum of values. This involves that each self must
take, subjectively, the roles of other selves, and identify
himself overtly with those processes of change which make
toward the harmonization of many interests, of many per¬
sons. The goal is progressive achievement of socially con¬
ditioned satisfactions for as many of these as possible.

In this continuing moral campaign for the good life, par¬
ticular objectives may be thought of as moments of aes¬
thetic satisfaction. Such moments are lulls in the strenuous
quest, when competing interests are momentarily harmo¬
nized in the presence of some inclusive systems of values or
satisfactions, and the seeker enjoys a temporary “ consum¬
mation.” Like every other finite experience, this sort of
interlude is wholly within the stream of natural events.
The refreshment which it provides can be accounted for
as the outcome of an orderly release of energies, a resolu¬
tion of tensions within the organism. It leads on into fur¬
ther vital activity, and the achievement of further advances
in the pursuit of individual and social satisfactions.

The role of creative intelligence is kept to the fore. By
selection and manipulation, each man determines which
parts of his environment shall condition most directly his
behavior, which is to say that he himself continuously “ cre¬
ates ” his own “ effective environment.” Yet in the long
run it is true, and now and again deserves recognition, that
this is possible only because in the total environment of
each person there are sources of satisfaction which can be
selected, and processes other than his own efforts through
which such values are being realized. These value-making
processes also are wholly within the natural order. Indeed,
for most practical purposes, one may say they are wholly
within the range of human social living. To these, and to

68 The Christian Understanding of Man

the furtherance of their working, in the transformation of
imagined or ideal into actual values, each man owes alle¬
giance; all the more when practice of such allegiance is
costly to himself. Such devotion not to some illusory tran¬
scendent deity, but to the concrete social and other natural
values, and value-achieving processes, constitutes the reli¬
gious attitude, the only one which, for a convinced prag¬
matic humanist, is valid.

3. CHRISTIAN FAITH AND HUMANITARIAN MODERNISM

To pass from such high-minded naturalism to the Chris¬
tian understanding of man is to move into additional
dimensions of belief. Much in what is affirmed by pragma¬
tism, and by the unreflective modernism to which it gives
one sort of voice, can be affirmed also by a contemporary
Christian, sometimes in frank divergence from views often
maintained hitherto in the name of Christianity. But such
affirmations, when set in the frame of Christian faith, take
on meanings beyond any for which naturalism has room.
Moreover, at certain points the affirmations of Christian
faith contradict both assertions and denials of naturalistic
and humanistic modernism. Christian faith rejects the
view that nature is ultimate; that man is self-sufficient; that
culture is the supreme object of loyalty, and the ground of
human salvation. It rejects with equal stubbornness the
humanism which makes a god of human personality, and
the inhumane primitivism which holds human personality
in contempt.

The base line upon which all these agreements and dif¬
ferences converge is the boundary between ways of life and
thought which lay primary stress upon things that are seen,
and those which lay primary stress upon things that are not
seen. Modernism of all varieties belongs to the first class,
Christianity to the second. For modernism, the center of

Robert L. Calhoun

gravity for human life and thought is wholly within the
range of human experience; for Christianity it is outside
that range, though crucially related to it.

This basic distinction has many particular aspects.
Thus, in its theory of knowledge modernism tends to posi¬
tivism and gnosticism, Christianity to faith-realism. The
one contents itself with the panorama of current events,
and speaks or acts as though in knowing these, one can
know all that is of importance for human life. The other
affirms that even if all phenomena were known by man, and
nothing beyond these, what is most important of all would
remain unknown; and further, that this most important
Reality can never be fully known by man, as one knows a
color or a pain, but partially at best, by faith, or by reason
continuously grounded in an act of faith. Modernism
tends to narrow men’s attention to the immediate present
and proximate future. Christianity tries to keep men
aware of all history as a living movement in time, which at
every moment points beyond itself to what is eternal, and
has its significance fundamentally in that relationship.
Modernism regards nature as ultimate and self-explana¬
tory; human culture and personality as given natural facts.
Christianity declares that nature, culture and personality
are problems, not solutions; and that all of them must find
theoretic and practical solution, if at all, through faith in
a sovereign God.

The essential difference between Christian faith and
modernism, whether inside or outside the nominally Chris¬
tian churches and sects, is a difference of actual perspective
or orientation. This difference is decisive, and irreconcil¬
able except through essential change in one or the other.
But it should not require anathemas nor bloodless wars of
extermination from either side. In detailed content and
aims, they have much ground for common understanding.

70 The Christian Understanding of Man

and much to learn from each other. What was true of
Christianity with respect to Greek philosophy, and with
respect to Avicennism, is true of Christianity with respect
to the modernism of our day. We are called on to find once
more, without compromising the Christian perspective, a
way both to learn from high-minded non-Christians, and
to confront them with a reasoned faith in which their own
best insights and impulses may find more room than mod¬
ernism as such can provide.

This means, in the first place, ungrudging acknowledg¬
ment of the positive gains for human life which modernism
has fostered. It must be said by Christian thinkers in the
most forthright manner that the explicit turning of men’s
attention from ultimate to proximate aspects of reality, in
the manner of the special sciences, is one indispensable fac¬
tor in man’s laborious quest after truth and enlightened
living. When concern with first and final causes crowds
out due attention to particular details, our whole outlook
is falsified. Faith in God cannot take the place of patient
search for understanding of nature and man, nor of pains¬
taking technical procedures through which detailed knowl¬
edge is put to work. Science and technology are certainly
not enough, but they are indispensable: and hitherto mod¬
ernism, not traditional Christianity, has most candidly
welcomed them. On the side of theory, moreover, the
pragmatic insistence on the inseparability of thinking and
experimental living is a wholesome, though an exaggerated
and confused, protest against the academic character of
much philosophy, and of much Christian theology. It is a
protest paralleled, in the very different key of faith-realism,
by well known proponents of “ existential thinking.”
Their way of treating the factor of decision in knowing is
more congenial to Christian faith than the way of pragma¬
tism, which is too fluent and positivistic, but the latter has

Robert L. Calhoun

at least the merit of underlining a real defect in abstract
speculation — its loss of contact with actuality.

At the same time, while giving full credit for sound em¬
phasis in modernism, it must be said no less plainly that its
purview is too narrow and its perspective false. This is
true both of frankly non-Christian thought, and of these
forms of liberalism and of “ the social gospel ” within the
churches which identify the Kingdom of God with a cul¬
tural ideal or an improved social order. In trying to be
realistic about religious tradition, modernism becomes un¬
realistic about man. It sees him predominantly if not ex¬
clusively as a “ cultured ” being, able to live his life fully
within the more decorous precincts of current civilization,
which collectively are often romanticized into a genial sort
of Magna Mater. It tends to forget, in spite of verbal
denials, that culture no more than nature is unambigu¬
ously good, either actually or potentially; and that even
less than nature can it lay claim to ultimateness of being.
Culture is itself floated on human cravings, aspirations
and habits which emerge from nature, in response to
stimuli partly natural, partly cultural, and partly (in the
case of logical and ethical norms, at least) supernatural and
supra-cultural. Man cannot live by culture alone. His
fierce, deep-seated drives require at once more ample scope
and more powerful discipline than culture by itself can
provide. This Christian faith sees far more clearly than
modernism, and by so much is more realistic about man.
It sees him as at once less admirable in his present actuality,
and more profound in his ultimate significance, than mod¬
ernism takes him to be.

First of all, man the animal is, for Christian faith, a
creature responsible to his Creator. This is not a contra¬
diction but a deepening of one view by another. Man is
an animal. So far as the tested findings of biologists and

72 The Christian Understanding of Man

psychologists go, concerning the observable phenomena of
human origins, behavior and development, taken as phe¬
nomena subject to further interpretation, Christian faith
has no tenable ground for dissent. No less than modern¬
ism, it will be well advised to learn from the scientists what
they have to say about man wie er geht und steht, and to
demand for them the utmost freedom to prosecute their
work in their own way. Censorship of scientific inquiry
by political or ecclesiastical pressure should be resented as
hotly by Christians as by any modernist. Moreover, dis¬
paragement of what scientists have to say about man within
the range of their special competence, as though it added
nothing of real importance to our understanding of our¬
selves, is a “ sin against the holy spirit of truth.” If in any
meaningful sense the heavens declare the glory of God his
ways are to be discerned no less definitely in the workings
of germ plasm or of reflex arcs, if these are described with
comparable clarity and objectivity. This implies that the
scientist’s findings must be freed from subjection to ex¬
traneous coercions, religious or irreligious; and from un¬
criticized assumptions covertly smuggled in by the scien¬
tists themselves. It is with such extra-scientific dogma, not
with a clearly delimited biological or psychological theory,
however abstract or mechanistic in method, that Christian
faith must conflict. As regards modernism, it is at the point
of the modernist’s tendency to make positivism itself a creed
that the Christian understanding of man as animal de¬
mands more room, and flatly rejects the modernist dogma.

For man the animal is unable, as plain matter of fact,
to live simply in the present. Perhaps a cow does; we have
no way of knowing. But a man does not. He is aware of
time, past and future as well as present. He is haunted by
norms to which, often in contradiction of present desire,
he tries to measure up. His animality is shot through with

Robert L. Calhoun

felt responsibility, and his life is continually in unstable
equilibrium, as though its center of gravity were outside
every present moment. To regard such a being as com¬
pletely describable in terms of phenomena is to miss the
most distinctive thing about him: his being haunted by
what seems a perpetual summons from beyond every pres¬
ent appearance. To show how one phenomenal segment
of his life is connected with other like segments is, we have
said, necessary to any extensive understanding of his exist¬
ence; but such descriptive explanation can never be
sufficient.

There is needed further an explanation which pierces
through the stream of appearances, in act rather than by
observation; which seeks to enact with insight and in that
sense to understand the more ultimate truth about man.
Such enacted understanding is the Christian belief that
man, this animal, is a responsible creature dependent for
his being and his worth upon God. In response to God’s
creative word he has emerged from the stream of organic
evolution, with ears partly though imperfectly attuned to
God’s continuing summons, which will not let him rest.
That summons is partly conveyed, though by no means
automatically interpreted, through the processes that go on
within man, and in nature around him; which have their
ultimate meaning not simply as being themselves, but as
being vehicles for the divine word to which man is not
merely subjected but responsible , having therein his dis¬
tinctive status as man.

A corresponding difference of perspective sets off the
Christian belief about man as social being. Modernism
tends to deal with culture and with history in the same
manner as with physical nature, regarding it as self-explana¬
tory, and a sufficient frame of reference for the behavior
of human persons. It is significant and typical that Pro-

74 The Christian Understanding of Man

fessor Mead who has given more than usually close atten¬
tion to the emergence of human selves, is baffled by the
problem whether self or society is prior, and yet is not
embarrassed by that fact — indeed, appears not to notice it.
He speaks with equal ease of human selves as able to
emerge only within a human society, and of distinctive
human society as produced only by human selves. The
facts of selfhood and social community are simply accepted
as given, and sociological and psychological descriptions or
analyses are offered without apparent misgiving as suffi¬
cient explanations of the way men live. This applies both
to human achievement and to human shortcomings. The
former are thought of as born and nourished wholly by an
existing culture. In so far as this culture comes to partial
self-consciousness, it is able to assume responsibility for
directing its own further development through education
and other social procedures. Thus only are human
achievements effected and improvements made, and only
within this context do ideals have any status. Human
shortcomings, on the other hand, are attributed simply to
individual ineptitudes and to cultural lag, both of which
are regrettable, but definitely remediable by rightly di¬
rected human efforts.

“ Creative intelligence,” in short, is the sufficient key to
human reformation as well as to control of physical nature.
The criteria for such improvement also are to be found
wholly within the range of social experience, in terms of
the harmonizing of human desires and their satisfactions.
Perfect permanent harmony is not to be expected, but pro¬
gressive harmonization is at once desirable and feasible:
the true goal of intelligent moral effort.

Modern Elijahs, very jealous for the God of hosts, are
apt to make again Elijah’s mistake and suppose that to be
Christian must mean to reject all this with execration.

Robert L. Calhoun

The truth is, I think, that as regards detailed insights,
hopes and social ideals, the greater part of humanitarian
modernism at its best should be cherished by contemporary
Christians, without conceding its ultimate perspective. In
spite of the closest agreement in detail, which should be
cultivated and not denied, there must remain a profound
divergence of meaning, or ultimate reference, that per¬
vades all the details of these respective ways of life. For
modernism, human society is ultimate and human ills are
curable by it. For Christian faith, man is not simply the
more or less inept child of a culture. He is that, no doubt.
But far more ominously he is, individually and collectively,
a sinner against the eternal word of God. The frame of
reference for his conduct is not merely the behavior pat¬
terns of an existing culture, but the fabric of a world order
in which all cultures are grounded, and which is itself
continuously molded by God’s will. Against this fabric
not only individuals and groups, but whole cultures stand
under judgment, and in so far as they fail grossly to meet
its demands, whether by overt rebellion or merely through
inertia, they die.

The requirement which thus lies upon men is not simply
the constraint of stubborn facts, but the obligation implicit
in worth and in the liability of persons to its claims. Such
obligation differs from factual compulsion (from which it
is, of course, never entirely separate) in that the response
for which it calls is not a forced surrender but a voluntary
devotion, in which the responding self is not constricted
but fulfilled, or realized. The summons is, in principle,
a demand for willingness to lose one’s life for the Kingdom
of God, and thus to find it. It is a call to the highest good
of which man is capable; to the fulfilment, not the destruc¬
tion, of his root nature, and the satisfaction of his most dis¬
tinctive hungers. For Christian faith, the call to such

76 The Christian Understanding of Man

devotion comes centrally through Jesus Christ, and the
voice that speaks most clearly in his life and death is trusted,
in Christian living, as the voice of God. To the more
superficial, so-called “ natural ” inclinations of men (in¬
cluding Christians) toward self-indulgence and self-glori¬
fication, such a call is either unintelligible or a positive
affront, and the usual response is apathy or refusal. This
is sin. It is not merely to reject some demand or habit
pattern of society. This, though entitled to its own proper
meed of love and devotion, is always partly and in some
respects radically of another mind than the mind of Jesus
Christ. To sin is not then simply to disobey society but
to contradict the will of God, which is the deepest law of
man’s own being.

The conflicts which arise thence are among the most
profound and most destructive with which we have to cope
in ourselves. Not merely pain, nor frustration of partic¬
ular desires, nor collision of individual wills, nor even
social conflicts between competing groups. These can be
endured, inside fairly wide limits, without essential disin¬
tegration of human selves; and within somewhat narrower
limits, they can even be regarded as conducive to growth
toward maturity. Of the really disruptive processes which
break down human selfhood, some are disasters which men
suffer but do not cause — deterioration of brain cells, star¬
vation of bodies and minds, overloading of the weak in the
natural struggle for existence; but some spring directly
from the self-contradiction which is sin — man’s vain
attempt to deny his own humanity by denying his respon¬
sibility to God. Thence arise the destructive tensions
within individual selves, whose symptoms are indecision,
vacillation, cowardice, anxiety and moral anguish; or, still
worse, acquired cruelty and brutal callousness. Thence
arise also, in large part, the insidious treacheries, prides

Robert L. Calhoun

and fears which take shape in the oppression of weaker
groups by stronger; and as the stress of group conflict in¬
creases, issue in the ghastly inhumanities of despotism and
war. It is this profound self-contradiction in man, this
denial of the responsibility which makes him human, that
breaks down selves and societies from within. Natural
disasters can be weathered, human struggle endured and
turned to account, so long as men are true to themselves
by acknowledging claims superior to their own wills. But
when irresponsibility becomes the rule, both selves and
societies disintegrate.

Such denial is at once an act and a disposition, individual
and communal. It is the disposition of every infant, every
adult, every social group (including the organized
churches and sects) , and every culture to affirm its own
wants and will as ultimate. It is also each particular deci¬
sion which expresses and confirms this tendency. Mankind
and every human self is “ fallen ” not from some original
perfection (which no creature has ever had) , but simply
into the plight of selfhood responsible yet not truly respon¬
sive to God. This “ fall ” is at once a rise from and a lapse
below animal innocence. Other animals cannot be “ de¬
monic.” Men and their cultures not only can, but con¬
tinually become so in fact. In failing or refusing to ac¬
knowledge the sovereignty of God, they deny their own
nature as human, and condemn themselves thereby to in¬
ner conflict, incurable by anything they themselves can do,
which tends continually to their own destruction.

This demonic tendency in human life modernism can
neither understand nor cope with. By its own secularistic
optimism, indeed, it helps, quite unintentionally, to foster
both the self-assertiveness and the delusive self-confidence
which lead again and again to the savage inhumanities
which modernists, like all decent folk, deplore. This in-

78 The Christian Understanding of Man

dictment rests also, of course, against organized Christen¬
dom. Professed Christians of modernistic temper share
the tendency to overvalue human culture, and are all too
easily sucked in to the defense of their own segment of it
against other segments, subordinating the supra-cultural
claims of the gospel to the demands of nation, folk or class.
Traditionalistic Christians, in essentially similar fashion,
have always been prone to confuse their acknowledged
responsibility to God with the right to identify the de¬
mands of the actual church, or some part of it, with the di¬
vine will. Entrenchment of vested interests, repression of
dissent, and persecutions are the not unnatural outcome;
and the peculiar ruthlessness of religious wars bears witness
to the liability of churches of all sorts to demonic self¬
exaltation. But in Christian faith, fallible men are con¬
tinually being confronted anew with the majesty of God
which condemns, and the love of God which can destroy,
all demonries. In modernism, there is sincere abhorrence
of these, but neither clear insight into their nature nor
power to nullify their spells. Intelligence and good will
are indispensable, but not enough. The enlistment of
emotion and the other powerful drives mobilized in a tran¬
scendental religious faith is needed also.

In its understanding of man’s origin, duty and present
plight, therefore, Christian faith differs crucially from mod¬
ernism, for all that they have much in common. They di¬
verge, finally, in their understanding of human destiny.
For modernism, as we have seen, man’s destiny is in his own
hands, and his salvation depends finally upon himself. This
salvation is conceived in terms of earthly progress, effected
through individual learnings and growth, and social amel¬
ioration. The ideal is by no means a vulgar or a trivial one,
though it can easily be cheapened — more easily, perhaps,
than the harsh judgments of prophetic religion (though

Robert L. Calhoun

these also are often turned into cloaks for all-too-human
arrogance and cruelty) . In the modernist ideal of the
good life, all that is choice in human culture in the regions
of intellect, aesthetic appreciation, moral sensitiveness and
vigor, humane love and loyalty has its place. For progres¬
sive realization of this ideal, modernism looks to man, to
his natural capacities, and the natural and social stimuli
which can be made to play upon them. Education, in the
broadest and most literal sense, is the way of salvation; the
drawing out, in a fluid series of controlled situations, of a
more and more effectively selected sum of human responses.
Such progress, limited only by the duration of human life
on the earth, is the modernist’s ruling hope.

Once more Christian faith dissents, not because at par¬
ticular points this view is bad, but because with all its good
it leaves out what is basic to the whole, and thereby falsifies
the total perspective. Christian faith denies, first of all,
that salvation of any kind is to be had except from God.
That men can learn and grow, and that they may well come
better to understand and control their natural and cultural
environment and themselves, it need not question. But
even such learning and growth, it declares, can take place
only by the grace of God. Not man but God maintains the
equilibria of nature, and the compensatory rhythms of his¬
tory. Cultures grow and decline not mainly because of
what men do, but mainly because of what God does, around
men and within them. Apart from his providence, not even
the wavering steps we call human progress could be made.

But Christian faith says more: that such progress is not
in itself to be called salvation. What men most deeply
need is not bigger and better things, nor even finer and
finer individuals and social orders. These certainly, if they
can be had, but these will never be enough. What men
most deeply need is blessedness, “ the peace of God, which

80 The Christian Understanding of Man

passeth all understanding.” Whatever the future may
hold, some men and women have found here stability and
fullness of life with God. But it comes from beyond the
here-and-now, to men and women for whom this present
has seemed to open, like a glass become translucent, upon
incomprehended depths of being and of good before which
human restlessness is stilled. Not that struggle ceases, nor
that sin is canceled. Man does not become a superman,
immune to these things. The point is that somehow, be¬
yond human knowing and doing, peace dawns in the midst
of struggle, without in the least annulling its arduousness
and pain.

A part of the truth is that meaning comes into the tur¬
moil, which before it did not have, of a sort which man had
neither foreseen nor specifically desired. But more than
meaning. There comes conviction of the overshadowing
presence of God. Not this or that detail of the present
landscape need be changed. Only the whole is made new.
The presence of a loved one, or devotion to a new-found
cause, may similarly make nothing different and every¬
thing new within a limited area, for a while. The presence
of God to those who believe makes a new heaven and a
new earth, for life. It should not relax but quicken the
struggle for specific human betterments; only the struggle
now is lived and seen in the light of eternity. This dimen¬
sion of being modernism by itself does not recognize, nor
count as a factor for human destiny. To Christian faith, it
is the chief thing of all.

Herein is the dilemma of humanitarian modernism: that
it condemns its own best impulses to continual thwarting
and recurrent disaster. This is, for Christian faith, a simple
variant of the central dilemma of mankind. Man is a prob¬
lem to himself not chiefly because of his more obvious vices,
but because the very strength in him, the better part of his

Robert L. Calhoun

effort and aspiration, so continually goes wrong. That
greed and lying should get him into trouble need be no
matter for surprise. But that truth-seeking and generosity
should betray him is a cruel puzzle. No wonder that in
bewilderment men turn again and again from the disap¬
pointing ways of genteel culture to the primitive devotions
of tribalism, war and tyranny. But that way madness lies.
Inhumanity is no solution for the dilemmas of human liv¬
ing: for men cannot by volition cease to be men, and their
efforts to do so aggravate the death-dealing conflicts among
them and within them. The only real cure is for them to
be made, by the grace of God, not less but more fully hu¬
mane. Truthseeking and generosity need more ample
room.

•«

✓

THE MARXIST ANTHROPOLOGY AND
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION
OF MAN

N. N. Alexeiev

THE MARXIST ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE
CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF MAN

1. INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS

The comparison of two such divergent conceptions as the
Christian religion on the one hand and the Marxist soci¬
ology, which is hostile to religion, on the other, is only pos¬
sible if some common basis can be found. In this article
it is held that philosophy provides such a basis: philosophy
in the sense of the consummation of knowledge in its ra¬
tional and conceptual form, in so far as it endeavors to in¬
vestigate the nature of the objective world — in this par¬
ticular instance the nature of man. Philosophy therefore
investigates the structure of human life, of that which is
typically “ human,” rather than the concrete conditions of
human life. It is right, moreover, that the philosophical
approach to the problem of man — as well as all the other
problems with which the Christian is faced — should be
found on the threshold, or so to speak, in the “ ante-room ”
of the Christian religion; such a philosophical approach is
also to be found on the threshold of Marxism, if one is to
regard the latter as a unique totalitarian conception of life,
comprising the unity of theory and practice.

Only on this “ threshold ” is it possible to examine the
problems of Christianity and Marxism as objects of thought
and to compare them. Even the Christian faith, as well as
the Marxist view of life (which ultimately is dependent on
a belief, no matter whether it is religious or not, or whether
it represents some other form of faith) is supra-rational and
independent of general rational understanding. It is, how-

86 The Christian Understanding of Man

ever, scarcely conceivable that the Marxist and the Chris¬
tian can understand each other as “ believers,” that is, in
the practical sense; whereas in the philosophical “ ante¬
room,” beyond the considerations of practicality, such a
mutual approach is not impossible. It is this which justi¬
fies the philosophical form of this paper.

2. THE MARXIST AND THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN IN THE
LIGHT OF POSSIBLE POINTS OF CONTACT

A. The Marxist Conception of Man.

(a) The Marxist conception of man is a product of
philosophical and theological speculations which originate
in the Hegelian school , which for their part are the product
of the struggle with Christian faith and Christian theology.

Anyone who has studied the history of Marxist doctrine
is convinced that the deepest philosophical roots of Marx¬
ism, and especially of the Marxist anthropology, are to be
found in the theological controversies which arose in the
Hegelian school after the death of Hegel.

Engels himself has described briefly the history of this
philosophical-theological struggle within the Hegelian
school.1 An important episode in this struggle was the
birth of the new German atheism. The time came, as
Engels said, when the “ Hegelian gang ” “ couldn’t go on
with the deception ” that Christianity was a barrier. “ All
the fundamental principles of Christianity, even those of
what has hitherto been called religion as a whole, have
fallen before the remorseless assault of reason; the absolute
idea claims to be the foundation of a new era. The great
revolution of which the French philosophers of the last
century were only the precursors has reached its fulfilment

i In an early work, Schelling und die Ofjenbarung, 1842, Marx-Engels,
historical-critical edition, publ. Karl Marx Institute, Moscow, hereinafter
referred to as ME., I, 2, p. 184.

N. N. Alexeiev

in the realm of thought. Protestant philosophy from Des¬
cartes onwards is finished; a new age has begun. And it is
the sacred obligation of everybody who is obedient to the
course prescribed by the self-development of his spirit, to
translate the stupendous result into the consciousness of the
nation, and to erect it into the basic principle of German
life.” 2

In this quotation we find the bridge which, in the opin¬
ion of Engels, connects the new antireligious tendencies
with Protestantism. Marx was also of the opinion, writing
in the Deutsch-franzdsische Jahrhucher (1844) , that “ Ger¬
many’s revolutionary past ” lay in the Reformation. “ As
the revolution of those days began with a monk, so today
it must begin in the brain of the philosopher.” But, Marx
adds: “ if Protestantism was not the true solution, it was at
any rate a true indication of the task. It was no longer a
question of the conflict of the layman with the priest out¬
side himself, but with his own inner priest ( mit seinem
eigenen inneren Pfaffen ) , with his ‘ clerical ’ nature.” 8
The conflict with his “ * clerical ’ nature ” meant the criti¬
cism of the religious consciousness and of religion as such.
But in so far as this criticism, in the opinion of the Hege¬
lians, is already achieved in the Hegelian philosophy, and
involves the rejection of the religious aspect of this phi¬
losophy, the issue is really the banishment from the field of
philosophical speculation of the idea of anything above
and beyond human nature, of an absolute spirit indepen¬
dent of man, and instead the identification of the absolute
with man. With the fulfilment of this task Hegelianism
changes, of its own accord, into a kind of philosophical an¬
thropology or anthroposophy.

The question still remains, however: how is the term
“ Man ” to be understood in this anthropology? We know
2 Loc. cit.t p. 185. 8 ME., I, 1 (2) , p. 615.

The Christian Understanding of Man

that Marx’ and Engels’ contemporaries answered this ques¬
tion in very different ways. The most famous and influen¬
tial of them, Feuerbach, understood by “ man ” an abstract
being, a human genus, the “ universal ” ( allgemein ) in
man. The so-called “ critical criticism ” of Bruno Bauer
and those who agreed with him vigorously attacked Feuer¬
bach’s abstract conception. They attempted to substitute
for his abstract human Wesen the concrete human indi¬
vidual. This concrete human individual of the “ critical
criticism ” did not appear to the most radical of the Neo-
Hegelians, Max Stirner, to be concrete enough. He there¬
fore raised into a philosophical principle his philosophy of
the “ self ” ( Einzigen ) , the egotistical individual who, re¬
leased from all social and moral bonds, appears in puris
naturalibus (Engels’ phrase) .

In this controversy with its conflicting views of man,
Marx and Engels had a peculiar position, for they stood
midway between Feuerbach and Stirner. From Feuerbach
they took over the thought that the notion “ man ” was not
covered by the idea of the “ self alone ” ( Einzigen ) ; Stirner
contributed the idea that the elements of struggle and of
self-interest could not be dismissed from any conception of
man.4 In Stirner’s onesided egoism Engels finds something
which is in principle true, and which communist doctrine
cannot but assimilate.

And what is true in it is this: that we will not be impelled to
action unless our self-interest is touched; in this sense, therefore,
we become communists by reason of our egoism, and we want
to be men out of sheer egoism, apart from any material hopes.

. . . Stirner is right when he rejects Feuerbach’s notion of man,

4 For the history of this discussion see D. Koigen, Zur Vorgeschichte des
modernen philosophischen Sozialismus in Deutschland (Bern, 1901) ; N. N.
Alexeiev, Die Naturwissenschaften und Sozialzuissenschaften (Moscow,
1911); A. Cornu, Karl Marx, Vhomme et Vceuvre. De VHegelianisme au
materialisme historique (Paris, 1934) .

N. N. Alexeiev 89

at least the notion embodied in his Wesen des Christentums;
the Feuerbach type of man is derived from God, Feuerbach ar¬
rives at his concept of man through God, and in this way
“ man ” is still surrounded by the halo of theological abstrac¬
tion. . . . We have to proceed from empiricism and material¬
ism if we want to be correct in our thinking, and especially in
our conception of “ man we must deduce the general from
the particular, not from itself or from the air, a la Hegel. All
these are obvious platitudes, and have already been admitted
by Feuerbach.5

Here is the kernel of the whole approach to the Marxist
concept of man, which we shall define more closely in what
follows.

(b) A definitely developed anthropology contradicting
the idea of philosophical cosmology constitutes the ker¬
nel of the Marxist conception of man.

The Marxist conception of man was the result of the
conflict waged by the young Marx and Engels against the
abstract anthropology of their time, as represented by
Feuerbach, Bauer and Stirner. In this controversy Marx
and Engels contended that a philosophical anthropology
which is concerned only with the “ isolated individual,”
with the “ individual man as such,” ignoring his relation to
other men and to his social environment, is largely errone¬
ous. In this sense, then, the repudiation of such anthro¬
pology by Marx is an incontestable fact. The situation,
however, changes when we examine Marxism in the light
of a philosophical cosmology which seeks to dissolve the
concept of man into an aggregate of nonhuman factors and
elements. We then see that early Marxism regarded man,
not as an isolated individual but as “ man in society,” as
primary, and was therefore more inclined to be anthropo¬
logical than cosmological. Marxism can therefore be con¬
sidered as “ anthropological,” in the sociological sense of
5 ME., Ill, 1, p. 6-7.

go The Christian Understanding of Man

the word. One proof of this is that in the early writings
of Marx and Engels there is no trace of any tendency to
erect nature into something absolute, self-consistent, con¬
trasted with man. On the contrary: nature has here a very
original, sociological, and in a certain sense an anthropo¬
logical meaning. Nature, Marx says, “ if taken in the ab¬
stract as something entirely apart from man has no signifi¬
cance for man.” 6 “ The extremely important question of
the relation of man to nature, from which all ‘ works un¬
speakably sublime ’ beyond ‘ substance * and ‘ self-aware¬
ness * proceed, vanishes of its own accord when one realizes
that the famous ‘ unity of man with nature * is as old as
industry.” 7 Nature, or the visible world immediately sur¬
rounding us, is not something “ which has suddenly ap¬
peared out of eternity, always the same, but is the product
of industry and of society.” It is “ a historical product,”
the result of the activity of a whole series of generations.8
One can, of course, speak of the “ priority of external na¬
ture,” but this is not the nature in which we live today,
and which, when considered in the abstract apart from
man, becomes in itself an abstraction.

In other words: if man is a product of nature, nature is
also the product of man. When considered from this stand¬
point the Marxist philosophy is not a materialistic cos¬
mology but an anthropology. That is why Marx defines
his philosophical position as a “ positive or real human¬
ism.” He identifies the terms materialism, naturalism, hu¬
manism and communism, opposing them to spiritualism
and idealism. He even says that his own approach to na¬
ture is anthropological,9 which fully substantiates the ac¬
curacy of our assertion.

6 ME., I, 3, 8, 170. 8 ibid., p. 33.

7 ME., I, 3, p. 170; I, B, 5, p. 33. 9 ME., I, B, 3, p. 122.

N. N. Alexeiev

thropology of the earlier period passes gradually into a
naturalistic cosmology , though this has not conspicuously
influenced the Marxist concept of man.

The cosmological attitude of later Marxism is exempli¬
fied in what is now called the “ dialectic of nature,” which
is actually a subdivision of the materialist philosophy of
evolution in general. Here the concept of man is grounded
on a natural science raised to the level of philosophy, and
one which claims to have knowledge not only of natural
phenomena but of the “ thing-in-itself.” Engels roundly
rejects the position according to which the “ thing-in-itself ”
is unknowable.10 In this manner the “ nature ” of the
earlier writings (“ not an absolute self-sufficient essence
(Wesen) “ not a ‘ substance ’ ”) is transformed into its
antithesis: into an “ absolute substance.” Engels does not
repudiate the thought that man is in the position of being
able to cause changes within nature, though at the same
time he points out that in all nature-changes there remains
something permanent, namely, the general conception
(In be griff) of the various forms of physical activity or the
interchange of natural powers. That, according to Engels,
is actually the conception of “ substance ” in Spinoza’s
sense: “ Substance ” as the causa sui.11 This absolute sub¬
stance is simply matter in the dialectic sense, not the “ mat¬
ter ” of materialism as it is commonly understood. This
idea of matter dialectically conceived was foreshadowed in
the Greek philosophers in their doctrine of Trp&rr) v\rj.
The idea of chaos in antiquity, Engels says, is to be found
again in Laplace, who makes of it a universal formless foun¬
dation for the physical world. In this primeval, formless
matter there originate, by means of a continuous process of
differentiation, all the forms of physical existence. In the

10 See Dialektik der Natur (Moscow, 1932) , pp. 6-7.

11 Ibid., p. 15.

92 The Christian Understanding of Man

so-called Einleitung zur Dialektik der Natur (1880) we
read words which are literally a repetition, in Ernst Haeck¬
el’s style, of the current ideas underlying popular naturalis¬
tic evolutionism. According to this philosophy man is only
the sum of “ nonhuman ” substances and purely physical
elements; his existence is completely conditioned by the
nature of an all pervading physical substance. Little re¬
mains of the anthropology which is expressed, for example,
in Engels’ famous pamphlet on Ludwig Feuerbach.12

All that distinguishes this “ dialectic of nature ” from the
other types of evolutionary thought is what remains of the
influence of the Hegelian philosophy. The Marxist dia¬
lectic includes three laws describing the historical develop¬
ment of all things: the law of the transformation of quantity
into quality, the law of the interpenetration of oppo¬
sites, and the law of negation. For the understanding of
the Marxist theory of development it is the first of these in
particular which is important. According to it, develop¬
ment does not consist merely in continuity but presupposes
sudden leaps. The principle of continuity is realized only
in quantitative changes, whereas the birth of a new quality
is always a jump, the creation of something new which is
not implied in the lower stages of development. For ex¬
ample: life originates in continuous quantitative changes
in dead matter; on reaching a certain level these changes
result in a jump forward from the dead to the living, and
in this way a new quality is created, namely, the category
of life. In the same manner, human life is a sudden leap
forward from animal life. We know that the controversy
about the essential meaning of thesb newly created qualities
of existence has split Soviet philosophy into two groups:

12 The last anthropological elements disappear completely in Lenin’s
exposition of the views of Engels, which we find in the well known book
Materialismus und Empiriokritizismus.

N. N. Alexeiev

the mechanists and the dialecticians. The first group
minimizes the significance of the newly emerged qualities;
the second accentuates it so much that it succumbs to the
two heresies of vitalism and idealism.13 About the year
1930, all such philosophical debates which allow for the pos¬
sibility of basing a new concept of man on Leninism were
forbidden. Stalin himself has assumed the right to solve
philosophical problems by decree.

When we consider only these cosmological characteris¬
tics of Marxism, we gain the impression that it represents
a kind of naturalistic philosophy with a cosmological tinge,
and that the Marxist concept of man is incomprehensible
without this philosophy. But in so doing, we lose quite
half of the Marxist system of thought and, indeed, some of
the most important elements in the view of man as taught
by Marx and Engels.

(d) For Marxism the nature of man is in the first place
conditioned by human interrelations and by man's place in
society , the essence of the latter relationship being not that
of existing social forms , because such forms are in them¬
selves contradictory and are responsible for the “ divided ”
“ estranged ” nature of man.

That man is essentially a social being, that the individual
without society is a pure abstraction, that society alone, not
the individual man, constitutes reality — at the beginning
of the nineteenth century these and other similar supposi¬
tions were no more than commonplaces. When Marx re¬
peats this thesis in his early writings he is only reflecting
the spirit of his age. For us it is not the general thesis but
the more specific nature of its contents which Marxism has
introduced into it which is instructive and important. The
unique thing about this “ sociological anthropology ” in

13 Cf. the “ Transactions of the Second Conference of the Marx-Lenin
Scientific Institute,” lectures by A. Deborin, Moscow, 1929.

94 The Christian Understanding of Man

the Marxist sense is that Marx regards the social nature of
man, as expressed in existing social forms, as something
“ incomplete/’ The real social character of man is not to
be sought in contemporary society. For this possesses no
solidarity, nor is it organic as the representatives of the va¬
rious sociological and politico-philosophical theories of the
Restoration period understood it to be. All these socio¬
logical doctrines are characterized by the tendency to as¬
cribe final and absolute significance to one section of his¬
torical reality, to the positive forms of social life and social
institutions. Notwithstanding the fact that even Marxism
reflects the historical spirit of the period in which Marx
lives, this philosophy, more than any of those which have
been mentioned, finds such an absolute idealization foreign
to its nature. For Marx, every social form is incomplete,
primitive communism included; for social perfection lies
in the future alone. Marx was a product of the Restoration
period, a student of the Hegelian philosophy, from which
he evolved the so-called historical spirit; in spite of this,
however, and in this he differs from his contemporaries, he
breathes a new spirit into the soul of the Restoration, and
infuses into it the breath of a new revolution.

Marx opposes the social theories of the Restoration pe¬
riod with his antinomian and dialectical teaching about so¬
ciety. He sees society as a struggle of mutually antagonistic
forms of social energy, not as the realization of social har¬
mony and solidarity. From this conception of society there
springs not only the idea of the class war, but also that of
the inner contradictions within capitalist society, which he
has described in his main work. His marked repudiation
of the existing order of society is expressed most conspicu¬
ously in the Marxist doctrine of the state; for in his time the
state was being increasingly regarded as an absolute. The
state, according to Marx, is an organization for the purpose

N. N. Alexeiev

of class war and of social exploitation. The impartial regu¬
lation and mitigation of social antitheses forms no part of
its purpose, therefore it has no social or moral value. Its
origin coincides with that of social-economic classes, and
it is doomed to disappear completely with the arrival of
the future classless society.

For this reason, therefore, “ man as a product of existing
historical forms ” does not provide any adequate concep¬
tion of the real nature of man; for this “ man ” is not an
organically unified whole, he is divided, or incomplete
( entfremdet ) ,14 The social origin of this inner division
consists, for Marx, in the division of labor, particularly in
the division of physical and intellectual work. “ The divi¬
sion of labor,” we read in the Deutsche Ideologie , “ shows
that as long as men live in a natural order of society there
will be a cleavage between general and individual interests;
so long as his activity is not voluntary, but dictated by natu¬
ral considerations,15 man’s own achievements take the form
of a power which confronts him and subjugates him, instead
of being dominated by him.” 16 These relationships be¬
tween man and nature will be ordered quite differently in
a free communistic society.

In communist society, where every man can develop himself
in any way he chooses, instead of having to move in a circum¬
scribed sphere of activity, society will control all the means of
production and will make it possible for me to do one thing
today, another tomorrow; in the morning, for me to hunt, in
the afternoon, to fish, in the evening, to look after animals,
and then to criticize according as I think fit, but without having
to be either huntsman, fisherman or critic.17

14 Marx took this idea of Entfremdung from the Hegelian philosophy,
though he tried to give it a new meaning.

iis Marx’s word naturwiichsig means literally “ indigenous.” — Trans.

is ME., I, 5, p. 29.

17 Ibid., p. 23.

g6 The Christian Understanding of Man

In such conditions the sense of incompletion will com¬
pletely disappear.

The same idea, rather differently expressed, recurs in
later Marxism in the well known doctrine of the “ fetish
character ” of goods in the first volume of Das Kapital. In
one sense this theory provides the key to the understanding
of the philosophical basis of the whole of the Marxist an¬
thropology. It endeavors, with the aid of an example
drawn from the elementary economic phenomenon of
exchange-value, to explain the innermost meaning of the
social relations of man which have originated in this ex¬
perience of Entfremdung. The concrete embodiment of
exchange value is the commodity. This is usually an ob¬
ject possessing natural properties: color, weight, etc. Yet
there is no such inherent quality which can be described
as exchange value, although this does not prevent some of
the representatives of political economy, as it is usually
understood, from confusing exchange value with such
qualities as are inherent in the commodity.

Here we are faced by the phenomenon of the domination
of man by certain false ideas. The mystery of commodity-
form consists in the fact that

it mirrors for men the social character of their own labor, as
an objective character attaching to the labor products them¬
selves, as a natural property of these things. Consequently the
social relation of the producers to the sum of their own labor
presents itself to them as a social relation, not between them¬
selves, but between the products of their own labor. Thanks
to this transference of qualities the labor products become com¬
modities, transcendental or social things, which are at the
same time perceptible by our senses. In like manner the im¬
pression which the light reflected from an object makes upon
the retina is perceived, not as a subjective stimulation of that
organ, but in the form of a concrete object existing outside
the eye. But in vision, light actually passes from one thing,
the external object, to another thing, the eye. On the other
hand, the commodity form, and the value relation between the

N. N. Alexeiev

labor products which finds expression in the commodity form,
have nothing to do with the physical properties of the com¬
modities or with the material relations that arise out of these
physical properties.18

Man lives, therefore, under the domination of phantoms,
illusions and ghosts which arise out of the confusion of
social relationships. In order to dispel these illusions and
fetishes which subjugate man it is enough to place such
social relations on a rational basis and to systematize the
labor which is natural to him. If we wish to envisage the
disappearance of fetishism and the sense of incompletion
( Entfremdung ) we have only to imagine a society of free
men who “ work under a system of socially owned means of
production and regard their individual talents for work
consciously as a social activity.” 19

The ideas described above suggest that the human his¬
tory of the “ fetish ” period was no more than the history
of the twilight of man’s reason. Just as with Feuerbach,
who believed that “ what man declares about God he can
in all truthfulness assert about himself,” 20 so also do we
find the same conception in Marx: whatever he asserts
about the commodity form he is able truthfully to assert
about his own social relations and his own particular share
in the division of labor.21 As we have said, it is enough
to expose this falsehood in order to see things as they actu-

is Kapital, Eng. trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (Everyman) , I, 45. The
author has not cited the whole passage, but has rather paraphrased the
first half and pointed out that the Entfremdung, or sense of incompletion,
in man is due to his having to regard the product of his labor as something
independent of himself. The fetishistic character of a commodity about
which Marx speaks might be elucidated by the establishment of a “ numi¬
nous ” relationship between it and the producer. — Translator’s note.

19 Das Kapital, p. 45.

20 Works, VII, 48-49.

21 For the place of Feuerbach in Marx’s works see A. Livy, La Philoso¬
phic de Feuerbach et son influence sur la litterature allemande (1904) , and
G. Stammacher, Das philosophisch-okonomische System des Marxismus
(Leipzig, 1909) .

98 The Christian Understanding of Man

ally are. Here we see the most important difference be¬
tween Feuerbach and Marx: the former believed that the
exposure of the religious consciousness should be under¬
taken by the rational criticism of the philosopher, whereas
Marx believed that the task of exposure would be achieved
through the objective process of human history. For
Feuerbach religion was only an error, whereas for Marx,
on the contrary, “ fetishism ” is the result of the natural
conditions of an economic activity.

(e) According to Marx’s view man is a historical entity
which is to be understood in naturalistic and materialistic
terms. But Marxist naturalism does not allow man to be
absorbed into Nature , nor does it deny the basic difference
between man and animal.

A characteristic of many of the social theories of the
Restoration period is that they deny the individuality of
personality. For them, man was no monad, no ego living
in a state of self-sufficiency, but a relation.

There is lacking in Marx any conception of man as an
absolute, self-evident entity (eine absolute Substanz) .
Even Hegel’s notion which endeavors to lose the individual
ego in universal absolute spirit, has, in the view of Marx,
too much of the flavor of substantiality. He criticizes Hegel
because, in his Phanomenologie, he identifies “ man ” with
“ self.” “ The self, however, is only individuality con¬
ceived in terms of pure abstraction. . . . The abstract,
static self is simply man as an abstract egoist, or egoism
elevated into a state of thought through pure abstrac¬
tion.” 22 The actual human self is only a historical phe¬
nomenon. As such it possesses no “ eidetic ” reality and no
permanent form. Marx attempts to prove the latter asser-

22 "Das fur sich abstrahierte und fixierte Selbst ist der Mensch als
abstrakter Egoist, der in seiner reinen Abstraktion zum Denken erhobene
Egoismus " (ME., I, 3, p. 158) .

N. N. Alexeiev

tion by drawing a distinction between the so-called “ per¬
sonal ” and the “ accidental ” individual. This distinction
is for him “ not a conceptual difference, but a historical
fact.” 23 It has a “ different meaning for different periods.”
Class (Stand) , for example, was an attribute of human
personality in the Middle Ages, whereas in the eighteenth
century it was something quite accidental. With the
change in economic conditions the structure of human per¬
sonality is changed. Personality as such is ephemeral: its
constitutive elements are the result only of methods of pro¬
duction, of economic modes of life and activity, of the tech¬
nique of labor. It is therefore scarcely worth while to
look for “ personal ” elements in Marx’s philosophy, as,
for example, Berdyaev does in an article entitled " Per -
sonne humaine et Marxiste” in a collective work Com-
munisme et les Chretiens (Paris, 1937) .

The Marxist criticism of the capitalist system does not
begin with personality in the usual sense, but with the idea
of the human individual as a definite physical, bodily exist¬
ence, consisting of flesh and blood, and natural, material
instincts set in motion by and inseparable from the society
which conditions his life. We should not forget that the
“ egoistic man ” in Stimer’s sense is not individual, but
collective, and that this conception was the starting-point of
the Marxist anthropology. Added to this are the influences
of French philosophy derived from practical materialism,
that is, from a hedonistic and eudaemonistic ethic. We
know that Marx himself liked to describe communism as
a kind of “ practical materialism.” It is also easy to show
that these motives are found in the later developments of
the ideas of Marx and Engels. In a letter to the Russian
sociologist, P. L. Lavrow (November 12, 1874), Engels
says that one difference between man and the beasts is that
23 me., 1, 5, p. 60.

ioo The Christian Understanding of Man

the former struggles for pleasure whereas the latter struggle
only for their existence. The struggle for pleasure, there¬
fore, he adds, is the highest aim of all social reforms and
ultimately of socialism.

Marxism is not only influenced by so-called “ practical
materialism ” but it has at the same time absorbed a large
dose of materialist philosophy as such. The only expres¬
sions of the “ materialistic interpretation of history ” which
Marx formulates bear evident traces of ordinary material¬
ism. Consciousness, so we read in the Deutsche Ideologie,
not only depends on physical existence, but merely repre¬
sents the ideological “ reflex and echo ” of the material life
process. This expression “ reflex and echo ” 24 shows that
the founders of Marxism have themselves given occasion
for a so-called “ mechanistic ” interpretation of their teach¬
ing. “ Even the mirages in the human brain,” Marx adds,
after having applied this expression “ reflex and echo,”

are inevitable sublimations of a life process which can be ma¬
terially and empirically determined and preconditioned by
material considerations. Morality, religion, metaphysics and
other ideologies and the types of life which correspond to them
no longer retain any semblance of independence. They have
no history; they have no development; but men change the
material processes of production and develop material com¬
munications, and in and through these changes in reality they
also alter their thought and the product of their thought.25

What Engels often said later about the independent validity
of an ideology was only an accommodation to the obvious
facts of experience.

It is, therefore, easy to understand why Marx and Engels
were so enthusiastic about the work of Darwin: so far as
social science was concerned, they were actually Darwinists
before Darwin. In many ways they had anticipated the

24 ME., I, 5, pp. 19-20. 25: ME., I, 5, pp. 15-16.

N. N. Alexeiev

101

Darwinian conception of man, but they differed favorably
in their sociology from the ordinary Darwinians of whom
there were so many in the middle of the nineteenth cen¬
tury. In spite of their undeniable preference for the natu¬
ralistic theory of evolution, Marx and Engels never lost
sight of the distinction between man and the animals.26
Man reproduces the whole of nature: that is what Marx
means by “ universal.” “ Man masters nature; in his rela¬
tion to nature he is master, whereas the animal is simply
a part of nature. Through human productivity man hu¬
manizes nature, and as a result, nature appears as his
work.” 27

From the foregoing it follows that the well known defini¬
tion of Aristotle, adopted almost universally by later Chris¬
tian literature, of man as an “ animal rationale,” is not en¬
tirely foreign to Marx; 28 he tried to improve this definition
by making a very close connection between human reason
and labor. Man is a rational being because he is able to
create tools and instruments, and is able to devote himself
to economic activity (whereas the animal does not pro¬
duce; it only accumulates) . Marx employs Benjamin
Franklin’s definition of man as a “ tool-making animal.” 29
The creature which is able to make tools is essentially ra¬
tional.30 Man is, therefore, not only a rational animal: he
is a creature capable of production, technical achievement,
and mastery over nature. And these two aspects of human
existence (reason, and the capacity for using tools) are
closely related to each other and mutually interdependent.

In the history of philosophical anthropology and soci-

26 me., i, 3, p. 187. 27 Ibid.

28 For the relation between Aristotle and Marx’s theory see Erdmann,
“Die philosophischen Voraussetzungen der materialistischen Geschichts-
aufiassung,” in Schmollers Jahrbuch, 1907, p. 3.

29 Kapital, I, pp. 350, 141 ff.

so ibid., I, p. 140; Eng. trans. E. and C. Paul, I, 169, 170.

102 The Christian Understanding of Man

ology, Marx is not the only one who has recognized the
significance of the technical factor in the development of
man. Quite independently of him a movement arose which
has investigated the function of the tool and has arrived at
a similar definition of man to his own (cf. L. Geiger, Kapp,
Norite, H. Bergson) . The Marxist anthropology is a
theory of the creative evolution of man which gives the
necessary place to the theory of creative revolution. For
Marxism, therefore, human history is simply “ the genera¬
tion of man through human labor.” Socialist man pos¬
sesses the “ obvious incontrovertible proof of his birth
through his own effort, a proof which is found in the very
process of his origin.” 31

Thus Marxism has elaborated a conception of man
which can with justice be defined as activist. The funda¬
mental principle underlying this conception is not the
“ object,” but man’s own activity.32 Marx insists that
man’s “ active side ” has been hitherto represented not by
materialism, but by idealism, which, however, is not aware
of “ actual, concrete activity as such.” Feuerbach, who
emphasized this “ active side ” in philosophy, thought of
it only as a theoretical condition, not as a “ praktisch-
menschlich-sinnliche , praktisch-kritische ” revolutionary
activity. This practical quality is the criterion of the truth
of human cognition. “ In practice man must demonstrate
the truth, that is, the reality, power, and this-sidedness
( Diesseitigkeit ) of his thought.” Thoughts stated in this
way gave some Marxists reason to compare Marxist phi¬
losophy with those types of philosophical doctrine which
saw the highest philosophical principle not in objective re¬
ality, but in the activities of man as a biological individual
(e.g., empiriocriticism, pragmatism, etc.) . The well

si ME., I, 3, p. 125.

32 As in Marx’s famous thesis on Feuerbach, ME., I, 5, p. 533:

N. N. Alexeiev

103

known physicist Ernst Mach, for example, regarded sci¬
ence as a by-product of human labor.33 Human cognition
was for him only an instrument capable of being of assist¬
ance in technical activity. Lenin’s famous philosophical
opponent, A. Bogdanov, has expounded Marxism in this
sense and was for this reason excommunicated by Lenin.
“ Physical science,” Bogdanov says, “ is nothing but an ide¬
ology resulting from the productive energies of society.” 34
This particular Marxist tendency which had supporters in
the West 35 is nearer to the anthropology of early Marxism
than to the later naturalistic cosmology of Engels and
Lenin.

(f) According to the Marxist theory man as a historical
fact has no higher value , no absolute moral value. Marx¬
ism acknowledges human value only in so far as man's life
is conditioned by the course of history.

In addition to the metaphysical doctrine of man as a
personality, there is what might be called the axiological
problem of man: the problem of the moral value of actual
human existence. This problem has never been stated by
Marxism as an independent question for philosophical in¬
quiry. Nevertheless, Marxism does work with certain con¬
ceptions of value which it unconsciously recognizes and
endows with historico-philosophical form. One often
speaks of Marxist individualism, of the Marxist struggle
for the rights of the “ under-dog ” and so forth. It is easy
to adduce instances in the works of Marx and Engels of
what are so clearly “ individualistic ” modes of thought
that no impartial observer can deny them. In the interests

33 E. Mach, Erkenntnis und Irrtum, 1905, and his Theory of Heat.

34 Vide Bogdanov’s preface to the Russian translation of Mach’s Die
Analyse der Empfindungen (Moscow, 1908) .

35 E.g., Fr. Adler, Mach’s Uberwindung des mechanischen Materia-
lismus, (Vienna, 1918) . Adler, whose Marxist sympathies are unquestion¬
able, is now secretary of the Second International.

104 The Christian Understanding of Man

of truth, however, it must be admitted that this Marxist
“ individualism ” is to be clearly differentiated from that of
liberal democracy. Marx established this difference in an
article on the Jewish question, published in 1843, *n which
he discovers that the “ democratic ” conception of man is
false because it is too “ Christian.” This conception holds

that not one man alone but each man has value as a sovereign
being: man even as uncultured and unsocial, man in his casual
manner of being, man as he walks and stands, as he is when
spoilt by the whole mechanism of history, subordinated to the
domination of inhuman relations and forces: in a word, man
who is not yet a proper representative of a species ( Gattungs -
weseri) .... For liberal democracy that illusion, dream and
postulate of Christianity, namely, man as a sovereign soul,
but entirely different from real man as he actually is, is a con¬
crete reality, an actuality, a practical maxim of this world.36

Historical man, therefore, is not the possessor of any
absolute value as Christians and democrats believe. He
is in no way of absolute significance in his own right, for
whatever value he possesses is dependent on his historical
function, and on the relation in which he stands to the
process of historical development. He is the bearer of
value only in so far as he is the expression of the positive
forces of history. Otherwise he loses whatever positive
value he has. For Marxism, therefore, man is a kind of
“ sandwich-man ”: for as an individual personality he dis¬
appears between the sandwich-boards on which history has
inscribed its legend and which he is destined to carry about
with him. He has significance in so far as what is written
on him is historically good (i.e., progressive) . But it is not
always good. Marx writes in his preface to the first edition
of the first volume of Das Kapital:

The persons of capitalists and landowners are not depicted
in rose-tinted colors; but if I speak of individuals it is only in
36 ME., I, 1, p. 590.

N. N. Alexeiev

105

so far as they are the personifications of economic categories
and representatives of special class relations and interests. Inas¬
much as I conceive the development of the economic structure
of society to be a natural process, I should be the last to hold
the individual responsible for conditions whose creature he
himself is, socially considered, however he may raise himself
above them subjectively.37

When Marx paints the proletarian in rosy colors and de¬
scribes his virtues, these qualities are not the expression of
the inner life of the proletarian soul, but are, in like man¬
ner, only “ historical categories,” the “ personifications of
special class relations.”

In other words, Marxism does not believe in the validity
of certain ideal values, or of personality. The ethic of
value, of the categorical imperative, or of moral autonomy,
as established by the Kantians, is not a Marxist ethic. The
logical Marxist cannot assert with Kant that “ in the whole
of creation whatever man wants, and whatever he is able to
do are simply means to be used; man alone ... is an end
in himself.” Marxism does not justify the ethic which
holds that the end justifies the means; 38 it does, however,
support the view that the process of history and the law of
historical evolution do determine the value of man and
therefore make of the individual man, in certain circum¬
stances, a means. The ethical teaching of Marxism is a
consequence of the Hegelian philosophy which also found
in the historical evolution of the idea of the absolute the
basis of man’s ethical life, though Marx and Engels substi-

37 Eng. trans., II, 864.

38 But cf. Lenin: “ In our opinion morality is entirely subordinate to
class war; everything is moral which is necessary for the annihilation of
the old exploiting order and for the uniting of the proletariat and
Preobazhenski: “ Whereas in a society in which there are no classes lying is
a disadvantage in itself . . . the case is quite different in a society based
on class. In the struggle of an exploited class against their enemies, lying
and deceit are very important weapons/’ Quoted by R. Fiilop-Miiller,
Lenin and Gandhi. — Translator.

io6 The Christian Understanding of Man

tute for this the idea of economic relations and class inter¬
ests. The belief that the process of historical evolution is
“ good,” that “ it ” moves from necessity toward freedom,
is also Hegelian, as Marx and Engels admit. They believed
that each stage of history brings an improvement, and that
the various social classes which appear successively in his¬
tory carry in themselves ethical values which justify their
struggle for power and create of other classes only an in¬
strument for the achievement of the aims of human evolu¬
tion. From this standpoint any doctrine of the higher
worth of man is simply an object of scorn and hardly de¬
serves consideration.39

(g) The birth in communistic society of the individual
personality is made possible, according to Marxist teaching ,
by the complete identification in such society of the “ indi¬
vidual ” with the “ general ” of human personality with
society. Only such an identification can guarantee the re¬
construction of the “ total man ” and of the “ truly human
individual.”

The theory of the so-called totalitarian state is by no
means a contemporary product. Totalitarian ideas are
found quite definitely in some of the “ organic ” doctrines
of the Restoration period. In the opinion of some repre¬
sentatives of this type of thought the totalitarian state is a
universe in itself, in which all things are compressed into
a whole, and where there is no contradiction between the
particular and the general. “ The disturbing factor
throughout is the egoism of the individual, who challenges
the Whole.” 40 Such a state is no longer a state because the
people living in it are not governed by anybody. But these
advocates of the organic theory conceived the embodiment
of their ideal as existing in the past or in the present,

39 ME., I, 5, pp. 58-59.

40 J. Wagner, System der Idealphilosophie (Leipzig, 1804) , p. 115.

N. N. Alexeiev

107

whereas the Marxists believe that it is to be found only in
the future after the collapse of the old order. Only then
will such a communistic society be possible, requiring
neither state nor government; in it law, as a bourgeois
system, will be superfluous; it is nonsense to believe, we
are told in the Deutsch-franzdsische Jahrbixcher, that there
will be any question of duties and rights in the communis¬
tic society — of two complementary aspects of an antithesis
which belongs only to bourgeois society.

Of course there will not be lacking in this society a cer¬
tain solidarity, but this must not be interpreted in its bour¬
geois sense. “ The awareness of individuals of their mu¬
tual relationship,” we read in the Deutsche Ideologic ,

“ will have as little to do with the ‘ love-principle ’ or ‘ de-
vouement ’ as has egoism.” And the chief thing is that in
such an ideal society there will be a complete identity be-^
tween the individual man and the community. In Marx’s
view the contrast of the individual as an independent, self-
consistent being with human society is only conceivable at
certain periods of history. Such a contrast is the product
of the “ inorganic ” condition of modern society, the prod¬
uct of that sense of incompletion and division which we
have already mentioned. In fully developed societies this
complete identification of self and species is indispensable.

“ Not until man has recognized his own powers as social
powers and organized them as such, and in this way has
ceased to see any separation of social from political power,
can human emancipation be accomplished.” 41 We are
here face to face with an ideally formulated ideal of totali¬
tarian society. Society is here a totality, but the individual
also achieves his totality, or as Marx says, he is at the same
time a “ particular individual ” and the “ ideal totality,”

41 Judenfrage, cited by Mehring, A us dem literarischen Nachlass, B. I.,
p. 424.

108 The Christian Understanding of Man

the subjective existence of a society which has been imag¬
ined and experienced.42

But this external resemblance of the ideals of totalitarian
society and the totalitarian state does not in the least degree
justify their identification with one another. The doc¬
trine of the totalitarian state confers upon the state abso¬
lute value; the state is the highest thing that exists, it is
even divine; but the Marxist conception of the totalitarian
society goes beyond the state: it demands the abolition of
the state when the condition of communism is reached,
preaching the death of all the power and force exercised
by the state, and promising complete freedom. It is here
that the chief paradox of the Marxist teaching about the
totalitarian society is revealed. It is believed by many that
the ultimate condition of the communist society will there¬
fore be one of anarchy; but in so doing they tend to forget
that the fathers as well as the disciples of Marxism (includ¬
ing Lenin) fought against anarchism and anarchistic tend¬
encies. The Marxist theory sees in the totalitarian society
of the future a stateless but nevertheless organized condi¬
tion, not one of anarchistic chaos.

It is, however, questionable whether the absolute libera¬
tion of man from the state as a resultant socially organized
condition is even thinkable. In our opinion there are two
solutions to the problem: either the superstate community
is a kind of animal society, like an anthill or a beehive —
or it is a form of secular church. Neither of these is a state,
yet they are both organized. We cannot suggest any third
possibility.43

42 “ Das subjektive Dasein der gedachten und empfundenen Gesellschaft
fur sich ” (ME., I, 3, 117) ; that is, a microcosm of society.

43 The first possibility is presented by Bogdanov ( Der Stiirz des Feti-
schismus, 1910, Russian) and Lenin ( Staat und Revolution, 1917) ; the
second by J. Dietzgen ( Die Religion und, Sozialdemokratie, 1870-75, Berlin,
1900) .

N. N. Alexeiev

109

B. The Christian Conception of Man and the Anthro¬
pology of Marxism.

It is scarcely possible to speak of a uniform Christian
anthropology from the historical standpoint, for the history
of Christian thought reveals as many kinds of theories
about man as there are Christian philosophies. The task
which we have set ourselves does not consist in the estab¬
lishment of a doctrine of man corresponding to any particu¬
lar confessional or philosophical school. We shall merely
enumerate some of the general tendencies of the Christian
conception of man as they are found in the sources of the
Christian faith, and, in a general sense, accepted by all
Christians. Our task is to compare and contrast this gen¬
eral Christian idea of man with the Marxist conception
which has been described above. In drawing possible anal¬
ogies between Marxism and this Christian idea we must be
careful not to regard either of them as purely static. Fur¬
ther, what is under consideration is not the comparison of
two complete and fully crystallized systems, but far more
the approximation of two living movements which illu¬
minate each other and can lead to a recovery of a true un¬
derstanding of human nature. There is always something
artificial about analogies if they are purely external; for an
analogy is only profitable if it throws light on the imma¬
nent perception of the qualities of things, not when it is
merely the play of human thought, which can compare any¬
thing you like with anything else.

(a) The Marxist Anthropological exposition of nature is
not opposed to the spirit of Christianity if we omit the idea
of creation; this , however , constitutes a limit beyond which
the analogy cannot proceed.

Man’s relation to nature, and the cosmological problem
in general, form a very vulnerable place in the Christian
philosophy as it is set forth in revelation and in the original

no The Christian Understanding of Man

sources: in the Old and New Testaments. The New Testa¬
ment has not formulated any cosmological problem: the
book of Genesis, however, regards man as the crown of
creation. In this view, it is difficult to say whether man is
a product of nature or whether nature was only created for
his benefit. In all the other passages in the Old Testament
nature is referred to only in so far as it fulfills some func¬
tion in the relation of man to God: thus it is with the help
of nature that God, by means of various physical phenom¬
ena, demonstrates to man his power, his will and his plans.
For the prophetic consciousness nature was never autono¬
mous, with its own inner life, expressing its own laws and
possessing (though of course unconsciously) a soul of its
own. Nature was no more than a divine alphabet, a collec¬
tion of objects created by God. The prophetic conscious¬
ness had none of that feeling for nature which the Greeks
possessed to a superlative degree. In this sense we are justi¬
fied in saying that both the Old and the New Testaments
are definitely anthropological rather than cosmological in
character.

Even in later Christian thought, as during the Middle
Ages after the adoption of the Aristotelian philosophy, cos¬
mological questions did not come to the fore. At the center
of medieval thought there were always theological prob¬
lems which were inseparable from the Christian elucida¬
tion of human problems. The so-called medieval Weltan¬
schauung , even if, generally speaking, it was more alive than
the Hebrew spirit to the recognition of nature, still re¬
garded natdre simply as a means of finding the way to
God.44 An autonomous and intuitive appreciation of na¬
ture, apart from any connection with theology, was scarcely
known in the Middle Ages and failed to give any inspira¬
tion to the soul of medieval man. There is, moreover, no

44 See Bonaventura, Itinerarium mentis in Deum , Prologus, 9.

N. N. Alexeiev

doubt at all that the awakening of the intuitive perception
of nature at the time of the Renaissance was not due to
Christianity, but to the influence of Greek philosophy.
Thus, the later European physical science and the natural¬
istic outlook may be said to have sprung not from Christian
principles, but from those of ancient philosophy.

From all that has just been said we may well believe it
is in this sphere of anthropological and cosmological prob¬
lems that we may light on some traces of those hidden
threads which connect the Marxist Weltanschauung with
the Hebrew prophetic spirit and hence with the Christian
spirit. The Marxist leaning toward the anthropological
approach to nature, toward the view that in any view of
nature all “ fine talk ” about “ Substance ” should be
banned, the assertion that nature only exists for the sake of
man, and that nature only molds man’s external body: all
these are ideas which have a greater affinity with Christian
doctrine than with the ancient cosmology and the more
modern scientific view of nature which is derived from it.
In the modern era, from external necessity, Christianity has
been compelled to- accommodate itself to the scientific view
of the world; though it is doubtful if this accommodation
has been successful, indeed, we may well ask whether, even
at the present day, there is not an irreconcilable antithesis
between the scientific and the Christian views of the world.
Under these conditions it is quite possible that the anthro¬
pological conception of nature held by the Marxists might
be so interpreted as to be not inconsistent with Christian
doctrine. We mention this problem without settling it,
believing that in view of the present uncertainty which sur¬
rounds cosmological questions in Christian philosophy it
would be good to examine the whole question seriously.
At this juncture, however, we can say with confidence that
the Marxist anthropological approach to nature in no way

112 The Christian Understanding of Man

contradicts the«Christian view. At this point, however, we
are confronted* by a difficulty which we must always bear
in mind.

Christian anthropology always takes the idea of divine
creation for granted, whereas Marxism obviously rejects
it. In Marx’s Oekonomisch-philosophischen Manuskrip-
ten we find some very interesting observations on what
is called “ creationism,” in which his opposition to the
Christian doctrine is expressed very clearly. Marx pro¬
ceeds from the view that the creation contradicts the self-
glorification of socialist man. A created being is depend¬
ent, for it exists “ by the grace of another,” namely, the
Creator. Thus, from the standpoint of independence only
the theory of the self-generation of man is acceptable.
Marx, of course, did not believe that primitive man con¬
sciously created himself; he only believed that matter and
life contain immanent creative forces which are expressed
in various forms in world history. Marxism, therefore, as
we have already said, must be understood in the sense of
Bergson’s “ creative evolution.” For this reason Marx re¬
gards the generatio aequivoca as the only possible hypothe¬
sis on which to base an explanation of the origin of life.

The foregoing ideas are essential, because they bring
out very clearly the contrast between them and the so-
called “ Christian awareness.” 45 The self-creating man of
Marxism is actually a Titan, “ who confronts the gods and
only in himself recognizes the all-highest.” We have here
an excellent example of this onesided Schopfergefiihl and
Hochgefiihl (Otto) of the man who glorifies himself. The
Christian conception of creation (and that held generally
speaking by all religions) does not repudiate the assertion

45 We use here Otto’s terminology, which in this connection distin¬
guishes very clearly between Christianity and Marxism. Cf. Westostliche
Mystik (second ed., 1929) , p. 135, passim.

N. N. Alexeiev

J13

that man “ as creative feels himself to be one with the Cre¬
ator from all eternity but at the same time it calls atten¬
tion to the other pole of human nature: the moment at
which man is aware of the futility of created existence, its
vanity and emptiness; when he feels that he is a “ miserable
creature.” It is in the creation hypothesis that the specifi¬
cally religious awareness of man’s dependence is found;
this sense of dependence is completely absent from Marx¬
ism, and gives it its fundamentally antireligious character.

A few words remain to be said about the later cosmo¬
logical motives in Marxism as considered from the Chris¬
tian standpoint. The elevation of material nature to a
position of absolute significance, which we find in the later
stages of Marxism, is completely opposed to the spirit of
Christian philosophy and makes any comparison between
Christianity and Marxism impossible. If man is only a
product of physical nature, only an insignificant part of the
infinite material substance, then it is questionable whether
a small piece of matter will ever be able to conquer the
material world. The lord of nature must in some sense
stand over and above nature, and must not be regarded as
an inseparable part of the infinite whole of the physical
world.

We believe that in that which concerns the idea of dia¬
lectic, the special emphasis on the principle of identity (as,
for instance, in Thomism) does not constitute an indis¬
pensable element of Christian philosophy. Christian phi¬
losophy, particularly in regard to the problem of man, is
bound to be dialectic, and should keep before it constantly
the antinomian and paradoxical character of human na¬
ture. In this sense the dialectic idea is quite Christian.
Yet, from the standpoint of a Christian dialectic it would
appear that the Marxist view of human nature is not suffi¬
ciently dialectical. Marxism concentrates one-sidedly on

ii4 The Christian Understanding of Man

one aspect of human nature only — the material, physical,
economic — and ignores the other — the spiritual, meta¬
physical, ideal. It also exaggerates the titanic, self-glori¬
fying side, and forgets the other; the fact that man has been
created. Marxism does not seem to be aware of these antin¬
omies, and makes no attempt to develop them in a delib¬
erate and philosophical manner. Marxism ceases to use
the dialectical method precisely where it needs it most.

(b) The Marxist view of man as a social being agrees in
many respects with the spirit of Christianity. This agree¬
ment, however , is limited by the negative attitude of Marx¬
ism toward the Christian principle of love.

The comparison between the Marxist and Christian con¬
ceptions of man, within the framework of the problems
which have been mentioned, compels us to ask the follow¬
ing question which is of immense importance for the Chris¬
tian concept of man: Is man, according to this concept,
to be conceived as an abstract, isolated individual, or is
he for Christian doctrine also a social being which cannot
be imagined as existing apart from relations to other men?
The history of Christian philosophy supplies an unambigu¬
ous answer to this question: the doctrine of the social na¬
ture of man was from the beginning a recognized Christian
doctrine even though the Christians took it over from
Aristotle. The only question is how far this doctrine is
compatible with the so-called “ Christian individualism.”
For of late, according to an American thinker, there has
been a very widespread idea that Christianity pursues in¬
dividualistic rather than social ends.46

This point of view is supported with similar force by
a well known German scholar, who says that Christianity
“ is an unlimited, unqualified individualism. The stand¬
ee Reinhold Niebuhr, “ Christian Politics and Communist Religion,”
in Christianity and the Social Revolution (Gollancz, 1935) .

N. N. Alexeiev

X15

ard of this individualism ... is determined simply by its
own sense of that which will further its consecration to
God.” 47 Only as a second, derivative element does the
nature of man appear as social. The individual as a form
of absolute value only attains his fulfilment “ through self-
abnegation in unconditional obedience to the Holy Will
of God.” In this originates the idea of “ the absolute life-
community of those united together in God,” which also
forms an indispensable element in the Christian concept of
man. In Christianity, according to Troeltsch, “ absolute
individualism ” is transformed into “ absolute universal-
ism.” These two poles require each other and are com¬
plementary.48 We believe, however, that Troeltsch sepa¬
rates too widely these two poles. In practice, the Christian
does achieve this “ universality,” that is, complete unity of
the individual with the universal, of course, only through
his unio mystica with God; though once he has reached this
stage, universal, and therefore social, existence becomes
a thing of equal, if not greater, importance (i.e., than
individual existence) . On this level perhaps the whole
position should be reversed, and the starting-point should
not be the individual but the divine society. Christianity
postulates such a mutual interpenetration of the individ¬
ualistic and the universal elements that priority has to be
given not to the individual but to the social whole: the
individual personality is thus regarded as issuing from
the human community.

We can pursue the analogy between Marxism and Chris¬
tianity concerning the social nature of man even further.
Neither Christianity nor Marxism regards as static the ex¬
isting modes of social life. The Christian does not seek
in them the ideal expression of the unity of the individual

47 Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches , Eng.
trans., p. 55. 48 Ibid., p. 41.

1 1 6 The Christian Understanding of Man

man with society; this is for him only to be found in the
Kingdom of God, which is “ not of this world,” but is only
possible after the transfiguration of this world and the
resurrection of the dead. In this sense the attempt to
identify the Kingdom of God with any particular social
program (as, for example, with social democracy) is folly.
Even the best possible social program can only create a
god-fearing life on earth: it cannot create the Kingdom
of God.

In some ways anti-Christian Marxist thought is nearer
to the social-political ideal of Christianity than these “ or¬
ganic ” political philosophies which have already been
mentioned. This statement follows from the fact that the
Marxist doctrine of the antinomian character of existing
social forms, and in particular the antagonistic nature of
the state as an organization of class forces, is in full accord
with the spirit of such Christian political views as we find
in the Old Testament and in the Book of Revelation. The
affinity between Marxism and the Hebrew prophetic spirit
cannot be questioned. It is, of course, not a matter of
close agreement about the details of the class-war theory,
but only the general conception of the state as an institu¬
tion which originates in brute force alone, an institution,
moreover, which is in harmony with the decay of society,
and is bound to disappear in the perfect community of the
future. The Chosen People, according to the Old Testa¬
ment, lived originally in a stateless condition, as the free
community of the children of Yahweh, who alone was their
legitimate king. The Hebrew ideal was that of an earthly
theocracy, to which the idea of the power of the state was
strange, and which was governed by the prophets, the medi¬
ators of the divine will. The state, in the biblical concep¬
tion, began with the period of degeneration, as a product

N. N. Alexeiev

ii7

of murder, crime and sin. The first king was Abimelech,
whose authority the Bible compares to a bramble which
alone was willing to accept the crown, whereas all the other
noble and useful trees refused it.49 The anointing of Saul
is regarded as a transgression of the law. In the words of
Samuel a state with a king at its head is a refuge for every¬
thing evil.

This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over
you: he will take your sons and appoint them unto him, for his
chariots and to be his horsemen; and they shall run before his
chariots . . . and he will take your daughters to be confection¬
aries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your
fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best
of them, and give them to his servants.50

Kingship is, therefore, an institution for exploitation: in
the Bible as well as in Marxism.

The idea of the class struggle in the Marxist sense can¬
not, however, be found in Christian doctrine. But the
mystical conception of the external and internal history of
nations as a bitter struggle appears in the symbols of the
Book of Revelation. Nowhere is the catastrophic character
of man’s history so clearly described as in this Christian
book. The social implication of chapters 17 and 18 is
worth special attention. In these chapters the noteworthy
thing, as a recent Russian commentator on the Apocalypse
has observed, is the symbolic description of the most pow¬
erful of all known systems, namely, capitalism: “ the great
harlot that sitteth on many waters.” 51 “ The following

words of the Apocalypse,” says this writer, “ point directly
to this: ‘ The great city which rules over all the kings of the

49 judg. 9:7 ff.

60 1 Sam. 8:11-14.

si Rev. 17:1. Cf. N. Setnitzky, The Ultimate Ideal, (Harbin, 1932).

n8 The Christian Understanding of Man

earth ’ ” (17:18). The symbols, with the aid of which this
social system and its decline are characterized, result in the
following historical picture: we see first of all this system
on the pinnacle of power, self-satisfied and infinitely proud
in its complacence. (“ I sit a queen, and am no widow,
and shall in no wise see mourning,” 18:7.) Thereupon
follows the sudden catastrophe, and the system is destroyed
by the very beast which has supported it. In the very
depths of the system are the forces which are evoked to
destroy it. These are the dark forces of chaos, the “ an¬
archy of production,” of which Marx has spoken.52

We must now try to answer the following question: Is
Christianity committed to the “ antagonistic ” theory of
society as expounded by Marx, with all its consequences:
of class struggle, social revolution, and the practice of mili¬
tant communism? The endeavor to answer this question
leads to the following conclusions.

From the standpoint of things as they are (but not from
the ideal standpoint) there is no reason why the Christian
should minimize the element of social antagonism in mod¬
ern society. Every lasting and properly organized social
unity presupposes a certain degree of solidarity (or loy¬
alty) among the individuals or groups who constitute it.
Without such solidarity the community is transformed
into a state of inner conflict, or assumes the appearance
of a purely mechanically imposed unity which by means of
might alone is able to force upon people some kind of
collective consciousness. But this recognition of solidarity
as a formal principle and as a general category of social
life has nothing to do with the various political and eco¬
nomic theories of so-called “ solidarity ” which minimize
the part played in history by the inner contradictions ex¬
isting in the social order, and have been justifiably attacked
5,2 Loc. cit., 185, 191.

N. N. Alexeiev

119

by the socialists. The principle of solidarity assumes
greater importance only when we pass from existing social
conditions to social ideals. Christians and Marxists agree
that the ideally conceived classless society can only be built
upon the basis of social solidarity.

From the standpoint of what ought to be the Christian
cannot allow himself to take part in the class struggle or
in social revolution like the Marxists. In this respect any
attempt to discover a closer approximation between Marx¬
ism and Christianity is doomed to failure from the outset.
The ethical aspect (though not the economic practice) of
the theory of the class struggle and social revolution is fre¬
quently supported by appealing to the Old Testament.
Here the valid norm consists in the familiar saying, “ an
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” 53

(c) There is contact between Christianity and Marxism
in the idea of man as a psycho-physical being . This con¬
tact , however , ceases with the statement of the Christian
doctrine of man as the “ image of God.”

It is undeniable that both Marxism and Christianity
belong to those types of doctrine which do not begin with
the metaphysical-idealistic hypothesis of the absolute au¬
tonomy of man ( der Mensch an sick) , of the ego on a level
with God. There is certainly a resemblance between the
two systems in the rejection of such a purely idealistic
anthropology. The analogy becomes still clearer when we
pass to the question of the dual character of man as at
once spiritual and physical. A certain “ materialism ” is
not entirely foreign to the Christian conception of man,
particularly when we consider the most important of the
original sources of this conception. The idea of man as a
purely spiritual, ideal being is actually a later product of
Christian philosophy; for the Old Testament conceives
)63 Cf. Esther 9:5, 15.

120 The Christian Understanding of Man

man as a being composed of body and soul.54 In the New
Testament doctrine of the resurrection the body is con¬
cerned as well as the soul.

The Pauline Epistles, too, show traces of the “ material¬
ist ” tradition of Stoicism, in which the body is an integral
and inseparable element of human nature. The familiar
Pauline doctrine of the different kinds of body 55 leads to
the conclusion that the present human body can be trans¬
formed into another material form. Many other early
Christian theologians (e.g., Tatian, Athenagoras, Irenaeus,
Tertullian) had theories about the interrelation of body
and soul in personality and even arrived at a kind of “ mys¬
tical materialism.” This tradition has never died out in
subsequent Byzantine theology. All this goes to support
the statement that the Christian is justified in accepting
the Marxist teaching about the close connection between
consciousness and material existence, at any rate in so far
as it is concerned with human nature.

It is also quite possible to approach the interaction of
human nature and human history, materialistically and
economically conceived, in a general Marxist sense, with¬
out ceasing to be a Christian, and without being in the
least obliged to accept its one-sided mechanistic interpre¬
tations of economic materialism, in which material ex¬
istence is given a primary place, and consciousness is re¬
garded as no more than a “ reflex and echo ” of material
conditions.56 Fortunately, however, Russian Marxist the¬
ory of the post-Lenin period has recognized the independ¬
ent nature of consciousness, as well as the positive character
of human personality, and in this way has substantially
modified the one-sidedness of the materialistic view of the
relation between nature and consciousness.

64 Cf. Fr. Riische, Blut, Leben und Seele, 1930.

65 1 Corinthians 15:39 ff. 56 See above.

N. N. Alexeiev

121

For the satisfactory elucidation of this problem it might
be necessary to ask whether the theory of the dependence
of consciousness on the physical world is valid only for an
imperfect society, and, therefore, that when the stage of
“ positive humanism ” has been attained — that is, after
the final liberation of man from the power of nature and
from slavery to economic conditions has been achieved —
it will disappear, or whether it is valid in all circumstances
and for all time. Hitherto, Marxist theory has not offered
any answer to this question; but, if the first theory is right,
and if the dependence of consciousness on nature is only
relative, it should be possible for Christians and Marxists
to reach complete agreement on this particular point.

It now remains to be seen how Christianity stands in
relation to the Marxist attempt to differentiate between
man and animal. Hitherto, Christianity has offered no
unambiguous answer to the problem of this relation
though innumerable theories have been suggested, which
are often mutually contradictory. One thing, however,
must be noted: the Marxist idea of man’s creativity as a
thing of positive value and a peculiarity of human life is
Christian in its origin: for no other religion has rated so
highly the significance of work, the creative powers of man,
and his capacities for organization.57 This is clearly ex¬
pressed in the familiar words of the Apostle Paul, in which
he insists that man’s right to eat depends upon the fact
that he works, a declaration which is now embodied in the
official text of the new Soviet constitution. We know that
the interpretation of these words in Christian theology and
philosophy has varied at different times, but their meaning
remains, generally speaking, the same. Work, that is,
man’s creative activity, is of value for its own sake, no mat-

57 See Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie, 1920,
and H. Bergson, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion , Paris, 1932.

122 The Christian Understanding of Man

ter whether it is of absolute or of relative importance,
whether it originates in love toward God or toward man,
or whether it is the result of the injunction to live the
ascetic life.

In this sense the Marxist conception of the creative man
is in agreement with certain tendencies in Christian civ¬
ilization, out of which have come the activism of the West
and the whole of modern industrial and technical society.
The fact that the value of man’s creative and organizing
activity is appreciated not only by the various Protestant
sects but also by the more mystically minded Christianity
of the East is clearly seen in those ideas in Byzantine the¬
ology, which found in this capacity for creation and or¬
ganizing the distinctive feature of human life, which raises
man above all other creatures, even above the angels.68

(d) The real , perfect man , according to Christian doc¬
trine , is revealed only in the person of Jesus Christ , Son of
Man and Son of God, who is one element ( hypostasis ) in
the Trinity. One can therefore only speak of the perfect
man, from the Christian standpoint, in the sense of his re¬
lationship to the Son of God , that is, communion with him
and with the Holy Trinity.

Christianity, considered in its philosophical and meta¬
physical aspect, does not belong to those doctrines which
see in the Absolute an indivisible unity, but rather to those
which attribute inner “ social ” relations to the Absolute
and do not seek to detach the idea of God from that of
community, for the Trinity itself is an example of a rela¬
tion between “ persons ” and is the most complete of all
forms of “ community.” Christian metaphysics are in this
way definitely sociological in character, which becomes
clearer when we consider that according to the Christian
conception the “ real ” man, as he is capable of being, will
68 See G. Palamae, Capita physica, Migne, S.G.T. 155, Col. 1166.

N. N. Alexeiev

123

be revealed only in the Kingdom of God. Philosophically
expressed, such a condition will only be realized after the
fundamental transformation of physical nature. This
radical revolution having been achieved, however, man
will not have the status of an individual pure and simple,
with no relations to other men, but as a part of the whole,
of the heavenly church, which through its mystical relation¬
ship to the Son of God cannot be conceived apart from the
Trinity. It is this which distinguishes the Christian idea
of man from those purely individualistic philosophies
which regard man “ as such ” as nothing but an individual
being, as, for example, in some tendencies of Indian
thought, according to which the soul after its redemption
is in complete isolation, and for such a soul not only the
world, but even the idea of “ community ” is doomed to
disappear.59 But, on the other hand, this Christian notion
of transcendental social relations does not imply that the
individual is lost in the whole; on the contrary it demands
the forceful expression of his individuality. As Royce has
with justice observed, it is in this that the difference con¬
sists between the Christian and the Buddhist ideas of re¬
demption, for according to the latter man ceases, in the
state of nirvana, to be an individual.60

Thus it is possible to perceive certain analogies between
the social character of the Marxist notion of man and the
social implications of Christian metaphysics. For Marx¬
ism, as for Christianity, the conception of man as a social
being cannot be excluded from an analysis of human na¬
ture. For both the fulfilment of the nature of the indi¬
vidual man and the fulfilment of the nature of society are
inconceivable apart from one another. The Christian doc¬
trine of the final cataclysm and of the future transfiguration

59 Cf. R. Garbe, Die Samkhja Philosophic, 1894, p. 326.

so Royce, The Problem of Christianity, i, p. 190.

124 The Christian Understanding of Man

and the resurrection of the dead suggest some similarity to
the Marxist theory of the final collapse of society. In each
case the existence of the new-born “ real ” man is bound up
with the rest of mankind. It would seem that only one fur¬
ther step might be necessary in order to conceive of the
ultimate Marxist ideal of social life as a church ideal, which
we have already discussed.

These observations certainly throw light upon enormous
differences between the Christian philosophy, founded as
it is on faith and revelation, and Marxism, which claims
to be scientific, realistic, positivist, and is hostile to all
forms of mysticism. And this difference is so great that it
compels us to reverse the methods which we have hitherto
adopted and to consider Christianity and Marxism not in
the light of their points of contact, but of the great differ¬
ences which separate their conceptions of human nature
from each other.

3. THE CHRISTIAN AND MARXIST CONCEPTIONS OF HUMAN
NATURE CONSIDERED IN THE LIGHT OF THEIR
DIFFERENCES

(a) The deepest cleavage between the two consists in
this: that whereas Christianity is a religion based on faith
and revelation , Marxism is a social system philosophically
and scientifically founded on human reason.

This difference should not be ignored — although this
happens far too often — especially in the face of the asser¬
tion that there is no real antithesis between revelation and
reason, and that revelation must be justified at the bar of
reason. Whoever is of this opinion forgets that historically
the Marxist system arose from the radical disagreement
between Christianity and rationalism. What Engels could
not accept about revelation was the idea that God is “ non-
rational ” (we would say supra-rational) , in other words.

N. N. Alexeiev

125

that reason was not supreme. Possibly it is at this point
that we see the deepest difference between Marxism and
Christianity. If everything were ordered according to the
laws of reason, Engels concluded, the “ divine personality ”
would become superfluous, for the human consciousness
would be raised to the level of the divine.61 Those who
consider that a peaceful return of Marxism to Christianity
is possible, and, conversely, that a painless approach, un¬
accompanied by any inner struggle, of Christianity to
Marxism is also possible, forget the spiritual crisis which
drove Christian philosophy from the Reformation to He¬
gel, and from Hegel to Feuerbach, Stirner, Marx and
Engels.

Marxism is often described as a kind of religion, which
ultimately has its basis in faith and has a God of its own.
Marxism is the belief in the earthly millennium,62 with the
perfect human society or the collective godlike man in the
place of God.63 Seen from this angle, Marxism is a sort of
deification of collective man and of a religion of humanity.
In all this there is, of course, some modicum of truth, but
it must be remembered at the same time that any attempt
at a purely religious interpretation of Marxist doctrine is
destined to fail because it tends to ignore the most impor¬
tant element in the Marxist philosophy and view of human
nature, namely, their thoroughgoing atheism. The es¬
sence of Marxism consists in the fact that, in spite of the
points of contact with Christianity which have already been
described, it is farthest removed from a specifically reli¬
gious attitude to man just because it goes farthest in its en¬
deavors to confer absolute autonomy ( Verabsolutierung )

6i me., 1, 2, p. 224.

6,2 See Gerlach, Der Kommunismus als Lehre vom tausendjdhrigen
Reich , (Munich, 1920) , and recently H. Marr, Die Massenwelt im Kampf
um ihre Form (Hamburg, 1934) .

63 Cf. Niebuhr, in Christianity and the Social Revolution, p. 461.

126 The Christian Understanding of Man

on the individual. This becomes clear as soon as a com¬
parison is made between Marxism and other types of hu¬
manistic religion and philosophies which aim at making
man into an absolute.

One thing, however, is certain: the idea of a religion of
humanity as conceived by Comte and his contemporaries
is completely foreign to Marxism; for the simple reason
that Marx was extremely negative in his judgments on re¬
ligion, and was not very particular about the way in which
he expressed them. We have already seen that, historically
considered, for Marxism religion is simply the result of the
division of labor, namely, a product of the sense of incom¬
pletion or “ estrangement ” (. Entfremdung ) . Religion
springs out of the animal consciousness, the result of a one¬
sided sense of dependence on nature and society. Religion,
therefore, is bound to disappear when the society of the
future comes into being: atheism is one of the indispensa¬
ble conditions of such a “ positive humanism.” From this
point of view it is futile to speak of a renaissance of religion
in socialist society, or of the rise of a new religion. Engels
has expressed this very clearly and well in his essays on
Carlyle. “ We do not need,” says Engels, “ to impress upon
what is truly human the stamp of the divine in order to be
certain of its greatness and splendor. On the contrary, the
more divine, that is, non-human, something is, the less shall
we be able to admire it.” 64 And if the leaders of Marxism,
like Carlyle and other social reformers, wish to fight against
the “ indecision, the inner emptiness, the spiritual death,
the dishonesty of our times,” they will not do so by re¬
ligious means. In the place of religion Marxism would set
philosophy, as Marx in his younger days suggested in his
articles in the Rheinische Zeitung (1842) . Later, Marx
chose to abandon philosophy and to regard science as a
64 me., 1, 5, p. 427.

N. N. Alexeiev

127

substitute for religion. In Sankt Max (1846) we read that
“ philosophy must be left on one side; as an ordinary man
one has to cut oneself loose from it and devote oneself to
the study of reality.” 65

In consequence of their antireligious position Marx and
Engels repudiate all forms of “ religious socialism.” 66
Such a position makes it impossible to discover any avenue
of approach between Marxism and the religion of human¬
ity or religious socialism. The chief feature of such a “ re¬
ligion,” the conscious acknowledgment of the element of
faith, is utterly lacking in Marxism. The Marxist glorifi¬
cation of collective man can be made to fit into the frame¬
work of pure knowledge alone: in this sense it must be
regarded as a kind of science, denying even the ethical sub¬
stance of socialism, namely, the conception of the social
ideal. Instead of value-judgments there is the theory of
the historical process. For the genuine Marxist a formula
such as “ The perfect society is the highest of all values ”
would be entirely unacceptable, for he would say that it
does not “ sound ” Marxist. We read in the Deutsche
Ideologie:

Communism is for us not a condition to have before us,
an ideal with which reality will have to conform. We call
communism itself the ultimate movement which puts an end
to the present state. The conditions of this movement are the
result of preconditions existing at the present time.67

These features of Marxist doctrine constitute an un¬
bridgeable gulf between Marxism and the Christian re¬
ligion. It is quite impossible to build a bridge between a
religious system based on faith and revelation, like Chris¬
es ME., 1, 5, p. 216.

ee Cf. Manifest gegen Kriege (1846) ; the article in the Brusseler
deutsche Zeitung (1847) ; Engels’ Brief e aus London (ME., I, 2, pp. 370 ff.) .

67 ME., I, 5, p. 25.

128 The Christian Understanding of Man

tianity, and a doctrine, like Marxism, which is essen¬
tially atheistic and repudiates all forms of religious faith.
Whether for a Christian or a Marxist the transition from
Marxism to Christianity, and vice versa, would mean a real
spiritual revolution. Without an inner upheaval the
Christian cannot become a Marxist nor the Marxist a
Christian.

It may, however, be argued that hitherto we have only
been dealing with the purely theoretical aims of Marxism,
whereas we ought also to take into consideration what
Marxism actually is. Actually, it is argued, it contains,
though perhaps unconsciously, certain elements of belief,
that is to say, of religion. This is particularly true when
we think not of Marxist theory but of so-called popular
Marxism. The masses, it is said, can only be moved by
some kind of faith, and this faith in the coming of the mil¬
lennium on earth, the New Jerusalem, was and is, as a mat¬
ter of fact, the motive force of the Marxist masses. All this,
however, requires qualification. For Marxism mobilizes
the masses, in the first place, not by appealing to their faith
in, or their desire for, a New Jerusalem, but by appealing
directly to their class interests. It suggests to the masses
that the socialist movement is their own affair, appealing
to their own self-interest. In this there is a remarkable
difference between Marxism and other socialist doctrines
which are concerned with “ ideas ” and “ ideals,” rather
than with purely material interests. We tend to forget
that a great mass movement founded on class interests is
easily capable of activity without any religious impulse
at all.

Further, there is a second consideration: whenever popu¬
lar Marxism seems to show evidence of some element of
“ faith,” it is a unique phenomenon, the explanation of
which is made more difficult rather than easier by com-

N. N. Alexeiev

129

parison with religious faith. The most important thing
about the so-called “ faith ” of Marxism is not the absence
of belief in a personal or impersonal God, for Buddhism
does not acknowledge a god, although it can with truth
be called a religion. Buddhism does embody the specifi¬
cally religious type of feelings (or what Professor F. Stepun
has so aptly called Glaublichkeit) which is completely ab¬
sent from Marxism: that is, the feeling of dependence (cf.
Schleiermacher) , the mysterium tremendum (Otto) , rev¬
erence for that which is higher than man. The Hochgefuhl
(Otto) of the Marxist mass-man who fights for his interests
does not bear any trace of the characteristics of that emo¬
tion in its religious form. This proletarian elation grows
out of the awareness of belonging to a certain class and is
often only a polarization of bourgeois pride.

This does not imply, however, that in the so-called re¬
ligious fervor of the Marxist masses (particularly in Rus¬
sia) , there are no quasi-religious elements ( Religidsitat )
especially if by this term we mean the “ concentration of all
spiritual forces in some all-embracing experience, the com¬
prehension of such experience in terms of symbol and idea,
utter devotion and fanaticism.” 68 This “ religiosity ” is,
nevertheless, bound up with the most radical denial of the
Christian faith, and is one of the most characteristic fea¬
tures of our time. The presence of such a specific kind of
religiosity (or quasi-religiosity) is not sufficient to warrant
our drawing analogies between Marxism and the Christian
religion.

(b) The second fundamental difference between Chris¬
tianity and Marxism is expressed in the transcendental
basis of the Christian conception of man contrasted with
the exclusively immanent conception held by Marxism.

If Marxism possesses certain elements of faith, such faith
F. Stepun.

130 The Christian Understanding of Man

is tantamount to belief that human perfection is to be
regarded as possible only in this world, whereas the funda¬
mental dogma of Christianity can be summed up in the
declaration: “ My kingdom is not of this world.” This
does not mean that Christianity has no plans for this world,
or that it is not prepared to recognize any mode of con¬
duct designed for it; it means only that the dynamic im¬
pulse for the Christian is inseparable from belief in God
and in the possibility of life after death. To a Marxist such
a belief appears completely nonsensical. Nowhere are the
well known words of St. Paul more appropriate than in
this connection — “ For the Jews require a sign, and the
Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified,
unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks
foolishness.” From the Marxist standpoint Christian doc¬
trine is simply folly; and for the Christian, Marxism is the
“ wisdom of this world ” and “ of the princes of this world,
that come to nought.”

There exist within Christianity several attempts at solv¬
ing the problem of the relation between this world and
the other. The most thoroughgoing of these attempts,
asceticism, held life in this world to be of no account, and
saw significance in earthly existence only in so far as it was
a transition to another life. A more moderate solution
sought to define the purpose of human existence in terms
of the revelation through faith of its relation to a life
beyond. There has always existed in the Christian tradi¬
tion, however, the tendency to conceive of the Kingdom
of God as an exclusively earthly system, a city of God on
earth, a kind of earthly New Jerusalem. The Eastern
Church found fault with the Roman Catholic Church
because it believed its doctrines and dogmas to contain the
seed of a false interpretation of the Christian faith. It was
Dostoievski’s belief that the whole of French socialism was

N. N. Alexeiev

131

nothing but a further development of this erroneous Ro¬
man Catholic idea.

In our opinion, however, this conception is not specifi¬
cally Roman, but rather Jewish, in so far as the doctrine of
the New Jerusalem on earth has the worldly power of the
Messiah as the basis of it. This makes it easier to under¬
stand why certain Christian sects, both in the East and in
the West (Hussites, Taborites and many Protestant sects)
have remained closer in spirit to the Old Testament and
have been attracted to the idea of a New Jerusalem on
earth and even to religious communism. It is to this type
of thought that, generally speaking, the more recent apos¬
tles of the earthly New Jerusalem, from the French utopian
socialists to Weitling, G. Kulman, and others, belong.
Considered in the broadly historical sense, Marxism has
also sprung out of this soil, but, in contrast to religious and
Christian socialism, it has completely detached the King¬
dom of God from the idea of God, and has introduced in
its stead the new elements which have been described.
Some of these may approach the Christian idea of man,
but others show how far removed it is from Marxism.

(c) The third fundamental difference between Chris¬
tianity and Marxism lies in the fact that it is impossible
to sever the idea of personality from Christian anthropol¬
ogy , whereas this does not constitute an essential element
in the Marxist conception of man.

We know that throughout the history of Christian phi¬
losophy there have existed several theories of human na¬
ture. Even those which were farthest removed from a
philosophical “ personalism ” (for example, those which
rejected the idea of man as an individual hypostasis and,
so to speak, dissolved him into a series of relations) were
more “ personalistic ” than Marxism. For such types of
thought, man in his relation to God, as a being created “ in

132 The Christian Understanding of Man

the Word,” is essentially a responsible creature, that is,
a “ center ” of responsible and free decisions, being called
upon to determine the direction of his own life. This sense
of responsibility constitutes the real nature of man, but it
is completely absent from Marxism. Man, according to
the latter philosophy, has no personal center of his own:
he is only one of a number of relations for that to which
man is related is society, which is not personal (as God is
personal) but only a sum-total of relations.

This constitutes a great difference between the concep¬
tion of relations as found in Marxism and those of which
Christian doctrine speaks, for the latter relations are only
to be understood in terms of the relation of the Creator to
the creature. Created man is nothing other than a repro¬
duction of the original pattern which remains the same.
God created man in his own image: which presupposes that
the original always overshadows the image. If God is a
“ person ” in the fullest sense of the word, it follows that
man is a kind of “ reduced ” person, and not only by virtue
of his imperfection, but even after his resurrection in the
Kingdom of God, where he does not become God but only
appears in a closer relationship to him. This gives rise
to an unbridgeable gulf between the Christian and the
Marxist conceptions of human nature, for the Marxist man
is not created after any pattern. He is molded according
to the model which evolves during the historical process
and as a result of the progressive march of humanity. The
dominating classes and individuals, bearers of historical
ideals, create in their own classconsciousness the concep¬
tion of a perfect man, which has never yet existed and
which is yet to be born. They try to appropriate for them¬
selves the prerogative of the creator.

Yet our examination of Marxist teaching about the inci¬
dental nature of personality has convinced us that the

N. N. Alexeiev

Marxist man is a far more ephemeral creature than the
Christian “ image of God.” And it is here — in the prac¬
tical attitude toward man — that the enormous difference
between Marxism and Christianity comes out very plainly.
The social practice of Marxism knows only one problem: 69
the transformation of the irrational, nonessential qualities
conferred by the process of history on the individual of
bourgeois culture into the “ accidental ” ones of Marxism,
and the creation, by means of a radical reconstruction of
social conditions, of the perfect human personality. The
real historical man is here not an end in himself, not an
ultimate value, but only an instrument for the purpose of
creating the society of the future; merely material to be
operated on by society. Reference is often made, of course,
to the fact that historical Christianity has also had its peri¬
ods of terrorism. But Christian terrorism does not arise
out of the foundation of its teaching, that is, out of the
Gospels, but is a denial of it; whereas the Marxist principle
of molding the individual into something impersonal is a
natural consequence of its tenets. According to the Chris¬
tian ethic each man is of worth for his own sake, a con¬
ception which Marxism resolutely repudiates. The Chris¬
tian ethic is one of loving one’s neighbor; it is not an ethic
which is derived from the historically determined, relative
values of human existence.

(d) The fourth fundamental difference between Chris¬
tianity and Marxism consists in the complete rejection by
the latter of the idea of the “ inner man” whereas this con¬
stitutes the foundation of the Christian conception of man.

“ For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you this
declaration is the basis of the Christian religion and of the
conception of man which is based upon it. The Marxist

69 For other problems, however, see Plekhanov, Fundamental Problems
of Marxism , Eng. trans. by Martin Lawrence, 1929. — Translator’s note.

134 The Christian Understanding of Man

“ kingdom of God on earth ” is, on the contrary, nothing
more than an external economic organization by reason of
which a new form of consciousness will emerge as a “ reflex
and echo ” of the new economic basis of life. The problem
of the specifically inner and spiritual character of human
nature lies completely outside the whole of Marxist teach¬
ing and the logical Marxist proletarian or intellectual.
What is there of practical worth for militant Marxism in
the following words of Christ: “ What shall it profit a man
if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? ” The
Marxist, on the contrary, wants to win the whole world, and
as for his soul he does not trouble about it. The man who,
in St. Peter’s phrase, is “ precious in the sight of God,” “ the
hidden man of the heart,” only provokes a pitying smile in
the Marxist. Once for all we must remind ourselves that
in this respect there is an unfathomable abyss not only be¬
tween Marxism and Christianity, but between Marxism
and all other religions and philosophies which recognize
the spiritual nature of man, whether it be Hinduism or
Platonism or any other. Marxism belongs wholly to the
type of civilization which has lost all understanding of the
problems of man’s inner life. For this reason such ideas as
an inner ethical imperative or responsibility to God or to
one’s conscience are entirely foreign to Marxism.

The Marxist ethic, as we have seen, is simply a class
ethic, that is one which deliberately rejects what St. Paul
describes as the “ fruit of the Spirit,” namely “ love, joy,
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
temperance.” 70 For the thoroughgoing Marxist these are
neither virtues nor vices (because he has no room for such
terminology) : they are only ideological principles which
divert the energies required for the class war and are there¬
fore to be cast aside. In the class struggle, as in every other,
70 Gal. 5:22.

N. N. Alexeiev

135

“ hatred, strife, jealousies, wraths, faction, divisions, envy-
ings, murders,” 71 are far more necessary. It must be un¬
derstood, once for all, that we are here once more faced
with a fundamental contradiction between the Marxist and
the Christian idea of man.

4. CONCLUSIONS

In the development of our subject we have placed before
us two different aims: a theoretical and a practical. In
pursuing these aims we desired above all to remain on
philosophical ground, on which alone any discussion be¬
tween Marxism and Christianity is possible. We believe
in the ultimate truth of Christianity as a religion, and are
convinced that Christianity includes whatever is true and
genuine in Marxism. But fundamentally religious faith
only embodies such “ true and genuine ” values in the
philosophically potential state. It would be scarcely pos¬
sible to assert that, in what concerns the actualization of
what is only potential, all the various philosophies which
have arisen on Christian soil and have dealt with ethical
and social doctrines contain the ultimate truth and are in
no need of improvement. In the “ anteroom ” of the
Christian faith, that is, in philosophy, any claim to possess
absolute truth is unfounded and false. The familiar at¬
tempt made by representatives of Christian thought to
prove that all the social and philosophical doctrines of so¬
cialism are implicit in Christian philosophy has led to an
exaggeration.

For it is a serious error, often committed by historical
Christianity, to elevate any theological, philosophical, or
social-ethical teaching to the position of an absolute truth
which can never be surpassed; or to proclaim any one
Christian teacher as alone orthodox; but it is this practice
71 Gal. 5:20-21.

136 The Christian Understanding of Man

which Marxism has taken over from historical Christianity.
Oriental theosophy showed far greater wisdom by acting in
accordance with the “ synthetic ” spirit in its dealings with
the differing, though fundamentally orthodox, philosophi¬
cal doctrines, rather than in the spirit of exclusiveness
which demanded the outlawing of heresies. Thus if we
agree that Christian philosophy does not necessarily con¬
tain truths which should be regarded as absolute, we should
concede that other philosophical, ethical and social ideas
which have not sprung from Christian belief may be in¬
structive. What truths there are in many non-Christian
ideas are often the result of the sins of historical Christian¬
ity, and the willingness of Christian thinkers to be in¬
structed by them is actually equivalent to the admission of
their own sins. From this point of view the foregoing in¬
vestigations possess a certain theoretical importance for
Christian philosophy and from them the following con¬
clusions may be drawn:

(1) The disappearance of German idealistic philoso¬
phy, which formed the highest point in the spiritual de¬
velopment of Europe in its most bourgeois period, and the
“ anthropological reaction ” against idealism, are to be wel¬
comed from the Christian standpoint, inasmuch as a con¬
crete idea of man replaced abstractions such as Fichte’s
“ Ich ” and Hegel’s “ absolute idea.”

(2) The thought which emerged conspicuously in the
post-Hegelian philosophy, that the problem of man is of
far greater importance to philosophy than other philo¬
sophical questions (e.g., time, space, causality, etc.) is also
justifiable from the Christian standpoint and should con¬
stitute a point of departure for a Christian philosophical
study of man.

(3) Acceptable also are the modifications which Marx¬
ism, and those philosophical doctrines which are related

N. N. Alexeiev

137

to it, have made of the old Aristotelian and Thomist view
of man as an “ animal sociale et rationale Such modifica¬
tions have been introduced by the appreciation of the
function of labor and technics, the conception of the so¬
cial nature of man, the relation of the latter to the perfect
society of the future, etc.

(4) Particularly acceptable are the ethico-social conclu¬
sions drawn from the above mentioned social philosophy
which involve a vindication of the need for a radical, social
and economic reconstruction of modern bourgeois society
and the interests of exploited social classes. The greatest
sin of the Christian churches is that they have hitherto de¬
fended the capitalist order of society and have thus sided
with the possessors of power against the oppressed.

The justification of one section of the philosophical con¬
tent of Marxism requires of us an unambiguous formula¬
tion of what, in Marxism, is unacceptable from the point
of view of Christian philosophy, and cannot under any
circumstances be adopted by the Christian:

(1) The materialist-naturalistic form of the philosophi¬
cal reaction against a onesided idealism.

(2) The fundamentally antipersonal attitude of Marx¬
ist teaching, and the conception of man as the sum-total of
social-economic relations, which are incompatible with
such ideas as responsibility, inner spiritual life, ethical au¬
tonomy, etc.

(3) The thoroughgoing identification of the individual
with the universal, and the complete absorption of the
individual personality by the community. In a sinful
world personality must necessarily maintain a certain
amount of independence over against society, for only in
the Kingdom of God can the individual be absorbed into
the community without damage to himself.

(4) The conception of religion as an “ opiate for the

138 The Christian Understanding of Man

people,” which forms the foundation of Marxist militant
atheism.

These are the major points which the Marxist must
abandon if there is to be any modus vivendi between
Marxists and Christians, who are obliged to live together
in the same society, and who, in the light of the contacts
described above, can to some extent work together in the
same direction. The Christian should and can participate
with the Marxist in the reconstruction of the world and in
the realization of social justice. The question of how,
while engaged in cooperating in such a task, the inevitable
collision arising out of the fundamental antagonisms of the
two doctrines can be avoided, is one which lies outside the
scope of this essay. The Christian, however, must not for¬
get one thing: to remain faithful to himself, and not try
to adapt himself to ideas which are foreign to him.

PART II

THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING
OF MAN

Emil Brunner

THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF MAN

INTRODUCTION

The Christian doctrine of man is one section of Christian
theology as a whole and can only be understood against
this background. All that the Bible says about man which
is essential and obligatory for faith is indissolubly con¬
nected with that which it declares about the nature and
the will of God, about the nature of the Trinity, and the
eternal divine decrees, about creation, atonement and re¬
demption on the basis of his revelation. The Word of
God, in which man has the ground of his being, is also the
ground of knowledge for all that we are, both ideally
and actually. It has only been possible to suggest these
general theological presuppositions in this paper; indeed
at every point this whole sketch of the Christian doctrine
of man needs to be more fully developed.1

The doctrine of man does not occupy a prominent po¬
sition in the Bible; the Bible is far more concerned with
God and his Kingdom than with man and his fulfilment.
At the same time this God is always the God of man, who
reveals his nature to man, and wills to assert his will in the
life of man. To a limited extent the Bible is anthropocen-

i The full exposition of my thought on this subject will be found in
the book which I published recently under the title Der Mensch im Wider-
spruch (Furche-Verlag, Berlin, 1937) . The present paper is merely a
brief summary of the main points of the book. Owing to its fragmentary
character it can only be regarded as a passing discussion. The reader will
find that many of the questions and objections which arise in his mind have
already been raised and, so far as it lay in his power, answered by the
author himself in the larger work.

142 The Christian Understanding of Man

trie, on a theocratic and theocentric basis. It is concerned
with the God who became man, and with man whose aim
it is to become like him — the “ God-Man.” But there is
a sense in which we can say that the doctrine of man does
occupy a privileged position in comparison with the other
doctrines in the Bible, since its theme is of the greatest
interest to modern man. Even those who have no interest
in God and his Kingdom are interested in the question of
man; indeed even those who do not dream of the divine
destiny of man are concerned with the question of the des¬
tiny of man as a whole. It is the task of a Christian anthro¬
pology to show that it is impossible to understand man
save in the light of God.

The central thesis of this article may be stated thus:
Man is a “ theological ” being; that is, his ground, his goal,
his norm, and the possibility of understanding his own
nature are all in God.

The Christian understanding of man, however — like
the Christian message as a whole — in relation to man’s
own knowledge of himself is both positive and negative,
missionary and polemical. The Bible does not assert that
man is unable to gain a true knowledge of himself by means
of his reason, by means of his natural methods of acquiring
knowledge, by the simple experience of life, by means of
scientific research, and by means of philosophical thought.
On the contrary, in a decisive passage it affirms: “ Who
among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit
of man which is in him? ” (1 Cor. 2:11) . The Bible al¬
ways presupposes man’s natural and valid knowledge of
himself; for instance, there is no reason to reject the results
of physical anthropology, anatomy, physiology, biochem¬
istry or even psychology, sociology or philosophical an¬
thropology. Even the most rigid Christian teachers, like
the Reformers, never questioned the validity and the ne-

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cessity of a purely rational natural doctrine of man. All
that is the subject of human research, such as the psycho¬
physical structure of man, his psycho-physical development
within time and space, both as an individual and as a mem¬
ber of a species, the relations between body and mind, the
laws of human thought, as well as the facts of human his¬
tory, is not derived from revelation, especially from its
original source in the Holy Scriptures, but from the par¬
ticular science which deals with that special sphere of life
or with that particular sphere of competent thought. In
principle there is no conflict between a scientific and a
Christian anthropology since the point of view from which
each looks at man is quite different. All that, in principle,
is accessible to experience within time and space is not a
matter of faith but of science; faith, for instance, never
competes with a scientific theory which seeks to explain
how the human race came into existence or the stages of its
evolution. The special object of faith is the nature and the
destiny of man as it is to be understood from the point of
view of God and in relation to God — to the God who dis¬
closes himself to us in his revelation.

Hence the boundary between the sphere of the knowl¬
edge accessible through faith and rational empirical knowl
edge can only be defined in terms of degrees. The more it
is concerned with man as a whole, with that which includes
not only what he is and what he ought to be but also his
ultimate origin and his final goal, the more exclusive is the
attitude of faith; while the more we are concerned with
partial aspects of human existence the more autonomous,
even from the point of view of faith, does our purely ra¬
tional empirical knowledge become. There is no special
science of Christian anatomy, nor is there any specially
Christian science of psychology or of sense-perception, but
there is a special Christian doctrine of freedom or unfree-

144 The Christian Understanding of Man

dom, of the destiny and personal existence of man, which is
more or less in sharp contrast with every other view of man.
Thus in principle Christian anthropology is inclusive so
far as scientific anthropology is concerned, but it is ex¬
clusive so far as the anthropology of another religion or
philosophy of life is concerned. But even in this second
case the relation is never purely negative, but must always
be dialectical in character: no other system of religious an¬
thropology is without a grain of truth — nor, however, is
it without a distortion of the truth — which affects it
through and through. But since the man to whom the
gospel is proclaimed is never without a total interpretation
of his own being, however unconscious this may be, and of
his own destiny, Christian anthropology is always, in the
sense of that dialectic, aggressive and eager to get into
touch with man. It is essential to it, therefore, that it
should always carry on discussions with its rivals.

THE PROBLEM FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF MAN

(1) We all think we know what man is. But what man
really is, is the great question of the ages. Not in vain were
the words “ Know thyself ” inscribed on the temple of
Apollo as the epitome of ultimate wisdom. Were man only
a piece of the world — one object among many other ob¬
jects — as was suggested by a certain kind of positivistic
natural philosophy of the last century — the problem of
man would simply be one problem among many others,
and not even one of the greatest. But man is also the sub¬
ject, to whom all objective problems are presented as ques¬
tions, or objecta. To inquire into the nature of man means
inquiring into the mind or the spirit from which all ques¬
tioning springs. All problems are human problems and
all interests are human interests. Therefore the secret of
man extends to the ultimate depths of existence; we can-

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145

not understand man aright unless we take into considera¬
tion both the primal origin and the final end of all things.
For man can never be understood merely from that which
he may be empirically at any given moment; his existence
includes his destiny. The specifically human element con¬
sists in being constantly disturbed and, at least in part,
determined by the idea of destiny, of obligation. Thus
from the very outset every merely empirical solution of
the problem is hopeless; positivism is not merely not a
metaphysic, it is bad metaphysics. It cuts away the very
roots of human existence.

(2) Since the question of man — from the point of view
of the theory of knowledge — is fundamentally different
from all others, the answer to the question of its practical
significance cannot be compared with any others. The
way in which men understand themselves decides what
their lives will be.

A dead thing, a living plant, even an animal, is what
it is simply as it has been produced by nature. It does not
understand itself, and it does not alter its life in accordance
with its understanding of itself. Both these elements, self-
knowledge and self-determination, are the wonderful and
dangerous privileges of human existence. Man is the be¬
ing who understands himself and in this self-understanding
decides or determines what he will do and be. This is true,
whether this understanding of himself be right or wrong,
superficial or profound. Differences of view about the na¬
ture of man create different ways of living, different civili¬
zations and cultures, different political, economic and social
systems. Every form of culture, every civilization, every
legal system, every form of economic order, every style
in art, every kind of constitution of a state — whatever
else it may be, is also a product of a definite view of man.
The great differences between the cultures and civiliza-

146 The Christian Understanding of Man

tions of the ancient Chinese empire, of ancient India, and
of classical Greece and Rome, were not only due to geo¬
graphical, climatic, and racial causes; above all they were
due to the fact that the Indian, the Chinese, the Greek and
the Roman had such a different view of his own nature —
that is, of human existence as a whole.

Thus — to take only one definite illustration — the doc¬
trine of the jus naturale of late antiquity, which is based
upon the Stoic conception of man, is one of the elements
which has helped to determine the formation of a legal sys¬
tem and of political theory and action in Europe, for cen¬
turies down to the French Revolution, and even on into
the period of modern socialism and communism. Again,
the view of women and children, which sprang from the
Christian conception of man, has not only influenced so¬
cial views but it has also affected the creation of institutions,
down to the modern legislation for the protection of the
workers. The most powerful of all spiritual forces is man’s
view of himself, the way in which he understands his na¬
ture and his destiny; indeed it is the one force which de¬
termines all the others which influence human life. For
in the last resort all that man thinks and wills springs out
of what he thinks and wills about himself, about human
life and its meaning and its purpose.

(3) There are many different conceptions of man; it
would be an impossible task to try to assemble them and
then to classify them. There are as many views of man as
there are human beings. Myth and poetry, philosophical,
scientific and religious doctrine are all in some way or an¬
other wrestling with this problem, and trying to find a solu¬
tion to this question which concerns us so nearly and is yet
at the same time one of the most disturbing and tormenting
questions of human life. And yet when we look into the
subject a little more closely, we perceive that this infinite

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variety can be reduced to a few main types, although within
each type it is possible to distinguish countless varieties.
In order to perceive the distinctive element in the Chris¬
tian doctrine of man we shall find that it will be useful and
indeed necessary to give a rapid survey of the other, rival
views of man. Behind the discussion between Christianity
and Marxism (respecting communism) , and between the
Christian and the fascist claim for totalitarian obedience,
stands the conflict between the Christian view of man and
a rationalistic or romantically vitalistic view of man. The
abstract discussion on which we are here engaged is already
a vital issue in the political and ecclesiastical spheres.

(a) The simplest, the least mysterious and the most
primitive form of anthropology is the view which regards
man as part of this world, especially of the animal world;
according to this view man is either a highly developed
or (according to the latest theory) a most degenerate ani¬
mal. This conception should not be confused with the
process of purely scientific research into the nature of man
— that is, with the methods of natural science — which is
called the anthropology of natural science. For scientific
anthropology as such does not claim to give a total explana¬
tion of man’s being, in competition with an idealistic or
Christian anthropology; it merely contemplates a definite
aspect of human existence without taking a definite posi¬
tion either negatively or positively on the question whether
man is more than this object which is being studied in this
way from the point of view of natural science, or not. We
make a sharp distinction between scientific research in
terms of natural science and a naturalistic metaphysic, thus
also between a naturalistic anthropology and the anthro¬
pology of natural science. The naturalistic view is ex¬
pressed in various forms. Its crudest expression is the ma¬
terialistic variety, which conceives man as a being composed

148 The Christian Understanding of Man

of material elements, and the mental and spiritual life
either as a secretion or as a kind of electromagnetic effect of
these material elements. Biological naturalism is certainly
more modern; it refrains from reducing all that is non¬
physical to the material plane, suggesting, however, that
all spiritual values spring from vital values, that all spir¬
itual norms are derived from functions of adaptation, and
that all spiritual truths are merely practical and useful
methods to help man to adapt himself to his sense environ¬
ment; in so doing it denies the independent reality of mo¬
rality and of religion. All that is higher is for it only a
product of a far-reaching differentiation of the same one
vital element; man is “ simply ” an animal of a highly dif¬
ferentiated kind.

(b) The second fundamental view starts from the op¬
posite end, from the spirit, as something which is totally
different from natural existence. Man differs from the
animal precisely because he studies natural science, because
he has a desire to inquire into the truth as truth, because
he cares not only about what is useful but about what is
just and good and holy. The philosophy of Greek idealism
— that is, that idealism which had not yet been influenced
by Christian ideas, which spring from an entirely different
source — regarded this spiritual nature of man as a divine
nature, as a kind of substantial relationship, a participation
in the divine reason. Thus the fundamental being of man
is not animal but divine. The physical part of man is
something foreign to his nature, it is a sort of relic which
is not essential to human existence. Alongside of this
boldly speculative idealism there is also a kind of moderate
idealism, which, although it asserts the impossibility of de¬
riving the spirit and its values and norms from any kind
of sense data, does not proceed, from this standpoint, to the
conclusions of the philosophy of religion: for it the spir-

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149

itual values and norms are the ultimate; man is regarded
essentially as the bearer and molder of these laws and
values, the distinctively “ human ” element is participation
in this “ spirit,” this “ reason.” In saying this I am not
taking into consideration the fact that very often this kind
of idealism is combined with the Christian view of creation
and of personality.

(c) Just as the first view starts from the body and the
second from the spirit, so the third view starts from the
“ soul.” The romantic and mystical theory believes that
behind the contrast between nature and spirit it can dis¬
cern the original source of both, free from all contradic¬
tions, a principle of ideality, which manifests itself in the
human “ soul,” in its feeling, in its intuition, in its mystical
experience of unity. The essential distinctive element in
man lies neither in his physical nor in his spiritual nature,
but in his half-unconscious “ soul ”; there man is close to
the heart of the All, there he lives by the life of the All.
This is the source of his creative existence, and the creative
element is the distinctive quality of humanity. It is of the
essence of this romantic, mystical anthropology that its con¬
ceptions cannot possibly be as clear and distinct as the two
others; thus we find its adherents not so much among peo¬
ple of a scientific turn of mind or among philosophers, as
among people who seek to find the meaning of their lives
in feeling rather than in thought, or among those to whom
art, above all, is the starting point for their understanding
of the riddle of existence.

Each of these three fundamental views is based on prin¬
ciple; that is, each looks at man as a whole, in the light
of one single principle of interpretation, either from the
point of view of natural existence, or from that of the spirit,
or from that of intuition and feeling. The fact that each
of these views is so unified and coherent gives each its spe-

150 The Christian Understanding of Man

cial strength and impressiveness; at the same time, however,
it also gives it its particular weakness and makes its inter¬
pretation appear rather forced. Hence at all periods of
history the most varied syntheses and combinations have
been essayed; even to mention them here, however, is im¬
possible. But in spite of all the keenness and profundity
with which these views have been elaborated, none of them
has been able to make the enduring impression of their
more one-sided rivals, and the most forceful thinkers have
always inclined to the more one-sided solutions.

(d) There is, however, a fourth type of anthropology
which ought to be mentioned; owing to the fact that it
cannot be systematically presented it is usually ignored.
The simple man — even when he is not conscious of it —
always possesses a more or less synthetic anthropology —
neither naturalistic, nor idealistic, nor mystical — but a
view which takes those three fundamental categories of
interpretation into account and applies them in an un¬
systematic, naive way, more or less profoundly, but also
in a more or less arbitrary manner. The nonphilosophical
man takes for granted that man is “ composed of body,
mind, and spirit,” and yet that he is a unity, but of the why
and the wherefore of all this he knows nothing. He sees
the animal and the material sides of man, but he also
sees the “ higher ” side of man: the sense of a spiritual
destiny, a sense of obligation, something normative and
significant. He sees the contrast between what is and what
ought to be, between the eternal aspect of man’s destiny
and the fact of death; he sees that man is both bound and
free; but he sees this without really knowing what it all
means, without being able to give a clear account of man
which is based upon ultimate truth. He knows himself
as man, but he does not know what it means to be human.

All science, philosophy and religion build upon this

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naive, prereflective understanding of man, by developing
this fundamental self-understanding of man in all kinds
of ways, deepening, transforming, and even distorting it.
The Christian message is also related to this simple under¬
standing of man.

THE OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN ANTHROPOLOGY

Although the biblical view of man does not spring from
natural experience or from rational thought but from the
divine revelation, yet its object is simply man as he actually
is, the empirical man. Its aim is to throw light upon the
mystery of this man, that is, upon ourselves whom every¬
one knows — and yet does not know; that mystery which,
to some extent, everyone knows as that of the contradiction
between what man is and what man ought to be.

When we pierce to the heart of these things we see
clearly that the one characteristic which distinguishes man
from all other creatures known to us is not his intellect
nor his power to create culture, but this simple and im¬
pressive fact: that he is responsible and personal. If any¬
one could say what this responsible personal existence is,
whence responsibility comes, what its aim is and why it
is that the actual man is always in conflict with his true
responsibility, he would have found the key to the mystery.
Responsibility has a source and a goal, there is a basis for
responsibility, something which makes man responsible,
and there is a goal of responsibility, a fulfilment of respon¬
sibility. Man understood as a responsible person, from
the very outset, is not regarded as an isolated being but
as a related being; this relatedness is understood in a two¬
fold sense. Man’s relation toward that authority which
makes him responsible is one of obligation; he also has
a relation to the others to whom responsibility binds him.
Of what character and of what origin is this twofold ele-

152 The Christian Understanding of Man

ment which binds and unites? Why is it that man always
has this twofold responsibility, and is also aware of it, and
yet again that he is in opposition to it, and is not rightly
aware of it?

None of the “ natural ” doctrines which have already
been outlined, doctrines which man has evolved from his
own inner consciousness, can give any real answer to this
question, which is the central question of human existence
as a whole. Naturalism has no idea of responsibility, since
it knows no authority which can make man responsible.
Idealism may indeed seek to produce such an authority
in some spiritual law or value; but it is unable to explain
why it is that man is in conflict with his own sense of
responsibility. All it does is to substitute two principles
for the “ contradiction ” : a “ higher ” and a “ lower ” prin¬
ciple in man; this simply destroys the unity of personality
as well as responsibility for the “ contradiction.” The
mystical romantic doctrine evades both the problem of
personal existence and that of responsibility. The simple
human being, it is true, has some sense of responsibility,
and is also dimly aware of the presence of the contradic¬
tion; but he has no idea either of its source or of its sig¬
nificance.

The Christian revelation does give an answer to this
central question, and it does so in such a pointed way that
we who always tend either to evade it or to depreciate its
significance are obliged to recognize its vital importance.
The Christian revelation answers this question by showing
that the source of man’s responsibility is the same as its
content, namely, unselfish, spontaneous love; it is this love
which makes him responsible, and it is this love again
which he owes to his neighbor. Further, the Christian
answer, where it reveals the nature of true responsibility
also reveals the actual depth of the contradiction in man as

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he actually is. Finally, the Christian answer, by unveil¬
ing the secret of human personality, is able both to achieve
the removal of the contradiction and the restoration of
integral personality and union with persons. This is the
content and the meaning of the three following statements,
in which the whole Christian doctrine of man may be
summed up:

( 1 ) Man has been created in the image of God — imago
Dei.

(2) Through sin man has come to be in a state of op¬
position to his divine destiny — peccatum originis.

(3) In Jesus Christ — who reveals to man both his origi¬
nal nature and his contradiction — in this actual revela¬
tion, man is restored to his original unity — restitutio
imaginis.

These statements are statements of faith, that is, they
do not claim to be capable of rational proof; on the con¬
trary, they spring from the divine revelation alone and
therefore they can only be grasped as truth in faith. But
since they refer to the actual man and unveil the secret
of the contradiction in human nature, and at the same
time remove it by faith, they also claim that no experience
and no correct ways of thinking can contradict them, but
that, on the contrary, through them both are placed in
their right context. The Word of God does not contradict
reason, but it places it within its right context, which it
cannot find of itself, and it ruthlessly lays bare all sham
reason.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE “ IMAGO DEI ”

(1) The first truth the Christian concept of the imago
Dei implies is this: that it is impossible to understand man
in the light of his own nature; man can only be understood
in the light of God. The relation between the knowledge

154 The Christian Understanding of Man

of God and that of man is different from the relation be¬
tween the knowledge of God and that of a thing — a bit
of the world — because the relation between God and man
is different from the relation between God and a thing.
The belief that God is the creator of all things is of course
fundamental to the thought of the Bible, and is an integral
part of the Christian message. But this does not mean that
because this is God’s relation to the universe, his relation
to mankind is exactly the same. Israel knew Yahweh first
of all as “ Lord ” and only after that as the Creator of the
world. I can only understand what the creation of the
world means when I know what God’s attitude toward
me is, that is, that God is my Lord. Because God addresses
me in his Word as the Lord I know that God the Lord
is the Creator. The biblical idea of creation is not a
rational, metaphysical theory of the origin of the world.
From the very outset, the biblical idea of creation in¬
cludes the special relation of God to man, namely, that
God reveals himself to man in his Word as the Lord.

The God who reveals himself is always the God whose
face is turned toward man; the anthropo-tropos theos. The
God whom we, as Christians, call the Creator is the God
who reveals himself to man; he is indeed the God who un¬
veils the mystery of God in the mystery of man, the God
who unveils both the mystery of God and the mystery of
man in the incarnation of the Word. The God who first
of all and in a special way has to do with man, the God who
shows himself to man as the Lord, is the Creator.

The converse, therefore, is also true: the being which
is related to God in a special way — in a way in which no
animal, no plant, and still more no dead thing is related
to God — is man. Hence the knowledge of man is very
different from that of a thing or an animal. It is possible
to describe a “ thing ” very fully without remembering

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that it is a creature made by God. The fact that it has
been created is not essential for the understanding of its
nature. But when we come to man the whole situation
is quite different. Of course it is possible to study human
anatomy without thinking of God; but it is not possible
to describe the specifically human element in man, that
which is peculiar to man as such, in contradistinction from
everything else, without gaining a glimpse of the “ dimen¬
sion of God.” The distinctively human element in man
is not a state of existence which can be described inde¬
pendently of the relation to God; it contains something
peculiar which defies isolated description, that is, the ele¬
ment of transcendence. In the very fact that man seeks a
ground and a meaning for his existence he transcends him¬
self. Every specifically human act, since it is related to a
ground and a meaning, is an act of transcendence. Ulti¬
mately this ground and this aim always ends in God. Man

— whether he will or no — is always a “ theological ” be¬
ing; that is, he is a being whose natural tendency is to seek
after the Ultimate; it is this tendency which stirs him to
thought and enquiry.

This does not mean that the idea of God can be added
to human existence like any other idea, so that it would
be possible to describe the nature of man or the idea of
God or man’s relation with God as independent entities.
No, the truth is that the specific element in man, the hu¬
man element, always contains this relation to God; thus
every view of man which ignores this relation to God fails
to perceive the specific element in human existence. In
speaking of man’s “ relation to God ” I mean not only
religion, but something which forms part of every human
act, whether it be legal, artistic, scientific, moral or re¬
ligious. The more an act is concerned with man as a whole

— that is, is a central or a total act — the more clearly

156 The Christian Understanding of Man

man’s relation to God appears. But man is not directly
aware of this fact, and even when he does become aware
of it he is still far from being in a position to perceive the
basis and significance of this truth.

The Bible proclaims this truth when it says that man can
only understand his being, that is, the distinctive character
of his human existence, from the God who reveals him¬
self in his Word. The being of man is related to God, and
indeed, to put it more exactly, man’s existence has been
posited by God as related to him; thus man’s relatedness
to God is first of all a relation of God to man, and on the
basis of that alone is it a relation of man to God.

(2) The more detailed doctrine of the Bible concerning
the specific being of man is that man, and man alone, has
been created “ in the image of God.” What the passage
(Gen. 1:26) — where this expression occurs for the first
time — meant in the mind of the author in his own day, is
not so important as the explicit and implicit understand¬
ing of this phrase in the whole view of man in the Old
Testament and in the New. The biblical concept of man
appears not only where this phrase, the “ image of God,”
is actually used; but wherever it is suggested that man is
like God or that there is any analogy between man and
God, this truth is implied. Now, however, we must make
this question more pointed: In what sense can we speak of
such an analogy, of such a relation? How are we to under¬
stand this parabolical method of speech?

The best and the most illuminating comment on this
statement is the saying of Paul: “ But we all, with open face
beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed
into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the
Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). Man bears within
his own nature an image of God because and in so far as
God “ looks at ” him His “ image ” is a kind of reflection.

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*57

But far more relevant for the thought of the Bible than
this expression, which is drawn from the aesthetic sphere,
is that of the “ Word.” Man’s distinctive quality consists
in the fact that God turns to him and addresses him.
In this “ address ” God gives man his distinctive human
quality. Even the image of Christ is preeminently one
that has been imparted through the Word; the same re¬
lation which Paul describes under the figure of an “ im¬
age,” in the passage which has just been quoted, he
describes at other points by the more illuminating and
definite idea of the “ Word,” to which, on the part of man,
there corresponds hearing, understanding, and believing.
Thus — this is the fundamental view of the Bible — man
gains his distinctiveness, his truly human nature, by the
fact that God speaks to him and that man in faith re¬
ceives this Word and answers it with the “ Yes ” of faith.
In ordinary language we express this by saying that man
is the being who is responsible. This is his distinctively
human quality, to be a being who is responsible to God.

The idea of responsibility is primarily a general concept.
It is an idea which is not confined to the world of Chris¬
tian thought. Every human being has some idea of re¬
sponsibility, and everyone is aware, in some way or another,
that he is responsible. Further: every human being is
aware, even if only very dimly, that this fact of responsi¬
bility means something which affects the totality of his life,
and the particular quality and destiny of man as man. Ani¬
mals have no sense of responsibility. Man always possesses
responsibility, and — this too should be taken into account
in thinking of the general knowledge of man’s responsi¬
bility — in all that he does he is responsible, even if he him¬
self is “ irresponsible,” that is, even if he acts without
recognizing his responsibility, or even in opposition to it.

But whatever man’s general sense of responsibility may

158 The Christian Understanding of Man

include or not, the Christian doctrine is related to it in a
twofold way: that of critical denial and fulfilment. Man
is not informed: “ You know nothing about responsi¬
bility! ” but: “ All that you know about responsibility al¬
ready, in a dim and confused way, the Word of God reveals
to you as the fact that you have been created in the Word
of God.”

The point at issue is responsible existence. It is not that
man receives responsibility as a quality to be added to his
human existence; but responsible existence is the same
thing as truly human existence. This does not mean that
the idea of responsibility covers everything about human
existence, but it does emphasize the distinctively human
element in human existence. It is true, of course, that man
possesses anatomical and biological peculiarities which dis¬
tinguish him from those creatures which are nearest to
him in the scale of creation, and give him an advantage
over them. Above all, however, he differs from all other
creatures known to us in his mental and spiritual nature.
But these differences are not unconditional and clear-cut;
there are transitions. The one thing which distinguishes
man unconditionally from the subhuman world is this,
that he, and he alone, is a person. But even this distinction
is not unconditional unless we define the idea of the person
more plainly by describing him as the responsible being.
This brings us into the biblical sphere where man is
called the “ image of God.”

(3) The Bible expresses the distinctive quality of man
by saying that he stands in a special relation to God, that
the relation between God and man is that of “ over-against-
ness ”; that it consists in being face to face with each other.
God created man as the being to whom He turns, so that
man also turns toward Him. The anthropo-tropos theos —
the God who is turned toward man — creates the theo-

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!59

tropos anthropos — the man who is related to God. This
becomes clearer when we fill this formal definition with
content. The God who is love creates man out of love, in
love, for love. Thus the divine love is both the basis and
the aim of responsibility; and it is both the basis and the
content of the specific and genuine nature of man. Both
the origin and the meaning of man’s existence lie in the
love of God. Man has been created in order that he may
return the love which the Creator lavishes upon him, as
responsive love; that he may respond to the Creator’s word
of love with the grateful “ Yes ” of acceptance; thus man
receives his human existence from God when he perceives
that his being and his destiny are existence in the love of
God.

This act of recognition, by receiving the love of God, is
what the Bible calls faith. Faith which receives love and
is active in love is not something which is added to the
being of man, but as the genuinely human, originally
created relation between man and God, it is at the same
time true responsibility, and thus the true nature of man.
Man is not first of all a human being and then responsible;
but his human existence consists in responsibility. And
man is not first of all responsible and then in addition he
possesses a relation to God; but his relation to God is the
same as his responsibility. Therefore it is his relation to
God which makes man man. This is the content of the
biblical doctrine of the imago Dei.

Now, however, this conception of the imago Dei should
not be understood to mean (as it has been from the time
of Irenaeus) that the “ imago ” merely signifies a formal
similarity between God and man — man as the rational
being, the fact that man is a subject or a person in the sense
of a natura rationalis. Rather that is a rationalistic and
individualistic transformation of the biblical idea intro-

160 The Christian Understanding of Man

duced by Greek philosophy, which turns the actual relation
between God and man into a mere resemblance. The dis¬
tinctive element in the anthropology of the Bible is the
fact that it draws the being of man into the actus of God.
Man is what he is, as reactio to the actio of God. Formally,
God’s being is actus purus or absolutus; materially it is
groundless, spontaneous love; formally, man’s original be¬
ing is actus relativus; materially, it is responsive love.

The relation between the two, however, may be thus de¬
scribed: love imparts itself in the determinative Word, and
human love replies in an act of self-determination and ac¬
ceptance. Formally, the difference between human beings
and all other creatures is that man is not only what he is
posited, but he is also what he posits himself, by his own
response. Materially, this means that he is intended for
participation in the love of God by the acceptance of this
original divine intention. His “ self ” exists in the divine
Word of love; and he has this Word in the obedience of
“ faith which worketh through love.” This fundamental
determination of man’s nature, however, contains yet an¬
other element.

Human existence in love cannot be expressed in a con¬
crete way toward God himself. To love — in the sense of
agape and not of eros — means to love only “ as God loves.”
God does not love that which is precious to him; he does
not love in the sense of eros , that is, as searching for or find¬
ing value, but his love consists in giving value. His loving
does not consist in an attraction to something valuable, but
it consists in giving himself away. God does not love the
“ rich,” but the “ poor.” His love is the very opposite of
craving. But the man who is living in the love of God
cannot love God like this. He cannot give anything to God.
Therefore God gives him his fellow man as the recipient of
this love. “ Love me, in giving thy love to this thy fellow

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161

man. Love him in my stead, out of love to me! ” Man’s
love of God must therefore find concrete expression in the
love of his neighbor. This is not stated as a command; it
is the very essence of love to go “ downward,” not “ up¬
ward.” The twofold commandment of the love of God
and the love of man expresses the original law of human
existence. This means that the original being of man, from
the very outset, and not merely afterwards, is related to the
Thou. The nature of man is not, as Greek individualism
regards it, first of all a natura rationalis , and then possibly
this anima rationalis may also come into contact with others
of the same kind; but the original nature of man is “ actual,”
like that of the lightning which extends from one pole to
the other. Just as God’s being is actus absolutus , so the
being of man is actus relativus, on the basis of the divine
actus absolutus; it is responsive actuality. The “ sub¬
stance ” of human existence is responsible love. This re¬
sponsive actuality is only possible by means of the fact that
man has spirit; spiritual existence is only possible by means
of the fact that mind exists; the mind only exists upon a
biophysical basis. Thus personal existence in responsi¬
bility is based upon something else; it has a substratum.
But we cannot understand human existence from the point
of view of the substratum, but, on the contrary, we must
understand the substratum from the point of view of per¬
sonal existence, for only from the point of view of the
person do we understand man as a whole. Where we say
“ person ” the Bible says “ heart,” and by that it means the
personal totality in its essential relation to God and to the
neighbor.

MAN AS SINNER

(1) The second main article of belief in a Christian an¬
thropology is that man is a sinner, that is, that his actual

162 The Christian Understanding of Man

existence is diametrically opposed to his origin. Here too
we are concerned with human existence as a personal whole.
Man does not merely “ commit ” sins, and he does not
merely “ have ” sins, he is a sinner. His opposition to his
original creation does not merely affect “ something in
him ” but himself. But just as his original existence is
actual existence, so also his “ existence-in-opposition ” is
actual existence. The fact that man is a whole does not
contradict his being “ actual the “ is ” in the sentence,
“ Man is a sinner,” is something actual; this use of the word
“ is ” means something different from the “ is ” in the sen¬
tence, “ The dog is a mammal,” or “ The sum of the angles
of the triangle is one hundred and eighty degrees.” The
“ is ” which describes sinful existence is sui generis pre¬
cisely because it describes personal existence. The doc¬
trine of original sin, in its ecclesiastical form, expresses this
truth very imperfectly, since it turns “ actual ” personal
existence into a substantial deformity. If there is anything
which according to the teaching of the Bible ought not to
be conceived in a substantial manner it is sin. The distinc¬
tion between original sin and sinful acts should be formu¬
lated as “ actual existence which manifests itself in par¬
ticular acts.”

From this point of view, sin means a threefold perversion
of created existence: it perverts man’s relation to God, to
his neighbor, and to himself. But perversion does not
mean annihilation. Man has not ceased to be a person;
but the original meaning of personal existence has been
turned into its opposite: existence in the love of God, in
faith and love, has been transformed into an existence
which is opposed to God, and that is, an existence in the
wrath of God; existence in the love of one’s neighbor has
been transformed into that selfishness which “ uses ” our
neighbor; unified personal existence has been transformed

Emil Brunner 163

into division of personality, “ existence-in-contradiction ”
to man’s origin.

It is as impossible to say when and how this transforma¬
tion took place as it is to say when and how the creation
took place. My creation by God cannot be measured by
that which takes place on the temporal plane; nor can the
perversion of my being be measured by that which takes
place on the temporal plane. The “ creation ” and the
“ fall ” have a very indirect and remote connection with
what science tells us about the genesis of the causal world
of time and space and the changes which take place therein.
We can no more localize personal transactions between God
and man in the world of time and space than we can local¬
ize the spirit of man in the brain. We ought to bear this
in mind not only when we read the first chapter of Genesis,
but also when we read chapter 3. There cannot be a “ his¬
torical ” account of the creation; nor, likewise, can there be
a “ historical ” account of the fall. In Jesus Christ it is
revealed to faith that we have been created in the Word
of God, and also that we have fallen away from this our
origin. As we all have this common origin — even though
the human race may not be uniform from the biological
point of view — so we have all experienced this breach with
our origin, and this fact determines the whole of our
existence.

(2) Therefore, if we wish to understand ourselves in the
light of truth, as we actually are, we must bear these two
facts in mind: the fact that we have been created in the
image of God, and the fact of the “ contradiction ” — that
is, that we have turned against our origin. This is the
reason why our responsibility is ambiguous, and our sense
of responsibility — which we possess as sinners, apart from
redemption through Jesus Christ — is ambiguous. Our re¬
sponsibility is now determined by three factors, which indi-

164 The Christian Understanding of Man

cate the presence of the contradiction: by guilt, bondage,
and the law.

Guilt. As sinners we are “ without excuse ” (anapolo-
getoi , Rom. 1:20) . This conception recalls the revelation
of the origin and the creation of man and of the world; at
the same time it also indicates the fall, the breach in man’s
relation with God. We are not only “ under an obliga¬
tion we are guilty. It is guilt which most profoundly
separates us from God; therefore the forgiveness of guilt
constitutes the heart of the gospel. We are utterly unable
to deal with our guilt; it cannot be removed save by the
intervention of God. Guilt means that the God who con¬
fronts us is no longer the loving God but the wrathful God.

Bondage. Sin is not merely the opposition of man’s will
to God, but it means such an alienation of man’s nature
from God that he can no longer do the will of God, indeed
he does not even wish to do it. Sin is the will that is bound,
enslaved. But this bondage must not be conceived in any
deterministic kind of way, but in a strictly personal and
actual manner. In our will a hostile power is active against
God. This bondage — like the “ is ” of sinful existence —
is sui generis, and must not be confused with any causal
relation. The Bible does not know the concept of “ origi¬
nal sin ” but that of “ death ” ( thanatos ) , which as the
power of sin enslaves the will.

Both guilt and bondage, however, point to a third ele¬
ment: the law. Through sin we are under the law. We
know God’s will no longer as the will of one who loves and
gives, but as that of one who demands, in a legalistic way.
Thus the natural sense of responsibility is the conscious¬
ness of the “ thou shalt.” This sense of responsibility is
universal; apart from faith it is the clearest indication of
man’s being in the Word of God and of the imago Dei.
But its legalistic interpretation means the perversion of this

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165

original relation. The law is the way in which the angry
God makes his will known to us; it is the way in which the
will of God is made known to us as sinners. Therefore
the law is the truly dialectical concept in the Christian un¬
derstanding of God. Redemption is above all redemption
from the law, and yet redemption takes place in the fulfil¬
ment of the law by Christ and works itself out in the —
relative — fulfilment of the law on the part of man who has
been born again, through the Holy Spirit. Our relation
to God and our neighbor is determined by the opposition
between what is and what ought to be, between what ought
to be and what is desired. The content of the law is love,
and yet love and law are opposed. That which is good
merely from the legalistic point of view is just as much a
manifestation of the breach made by sin as that which is
evil from the point of view of the law. This is the “ curse
of the law it shows the depth of the alienation of man
from God. All non-Christian religion and morality — as
Luther saw with his profound intuition — is legalistic.
The fact that man has this (legalistic) morality and religion
is the trace of the imago and of his origin; but the fact that
he knows the nature and the will of God only in a legalistic
manner is the sign of the fall. Thus all religion and mo¬
rality is twofold: it is a token of man’s origin and a sign
of the contradiction. Legalism makes man’s relation to
God and to his neighbor impersonal. Only in Jesus Christ
do we perceive the divine “ Thou ” and the “ Thou ” of
our fellow man; only in Jesus Christ — through the fact
that the Word of the origin which we have lost returns to
us as the Word in which God’s love is personally present
— is the original personal relation, existence in the love
of God, restored through faith. This is due to the fact that
Jesus Christ removes the curse of the law.

(3) Thus the actual man, from the point of view of

166 The Christian Understanding of Man

Jesus Christ, that is, regarded from the point of view of his
origin, is the being whose life is an “ existence-in-contra¬
diction ” — the fact of his origin is contradicted by the fact
of sin. This contradiction manifests itself in all genuinely
human phenomena: in anxiety, in longing, in doubt, in
despair, in a bad conscience. It also manifests itself in the
fact that human philosophy always breaks up into contra¬
dictions: the contradiction between idealism and natural¬
ism, pantheism and deism, determinism and indetermin¬
ism, etc. It manifests itself in the variety of religions and
systems of morality, which cannot be reduced to a common
denominator. It manifests itself above all in the “ dialec¬
tic ” of man’s natural knowledge of God, namely, that we
know God, and yet that we do not know him; that we want
to serve him, and yet that we do not want to do so; that we
seek him, and yet that we flee from him. This contradic¬
tion is peculiar to man, that is, to the “ empirical,” “ natu¬
ral ” man, outside the redemption wrought by Christ.

This is particularly true of responsibility, of personal ex¬
istence. No human being is without some sense of re¬
sponsibility; but no human being exists who really knows
what responsibility is, and certainly no one really lives a
responsible existence. For to live as a truly responsible
being would indeed be the same as living in the love of
God. A human being without any sense of responsibility
would not only be a human being in whom man’s relation
to God had become distorted; it would have been de¬
stroyed; he would have become wholly inhuman. A truly
responsible human being would be one wholly united to
God, truly humane. Our human existence always contains
elements of inhumanity; and in all inhumanity there still
exists a spark of humanity. It is the same with our exist¬
ence as persons. We are personal; but our personal exist¬
ence is always at the same time impersonal; we are domi-

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167

nated by abstractions; we make the human element the
means of the impersonal — civilization, the state, the power
of “ something.” Indeed we ourselves are the slaves of
“ something.” We seek to master God and man by means
of ideas. We fall a prey to the world and its goods. The
truly personal existence is the same as existence in the love
of God, existence in Christ.

PARTICULAR PROBLEMS

Having thus indicated the fundamental aspects of Chris¬
tian anthropology we can now attack some of the particular
problems.

(1) The Individual and the Community. One of the
most important of those manifestations of the contradiction
is the fact that our understanding of ourselves and of our
destiny breaks up into individualism and collectivism.
This contrast is one which runs through the whole history
of humanity and is never settled; for man, having lost his
center, can only fly from one extreme to the other. He
could only find his center in that existence in which and
for which he has been created. Individualism emphasizes
the independence of the self; collectivism stresses the bond
with the community, but both do this in such a way that
each destroys the other. In the Word of God, however,
man is wholly a person; thus he is independent. “ If the
Son makes you free, then are ye free indeed.” Nothing
stands between God and me, nothing should bind me save
that which is my distinctive nature in harmony with the
fact of creation; existence determined by belonging to God.
True freedom means that I, as one who has been chosen,
stand face to face with God as an “ individual.” But the
same call of God ( klesis ) which makes me free, binds me
at the same time to others: the ekklesia. The ekklesia is
not merely a community of worship, it is a perfect commu-

168 The Christian Understanding of Man

nity of life, communicatio omnium bonorum (Luther) .
The same love which sets me free makes me a social being.
Thus we perceive that a really independent and a really
social existence are actually one and the same, namely, ex¬
istence in love. Faith, which accepts the love of God, and
the “ church ” as the community of those who believe, are
correlated. All freedom is fulfilled in the “ glorious liberty
of the children of God,” all community is fulfilled in the
communio sanctorum. The life which is intended and
given by God is both a completely independent life and a
completely social life; the genuinely human element is
freedom in union with God and my neighbor.

(2) Individuality and Humanity. A second contrast
which affects history is that between the universal and the
particular. That which differentiates is so strongly empha¬
sized that the common element disappears. The essential
unity of humanity is denied because the particular element
of race or intellectual endowment seems to be more than a
question of degree. Between barbarians and Greeks, be¬
tween Aryans and non-Aryans, between the genius and the
average man, there exists — so it is said — a difference of
species. They are different beings. On the other hand a
rationalistic humanism lays stress upon the unity of the ra¬
tional nature of man to the extent of making all that is par¬
ticular a matter of indifference. Cosmopolitanism and ab¬
stract humanism are the product of rationalistic periods.
At the present day the two opponents are wrestling with
each other in the form of the abstract idea of a world state
on the one hand and of the national or racial state on the
other. Human reason is not capable of bridging this gulf.

In the divine creation of man, however, this contrast
does not exist. God creates each human being with his
particular qualities, but in this one particular element he
is simply differentiating the one human nature common

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169

to all. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither
male nor female; yet the particular, distinctive qualities of
each human being are a sign of our “ creaturely ” character;
they also indicate that we need mutual supplementation,
and that we can thus supplement each other. The unity
of mankind and the distinctive character of each particular
individual are both due to the divine creation; the mean¬
ing of the creation is fulfilled in one truth, namely, that
beings who have all been created with their particular dif¬
ferences are made for one another. Therefore from the
point of view of the Christian faith we accept neither ab¬
stract cosmopolitan humanism nor a view of race which
denies the essential unity of all men. But the point of view
of differentiation, of individuality, is subordinate to that
of unity. The fact that every human being is responsible,
that is, is called by God to be a personal being, to commun¬
ion with Himself and with his fellow men, is incomparably
more important than the fact that human beings differ
from one another in individuality, sex, nation and race.
Every human being has been created in the image of God,
every human being is a sinner, and everyone is called to
faith in the gospel of reconciliation and redemption.
Within the community of the saints, the unity which has
been restored in Christ, the differentiation of human be¬
ings is treated as a matter of no significance, indeed it is
abolished.

(3) Spirit and Nature , Mind and Body. Those who
hold a non-Christian anthropology are unable to under¬
stand man as a psycho-physical personal unity. Either they
regard him, in an idealistic way, as essentially spirit, or in
a naturalistic way they regard him from the point of view
of physical existence only. The Christian understanding
of man is equally sharply opposed to both these alternatives,
although from the very beginning of Christian theology

170 The Christian Understanding of Man

idealist anthropology has had a great influence upon the
Christian view and has done it harm. The synthesis be¬
tween idealism and the faith of the Scriptures comes out in
anthropology in particular as a complete misunderstanding
of man. For idealism the spiritual or rational existence
of man is a participatio divinitatis, an essential participa¬
tion in the divine spirit or the divine reason. It has no idea
of a personal “ over-againstness ” of the divine spirit and
the spirit of man; instead of responsibility in love and the
destiny for community it presupposes the metaphysical
unity of nature. This produces its ethics of respect (recog¬
nition of the presence of the same reason in the other man)
and its abstract cosmopolitan humanism.

(4) The Evolution of Humanity. When modern writ¬
ers speak of a conflict between the biblical and the scientific
views of man they are usually referring to that transforma¬
tion of the temporal and spatial view of the universe con¬
nected with the name of Darwin and the idea of evolution.
It is true, of course, that between the traditional Christian
view of the development of the human race and this evolu¬
tionary view — which, at least in its most general sense,
came to predominate in science — there certainly was an
impassable gulf. And yet this problem was not a real prob¬
lem at all; it was simply a problem which had been created
by misunderstandings on both sides. On the side of the
church it was caused by the failure to distinguish between
the biblical picture of the universe, which was simply that
of antiquity in general, and the biblical revelation of God’s
nature and will. The Bible is not a textbook of natural
science which tells us authoritative facts which come within
the sphere of human research.

The biblical revelation is certainly embedded in a view
of the universe which in many other respects, as well as in
that of evolution, has ceased to be of value for us at the

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171

present day. Just as it is impossible for us to go back to the
days before Newton and Copernicus to the ancient concep¬
tion of the cosmos, so it is equally impossible for us to go
back to the days before Lyell and Darwin to the view of
a simultaneous divine creation of all species including man.
That which takes place in time and space, or has taken
place in that sphere, is, in principle, the object of research
and not of faith. Faith does not exist in order to fill up the
gaps in our knowledge or to compete with scientific hypoth¬
eses. Whatever we state about the creation of man by
God cannot be in conflict with anything which natural sci¬
ence discovers as the result of careful research, because
both statements are entirely incomparable. The Bible it¬
self allows for this distinction. The poet who wrote the
one hundred thirty-ninth Psalm knows very well that the
individual human being comes into existence as an em¬
bryo in its mother’s womb as the result of conception; but
this “ natural story of creation ” does not prevent him from
considering the same human being, who came into exist¬
ence in this natural way, as having been created by God.
The divine creation is the background of the natural proc¬
ess of conception which can be discovered by research. It
is true of course that the Bible did not by any means extend
this idea to humanity as a whole; the picture of the uni¬
verse which was accepted at that time did not provide any
occasion for this. But there can be nothing to prevent us
from doing so and from saying that the story of the natu¬
ral development of mankind is the foreground of the same
process whose background we call the divine creation.

The conflict between the two arose, however, as a result
of misunderstandings not only on the side of the church
but also on the side of many of the representatives of sci¬
ence. The idea that the genesis of anything explains its
nature is a widespread misunderstanding. To say that be-

172 The Christian Understanding of Man

cause man has issued from prehuman forms he is “ simply ”
an animal, would only be legitimate if the specific nature
of man could be explained as a mere differentiation of the
animal element. But when we look into this question
more closely we see that this is actually impossible; even if
this specifically human element has been developed and
shaped very gradually as the result of a long process of
development, this does not mean that it is “ simply ” that
out of which it has been shaped.

All that is required has already been said upon this sub¬
ject in an earlier paper. However man may have evolved
out of prehuman forms the fact remains that it can only
be denied per nefas that the humanum is a distinct form
of animal. Man alone is a responsible personal being; he
alone knows what responsibility means; he alone is capa¬
ble of perceiving the Word of God. He alone has been
created “ in the image of God ” in order that he “ may be
like him.” It is true of course that even his particular men¬
tal endowments, — his power to form ideas and to be de¬
termined by ideas — give him a distinctive place in the
life of the universe and single him out from all the sub¬
human creation; but the absolute breach between man and
all that is not man only occurs here, at the very center: man
alone is a person. The question whence man has gained
this responsible personal quality — both as an individual
and in the development of mankind as a whole — is a sec¬
ondary question, and it may be unanswerable. When the
Bible speaks of man it always presupposes a human being
who is able to assume responsibility for his own life, and
is capable of following the message of his Creator with in¬
telligence.

(5) Man in History. Far more important than the
question of evolution — which has caused so much agita¬
tion — is that of history. The Word of God has no devel-

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*73

opment, but it has entered into history and has indeed
become history. “ The Word became flesh,” the eternal
Son became the Son of Man, an “ accidental fact of history,”
just as the record of him, that of the Bible of the Old and
the New Testament, is likewise an historical record. Thus
the Christian faith is essentially and not merely accidentally
an historical faith. History in contrast to natural evolu¬
tion is the realm of personal decision. History is the sphere
where deeds are done, where decisions are taken. Likewise
history — in contrast to natural development — is where
we find not merely collectivities, such as species, races, etc.,
but personal community. Responsible personal decision
and personal community are the constituent elements of
the historical. In both senses Jesus Christ has not only en¬
tered into history but he has at the same time fulfilled and
ended history; his coming is the fulfilment of history.

Through the Word of God, through Jesus Christ, man is
rightly summoned to decision, that is, to unconditional de¬
cision, which decides everything else. For the believer time
is qualified irrevocably as the time of decision in which
the final decision may be taken at any moment. Faith
is always concerned with the whole, with eternal life and
eternal death. Faith is the turning from death to life, just
as Jesus Christ himself is the turning point of human his¬
tory, who once for all has done the decisive deed. Likewise,
Jesus Christ is the bringer of truly personal community, of
unconditional community. In him alone we see humanity
gathered up into a unity, into a complete solidarity of re¬
sponsibility and dignity, of the guilt of sin and of redemp¬
tion. One who believes in him does not argue about “ de¬
grees of responsibility for guilt,” but he takes the guilt of
others on his own heart as though it were his own. One
who believes in him can no longer think about his own
soul and his private salvation in an individualistic manner.

174 The Christian Understanding of Man

but his hope reaches out to the whole of humanity in the
vision of the Kingdom of God. He who belongs to Christ
through faith is no longer a private individual, but he is a
member of the body of which Christ is the Head. He is
indissolubly united with the church of the ages.

Just as the word of God is the true self of every indi¬
vidual so also the divine Word is the meaning of history.
In Jesus Christ the meaning of history has not only become
evident, it has actually come. However, it has come only
as that which is announced and has just begun to be real¬
ized, not as that which is fulfilled. The fulfilment of this
coming is both the aim and the end of history. The goal
and the meaning of each individual is that “ we should be
like him the universally historical, supra-historical goal
of humanity is that “ all should be gathered up in him ”
into a unity of complete communion with him and with
one another. World history, in the sense of a universal his¬
tory of humanity, has only been known since Jesus Christ,
since the world has become aware of this goal towards
which all tends.

Even the existence of the nonbeliever has been affected
in a new way by Jesus Christ, by the historical revelation,
from the point of view of history as a time of decision.
Man after Christ is not the same as man before Christ. The
Bible itself makes a distinction between the responsibility
of man in the “ times of ignorance ” and his responsibility
since the advent of the Messiah; for this coming of the
Messiah — whether man believes it or not — challenges
him to a decision which he was not aware of before. If he
says “ No ” to Jesus he is not an unbeliever in the way of
the pagans who lived before Christ. This “ No ” has be¬
come pregnant with the quality of decision since man be¬
came aware of Christ; it has a new, intensified, even if
negative personal character. This is manifested in all the

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175

modern “ godless ” movements. Modern man, even when
he decides against Christ, has an understanding of personal
existence, of freedom and of responsibility, which pre-
Christian man did not possess. Even anti-Christianity —
though in a negative form — contains Christ and the his¬
torical nature of existence. Hence its opposition to God
has an intensity which makes all pre-Christian paganism
and pre-Christian atheism seem quite mild in comparison.
It is anti-Christian unbelief.

THE NEW MAN AND THE NEW HUMANITY

The third statement, that of the restoration of the divine
image in man by Jesus Christ, cannot be developed within
the framework of anthropology, but is only present within
it as the point from which all the rest is regarded. The doc¬
trine of the new birth and of redemption, being the topic of
soteriology, is the boundary of anthropology and therefore
as such can only be suggested here. We will confine our
observations to developing, by a retrospective glance at
what has been said already, the truth of man as renewed in
Jesus Christ and the renewal of humanity.

(1) The renewal of man in Jesus Christ means first of
all the forgiveness of sins. This implies that in the biblical
doctrine of man the concern is always with man as a re¬
sponsible being. Responsibility, from the negative point
of view, means guilt. The fact that the Bible — in contrast
to all other forms of religion and philosophy — places for¬
giveness of guilt in the most central place, shows to how
great an extent it holds that everything centers in the prob¬
lem of responsibility. It also shows that human existence
is always related to the divine “ Thou.” The existence of
man is not an independent existence, but it is what it is
through its relation to God. Man’s attitude to God is the
heart of his being. The renewal, the reintegration of man.

176 The Christian Understanding of Man

who has fallen into contradiction and therefore into ruin,
begins with the fact that man is “ accepted in grace,” thus
that he is once more restored to his original attitude to¬
ward God. With this renewal of his position the most es¬
sential element in personal renewal has taken place.

(2) This renewal in the center takes place through the
“ justification of the sinner,” through the Word of God.
This means that in actual fact the personal existence of
man is determined by the Word of God, so that, by the
reception of the Word, man is a new person. It is not the
infusion of grace but the verdict of justification, the Word
of God graciously imparting love, which creates the new
man. Through this Word of forgiving love, the image of
God is again restored, which is indeed nothing other than
existence in the Word of God, existence in the love of
God. According to the view of the Bible, personality is
not constituted by any formal spiritual endowment; the
imago Dei is not to be understood in this formal sense,
but in this material sense, which is both a relation and
an actuality: the self-understanding of man is the self¬
giving Word of God. It is to be understood literally:
“ Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word
which proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” To fall away
from this Word by unbelief and disobedience does not
only affect the content of personality but personality itself;
by this act personal life is divided. Nonexistence in the
love of God is the loss of truly personal existence, it is im¬
personal personality. By justification through faith the
right relation to God is restored and also the unity of per¬
sonality (peace) , and likewise truly personal life, that is,
love.

(3) In the New Testament, however, justification is
never represented merely as a judicial acquittal but it is
always also a creative act of God. Since man comes into a

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177

new position he gains a new reality. Justification is directly
both rebirth and sanctification. For the new position is
not only an act of God, it is also at the same time knowl¬
edge and obedience, the believing obedience of man.
Hence the Bible speaks of “ justifying faith ” as well as of
the “ justifying Word.” The existence of man — this was
our main thesis — is responsive actuality, the actual answer
of man to the actual Word of God. The man who really
receives the divine love by this very act himself becomes
loving. “ Faith which worketh through love ” alone counts
before God. This it is which constitutes the image of God
in man: that his life as life in love reflects the love of God.
“ Let us love him because he has first loved us.” The di¬
vine love which man gives out again to others is the reflec¬
tion of the primal love of God for man.

(4) The renewal of man through Jesus Christ also
means the renewal of humanity. As a purely individual
process it cannot be imagined, for it means being incor¬
porated into the Body of Christ, the church. This shows
clearly that we were right in conceiving the existence of
man as person as existence in community. How could it
be otherwise since it is indeed existence in love? Love is
community. All that makes man truly personal makes him
at the same time a truly social member of humanity united
in Christ. The “ person ” and “ community ” are corre¬
lates; the one cannot be realized or even thought of apart
from the other. Once again it becomes manifest how im¬
portant it is to define the concept of the person materially
as existence in love. Only thus can we understand that
the personal and the communal are one and the same. In
the Christian church, as in the New Testament, it is espe¬
cially the sacrament of holy communion which expresses
this unity: that which truly feeds me is the same as that
which creates community.

178 The Christian Understanding of Man

(5) Both, however, the renewal and the realization of
the true “ person ” and of true “ community,” can only
be fully understood from the point of view of the goal
of renewal. Man is not merely what he is now but that
which he is destined to be. In sinful man destiny and exist¬
ence have broken asunder in the antithesis of that which
is and that which ought to be. In justification and rec¬
onciliation this antithesis has been overcome in principle
though not yet fully in reality. “ It doth not yet appear
what we shall be.” The fact that man possesses his self
not in himself but in Christ is known to faith but it has
not yet been finally realized. The perfect realization of
this God-intended self, however, is simply the realization of
God-intended humanity. It takes place through the com¬
ing of Christ in power. In Jesus Christ the true self
comes to the individual and to humanity, and is its mean¬
ing. Just as we await the Christ who is to come, so also we
await the realization of our true existence, both as per¬
sons and in community. Can there be a stronger expres¬
sion of the fact that the true self of man is not in himself
but in Jesus Christ, and therefore that it is in God? Hence
Christian anthropology is essentially Christology; for
Christ is our righteousness, our sanctification, and our life.

THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN

Austin Farrer

THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN

Earlier essays in this book have defined Christian belief
against several heretical positions. It might be expected
that, the ground being thus cleared, we could now pro¬
ceed to a purely positive statement of the precious truth.
But is this in fact possible to us? To define against heresy,
as these writers have done, is a well-known task of the
theologian; all our positive creedal statements, serene and
timeless as they now appear, are but the crystallized de¬
posit of such defensive definitions in the past. When some
heresy is in the field, we have to draw a line, and say: “ the
Christian verity is to be found on this side, not that, of such-
and-such a boundary.” This much theology must do: it is
her life-and-death concern: and, whether we like it or not,
we are bound in so far to dogmatize, because it concerns
man’s salvation that we should.

But when, within such necessary boundaries, the theolo¬
gian is called upon to state the Christian truth in positive
terms, what is he to do? Our Lord, faced with a similar
question out of the blue, replied: “ Thou knowest the
commandments.” We, following that example, may be
tempted simply to refer inquirers to the divine gospel and
the living church. But, it will be said, surely we are not
irrationalists: it is the business of the theologian to sys¬
tematize as best he can the revealed truth, in the light of
natural knowledge. Very well: but such speculative sys¬
tems are tentative and private: who can venture to put his
own forward as the Christian doctrine of man?

We become even more alarmed about the task laid upon

181

182 The Christian Understanding of Man

us, when we realize that the Christian doctrine of man is
being laid down as the foundation on which practical con¬
clusions are to be built, referring to the social and political
spheres. This doctrine, then, is to be some sort of bridge
between the faith of the gospel and its practical application.
Now it might very well be suspected that no such a bridge
exists or can exist. Perhaps, after all, there is only the
Word of God on the one hand, and on the other the
church’s consciousness which, responding thereto, arrives
at convictions about certain particular things which ought
to be done. The preacher proclaims Christ: in responsi¬
bility towards the Christ proclaimed, and in view of the
situation before him, the Christian man of practical vision
sees what he thinks should be done: the Christian scholar
adds the guidance of precedent from the church’s former
acts: the critical theologian judges the proposed decisions
by the standards of faith. The series is complete: nowhere
does there intervene a constructive theologian with a the¬
ory of man, from which the practical decision needs to be
deduced.

“ Well but,” it may be protested, “ the practical and
moral judgments of Christians are not chaotic, not un¬
connected by any thread of common principle. From the
church’s moral experience generalizations can be drawn;
and these might well be called a Christian doctrine of
man.” They might indeed: but then they are reflective,
and subsequent to the action which is the primary response
to the gospel; and, being generalizations from the past,
they share the unsatisfactoriness of all such generalizations
— the practical light they shed on new situations is dim
and equivocal, and those who expect from such a doctrine
clear deductions about the desirable direction for new
forms of state activity, will probably be disappointed. The
only theologian who can help much there is the theologian

Austin Farrer 183

who feels inspired to prophesy. Let those that have it ex¬
ercise the gift.

It looks as though the Christian doctrine of man will
fall apart into two halves — a generalization from the
Christian practical conscience: and the gospel itself viewed
from its human end. The essay which follows will deal
with the relations between these two doctrines of man —
the doctrine revealed from heaven and the doctrine which
springs from the enlightened conscience. Then, by an
inevitable transition, we shall find ourselves led to deal
with the relation between the conscience enlightened by
revelation and the conscience not thus enlightened: be¬
tween the practical ideal for man within Christianity and
that which is to be found outside it.

1. WHAT IS MEANT BY A CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN?

The reflections we have so far made seem to be confirmed
when we examine the attempts of philosophers or theolo¬
gians to arrive at an account of man’s substance. Their
real object, we quickly discover, is to answer the question:
“ What ought man to be and do? ” But it seems natural to
attempt first the apparently prior question: “ What is
man? ” For if man be a spiritual organism so constituted
as to perform a certain function, observe the structure of
the organism and you will be able to infer the function’s
nature: proceed, therefore, with your analytic exposition
of man’s constitution.

But when we examine the analyses that have been made,
we find that they consist in the enumeration of “ active
properties.” Elasticity is an active property in a ball; and
if the ball has this property, it is capable of an elastic re¬
bound. But in attributing to it this property, we are
merely attributing to it a quality x, such that it will re¬
bound in suitable circumstances. And our only evidence

184 The Christian Understanding of Man

for its doing so, and therefore for its possession of the
quality, is the observed fact of its rebounding.

Similarly, we may be told that man has spirit in his
makeup. Either this means nothing relevant to our pur¬
pose, or it means he is capable of what are called spiritual
activities, of which the types could be roughly enumerated.
But we can only know this by having observed such ac¬
tivities in exercise; and all we shall then know is that vari¬
ous men in various observed degrees have shown themselves
capable of these activities. We cannot proceed to the uni¬
versal “ man has spirituality,” nor even if we could to the
conclusion “ and therefore he ought to behave thus and
thus.”

It appears vain, therefore, to construct a wholly invisible
substance which all men are, in order to explain why a
certain pattern of activities is what they ought to practise.
Our primary certainties, if we have any, are about this
pattern itself: we may claim that a certain configuration of
it is good, or the good, for man, and this may be the only
doctrine of man worth having.

If we do make such statements, we must be assuming
that the relation between man’s life or realized perfection
on the one hand, and on the other his determinate sub¬
stantial being qua man, is certainly not fixed. He must be
capable of various patterns of life, or it would be needless
to inquire which is best. His pattern must be alterable;
but no doubt there are limits to that alterability. Perhaps
it is here that an examination of what man is, of his actual
“ nature,” may come in: we may try by observation to
arrive at the probable limits of his variations. And so
we do, if we are psychologists or physiologists: we gain an
ever increasing body of evidence as to what tunes can and
cannot be played on the human instrument without ma¬
terial damage to it.

Austin Farrer

185

Even this evidence is no surer or wider than the instances
from which it has been generalized: it does not rule out the
possibility of a fundamental change in man or in some men,
falling completely outside its generalizations. But let us
ignore this point, and accept the sciences as they stand.
Still they only tell us what will not work. Among the vari¬
ous lives that will work — for there are many — we have
still to make our choice, and Christian theology claims to
be able to assist us.

Theology can but point to the data of revelation; but
these, whatever it is that they give us, do not supply a
system of ethics and sociology, nor yet do they give us a
doctrine of man’s substantial composition, from which
these things could be deduced.

It is true, no doubt, that Scripture gives some account of
man’s substance in terms of body, soul, spirit and other
such conceptions. This language is primitive, inadequate
and confused. The Scripture was not given to teach us
psychology. One need not deny that such terminology
was accurate enough for the purposes of Scripture, that is,
for referring to the human pole of the relation with God
which God brings about. But that only shows how com¬
pletely Scripture is concerned with the relation, and how
little with the human pole considered apart from the
relation. If the terminology has any merit, it is the merit
of infancy as compared with maturity. Maturity in be¬
coming determinate and effective excludes many possibili¬
ties that still seemed to lie open to childhood. So human
thought in becoming mature becomes accurate indeed and
systematic, but narrowed by its very definiteness; and a
glance back to the childhood of the human mind may
convey to us vague and undifferentiated suggestions of a
wider truth than can be expressed in our current philoso¬
phy or science. That might mean for us the reform of our

186 The Christian Understanding of Man

present conceptions, certainly not a return to their primi¬
tive counterparts.

Revelation, then, does not set out to answer for us the
question “ What is man? ” but to tell us how God made
him but little lower than the angels, how he regards and
visits him, and crowns him with glory and honor. Here
we have primarily acts of God, but no doubt secondarily
activities also of man in response thereto. Since these ac¬
tivities of man are the appropriate responses to the objects
set to him by God’s acts, they make up what is the true
pattern of man’s life according to the Christian revelation,
and to know this pattern would be to know, if not a Chris¬
tian doctrine of man, at least the Christian doctrine for
man. We may indeed study the pattern direct, in the lives
of those who have worthily pursued the God-given objects,
but even so, the objects were determinant for them and the
primary matter of revelation. For piety, in a Christian
view, is just whatever a man does in conforming himself
to the self-revealed God, and to infer the revelation from
the response is in the strictest sense preposterous.

This is not of course to say that we begin with the re¬
vealed knowledge of what God is, simply in himself. Of
such knowledge we are not capable recipients. What is
revealed is his actions, and himself only as the agent of
them; and what he does is to create, call, redeem, promise,
that is, to determine our existence and not his own. And
yet these determinations do not reveal to us what we are,
but give us the objects we must pursue.

It would not do to say that the relations of man with
God which revelation displays are simply external to man,
as they are external to God. The relations which come
into existence between the creature and the Creator do
not affect the Creator’s being: the creature’s they not only
affect but effect, since both our nature and our existence

Austin Farrer

187

are pure effects of his will. That is true of the order of
being; but in the order of knowing it is otherwise. As
knowers, we begin by taking ourselves for granted. Then
we learn, in this case from revelation, the relations in
which we stand to our environment — in this case, our su¬
pernatural environment which is God himself: and next,
the claims that this environment has upon our activity.
And so revelation is primarily of God’s acts and the rela¬
tions to him which they create for us; and it is through
the knowledge of these things that we come to the knowl¬
edge of the sort of life we ought to live in response to
them, and so to the Christian doctrine of man.

2. HOW THE RELATIONS OF MAN TO GOD MAKE POSSIBLE
THE IDEA OF A DOCTRINE OF MAN

We can only attempt to show here how the very notion
of a true nature of man, which he ought to and in some
cases is destined to realize, is, for the Christian, bound up
with those relations to God in which revelation sets him.
Of these relations we may specify:

(1) Man’s relation to God as his Creator and Sustainer.

(2) His relation to the end intended by the Creator.

(3) The correspondence or noncorrespondence of his
present course with the steps divinely intended to lead him
to that end.

(4) His relation to the gracious intervention of God
which is to restore that correspondence when lost.

To the Christian it appears that the very conception
of a true or natural pattern for human existence depends
on the first two of these relations. If we take man apart
from God, why suppose one end or goal for mankind at
all? Men are many, and they are various. It is true that
they have, in general outline, the same biological basis,
being of one animal species. But there seems no reason

1 88 The Christian Understanding of Man

why they should not go as many ways as their common
species allows them to go, or as their herd instincts allow
them to desire. But if what appears to phenomenal ob¬
servation as the evolution of man is in its reality the cre¬
ative act of God, then a Maker may have a purpose, and
a Maker of many a common purpose for all, and this
“ idea ” subsisting in the divine intention is the true ex¬
emplar of the true doctrine of man — that is, indeed, where
the true nature of man truly is, and only secondarily in
anything that man may be observed to be, or to be tending
toward, or aspiring after in fact.

It is this intention of man’s Creator that imposes on him
an absolute obligation — that of acting in correspondence
with it; and failure to correspond makes his state one of
sin. How great the lack of correspondence, and how com¬
plete the inability of man to recover it, is known by reve¬
lation alone; and that revelation takes the form of the di¬
vine intervention itself which recovers it to him. For it
was in the act of God’s recovering man that man saw how
low he had fallen. The revelation of a depth implies the
revelation of a height, and both were revealed by the act
which lifted man from the one to the other.

If it is true that the first two relations specified above
give us the bare possibility of conceiving a true and unitary
“ nature ” for men, it is the second two which afford the
possibility of filling that conception with any content.
Words about our final consummation or true end would
bear no sense, unless they bore analogy to present experi¬
ence. And so the actual reception of grace, as being a
foretaste of our end, is our key to the conception of it.
If our end is to attain unto God, then the entry of God into
the world in Christ, and our being by the Spirit enabled
to know him there, is the actual revelation of our end:
and it is from our end that we know our true “ nature.”

Austin Farrer

189

By our redemption we are already in some measure in
reception of God; and, therefore, able to attach some sense
to the teaching that promises us an increase both of our
capacity to receive and of its satisfaction up to such a point,
that any further increase would destroy our determinate
nature as creatures of a certain kind.

The notion of such a fixed point might suggest an arbi¬
trary limit, as though we might be destined to fret for all
eternity against a barrier we may not pass. There is no
need to think anything of the kind. If we are to receive
God up to the limit of our capacity, and that capacity finds
its measure in our very nature as men, then we should pre¬
sumably feel no barrier, for who can feel a barrier in the
absolute fulfilment of himself? To desire more would be
to desire extinction, by absorption into the very being of
God himself. Absorption is a misleading word; it suggests
that something remains of what is absorbed. But God
realizes in himself the full possibilities of the divine na¬
ture: there is no room for more gods but one, or in the one
for any addition; and the deification of the creature is
exactly its annihilation. By this path also, then, we are
led back to the same point — that the Christian doctrine
of man’s end and consummation itself implies that the
Creator has assigned to man a determinate nature, which
can be perfectly fulfilled, but not passed beyond.

That does not mean that the present pattern of our
nature is eternally unalterable; for who can determine
exactly which aspects of manhood as we know it belong
to the conditions of its ultimate perfectibility and which
to the state of earthly existence? Grace, then, may per¬
form upon us marvels that we cannot conceive; but still
in perfecting, not superseding, our nature; a nature which
is a datum for grace and imposes a measure on what grace
may effect: just what measure we cannot know.

190 The Christian Understanding of Man

Our ignorance is not removed by the revelation of God
in Christ. There indeed we see divine perfection meas¬
ured or limited by the capacity of human nature, yet not of
the nature we shall ultimately be, but only of the possibili¬
ties of its perfection under the conditions of this life. To
know the other we should have to have direct knowledge of
Christ in glory, which we have not, so far as regards his
manner of being. We have some knowledge of him in the
days of his flesh; and there we see him clothed in certain
elements of our nature as we know it here; which we as¬
sume, therefore, to belong at least to the raw material of
our perfection, and not to the dross of perversions which
grace will simply purge away.

If in the Man Christ Jesus we have a man in perfect
response to the acts of God through which we are related
to him, then in the same Christ we have in actual and
perfect expression the human pole of the relation between
God and man, as redemption restores it under the con¬
ditions of our present life; and to know this would be to
know the Christian doctrine of man in the only way pos¬
sible to us here.

3. THE STATUS OF NON-CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES ABOUT MAN

We have so far attempted to show that while it is not
possible to begin with the knowledge of a human sub¬
stance simply given, it is possible to conceive a true nature
of man — true with the truth of correspondence to a di¬
vine exemplar, as artistic expression can be true in corre¬
sponding to the artist’s thought. We have hoped to show
the possibility of such a conception within the framework
of Christian revelation. We proceed to consider whether
there can be any conception of it outside that framework;
and if so, what it is that revelation adds to a knowledge
obtainable without it.

To maintain that apart from the one revelation there

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191

is no conception of man’s nature or pattern of life, is noth¬
ing more nor less than an attempt to silence good evidence
by hard swearing; though some appear not to have shrunk
from it. It is evident that all philosophies, religions or
views of the world, excluding those that are purely skep¬
tical and including most that pretend to be so, have some¬
thing to say about the true type of human life. It is equally
plain that the subject matter about which they try to speak
is the same as that about which the Christian doctrine does
speak; and that while all are, by the Christian standard,
more or less wrong, all are more or less right as well.

That is the evidence, and our difficulties do not begin
till we launch into dogmatic explanations of it — which
admittedly we are bound to try to find. Could we say, for
example, that before revelation a certain area of the ra¬
tional conscience was indefectible and uncorrupt, a certain
set of moral propositions clear, while those other truths re¬
mained in the dark which revelation was later given to il¬
luminate? Such a suggestion remains plausible only so
long as we abstain from trying to enumerate these truths of
reason.

If, then, we cannot maintain in this sense a residual
but reliable reason left over by the “ fall,” are we to go
into the other camp and assert “ total depravity ”? That
depends on what we mean by “ total depravity.” If we
are adopting an eschatological view, and taking our stand
at the final consummation of the world, then no doubt
it is proper to say that everything in the world is totally
depraved, if it is turned so crooked as not to be following
a line which will bring it to its God-intended consumma¬
tion. If a creature is so behaving as to lead to its becoming
a final and total loss, then there is good sense in saying that
it is totally off the right line.

If, on the other hand, we consider any creature as it is
at any moment of its progress toward its end, however

192 The Christian Understanding of Man

lamentable that end is to be, and ask what it now is in
itself; then to say that it has no correspondence of any
kind with the nature intended by its Creator does not
make sense. So long as a creature continues to exist, its
existence cannot fall wholly outside the nature intended
by its Creator: that is the charter of its being, and by pass¬
ing outside its terms, it would either cease to exist or be¬
come something else. Human nature totally depraved in
this sense would be totally denatured and dehumanized.
We might accept that description of the totally insane so
far as their life is manifested to us; but hardly of mankind
as a whole before revelation.

Corruption is a real and terrible thing; but it is distrib¬
uted partially over man’s whole moral nature, and is not
the total extinction of any particular elements in it. There
is only one thing that is definitely and simply “ lost ” —
a sure true and objective vision of God. That vision, and
the relation to God founded upon it, may well be the very
head in the body or organism of man’s spiritual nature, the
very keystone to the arch. But this head being lost, the
members do not simply mortify and perish: if they did,
there would be nothing left for redemption to redeem.
They have a certain vitality which causes them to struggle
against their own corruption: not, we may well say, with
such success that they ever unaided shake it off, or attain a
mastery which is the earnest of final victory and final perse¬
verance; yet vigorously enough to maintain their own ex¬
istence, to be still holding out when grace comes to give the
triumph they cannot themselves attain.

But in nature’s unaided struggle, it is absurd to draw
lines she cannot, in this and that instance, overpass. There
is no specific human virtue or social attitude of which we
could dare to say that it is not to be found in those un-

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193

touched by the Christian dispensation. In perfection, no
doubt not: but we might look in vain for that among the
elect who have not perfection but only the earnest of it.
And even their having that is a matter of faith.

Man, then, apart from revelation and grace, is still
man, and the creature of God; and though corrupt in his
spiritual nature to an undefinable extent, still has, as is
evident, the power of reflecting on his true nature and ob¬
taining some impression of the pattern of it intended by
God. He may not even be aware that God is, but that does
not prevent his having some sense of a goal set before him,
because man as a spiritual being is essentially an aspirant,
and an aspirant must have an object of his aspiration; so
that in being aware of himself in any wise, man is aware,
however confusedly, of a pattern of true nature; and, once
again, we can draw no line that his unaided moral reflec¬
tion is incapable of passing. There is no single moral con¬
viction that nature may not arrive at for herself, so long
as we are speaking of man’s ideal for his own life on earth,
or for his relations with his neighbor.

In saying this, we are not going back on our original
denial that man has a substantial being which can be ob¬
jectively defined in such a way that his true end could be
inferred from it. What the pagan philosopher does is not
this at all, even if it is what he thinks he is doing. He
is, in fact, becoming vaguely aware — sub quadam confu-
sione , says St. Thomas — of the exemplar which is actually
in the divine mind, and nowhere else. The persistence of
man’s moral nature even under corruption means the per¬
sistence of actual aspiration towards the divinely appointed
end, and that implies a certain vision of that end, however
confused, and however dissociated from all ideas of the¬
ology. It is sufficient here to state the fact, without asking

194 The Christian Understanding of Man

through what channels this confused conception of the
divine purpose reaches the “ natural reason.”

We will pause to refute a heresy, partly because it is
pernicious, partly because the refutation of it will cast fur¬
ther light on the relation between revelation and “ natural
reason.” This heresy attempts to prove, in the teeth of
all evidence, that certain vital spiritual attitudes and con¬
victions about the human side of human life are impossible
without faith in revelation, or at least in God.

The heretical argument builds on the propositions as¬
serted above, that a right conscious relation to God is the
keystone to the structure of human life, or head to its or¬
ganism. For in an existence ordered toward God, the vari¬
ous elements belonging to the true pattern of our life are
seen to find their reasonable and organic place, and to
cooperate harmoniously in subserving the one supreme
end. Remove the governing principle and the harmony
and completeness to which Christian eyes are accustomed
will no longer be found. But the now headless members of
our moral nature — the various elements of interest, desire
and aspiration, social or self-regarding — are unwilling to
fall into complete dissociation and dissolution. Having
lost their king, they elect a president, and tend to reunite
themselves under some makeshift principle or another,
when they find themselves deprived of their proper head;
and so arise various philosophies, whether formulated or
unconscious.

The Christian dialectician takes these various substitute
highest principles of action. One may be self-realization,
another the good of the totality of mankind; another the
attainment of a certain list of “ values.” About all these
he proceeds to demonstrate that they are inadequate for
the role they have undertaken. Treat any one of them as
your supreme motive, and it becomes impossible to regard

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some one or other of the Christian virtues — it may be
absolute chastity, it may be true neighborly love — as
means that you would naturally adopt in order to compass
that end. Either the end fails to provide a place for the
Christian virtue at all, or else, in adopting it, more or less
seriously distorts it.

The Christian dialectician may further claim to show
that even though you may have true neighborly love as
derived not from your false first principle of action, but
from some independent source — e.g., from the example of
Christians — then still the false first principle, if it has any
serious influence on your thoughts and acts, is bound to
cramp its exercise. If you really treat the friendship you
show to your neighbor as means to your own self-realization
or as a contribution to the well-being of an abstract totality
called mankind or the state, the quality of your neighborli¬
ness will not remain unimpaired.

All this may very well be true; but it is at the next step
in the argument that error arises: when the theologian goes
on to draw the conclusion that so long as you have the
false first principle, you cannot exhibit true neighborly
love at all, nor possess the notion of it, nor admit the claim
of it. This conclusion is false. The only true conclusion
would be: “You cannot logically, so long as you pretend
that all your morality is to be deduced from your false first
principle.” But even if men do seriously pretend this, how
many of them are logical in its practical application? It is
very unplausible to maintain that men are so single-minded
and logical in their aims: all are in practice pluralists to a
greater or less extent, and follow many uncoordinated val¬
ues; and, therefore, though the possession of a false first
principle and the loss of the true may make impossible the
realization of the full true pattern of human nature in the
ordered kingdom of ends, it remains possible for any single

i g6 The Christian Understanding of Man

human virtue or worthy aim to flourish illogically under
the makeshift republic.

If men who have lost a true conscious relation with God
could not patch together the consequent disunion of their
aims and of their life with some sort of substitute general
principle, their minds would fall into extreme disorder.
But equally, if they could not set up such a patched unity
without the substitute first principle’s imposing an abso¬
lute dictatorship and Gleichschaltung upon all the ele¬
ments it patches together, men would become completely
dehumanized. We see the process going a good way in
certain fanatics: but if it goes all the way, the man is mad.
In the ordinary case, it is the essence of the situation that
the patch remains a patch, and so in more or less dishar¬
mony with what it patches. Only the true first principle
can be anything else. And this no doubt is the reason for
the world’s profound suspicion of philosophy whenever it
proposes to take itself too seriously: and a similar suspicion
of Christianity, with those who do not know what it is. If
one gave God an inch, he might so easily take an ell!

But, it is said, apart from the love of God we have at
least one purely human disability: we cannot love human¬
ity. No: but then the love of humanity is not a human
possibility at all, because humanity is nothing but an idea
in the mind of God, and we can only love the idea by lov¬
ing the mind, and desiring the fulfilment of that mind’s
purposes. Otherwise, humanity is merely a general de¬
scription of such men as we may be in direct and indirect
relations with, and to love humanity can only mean to en¬
tertain the resolve to take up a friendly attitude to any
men we may have to do with from time to time.

The paragraphs which have preceded might be welcome
to a humanist as a plea on behalf of natural goodness: a
suggestion that man is not so very bad after all, and in

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*97

need of supernatural grace only to add the last touches
to his perfection. Any such interpretation must be far
from the mind of the Christian theologian. Our object has
been merely to show that what corruption fastens on is
human goodness. A parasite cannot be parasitic on noth¬
ing, nor can corruption prey upon itself. But the terrible
nature of the disease is only heightened by the worth of
what it undermines and will at length destroy. A stinking
fungus in the woods may be offensive to sense; but to the
mind it is infinitely less distressing than a cancer in the
human throat.

From the point of view also of our responsibility for evil
— a topic on which we shall later have more to say — the
same thing appears. The shining excellences that are in
mankind themselves create the blackness of a sin which
can turn from a realized spiritual beauty to feed on gar¬
bage. Every such act is guilt which cannot be weighed,
much less atoned, by man. Had his present condition
simply dropped to that of some baser creature, then what¬
ever the guilt of his ancestors, his own would be small.
The type of sin is not the serpent considered according
to its natural kind, but the rebellious angel who chose to
crawl in the dust.

It is in this spirit that we have maintained the roots
of all the human virtues to be in natural man. And it is
nonetheless only by supernatural aid that they can at last
be saved alive, not to say brought to perfection.

4. WHENCE THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN
DOCTRINE OF MAN IS DERIVED

There might at first sight appear to be a contradiction
between the last two sections of this essay. In the former
(2) the very idea of a doctrine of man was said to spring
from that of the relations in which man stands to God. In

ig8 The Christian Understanding of Man

the latter (3) men, quite unaware of any relation to God,
were admitted to have some sound notions about the true
nature of man. Now we did attempt to cover this contra¬
diction by the statement that the unbeliever is actually ap¬
prehending the effect of a divine relation without realizing
it. But this naturally suggests the rejoinder: “ But can¬
not the Christian do the same? When the Christian sees
some aspect of the good for man, does he necessarily see
it as the consequence of a relation to God? ”

We must answer that it is obvious that the Christian’s
conscience can function without the awareness of theologi¬
cal principles just as anyone else’s can. It is only on philo¬
sophical reflection that the very notion of a “ true good for
man ” hangs upon theology. The particular content of
that notion may be given not by awareness that man is
made in God’s image, but by the functioning of that image
in man.

The Christian’s human virtues are not all dictated from
heaven, nor are they inferred by mere hard reasoning as
logical consequences from the relations in which he learns
himself to stand toward God. They are not a mere con¬
formity to principles imposed by his theology, but spring
naturally in his human consciousness as faith toward God
completes the pattern of his nature. They are natural and
not supernatural to him: but in order to attain their proper
perfection they need their true setting, and that setting is
itself partly supernatural, being in this aspect nothing else
but those relations to God of which we have spoken. This
setting being given, nature has her true efflorescence, like
a plant that has obtained soil, sunlight and air.

This does not mean that it is impossible to enforce the
detail of ethics by theological considerations. For all these
parts of the pattern once it is finished, both the super¬
natural setting and the microcosm of nature, are inter-

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199

related in a true order, in which the various elements are
felt to imply one another; so that men can be told to love
as brethren because they have one Father, or to purify
themselves even as he is pure. But it remains true all the
same that human duties are duties because they are hu¬
man; because God created man that he might realize his
manhood; and what that is, is known to the Christian by
redeemed nature’s own response to God: doubtless not the
nature of the isolated individual alone, but human nature
all the same.

This matter is somewhat complicated by the fact that
Christians have in the life and ethical maxims of Christ a
standard of the truly human; and it is a usual way of speak¬
ing to call this standard a matter of revelation; which in a
sense, no doubt, it is. But if we carry consideration a step
further back, we shall say that the humanity of Christ, in
human activities and relations, is itself human nature per¬
fectly actualized in its true setting, that of absolute right¬
ness of relation toward God. And so what happens in him
is what happens, however imperfectly, in believers.

We have attempted to reconcile these two propositions:
“ The Christian doctrine of man is just the human con¬
science come fully to itself,” and “ The Christian doctrine
of man essentially presupposes the Christian revelation of
God in Christ.” And this coming to itself of the human
conscience we take to include the stabilizing of it. But
now how far is this stabilization a fact? No doubt there
is more agreement between Christians who claim to obey
the authority of the once-given revelation, than there is
in the rest of mankind beside. But there is disagreement
also: and that is not hard to explain.

In the Christ of the Gospels we believe that the true
self-awareness of humanity is found pure. There is the
true man truly responding to the true God with true hu-

200 The Christian Understanding of Man

manity. But Christ’s acts and words do not give us a
complete guide to life, and what they do give us may be
misinterpreted in being applied to new circumstances: nor
can any mere logical accuracy eliminate such misinterpre¬
tation. An element of fresh spiritual judgment is involved
and our judgment may be impure.

Both for interpretation, therefore, and for supplementa¬
tion we are forced to call in the Christian consciousness
outside our Lord, a consciousness liable to an indetermin¬
able degree of perversion and error, and yet the best that
we have. We shall look for it where we suppose it to be
purest or most surely guided. To raise the question as to
where that is would be to compare the claims of churches
to their authority, and of saints to their aureoles. This is
not the place to do it, nor is it the place to discuss how
much weight is to be attached to precedent, even the best,
or how far the individual has to make new decisions for
himself in responsibility toward God. It will be sufficient
to state that everyone respects some authority in practice;
or if not, then he must deny any expressible Christian
doctrine of man at all.

5. THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN

From what precedes it must follow that the content of
the Christian doctrine of man is the whole deliverance of
the true Christian conscience, in unity with our Lord’s, con¬
cerning the good for man in this life. To attempt an ex¬
pression of this would be to attempt a complete system of
ethics. We can here go no further than the most bare gen¬
eralization and arid platitudes, mentioning only these prin¬
ciples — the hierarchy and balance of activities, sociality,
liberty and spirituality.

Quite apart from all questions of duty to his neighbor,
the Christian sets certain activities before others: other

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201

things being equal, feeding should yield to philosophy and
pushpin to poetry. But this principle of hierarchy does
not exclude the principle of balance. There is a time for
philosophizing, but a time also to refrain from philosophy,
and some kind of balance is to be observed, though only
in broad principle. It is absurd to think one can write a
prescription for the employment of everyman’s leisure, or
demand that every example of homo sapiens should be an
example of homo rotundus , that mythical species, the all¬
round man. Yet however absurd we become in attempting
too much exactness in their application, the principles of
hierarchy and balance of activities are perfectly binding as
far as they go, and form a man’s absolute duty, so far as
that duty can be considered apart from duty to his neigh¬
bor.

The preservation of such balance and order requires
discipline, not merely the resolute choice of the right ac¬
tivity when the inappropriate one is bewitching, but the
systematic hardening of oneself in habits conducive to right
choices. For we are creatures of habit, and cannot trust
habits to look entirely after themselves.

In his respect for these things, the Christian need be in
no way singular. Although it is unlikely that his hierarchy
and system of activities will correspond exactly with that
of the non-Christian in detail, the non-Christian may rec¬
ognize these principles in general, and have many details
too in common with him, and be as absolute in his sense
of duty.

But now there are certain activities which will be pe¬
culiar to the Christian. For his conscious response to God,
in acts of understanding and love, is not indeed itself hu¬
man activity, nor subject matter of ethics, but demands
and uses human activities none the less. These religious
practices will have their place in the scheme of life, and

202 The Christian Understanding of Man

will carry with them further and peculiar developments of
self-discipline. For now this is valued not merely for the
formation of useful habit, but for creating the state of life
conducive to the contemplation of God.

But once again, religious practice and the religious dis¬
cipline that goes with it are not peculiar to the Christian
alone: other followers of other religions know them. Yet
here we have something in which the Christian is more
directly determined in his conduct by revealed truth —
religious practice does not spring simply in the human con¬
science, but is a direct opening of oneself to God accord¬
ing as one believes in him. As the beliefs differ, so will
the practices and the estimation in which they are held,
and it is the less to be expected that the Christian will
coincide with others in this field. The source and value of
non-Christian religious ideas is a question which we must
refuse to consider here.

It is odd that the duties of sociality should have been
sometimes treated as the chief matter of the Christian reve¬
lation. Sociality is part of the true nature of man as man,
and so recognized by the most considerable non-Christian
thinkers. It is part of what we are from the start, it is a
datum for grace when it comes, and lays down lines along
which grace will have to proceed if its action is not to de¬
humanize us. The plurality of men belongs as much to
our existence as the unity of God does to his, and the end
of man must be a social one. That this involves the ab¬
solute and universal obligation of justice and loving-kind¬
ness is a possible piece of moral knowledge apart from reve¬
lation, however much it may be stabilized and enforced by
the theological consideration that other men are as much
objects for God as we ourselves, so that to love him means
to adopt his purpose for them.

Justice means impartiality in all men’s minds, and

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203

loving-kindness means wishing them well and giving them
friendly assistance in the defense and attainment of their
good. There is much more agreement about these defini¬
tions than there is about the goods that we have to be
impartial in allotting if we are to be just, and that we have
to wish and strive to obtain for others if we are to be lov¬
ing. Thus while two of us may coincide exactly in our
definitions of these great social virtues, our views of their
practical application may be poles asunder, in so far as
we differ in our estimation of the goods to be distributed
by justice or sought by loving-kindness. So the practical
meaning of our social morality will depend on our individ¬
ual morality — on our opinion about the hierarchy and
balance of activities, but also on our belief in supernatural
goods, which though they do not form the subject matter
of this essay, cannot be excluded here. The Christian in
wishing well to his brother and acting on his wish, will
desire for him a right relation with God in response to
divine grace, expressed in contemplation as well as obedi¬
ence, and supported by a self-discipline conducive thereto.

It is in its content, then, rather than in its form that
Christian altruism is peculiar: the Christian is not singular
in exercising sympathy, but in sympathizing with his neigh¬
bor’s position as a soul living in the sight of God. If loving¬
kindness is to be defined as sympathetic cooperation with
others in the attainment of whatever aims they happen to
adopt, then the Christian must be confessed to be not more,
but less, loving than other men. True, he has sympathy for
error, or rather for the man that has fallen into it, but to
support him in the recovery of the right path, and not in
the attainment of his erroneously chosen goal.

This aspect of the Christian’s social conscience gives a
peculiar turn to his version of the principle of liberty,
the third of those we proposed to consider. That principle

204 The Christian Understanding of Man

is not a Christian monopoly. It may be stated in the form,
that men’s attainment of their good must come through
the exercise of their own choice and will. But now the
Christian, together with some other moralists, will have a
particular temptation to interfere with the liberty of oth¬
ers, because he thinks it important that they should pursue
the right goods and not the wrong. This may lead him to
adopt the line of conduct which has been euphemistically
but nonsensically described as “ forcing them to be free,”
i.e., driving them into the right channels of endeavor.

But then on the other hand he has an equally strong
interest in leaving them to act for themselves, since the
chief of those “ right goods ” that he wishes for them is a
right standing in the presence of God, and that can only
consist of a right attitude of the autonomous will. Our
wills are ours to make them God’s, and it cannot be done
by proxy.

The Christian’s respect for liberty, then, will be some¬
thing of his own. He will appear to others to be inclined
to unwarranted interference; but he will claim that his
so-called interference is intended to create the very con¬
dition of the true exercise of liberty. For liberty is the
voluntary choice of the good. But the good cannot be
chosen unless it has been seen. The interference of the
Christian, then, will consist in that effective presentation
of the good which makes possible for another the choice
of it.

Needless to say that, other things being equal, the Chris¬
tian sympathizes and cooperates with his neighbor in the
attainment of immediate and natural desires, and that the
obligation to do so is absolute.

Under the last head, spirituality, comes the problem sug¬
gested by an earlier section of this essay, when we touched
on the subject of the bounds set by our earthly condition

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205

to the progress of our nature, under the impulse of grace,
toward its ultimate perfection. What, in fact, are these
bounds? Ought we to push them back as far as possible,
and follow the Aristotelian maxim, which bids us live the
life of immortals even here, as far as in us lies? Since
certain things, for example, in Christ’s words, marrying
and giving in marriage, and every pleasure of sense, seem
to belong to our present condition rather than to our ulti¬
mate perfectibility, can we anticipate paradise by mortify¬
ing them?

This question is partly a practical one — how far can it
be done, without cutting our life off from the roots of its
natural energy, and so frustrating our object by starving
the higher activities themselves? To mortify the “ body
of flesh ” is not to enter into immediate possession of the
resurrection-body: we cannot hope to live in the flesh and
out of the flesh at the same time. But partly too it is a
social question — how far can it in fact be done without
irresponsibility toward the rest of mankind, from whom
we are not free to dissociate ourselves?

The answer then depends on practical considerations,
and has been solved for the few by the admission of a social
and regulated monasticism as a specialized function of so¬
ciety in general, which those who are called into this life
help more in this way than they would in any other. For
the many, infinite varieties and degrees in other-worldliness
have to be recommended according to the vocation and op¬
portunity of each.

Our conclusion is, that the Christian doctrine of the
good for man is no more than a pure and stabilized form
of the human conscience about it. This is so, in so far as
human goods and relationships are concerned. But those
supernatural goods which Christianity adds are no mere
addition, nor merely the cause of the purity and stability

206 The Christian Understanding of Man

of the Christian’s view of the rest. For the life of man’s
spirit is not an agglomerate but an organism, and of that
organism we have called his conscious relation with God
the head. The whole is more than the sum of its parts,
and the natural goods become transmuted in entering into
the supernatural good by becoming the field of man’s serv¬
ice to God. For the Christian there can be no mere moral¬
ity. His moral judgments may agree with other men’s
but his obedience to them is obedience to God, and a means
of appropriating the supreme good.

6. THE FREEDOM OF MAN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

We have said something about man’s nature in its rela¬
tion to God: and something about its content in itself. We
must turn to man’s nature in its relation to man. For the
paradox of human existence is that man becomes an object
to himself: he is concerned with realizing what he is: this is
the mystery of the will.

Man’s nature has appeared in the double role of goal
and limit to his aspiration. It is a certain measure of the
divine perfection, and, therefore, the object of his striving:
but again it is only a certain measure of it, and, there¬
fore, a limit to his pursuit of perfection itself. But neither
a goal nor a limit to aspiration would have any meaning
unless man were an aspirant and, therefore, a free crea¬
ture: if he had not a power to aspire after his end and to
conform his actions to his aspirations.

That man’s will is free — that it is a will, in fact, and
not something else — is certainly Christian doctrine, how¬
ever many views have been taken by Christians about the
scope of his freedom: and it seems best here not to attempt
to take sides with any school, but rather to express the
minimum doctrine of human liberty which must be held
if our religion is to make sense.

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207

We need not assert, then, an arbitrary freedom of choice
— that man is able to will anything that could ever come
into his head. But we must assert the freedom of effort.
Let it be granted that a man can recognize an aspiration
as the highest he has — either the highest absolutely, or
the highest that applies to these or those given circum¬
stances with which he is today confronted. He can rec¬
ognize it, but only if he makes the effort of sincere reflec¬
tion. He may or may not make that effort: here lies his
freedom. But again, when he has recognized it, he may or
may not make the effort required to bring his action into
line with his aspiration: and here is freedom again.

It does not seem necessary to assert that a man could
always have reflected honestly or acted virtuously on each
given occasion. Past failures may have incapacitated him;
there may be impediments in the physical or psychic con¬
stitution he has inherited. It is enough to assert that he
has some freedom, however narrow its scope; for then there
is something to which the moralist can address himself,
and some field in which the will can be exercised.

Christians are not singular in the assertion of free will:
it is really acknowledged, though often with much confu¬
sion, by most religious and moral systems. It does not re¬
quire Christian faith to bring the acknowledgment of ab¬
solute obligation to use all the liberty one has in the pursuit
of his best aspirations. Nor need the non-Christian’s sanc¬
tion be a selfish one. The atheist may ask no other motive
than the duty of bringing good into existence, whether that
good consists of his own activities and states, or those of
others, or material conditions productive of these.

The success of a man in actually following his best as¬
piration depends upon two factors: first, the clarity, force
and unity with which the object of aspiration presents itself
to his mind: and second, the effort he actually makes in

208 The Christian Understanding of Man

concentrating attention and activity upon it. No man will
be a hero in the service of an ideal he has but faintly seen,
nor in that of the most luminous vision, if his will power is
slight.

On both accounts the Christian claims supreme advan¬
tage. First, the object of aspiration is not a mere multitude
of particular human goods, but the will of the Creator,
the one highest good, so far as that can be imparted, and
is imparted, to the created universe; an object, therefore,
which has a natural power to move the will out of all pro¬
portion to any other. And it is the very work of revela¬
tion to make this object effectively known to man, that is,
in such fashion as to command his desire. Second, the
Christian hopes to have received in the grace of the Holy
Spirit a power to conform his act to this supreme aspiration.

Kant thought that if I am to recognize the highest good
as highest, when presented to me by revelation, I must
already have the pattern of it in my heart to recognize it
by. In that case I already know what is “ revealed.” That
is an error. The faculty of judgment is a faculty of recog¬
nizing which is better of two objects or more. In order to
acknowledge Hamlet as the best of plays I do not need an
innate knowledge of Hamlet but only a power of compar¬
ing it with other works. The same is true of my recognition
of the true good when presented: I had no knowledge of
it before — except sub quadam confusione — but when I
really see it, I can know it to be superior to all else I know.
The object itself instructs us. But in the case of the high¬
est good, I am not, in fact, free to recognize this. Good can
only be apprehended as such with the cooperation of de¬
sire. Mine is warped so that I cannot see it to begin with,
and therefore the presentation of the good objectively is
only possible if it is accompanied by the subjective correc¬
tion of aspiration. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, and

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209

there is no longer any sense in talking of a “ capacity ” I
have for his action upon me. The only capacity I need is
that I should be a mind, in order that there may be some¬
thing there for revelation to illumine. There must be a
mind to use light when it has come, there must be desire
and will, to be clothed with the love of God shed abroad in
the heart, otherwise God would not be redeeming but cre¬
ating anew; but there need be no other innate power be¬
yond these faculties existing in a more or less degree of per¬
version. Their freedom before grace need be only such
that they exist, not such that they are capable of response
to God apart from God’s enabling action. For discovering
the various degrees of perversion and perfection before
grace, there is nothing like the observation of instances.

If we speak of the supreme good as our supreme motive,
it may appear that we are depersonalizing the relation be¬
tween us and God, and this has led some to prefer to inter¬
pret the claim of the divine will upon us as “an absolute
personal claim ” rather than as the duty to realize intrinsic
good. But “ an absolute personal claim ” is difficult to
understand, if taken alone. No person has any claim upon
us that we should further his purposes unless these purposes
are good, either intrinsically or as a means to other good;
so that a personal claim itself needs the sanction of intrinsic
goodness. We may say in another sense that all persons
have an absolute claim on us, because they are all the crea¬
tures of God, and doubtless God has a good to be realized
through them; which good we are bound to try to discover
and to foster — not because they now actively desire it,
but because it is good. Our duty to God is the opposite —
an absolute duty to promote his actual purposes, for they
are simply good: none at all to promote the realization of
good in him, for he has and is it all.

The sanction, then, of our obedience is the supreme and

210 The Christian Understanding of Man

sole independent worth of his existence, which he extends
to others according to the capacity he assigns them. But
his existence is life and spirit, and, therefore, it is true
enough that in subjecting ourselves to his activity and as¬
piring after him we are moved by emotions of reaction to
a person and not a principle — and that, no doubt, is the
substance of the contention that we have been criticizing.

Aspiration after true good, and the loyalty of the will
thereto, constitutes the spirituality of man, and the realiz¬
ing in him of God’s image. It is the cooperation of his
whole self, and not his abstract intellect alone, with reason,
in the sense not of a mere ratiocinative power, but of the
faculty for grasping truth. So the man becomes, and not
merely possesses, rationality. God, in willing his own ex¬
istence, wills absolute good. Man is the image of God in
so far as he both has a will and wills the supreme good
according to his ability. To will one’s self as God wills
himself would be to realize not the image but the parody
and blasphemy of God.

Such an actualizing of true humanity has its true pat¬
tern completed in faith toward God through Christ. But
there exists much aspiration after the true good in igno¬
rance of its true nature, and much loyalty of will in second¬
ing it. In men that are sane, such active rationality is never
quite extinct, and there, just in such proportion as it is
found, is a vestige of the image of God. But once again,
as we said above of total depravity, if we wish to adopt the
eschatological point of view, we may say that the image of
God is lost in those that are lost — in those whose apprehen¬
sion of good is insufficient to bring them to the attainment
of final and immovable rationality, that is, an absolute
dwelling of their desire upon God. But if we speak not
of the lost but of those that are being lost, then we must
speak also of those that are losing the image of God.

Austin Farrer

211

7. CONCLUSION

In conclusion we will return to our beginning. Chris¬
tianity asserts indeed that there is a true nature of man, for
that is the Creator’s intention, actual in the divine mind
and never wholly unactualized in men if they are men at
all. Of this true human nature men can and do become
aware, not through speculative deduction, but piecemeal
in the recognition of what is good for man. For such rec¬
ognition the favoring conditions are sensible reflection,
honest intention, and a right relation with God.

Christianity, therefore, does not come before the world
with an ideology about man, the rival to several others.
Those others it must condemn as forms of idolatry, but
not by substituting an idol of its own. The church’s first
mission is to re-create the right relation with God, or rather
to be the instrument of God for such a work. Concerning
the gospel of redemption, others have written eloquently
in this book, and it would be superfluous to repeat what
they have said about man’s fall and its divine remedy.

But the church has a second mission besides. She knows
the humanity as well as the deity of Christ: she exhibits
the good for man shown forth in his conscience and life,
and in the life and conscience of the saints ever since; and
this supplies in part a guide to action, and on the basis of
it she must utter the divine law in such detail as her vision
allows or men’s need demands. We have suggested some
of the heads under which the distinctively Christian teach¬
ing is likely to fall. But the codified experience of the
true conscience in Christ cannot be treated as an oracle
which will answer all questions. History does not wholly
repeat itself, and a new situation will require a new deci¬
sion, which cannot be deduced simply from established
principles. Such a decision, if it is right, cannot indeed be

212 The Christian Understanding of Man

out of harmony with the mind of the church hitherto; but
harmony is a difficult thing to dogmatize upon; it cannot
be settled by syllogizing.

But however difficult the process of forming judgments,
the church must judge whenever she thinks that a judg¬
ment, either vital or valuable, can be given; and she must
judge, among other things, the state. Her judgments in
this sphere will (on the evidence of what proceeds) differ
from those of others only in being more purely ethical.
She must refuse every assumption of the unquestioned
value of any political aim; everything must be judged ac¬
cording to the part it can play in the realization of true
human nature in the many, according to the church’s vision
of what that nature is.

State action must always present itself to the church in
a double aspect. Every deliberate human act can be re¬
garded as a mere event, likely to lead to consequences good,
bad or indifferent. But equally it can be regarded as lan¬
guage more effective than words; the eloquent expression
of the agent’s mind. So every act of the state is an event
likely to produce consequences by the ordinary sequence
of cause and effect; but also it is the expression of a doctrine
in the minds of those who stand behind it. A measure for
physical education is an instrument by which the bodies
of the educable will be affected: it is also an expression of
the value attached by its authors to bodily welfare. It may
be purely beneficial in the first regard, but in the second
be put forward in such a way as to preach materialism.

The church qua church is perhaps more concerned with
the second aspect than the first; if, indeed, any comparison
can be drawn. For the doctrine of life, silently preached by
state action, may be to the Christian simply false. It is
less often that he can judge the probable effect of measures
to be simply deleterious, or demonstrably unjust. For he

Austin Farrer

213

does not suppose that state action can realize the ideal with¬
out defect. No state measure will be perfectly just or un-
mixedly useful to all inhabitants of a partly unregenerate
world. It is a matter of finding the least bad alternative.

Moreover, the church qua church is concerned first with
spiritual truth, and, therefore, with combating the practi¬
cal expression of falsehood by all the means in her power.
It is much harder for her to judge, through channels of
ecclesiastical organization, what practical tendency the
maintenance or change of any institution will have toward
promoting or hindering her ideal for human life: except,
indeed, when it is a question of her own freedom of spir¬
itual action being extended or diminished.

This is the inevitable misery of the church: she must
fight for the right to judge not only principles and doctrines
expressed in the state, but also the ethical expediency of
measures and institutions. And yet she cannot expect
often to be either inwardly united or practically wise in
judging the expediencies of the moment. But neither can
she fall back on established precedent alone, and treat new
situations as cases of old rules. She will often, then, cut
a foolish figure: but she will be at least illustrating in act the
ethical and spiritual judgment of state affairs, and that is
more important sometimes than the prestige of ecclesi¬
astical infallibility. If we have any belief, however dim,
in our guidance by the divine reason, we must suppose that
Christians uttering and comparing their reflections on the
ethical expediency of politics will be contributing toward
the formation of a right judgment in the end, whatever the
ineptitude or disunion of their first suggestions.

THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING
OF MAN

Walter Marshall Horton

THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF MAN

1. THE CONTEMPORARY DEVALUATION OF MAN

In this second quarter of the twentieth century, modem
man is better prepared than at the turn of the century to
hear and understand a Christian word addressed to him, on
the subject of his own nature and condition. Then, his
self-valuation was vastly inflated, and he viewed his re¬
ligious advisers with a mixture of amusement and con¬
tempt; now, he has gone through a sobering process of
deflation, and is ready to listen, if not with much hope,
at least with some interest, to anyone who offers him a
heartening word of counsel.

Victor Monod, of the faculty of Protestant theology in
Strasbourg, has recently written a remarkable book 1 in
which this contemporary Devaluation of Man is vividly
portrayed. He points out that the sense of human worth
and dignity is largely based upon two peculiarly human
devices by which primitive man very early showed his
superiority over other animals: the use of tools, by which
he has asserted his dominion over things in space; and the
making of agreements and contracts, whereby he has as¬
serted his dominance over events in time. Toward the
close of the nineteenth century, science and technology
seemed to have brought these two ancient means of pre¬
diction and control to such a pitch of perfection that man
began to see himself as veritable lord of creation, and Swin¬
burne could sing “ Glory to Man in the highest, for Man

i Divalorisation de I’homme (Paris, Alcan, 1935) .

217

218 The Christian Understanding of Man

is the Master of Things! ” Today, after the disillusion-
ments of the World War and world depression, man’s
sense of his own value has ebbed to the zero point. He
begins to suspect that in passing from the tool to the ma¬
chine, he has overreached himself and lost the power he
possessed in grasping for more. A workman with a tool
in his hand has worth, because without his skill the tool is
useless; but as the tool develops into the power-driven
machine, the workman becomes less and less important,
until at last a single easily replaceable employee stands
watching a whole vast roomful of machinery, occasionally
pushing a button or throwing a lever, while solar energy in
some one of its various guises does the real work. And in a
world where machines have thus got the upper hand, future
events are no longer predictable. Contracts and agree¬
ments, whose central importance for human society is at¬
tested by the immense care with which their sanctity has
been guarded ever since the days of Hammurabi, have
in our generation been rendered null and void by the grow¬
ing unpredictability of the course of events. In contem¬
porary society, legal contracts are continually being voided
on the plea of “ unforeseeable circumstances and inter¬
national agreements are proverbially less enduring than
the paper on which they are written.

What impends under these circumstances is not merely
the breakdown of ancient moral sanctions; it is, as M.
Monod insists, the breakdown of morale itself which un¬
derlies all codes of morals. Instead of being the “ Master
of Things,” modern man has become the servant of things,
the plaything of untamable forces and events. Like the
Apprentice Sorcerer, he has released by his scientific magic
all sorts of powers which he cannot control, and stands
helplessly watching the havoc these forces are creating,
while he waits for some Master to return and put things

Walter Marshall Horton 219

in order. Or to use a figure of Bergson’s, man is now,
with his globe-encircling mechanical devices, like an im¬
measurably overdeveloped body, whose animating mind is
“ too little to fill it, too weak to direct it.” Unless he can
be aroused from his apathy and given new morale, he will
allow the present disastrous drift of events to proceed me¬
chanically toward the chaos for which it is headed without
lifting a finger to save himself from destruction.

Some Christian thinkers have seen in this current de¬
flation or devaluation of man the means of inducing in
our contemporaries a mood of humility meet for repent¬
ance. To deepen men’s self-distrust seems like the quickest
and most efficacious way of leading them to trust in God —
or at least the most opportune way at the moment — and
so there are found many Christian pessimists in our time,
ever ready to answer the wails of secular pessimists with
antiphonal groans, when the plight of modern man comes
up for discussion. Yet it is a dangerous stratagem to exalt
God at the expense of man; almost, though not quite so
dangerous as to exalt man at the expense of God. Faith in
God and faith in man are so interdependent that we can¬
not utterly despair of man without undermining faith in
God, just as we cannot ignore God without undermining
faith in man. If the godless secularism of modem times
leads inevitably to that loss of trust in humanity which is
so evident today, the attempt to bludgeon man into abject
submission to God may lead with equal logicality to a
new wave of atheism.

Christian teaching is not merely guilty of bad strategy
when it thus succumbs to contemporary pessimism; it is
false to its own gospel. The Christian gospel, when rightly
received, humbles man to a sense of grateful dependence
upon the power, grace and forgiveness of God; it does not
humiliate him nor break his spirit. To the proud and

220 The Christian Understanding of Man

self-sufficient it speaks sternly of One who has often, in the
course of history, “ put down the mighty from their seats
and exalted the humble and meek.” But in the same
breath, it declares that man is God’s child, made in the
divine image, destined for an exalted post, as God’s vice¬
gerent on this planet, so soon as he learns to find his joy
in obedience to his Father’s will. It does not crush him
as a “ worm of the dust it stirs him by showing him that
he is betraying a great responsibility and missing a supreme
opportunity. In short, the Christian gospel has precisely
that steadying word of mingled warning and encourage¬
ment which is needed to put fresh heart and saving contri¬
tion into our sick and dazed contemporaries — if they could
but grasp its meaning.

2. “ FACT ” AND “ TRUTH ” IN THE CHRISTIAN
UNDERSTANDING OF MAN

The chief reason why it is difficult to convey the Chris¬
tian understanding of man to our generation is that secular
thought and religious thought have been pursuing diver¬
gent paths in western Christendom since the close of the
Middle Ages.

Medieval Christian thought, as represented in the philos¬
ophy of Aquinas and the poetry of Dante, had the great
merit of uniting the secular and religious understanding
of man in one comprehensive view. In the medieval
synthesis, Aristotle’s scientific theory of man as a rational
and political animal found an honorable place, subordi¬
nate to the higher verities of the Christian gospel which
alone could reveal man’s ultimate source and goal, but
nevertheless part of the same hierarchical scheme of things.

What John Macmurray claims as always true of religious
thought “ when it is real ” was emphatically true of medi¬
eval Christian thought — it was “ alive both to the facts of

Walter Marshall Horton 221

the empirical situation and to a truth which is denied by
the facts, and which is, for all that, their eternal essence.” 2
What the philosophy of Aquinas did for the educated
classes, the popular lore embedded in the carving of the
French cathedrals did for the rank and file — it related
every natural fact to some mystic meaning and placed the
daily round of life in constant juxtaposition with heaven
and hell. Religion and life were one, not two; religious
mysteries were half hidden, half revealed in precisely this
world wherein men lived and walked; and as Dante’s Di¬
vine Comedy illustrates, astronomy itself was correlated
point by point with moral theology. The synthesis was
too perfect to last, of course, for not all the “ facts ” ac¬
cepted by the medieval mind were really facts, and not all
its “ truths ” were true, or germane to the facts with which
they were fancifully connected; but until some such rela¬
tion of fact and truth is recovered in our time, religious
and secular thought will continue to be irrelevant to one
another.

Religious thought cannot escape its share of the blame
for the loss of balance in the modern understanding of
man. In Luther’s commentary on Romans, he went out
of his way to express contempt for the scholastic and Aris¬
totelian attempt to study man as he is, empirically: “ Who¬
ever considers the essences and operations of creatures,
rather than their aspirations and expectations, is without
doubt stupid and blind, and knows not that creatures are
creatures.” 3 In this remarkable saying, and many like it,
the great reformer exhibited profound insight into that
deeper religious “ truth ” about man which outruns and
seems to contradict the empirical facts of human nature;
but he erred when he isolated this higher truth (em-

2 Creative Society , p. 69.

3 M. A. H. Stomps, Die Anthropologie Martin Luthers, p. 15.

222 The Christian Understanding of Man

bodied in the biblical view of man’s divine origin and
destiny) from all empirical knowledge of man as he is.

From that day to this there has been a tendency in
conservative Protestant thought to ignore, suppress or
deny all facts that seem to collide with the biblical view
of man; and to draw man’s portrait directly from sacred
texts, instead of from life in the light of Christian revela¬
tion. The animal ancestry of man, for example, has been
denied and opposed by Christian theologians on religious
grounds to their own ultimate discomfiture; while at the
same time a theological lay figure of “ the natural man ”
has been constructed which no layman would recognize as
natural. Only a few literary geniuses like Pascal have
known how to present the Christian estimate of the “ great¬
ness and misery of man ” in terms that actually strike home
to the lay conscience.

When religious thought thus withdrew from the world
of common life, it was to be expected that secular thought
would increasingly ignore it, and try to solve the problem
of man in wholly factual and naturalistic terms. What one
gets, when one thus attempts to define man’s place in the
world without reference to God, is a curiously unstable
estimate of his importance, fluctuating wildly between noth¬
ing and everything.

It is as though modern man, since his emancipation
from medievalism, had been exhibiting the typical reac¬
tions of a pampered only child suddenly put out in the
cold world to shift for himself. By turns, he swaggers with
self-importance and shivers with fright. In the snug medi¬
eval world it seemed self-evident that man was God’s only
child. But when the Copernican revolution and its sequel
set him in a vast impersonal universe, where he was no
longer at the center but lost amid the immensities and the
eternities, he shrank and trembled and cried out with

Walter Marshall Horton 223

Pascal, “ The silence of these infinite spaces frightens me! ”
Finding the notion of his own insignificance quite unen¬
durable, he reverted to pride and boastfulness when it oc¬
curred to him that his own thought had forged the picture
of the universe which so terrified him. By the magic
formula, “ The world is my idea,” the Copernican revolu¬
tion was undone and the universe made to revolve again
around man as its center. At the height of the idealistic
movement, men made and remade systems of philosophy
as if they were indeed creating worlds by fiat and demolish¬
ing them with a wave of the hand. Darwinism gave a great
blow to this idealistic habit of thought and set homo sapiens
down with a thud among his humble mammalian ancestors;
but after a brief period of humiliation he recovered his
pride again — for was he not the last and highest product
of evolution, the end toward which the whole creation
moved, the sole point at which the cosmic process became
conscious of itself and devised scientific means for its own
endless improvement?

Now again, since the World War our human sense of
worth is deflated; but there is nothing in the sphere of
mere fact to prevent our continuing to alternate between
despair and megalomania in the future as in the past. Re¬
ligion alone — and that, for us, means the Christian revela¬
tion — can adequately interpret facts which by themselves
are ambiguous or meaningless. God alone — and that, for
us, means the God revealed in Christ — can mediate be¬
tween man and nature, and decide which is subordinate
to the other. If Christianity is actually to rescue modern
man from the twin dangers of egotism and humiliation,
one thing must be clearly understood: that Christian reve¬
lation is not a ready-made system of knowledge, contend¬
ing with scientific knowledge on the same factual plane,
but a set of extraordinary facts — Israel, Christ, the church

224 The Christian Understanding of Man

— in which Christian faith finds the key to the meaning of
all facts. The biblical view of man is authoritative, not
as a literal account of how he was created and what he is
composed of, but as an interpretation of his relationship
to the Ultimate Being, God, whereby his relations to his
natural and social environment are clarified, and the mean¬
ing of his existence is defined.

The biblical anthropology is most simply and clearly
expressed in Psalm 8, where man is described as a tiny
helpless creature, a mere babe, looking up in awe at the
high heavens which dwarf him into insignificance, yet
raised to a position of dominance and dignity “ a little
lower than the angels,” with the whole animate creation
“ under his feet,” because the Maker of this vast world is
“ mindful ” of him and “ visits ” him. This account of
man’s place finds its echo in the Genesis account of his
creation (out of the “ dust of the earth,” yet in the “ image
of God ”) and in the New Testament gospel of his re¬
demption (by a God so “ mindful ” of his need as to
“ visit ” him personally in the midst of his afflictions and
die for his sins) . The Thomistic doctrine of man (as a
creature situated on the border-line between corporeal and
purely spiritual substances, in confinio corporalium et sepa-
ratarum substantiarum , lowest among intelligent beings
but first in the order of material forms, reflecting im¬
perfectly in his progressive and responsive activity the actus
purus that belongs to God alone) simply applies the bibli¬
cal interpretation of man’s origin, rank and destiny to the
data of Aristotelian science, the best approximation to
44 fact ” which the Middle Ages possessed. It gives scho¬
lastic precision to the biblical idea that man is “ a little
lower than the angels.” 4 It is the business of contempo-

4 The word elohim, “ divine beings,” literally includes God and all
other heavenly beings; but since the medieval doctrine of angels sharpened
the gradations in the heavenly hierarchy, “ angels ” translates the Psalmist’s
meaning very well.

Walter Marshall Horton 225

rary theology to use the same ancient clue for the elucida¬
tion of the meaning of human life in its modern setting.
All the empirical data which scientific anthropology, physi¬
ology, psychology, sociology, etc., have been heaping up,
together with the empirical insights of modern novelists
and modern saints, are as germane to the modern Chris¬
tian understanding of man as was the philosophy of Aris¬
totle to the medieval Christian understanding of man.
But these empirical data are unintelligible except in the
light of the biblical revelation of man’s more than empiri¬
cal source, nature and end.

Let us try briefly to organize our contemporary empirical
knowledge of man in terms of the biblical understanding
of man, using medieval ideas from time to time as con¬
venient middle terms. In so doing we shall find ourselves
passing successively from three great groups of “ facts ”
to corresponding “ truths,” which Christian faith asserts
to be the truth of these very facts:

(1) From the general facts of scientific anthropology,
to the truth that man is a great and marvelous work of
God his creator, made in the divine image out of humble
materials.

(2) From the special fact of human frustration and self-
contradiction, to the truth that man is a sinner, responsible
in the sight of God his judge.

(3) From the unique fact of the new life in Christ and
the church, to the truth that man is potentially the beloved
son and heir of God his redeemer.

3. MAN AS CREATURE

The biological, psychological and sociological facts
which form the scientific substructure of any adequate
doctrine of man are so numerous and various that it is
difficult to view them in perspective. Faulty perspective
is especially likely to result from the circumstance that

226 The Christian Understanding of Man

human physiology, as a part of the relatively well developed
general science of biology, has attained a degree of ac¬
curacy and certainty only excelled by that of the physical
sciences; while psychology and sociology are only sciences
in the making, full of unclarified philosophical assump¬
tions and disturbed by the clamor of rival schools; yet quite
plainly the most characteristic and distinctive facts about
man fall in these only partly explored fields. Dr. Alexis
Carrel, in his popular book Man the Unknown , has made
a valiant pioneer attempt to introduce proper perspective
into scientific anthropology, by briefly summarizing the
physiological knowledge of which he is an acknowledged
master, and combining it with such psychological and soci¬
ological facts as seem to him highly probable — including
such commonly questioned phenomena as the occurrence
of telepathy and healing miracles. In so doing, Dr. Carrel
has made it evident, I think, that the modern science of
man, with all its distinguished attainments, has not really
destroyed the applicability of the main concepts of Aris¬
totelian anthropology which formed the substructure of the
medieval Christian doctrine of man; nor has it abolished
the necessity of a more than scientific doctrine of man’s
ultimate origin, nature and destiny. Let us endeavor to
pour our modern data into the molds of medieval Christian
thought and see if they spill over.

Aristotelian biology, in its bearing upon the doctrine
of man, may be summarized in the proposition that man
is an animal; psychology, in the proposition that man is a
rational animal; sociology, in the proposition that man is
a social animal ( zdon politicon) . All three of these propo¬
sitions hold good in modern terms.

(a) Man Is an Animal. While Aristotle’s astronomy
has been completely upset by Copernicus, his biology has
not been so fundamentally transformed by Darwin. What

Walter Marshall Horton 227

the Stagirite saw as a hierarchy of fixed forms has been
changed into a succession of evolving species lineally de¬
scended from one another; but the order of descent sub¬
stantially corresponds to the ascending order in the hier¬
archy. What he called the “ vegetative ” and “ sensitive ”
souls are still recognizable as the organic and sensory func¬
tions which man shares with the simpler forms of organism
that preceded him in the evolutionary series.

As an animal, descended from lower animals and carry¬
ing active or vestigial reminders of his descent in his physi¬
ological structure, man has many definite limitations which
cannot be overstepped without paying physiological pen¬
alties: first disease, finally death. It is Dr. Carrel’s sober
opinion that modern civilization has imposed a topheavy
burden upon man’s physique which no animal is capable
of enduring; and while scientific medicine is decreasing
the incidence of infectious diseases, it cannot check the in¬
crease of degenerative and nervous diseases unless man
returns to a manner of life more in conformity with his
nature as an animal. No animal can escape the law that
the mechanisms of physiological adaptation suffer atrophy
without physical exercise and hardship; and from such
atrophy to nervous strain, degeneration and death is a short
road.

In successive generations of pure-bred dogs, nervousness is
often observed to increase. . . . This phenomenon occurs in
subjects brought up under artificial conditions, living in com¬
fortable kennels, and provided with choice food quite differ¬
ent from that of their ancestors, the shepherds, which fought
and defeated the wolves.5

A part of the prophetic message of the Christian church
to modern man must be a warning based on physiology:
“ Act within the limits of your animal constitution; or by

e Carrel, Man the Unknown (New York, Harpers, 1935) pp. 157, 158.

228 The Christian Understanding of Man

God’s law, laid down in your bones and tissues, you and
your line will perish.” We must add, however, that some
of the anthropological doctrines now being promulgated
in the name of science, especially in the field of “ race,”
are to be rejected, not only because they are unchristian,
but because they are based on bad biology.

(b) Man Is a Rational Animal. “ The soul is the aspect
of ourselves that is specific of our nature and distinguishes
man from the other animals.” This might be a citation
from medieval philosophy; it is actually Dr. Carrel’s formu¬
lation 6 of what he calls the “ operational concept of the
mind ” required by modern science. Scientific psychology
is in fact quite compatible with the Aristotelian and
Thomistic conception of the soul; whereas it is hard to
reconcile with the extreme dualism of Plato and Descartes.
A view of the human rational soul which conceives of it
as the form or activity of the body, intimately united with
a whole hierarchy of animal functions such as nutrition,
reproduction, sensation and memory, is a view which makes
the soul a proper object for scientific study, and accommo¬
dates itself easily to changes in the empirical data it seeks
to synthesize.

If there is any point at which the Aristotelian view of
the specific nature of human intelligence needs basic re¬
vision, it is to be found in its excessive emphasis upon
pure intellectual contemplation ( theoria ) as man’s highest
activity. Disinterested love of truth and joy in truth have
indeed found their best expression in modern science; but
the scientific study of man’s early development has made
it clear that his supremacy over other animals is funda¬
mentally based upon a more “ instrumental ” use of in¬
telligence, wherein moments of intuitive contemplation oc¬
cur as part of a rhythmic alternating flow, from action
toward imagination and back again to action.

e Ibid., p. 1 18.

Walter Marshall Horton 229

Human intelligence begins with the ability to manipu¬
late objects between the prehensile thumb and forefinger
so as to make them serve as means to the ends which
imagination envisages. Physical tools, language and free
ideas — culminating in long chains of mathematical propo¬
sitions or poetic symbols — are among the most important
improvements by which the process of fitting means to
ends, and revising ends in the light of consequences, has
been perfected. Through these and other inventions, man
has been enabled to handle his environment with a degree
of flexibility of which no other animal is capable. He is
the most adaptable and teachable of animals, responding
to a change of circumstance not by growing a new organ,
but by manipulating environmental factors until they serve
his purposes. He has all the fundamental drives and im¬
pulses which are called instincts in other animals; but as
Professor C. H. Cooley has said, animal instincts are to
human, rationally adaptable drives what a music-box play¬
ing set tunes is to a piano on which all manner of tunes can
be played. Aristotle’s Ethics gives large recognition to this
instrumental use of intelligence as a control over conduct
— in fact, it constitutes the basis of his distinction between
the purely intellectual and genuinely moral virtues — but
his Greek scorn for the artisan classes, and his own pro¬
fession as a leisured philosophical observer of life, pre¬
vented his recognizing the supplemental relation between
action and contemplation.

All that Christian theology needs, as empirical basis for
its doctrines of human freedom and immortality, is this
conception of man as a rational animal. The chief grounds
of these doctrines are not simply empirical, but meta¬
physical and theological. It is because God is man’s eternal
source and goal that human acts of volition can never be
completely determined by the immediate and apparent

230 The Christian Understanding of Man

but transient goods which first catch his attention; and it
is this same dissatisfaction with things transient, this same
restless hunger for things eternal, which is the principal
ground of faith in his immortality. All that is necessary
to provide an empirical basis for this act of faith is to
insist that man is not merely driven from behind by com¬
pulsive animal instincts, nor merely capable of “ rationaliz¬
ing” these blind urges in the delusive way described by
Freudian psychology, but possesses a genuine capacity for
receiving his motives from rationally envisaged ends. Gen¬
uinely rational motives are always struggling with irra¬
tional drives, and the mastery they attain is a precarious
mastery; but it is an empirically verifiable fact that moti¬
vation can flow from reason toward desire, as well as in the
opposite direction. The Christian doctrine of man admits
the power of these compulsive forces in man to which
Freud and Marx call attention, and it adds thereto the
power of sin; but against all theories that reduce man to
a mere irresponsible puppet, it protests, both in the name
of Christ and in the name of sound philosophy.

(c) Man Is a Social Animal. The Aristotelian sociology
may be summed up in the famous description of man as a
“ political animal,” or more fully in the remark, toward
the end of the Ethics (X, 1180 a) , that “ he who is to be
good must have been brought up and habituated well, and
then live accordingly under good institutions, and never
do what is low and mean, either against or with his will.”
The “ institutions ” here referred to are not merely politi¬
cal institutions, but specifically include private institutions
like the family. Aristotle is perfectly convinced that the
individual cannot attain his true good except in loyal re¬
lationship to society; but he is equally convinced that the
best society is not the totalitarian state. The Spartan state,

Walter Marshall Horton 231

the nearest approach to complete collectivism that came
under his observation, was not his ideal. “ Private train¬
ing/’ he remarked, “ has advantages over public . . . the
individual will be most exactly attended to under private
care, because so each will be more likely to obtain what is
expedient for him ” {ibid., 1180) .

This general position, that the individual needs society
for his own fulfilment, but thrives best in a society which
does not swallow him up in the mass, is entirely con¬
firmed by modern observation. Dr. Carrel remarks that
our “ visible frontiers,” the skin and the digestive-respira¬
tory mucosas, are quite plainly not our real frontiers, but
only “ a plane of cleavage indispensable to our action.”
As the body takes in chemical substances, selecting from
them those which tend to build up its individuality, so
the mental life takes in from its social environment im¬
pressions and influences which tend to build up individual
character. But the individual who becomes only a “ unit
in a school,” or a “ unit in the herd ” in some great factory,
city or collectivist state, is stunted in his growth. “ In
order to reach his real strength, the individual requires
the relative isolation and the attention of the restricted
social group consisting of the family.” 7

Christianity has always had to combat the extremes of
individualism and collectivism, in the interest of its own
characteristic conception of the church as a body with
many members, a community of free individuals. It would
be too much to say that secular science and philosophy,
by themselves, lead to any such exalted conception of social
life; but this much can fairly be claimed — that in her
present struggle with the tendency toward anarchic indi¬
vidualism in democratic, capitalistic countries, and with
7 Carrel, op. cit ., chap, vii, esp. p. 270.

232 The Christian Understanding of Man

the tendency toward tyrannical collectivism in fascistic or
communistic countries, the church has the support of the
great masters of social science and philosophy, both ancient
and modern. She speaks not only with the voice of faith,
but with the voice of knowledge; and what she has learned
from “ the Master of those who know ” is a part, though
only a part, of the Christian understanding of man.

(d) Man As God's Creature , Made in the Divine Image.
All the facts of human physiology, psychology and soci¬
ology, taken together, are not enough to establish the
Christian view of man as God’s creature, made in his image.
This mass of scientific data does indeed demand philo¬
sophic interpretation; and if there is anything in the
maxim that the stream cannot rise higher than its source,
the most rational interpretation of man’s origin is one
which ascribes it to a creative principle that is more than
mechanistic, more then vitalistic, and at least as intelligent
as man himself. Yet this Creative Intelligence is not the
Christian God. If it were, one might be content to inter¬
pret the divine image in man as St. Thomas interprets it —
reason itself, or the power of self-determination through
the envisagement of ideal ends. But this interpretation of
the divine image presupposses the Aristotelian view of
God as the Unmoved Mover, creating and moving all
things by pure thought, without ever coming forth from
his splendid isolation into the world he has created;
whereas the Christian God is a God of sacrificial love, for¬
ever coming forth to communicate grace and truth to his
creatures. The image of God, then, must be interpreted
as man’s capacity to respond gratefully to the divine love
that patiently seeks him out, and to show his gratitude for
God’s patient mercy by exhibiting a similar magnanimity
to his neighbors, even though they be his enemies.

This is that Godlikeness which Jesus held up before

Walter Marshall Horton 233

his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, and which he
himself exhibited when he went to the cross for mankind’s
sake, begging forgiveness for his enemies as they crucified
him. No scientific anthropology could ever prove that man
is capable of Godlikeness in this sense; though it might
establish the fact that, like many of his humble mammalian
ancestors, he knows “ how to give good gifts to his chil¬
dren,” and to some extent is accustomed to push the atti¬
tude of loving generosity beyond the limits of the natural
family, to include members of other groups for which he
has a strong “ we-feeling.” The confirmation of this Chris¬
tian view of God and man is only to be found in the non-
scientific observation, that when the challenge to be God¬
like is presented to him in the gospel, man does sometimes
respond to it with a disinterested, reverent, self-forgetful
devotion for which his devotion to wife and child, or
country, or truth, or beauty, is only a partial analogy; so
that even though he fails to live up to the challenge, his
conscience remains uneasy and he bows down in penitence
before the God of love whom he continues to crucify.

Between Aristotle’s rational, social animal and the full
Christian understanding of man, as a divinely fashioned
creature capable of reflecting and transmitting the divine
sacrificial love, there is a great gap that must not be mini¬
mized, and that only faith can bridge. Yet the secular, sci¬
entific portrait of man, in its modern as well as its ancient
and medieval forms, needs to be incorporated in the Chris¬
tian view, both as a point of contact with the secular mind,
and as a needed check upon fanatical aberrations in Chris¬
tian belief. If we have gone to some length to prove that the
Thomistic doctrine of the natural man still very largely
holds good, it is not because we believe either Aristotle or
Aquinas said the last word on human nature, but because
Thomistic philosophy did render full justice, in its day, to

234 The Christian Understanding of Man

the scientific view of man which should always form the
groundwork of Christian anthropology. The Christian
view of man is the eternal truth; but unless this truth is
expressed in terms of commonly accepted facts, man will
not recognize it as the truth about his actual, contemporary
self.

4. MAN AS SINNER

The facts which support the truth that man is God’s
creature are, to a considerable extent, both empirical and
scientific. Those which support the truth that man is
a sinner are empirical but in the nature of the case non-
scientific, since they involve appreciative judgments of
value that are beyond the scope of scientific method. It
is not to the pure scientists, then, with their completely
matter-of-fact view of human nature that we must go for
our data, but to the novels of a Dostoievsky or the Confes¬
sions of a St. Augustine, checked by the specific studies of
clinical psychiatrists and criminologists such as applied sci¬
entists.

We cannot start with sin as a recognized fact. Dr. T. Z.
Koo has said that in his work as a Christian evangelist
he rarely finds a man awakened to the fact that he is a
sinner. It is the great saints who recognize themselves as
sinners; and to do so is already to be half delivered. But
what the average man does recognize as a fact in his life
is frustration or conflict. There is a widespread human
acknowledgment that we are making rather a mess of
things, that the longer we continue in the ordinary way
of life the more confused and meaningless it gets. Great
novelists, autobiographers and psychiatrists help to clarify
this common consciousness of an undefined evil that presses
down upon us all.

The evil occurs in very specific forms which demand

Walter Marshall Horton 235

specific treatment like the various types of disease. Not
everyone has a completely divided will, like St. Paul or
St. Augustine or Luther just before their conversions.
Not everyone's experience is as macabre as that of Dos¬
toievsky’s Man from the Underworld. Not everyone is in
danger of becoming a paranoiac, or committing burglary.
Hence the infinite variety of the methods that must be
employed in the cure of souls and the need of deep in¬
tuitive insight into the peculiar needs of the individual.
Yet there runs through all human experience a common
element which binds us together in a brotherhood of woe.
It is a sense of a blockade, an isolation, an estrangement
between ourselves and that which we dimly feel to be
our highest good; and this blockade makes it impossible
for us to trust ourselves freely and expansively to our world,
as the swimmer trusts himself to the waves. Instead, we
adopt a contractive attitude, dominated by fear or anger;
we shrink back from life, or we allow it to drift meaning-
lessly on, or we hit out resentfully at all who would pre¬
sume to lay an obligation upon us. And all the time, if
we observe ourselves closely, we are grudgingly conscious
that we are to blame for this state of affairs; that ignorance
and finiteness and hampering circumstance, and the pres¬
sure of animal impulse, are all insufficient to account for
it. Christianity interprets this to mean that we are re¬
sisting or evading something that means our good, and with
which we need to be reconciled; we are guilty sinners who
must ask forgiveness and be converted.

The sense of sin and guilt has suffered a great eclipse in
recent times; it is an ominous symptom. Modern man
is not well, but he refuses to admit he is sick. He represses
the notion of guilt; he laughs convulsively whenever
“ hell ” and “ the devil ” are mentioned. No doubt the
Puritan mind was morbid on these subjects and a reaction

236 The Christian Understanding of Man

was necessary. But there is plenty of evidence in our
mental hospitals that the repressed idea of guilt is still
present in the contemporary mind, and bursts forth in
melancholy splendor when the mask of convention is re¬
moved. Dr. Anton Boisen, who has himself twice experi¬
enced psychoses, and who as a psychiatrically trained chap¬
lain has since observed multitudes of sufferers in mental
hospitals, testifies that “ the outstanding evil in all of
them has been according to our findings, the sense of iso¬
lation or guilt.” 8 Some, to be sure, escape from guilt
through lapsing into apathy; others, through systematic
delusions of grandeur which identify them with God or
his representatives; but those who struggle most realistically
with their actual condition, and have the best chance of
being cured, are precisely those with the strongest sense
of guilt. Certain schools of psychiatry try, indeed, to treat
the sense of guilt as a pathological condition, and cure it
by lowering the threshold of conscience; but this is simply
another evasion, analogous to that which criminals use
when they give each other a sense of acceptance and for¬
giveness by condoning each other’s crimes. The only real
escape from guilt is through confession, forgiveness and
conversion.

The Christian doctrine of sin is an interpretation of
precisely these facts with which psychiatrists and criminolo¬
gists deal professionally. It asserts that we live in a world
whose eternal ground is not an inscrutable fate, nor an in¬
different and fortuitous “ concourse of atoms,” but a Will
that is just and merciful, and seeks our deepest good.
This Will has put us under hard and testing conditions,
but it has implanted in us no basic impulse that is in¬
capable of being directed to worthy ends, and it has sur-

s Boisen, The Exploration of the Inner World (Willett, Clark and Co.,
Chicago, 1936) , p. 150.

Walter Marshall Horton 237

rounded us with gracious influences that are impeded only
by the obstacles that we (or our neighbors) have thrown
in their way. Hence we cannot say with Omar Khayyam:

O Thou who man of baser clay didst make.

And e’en with Paradise devised the snake.

For all the sin wherewith the face of man
Is blackened, man’s forgiveness give — and take I

Rather we have to recognize that we have misused man’s
kingly prerogative as a rational animal by envisaging and
pursuing ends that are unworthy of pursuit; and we have
misused man’s prerogative as a social animal by making
others bear the burden of our selfishness. Old Testa¬
ment prophecy interprets the woe that results from this
misuse as the righteous judgment of a divine Lawgiver
who never punishes us more than we deserve. The New
Testament interprets it as part of the burden of a divine
Sin-bearer, who suffers agony and death with us and for
us, that we may turn and be reconciled with him. Sin in
the Old Testament means violation of a fair contract made
with an equitable divine Ruler; in the New Testament it
means swinish trampling upon a divine magnanimity that
gladly humbles itself to share our woes. If God is really
like Christ no wonder we feel frustrated, divided and guilty
so long as we continue to live for ourselves, or for the
baubles that most commonly attract us. Sin is what St.
Augustine called it, amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei ;
and we must continue to be tormented in our minds until
we learn to forget ourselves in the one love that can absorb
us: the love of God, expressed in Christlike love for our
sinful and unfortunate fellow men.

5. MAN AS SON AND HEIR OF GOD

The facts upon which the Christian truth of man’s des¬
tiny as a son of God is based are still less extensive and

238 The Christian Understanding of Man

still less scientific than those which support the truth that
he is a sinner. All men have experienced the sting of
sin, even though they fail to recognize it for what it is;
but only a limited number have known the joy of redemp¬
tion from sin, and adoption as God’s sons and heirs. In
collecting our data here, we shall get little help from such
calm intellects as Aristotle or Aquinas, and much help
from such passionate souls as Luther, who knew man’s
diviner “ aspirations and expectations ” as well as the an¬
gelic doctor knew his more common “ essences and opera¬
tions.” To make the data quite contemporary, let us take
as our witnesses some of those contemporary Wrestlers with
Christ of whom Karl Pfleger has eloquently written — men
like Bloy, Peguy, Soloviev and Berdyaev, who in our own
day have sounded the same heights and depths of human
nature formerly explored by St. Augustine, Luther, Pascal,
George Fox and John Bunyan.

These men are sinners, they are mortal and fallible, they
are chafed by their animal nature and do not know how to
master it. Even after they realize their divine sonship, and
their heritage of eternal life, they fall into despair. Yet
one thing they repeat in chorus: that there is an unearthly
joy that lies beyond despair; that just so soon (or so often)
as man decisively lets go of his life and commits it abso¬
lutely to the mysterious will that seeks him through his
pain, he begins to have foretastes of the beatific vision, and
knows he has found his chief end. The spectacle of L£on
Bloy giving himself to the prostitute “ Veronica ” with an
increasingly spiritual passion that first rescued and beati¬
fied them both, and afterwards, pathetically, drove them
through unwise austerity into mental collapse; or of Peguy,
led by his humanitarian passion for social revolution back
to the religious faith of his youth, yet abstaining from bap¬
tism and communion because (unlike Bunyan’s Christian)

Walter Marshall Horton 239

he could not bear to enter the pathway of salvation without
his wife and children — such episodes as these remind us
that even in our own time it is possible for men to exhibit
Christlike traits and devote themselves with complete aban¬
don to the will of God as they understand it. In the light
of such individual experiences, and the collective experi¬
ence of the church, the theory of the " divine humanity,”
developed by Soloviev and Berdyaev along lines suggested
by Dostoievsky, has great appeal. There is, from this point
of view, an eternal humanity in the nature of God, and an
eternal divinity in the nature of man. The historical union
of the two in Christ, the God-man, and in the church which
continues the incarnation, is but the manifestation in
time of an eternal unity of God, man and world. Through
man, redeemed by Christ to a knowledge of his true divine
essence, God is to redeem all the universe, which “ groan-
eth and travaileth until now, waiting for the revelation of
the sons of God.” Such a doctrine of man’s essentially
divine nature is at the opposite pole from another con¬
temporary Christian philosophy, according to which there
is nothing in man to respond to the grace of God, and God
must, so to speak, knock a hole in man in order to find
entrance. The first of these views presupposes the Eastern
Orthodox belief in man’s capacity for deification, whereas
our stern neo-Calvinists insist upon the great gulf that re¬
mains fixed between Creator and creature, and the essential
sinfulness of the “ saved ” man — simul justus et peccator.

We shall be closest to the authentic Christian interpre¬
tation of man’s higher nature if we avoid both of these
extremes. As seen in the life and teachings of the Christ
himself, divine humanity remains conscious of its clear
distinction from God, and its humble dependence upon
him, as the source of all being and all goodness. “ There is
none good save one, even God.” Yet in his dealing with

240 The Christian Understanding of Man

even the worst of men, Christ constantly made appeal to
a hidden goodness in their nature, a capacity of response
to God’s mercy, which sometimes flashed forth suddenly
and dramatically, as in the case of Zacchaeus, and some¬
times ripened slowly, with many setbacks, as in the case
of Peter. The Christian Gospel is not preached, where
there is no appeal to this capacity. Where the appeal is
consistently made, as in the Salvation Army with its slogan:
“ A man may be down, but he’s never out,” the response is
of a volume and a depth that should leave no doubt in any
unbiased mind. Lives are changed, when the potential
good in man is believed in, patiently, in the face of repeated
rebuffs. Failures occur, besetting sins remain; man is still
a creature, living by reflected light and borrowed spon¬
taneity. Ancient sins, embodied in persistent institu¬
tions, cast their shadow over the redeemed, and fill the
church with conflict. But God has implanted his image
in the depths of man’s soul, and by his grace, embodied in
the Christ, has begun to pierce the thick layers of sinful
habit and disposition with which man’s persistent misuse
of his capacities has overlaid these depths. Whenever the
grace of Christ, mediated by Christian love and faith, and
manifested in the fellowship of the universal church, actu¬
ally pierces to the bottom of man’s heart, he begins to be
restless; and this restlessness will continue until he sits at
last in the place which God has designed for him: that of
vicegerent of the divine domain on this planet, adminis¬
tering all its rich resources wisely and generously, in rever¬
ent service of his Creator and Redeemer and in love of
all his fellow creatures.

When will modern man return to this understanding of
his origin, place and destiny? We do not know. When
he does, he will be delivered from his alternating moods of
pride and terror, and recover a sense of his true worth. In

Walter Marshall Horton

241

obedience to the will of God, he will find his peace. Until
he does, he must continue to seek his chief end where it
is not to be found — in himself, or in the institutions he
has created — and as each idol collapses in its turn, he
must expect to be delivered over to a deeper and deeper
sense of the misery and meaninglessness of existence.

THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN

Pierre Maury

THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN

Before examining the content of Christian anthropology,
it is well to recall what we are to understand by a Christian
doctrine. Such a doctrine systematically expounds truths
of faith, that is, truths which are known in a specific way,
differently from all the other human ways of knowledge,
and consequently subject to a specific standard of judg¬
ment which is different from all the other human criteria
of truth. Concretely, a Christian doctrine expounds re¬
alities which are known by the miracle of the Holy Spirit
who reveals them to us; and it is subject to one sole cri¬
terion: its conformity with Holy Scripture, the witness of
the revelation. Thus it is not because it is more satisfying
for the mind, or because it does justice more completely
to the rich variety of human experience, that a doctrine
is true for the church; it is solely because it is biblical.

It is particularly important to recall this definition when
one is taking up the problem of anthropology. For in this
domain it seems at first sight to be quite unnecessary to
have recourse to an external revelation in order to under¬
stand the object studied.

When we are dealing with man, are we not dealing with
ourselves — that is, with the reality, perhaps the only re¬
ality, that we can attain immediately? Here it is not the
same as in the other sciences; the subject and the object
coincide. The famous formula, “ Know thyself,” would
thus define very exactly the unique situation of anthro¬
pology. It is the same self which knows and is known; it
has only to apprehend itself. It is true that philosophical

245

246 The Christian Understanding of Man

criticism has contested this affirmation of pure idealism;
it has questioned or even denied that the man who knows
himself and the man who is known are equivalent. And
that is why there have been and always will be very differ¬
ent if not antagonistic anthropologies. But it remains
true that a doctrine of man naturally appears to all thinkers
to be one of our innate possibilities. Does not any talk
of an anthropology which supposes or implies any other
factor than man himself simply ruin its strictness in ad¬
vance and sally out into the realm of chimerical specula¬
tions? It is this conviction that anthropology constitutes
a privileged field of human knowledge which has incited
many Christian thinkers to imagine comparisons, or even
rapprochements such as are impossible elsewhere, between
secular philosophies and Christian theology. Is not man
always the same? Is it not enough that everyone should
employ the same application and the same good faith
in order to know him? Thus, according to several theo¬
logians, the very lively curiosity about human nature which
one sees being shown in systems very remote from the
Christian faith might furnish the latter with a special op¬
portunity of establishing its truth.

It is also true that at all times certain theologians have
upheld the view that faith is only the fulfilment of a pos¬
sibility latent in every man, and that the analysis of the
immediate data of knowledge, such as may be undertaken
by natural philosophy, must necessarily issue in a demand
for the supernatural, even the Christian supernatural.
Numerous expositions have been given to the famous
formula " anima naturaliter Christiana ” such, for example,
as the following: every man bears within him the need
to transcend himself, the knowledge of his existence in¬
volves a feeling of insufficiency, and the Christian revela¬
tion corresponds to that aspiration, prolongs it and satisfies

Pierre Maury

247

it; or again: every man at grips with his inner contradic¬
tion, torn between his reality and his ideal, seeks for a
solution to that duality, and the Christian revelation is
the synthesis of these antagonistic elements; or again: every
man suffers by the limitation of time and space, and dreams
of eternity, that is, the abolition of these limits, and the
Christian revelation proposes to him a “ beyond ” which
transcends these barriers which shut him in. In theologi¬
cal language, these thinkers consider that “ grace fulfills
nature ”; they do indeed agree that grace transcends na¬
ture, but they maintain that it is in continuity with it
and that even when it contradicts it, grace still takes nature
as its point of departure. Every man would thus be a po¬
tential Christian, and that by nature and not by an absolute
miracle. By developing his latent possibilities with the
aid of God, he could “ become what he is.” For these
theologians — of whom Roman Catholicism furnishes the
most eminent representatives — the natural knowledge of
man by himself must logically fulfill itself in the Christian
anthropology, which thus becomes the crown of all true
anthropology: human ethics postulate Christian ethics,
rational metaphysics aspire to the theology which will be
their fulfilment, the natural sociology of justice and love
is a stage on the way toward a doctrine of the communion
of saints.

It must be categorically affirmed that that is not the
biblical conception. The biblical conception differs radi¬
cally from any philosophy or theology whose starting point
is the reality of man as known by experience. For the
Bible, in regard to man as well as in regard to all its other
objects, the divine revelation is never for a moment to be
reduced to a philosophy, and the knowledge of faith is
never assimilable, comparable or continuous with natural
experience. To the postulate of every non-Christian an-

248 The Christian Understanding of Man

thropology that the knowledge of self has its origin in the
consciousness and observation of self, the Bible opposes its
own postulate that man cannot know himself, “ in his
light he does not see light/’ 1 Every non-Christian anthro¬
pology admits that when man asks “ Who am I? ” he knows
what he is asking and has the possibility of recognizing
in himself or outside himself the truth of the satisfactory
reply to that question. The Bible on the contrary, while it
recognizes that this question is a true question, affirms not
only that this true question cannot find any satisfactory
solution in any human reflection, but also that it is true
and truly put only when it is put, not by man, but to man.
For the Bible, it is God who asks “ Adam, where art thou? ”
and not Adam who asks himself. In a word, the problem
of our life truly exists, according to the Bible, only if it
comes to us from God and not from ourselves.

Thus, to be really Christian, it is necessary that anthro¬
pology, like the other theological doctrines, should give up
taking as its starting point the same knowledge as the secu¬
lar anthropologies take. Much more than this — it must
refuse to be compared with them and subjected to their
criteria. Just as metaphysics are incapable of judging the
truth of the revelation, which on the contrary judges all
philosophy, so an anthropology according to the Bible can¬
not be judged by any secular anthropology; it judges them
all.

The limits within which an anthropological doctrine may
lay claim to the title of Christian having been thus defined,
what must the content of this doctrine be? One might un¬
dertake the task of determining this according to the bibli¬
cal revelation in several ways. The simplest and strictest
is undoubtedly to do it by reference to the essential object

1 Cf. Psalm 36:9.

Pierre Maury

249

of that revelation: God in Christ reconciling the world unto
himself. To know who is man, it is necessary and sufficient
to know that God was made man and what that incarnation
means. It is in the assumption of human nature by Jesus
Christ that we can know the mystery of that nature. Cer¬
tainly the humanity of Jesus Christ is unique, since it is
that of the Son of God; certainly, just as he was true man,
the mediator was true God, and so we cannot know his
reality by starting from our own. But that absolute dis¬
tinction does not suppress anything of his voluntary identi¬
fication of himself with our humanity. If we cannot define
him according to what we are, we must allow ourselves to
be defined by him as he is in his incarnation, for he “ was
in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin,” 2 and
as for that capital difference of nature between him and us,
we cannot forget that he was “ made . . . sin for us.” 3
Thus it is the reality of Christ which can reveal to us our
human reality.

Here it is necessary to guard against a possible misunder¬
standing. This would consist in defining man according to
his knowledge of Jesus Christ and reducing anthropology
to a doctrine of the believer, of the “ new man,” or in other
words to absorb anthropology in soteriology. It is indeed
true that in Christian dogmatics no knowledge of man is
possible outside a knowledge of the salvation of man; it is
true that only the cross can reveal to us the meaning of the
fall, and only the resurrection and its promise can unveil to
us the creation in the image of God.4 But just because we
have to do with the revelation of a real fall and with the
promise of a real resurrection — in a word, just because a
real reconciliation is wrought in Christ incarnate — it is

2 Hebrews 4:15.

* n Cor. 5:21; cf. Gal. 3:13.

4 Col. 1:15; 3:10; Eph. 4:24; n Cor. 4:4.

250 The Christian Understanding of Man

evident that there does exist on the authority of the Bible
a doctrine of the nature which is fallen, condemned to
death, unreconciled. Even if this nature is known only in
the divine act which makes a “ new creature ” of it, it is
nonetheless the reality which that divine act has as its ob¬
ject. The doctrine of salvation implies a doctrine of man
which must be expounded separately.

Human nature as donned or assumed by Christ is defined
and unveiled in all its entirety in the fact of the cross. It is
a mortal nature; Christ came in the flesh to “ suffer many
things . . . and be killed.” Christ 3 crucified is the only
thing we can and ought to know 6 not only as regards the
salvation of man but also as regards the nature of man.
But this mortal character is not that which any secular an¬
thropology can affirm as the characteristic of our existence;
it has “ in Christ ” a special and unique signification: the
signification of a judgment, a condemnation. Death is not
the condition of man; it is the verdict pronounced upon
man. Jesus underwent it as the terrible and unfathomable
will of God. Paul calls it “ wages.” 7 Thus Christian an¬
thropology is essentially a consideration of death and the
reasons for it.8 The Old Testament already defined the
very nature of all flesh (“ flesh ” being in biblical terms the
anthropological notion par excellence) in this way: “ All
flesh is grass.” 9

That, it will be said, is an absolutely negative content.
It is true that any doctrine of man which is in conformity
with the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified must have a nega¬
tive note as its dominant note: is not baptism — which is
essentially the act in which the church faces and takes hold
of the natural reality of man — a baptism into the death

5 Matt. 16:21.
« 1 Cor. 2:2.

7 Rom. 6:23.

8 Rom. 5:12-14; Eph. 2:5.

9 Is. 40:6-8.

Pierre Maury

251

of Christ, burial into death, conformity to his death? 10
Every time that this dominant note is weakened, every time
that human possibilities are exalted in any way at all and
even with all the reservations imaginable, it is the very sub¬
stance of Christianity which is injured. If anthropology
had to consist in investigating what there was in man that
could render the cross of Christ useless, that could develop
without it, that would have no need of being denied by the
judgment of God pronounced on Calvary — then it would
be purely and simply extra-Christian and even anti-Chris¬
tian. In this sense there is an incompatibility between the
Christian doctrine and the secular doctrines of man which
tends directly or indirectly to exalt or to develop all or part
of nature, to realize the vitality of nature as it is given to us.

What does this character of the Christian doctrine as a
mortal judgment pronounced in the crucifixion of Christ
on human nature signify? Above all, it designates the con¬
dition of that nature, its submission to a sovereign power —
that is, its creaturely condition. Biblically it is the power
of God to kill and make alive 11 which defines his creative
function. Scripture never considers the relations of the
world with God as the many cosmogonies do, that is, from
the viewpoint of a physical or philosophical causality; but
it does consider them as relations of dependence. The
story of Genesis is perfectly explicit in this respect: it is the
dominion of God over his work which is brought out, even
and indeed especially when he delegates that dominion to
man so that the latter may exercise it over the rest of crea¬
tion.12 When it is said there that man is “ in the image of
God,” that affirmation is made in immediate relation with
this right which is conferred upon him of subjecting to him¬
self all that is on earth.13 The condition of man thus con-

10 Cf. Rom. 6:3-5.

11 Deut. 32:39.

12 Gen. 1:26-30.
is Gen. 1:26.

252 The Christian Understanding of Man

sists before everything else in depending at every moment
upon the will of an Other who alone has the power to call
to life, to make alive, because life belongs to him alone. He
does not need us in order to exist,14 whereas we never are
except through him. But this dependence does not define
man specifically; for it is the condition of the whole crea¬
tion. That which constitutes humanity properly so-called,
the distinctive character of human nature, is the knowledge
of that relation, or, to put it otherwise, the personal and
conscious character of the relations between this special
creature that we are and God. To be “ created in the
image of God ” thus does not mean at all the possession
of some divinity in oneself; on the contrary, it is the knowl¬
edge that one is only an image in regard to God. The no¬
tion of divine likeness as the Bible enunciates it implies
the knowledge of a subordination and never the knowledge
of an analogy of nature of which man could take advan¬
tage.15 Not the pride of any autonomy, but the full knowl¬
edge of an absolute heteronomy. The fact that in God
“ we live, and move, and have our being ” 16 means not, as
the pantheists interpret it, that we participate in the divine
nature, but on the contrary that none of our reality ever
has any existence except by the sovereign and transcendent
will of the Lord of heaven and earth.17 It is this conception
which the biblical indications of the end of the creation
make clear. The creation has its end, not in itself but in
God to whom it must give glory. “ The world is ‘ good *
for man, that is to say that it allows him to serve God: that
is the concrete content of faith in God the creator.” 18 All
things were created by Christ, but also for him.19

Acts 17:25.

15 When Gen. 9:6 and James 3:9 recall this given fact of creation, they
do so precisely in order to emphasize that every man made in the image of
God belongs to him and to him alone.

is Acts 17:28. is Karl Barth.

17 Cf. Acts 17:24-27. 19 Col. 1:16; cf. Eph. 1:4-6.

Pierre Maury

253

Here it is important to recall that according to the Bible
the knowledge of this creaturely state is a knowledge of
faith. It is “ through faith ” that “ we understand that the
worlds were framed by the Word of God.” 20 This affirma¬
tion not only excludes the possibility of reducing the rela¬
tion of Creator and creature to a relation of causality, but
also indicates that this relation is one of responsibility: of
a Word spoken and believed. It is not by speculating on
his origins that man can know what he is (though that is
the postulate of all the anthropologies) ; it is by listening
to what is announced to him and obeying what is com¬
manded him. To know by faith that one is created is to
know that one has to give an account of one’s life because
one does not possess it but is always receiving it.

But the fact that this faith is also faith in Christ, cruci¬
fied by the will of God, faith in the destruction of this life
by the very One who gives it and without whom it does not
for a moment exist; or to put it otherwise, the fact that the
knowledge of our true nature takes place in the mortal
judgment passed on Calvary upon that nature — that fact
implies that the relation of creation between God and man
is incomprehensibly and radically spoiled. That is the
absolute paradox of the human condition according to the
Bible: life as we know it is not life; it is the contrary of
true life, it is already dead and not only promised to death.21
It is sinful. The notion of sin in Christian doctrine must
indeed be understood in a radical sense. Sin is not a mere
modification of the first nature of man, of his creaturely
state: it is the absolute contradiction of it. Does it not in
effect consist in the refusal of subordination, in the procla¬
mation of autonomy, in self-affirmation by disobedience?

To depend upon oneself, to be accountable only to one¬
self for one’s life: that is the sovereign good for the fallen
creature. Thus one cannot confuse the biblical notion of
20 Heb. 11:3. 21 Eph. 2:1 and 5; Luke 9:60.

254 The Christian Understanding of Man

sin with that of moral fault, that is, with the notion of an in¬
sufficiency to realize oneself or that of a free disobedience
of one’s conscience. Sin is a state of revolt against the
Creator, against his sovereign right to give life and to take
it away. Hence the relative human value of the works of
that monstrous being which the sinner is because he is a
creature without a Creator is of very little importance;
these works are vitiated in their very origin. Sin is original.

Here again it is important to specify how according to
the Bible we can know this condition of our concrete exist¬
ence. Once again, this is a knowledge of faith. Only a
Word of God — the Word of judgment pronounced on
Calvary upon the human nature assumed by Christ — can
reveal to us “ the full gravity of sin ” ( quanti ponderis sit
peccatum : Anselm) and the true nature of death. Death,
the wages of sin, appears there indeed, not as the termina¬
tion of life, but as the curse which strikes it, the deed and
the effect of the divine anger. Dereliction of God — “ My
God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? ” 22 — has
taken the place of the communion with God which is the
goal of creation. It is a far cry from this absolute of pun¬
ishment to the natural knowledge of death which the secu¬
lar anthropologies may incorporate into their exaltation of
life.

Such are the two essential given facts in the Christian
doctrine of man. Each of them must be upheld as strictly
as the other; their contradictory, paradoxical character
must not for a moment be minimized; the nature of the
knowledge which is accorded of it must never be forgotten
or transformed into a natural, psychological or metaphysi¬
cal knowledge. In order to avoid these three dangers, it is
necessary to specify more explicitly each one of these facts,
and also the mode in which they are revealed.

22 Matt. 27:46.

Pierre Maury

255

The fact that man is and always remains a creature does
not appear only in the story of Genesis and before the fall,
so that one might imagine that since that fall and before
the restoration by Christ of his fallen nature, man lived
somehow outside his dependence upon God. Biblically,
sinful man remains nevertheless without ceasing in the
hands of Providence. As Psalm 1 39 indicates for example,
no area and no moment of life escapes from the presence
and the power of God. Behind and before, right up till the
tomb, every existence is enveloped by the Creator. How
would it still exist without that sovereign act? The sign of
that Presence is that God manifests his sovereign presence
in the world without any ambiguity. The invisible perfec¬
tions of God, his eternal power and Godhead, are clearly
seen from the creation of the world when they are consid¬
ered in his works.23 Above all, God does not cease to speak
to man, that is, to treat him as his image, as being respon¬
sible before him. He addresses himself to him notably in
the Law. The Law is not different from the creative word.
Just like the latter 24 it contains a gift, a demand and a
promise; like it, it marks a radical distinction and subordi¬
nation as between the Creator and the creature; like it, it
gives life by making responsible. The commandment leads
to life.25 To this universal manifestation, this constant
Word of God, correspond what the secular anthropologies
call the religious sense and the moral sense.

But we cannot forget that this primary fact of our nature
— our creaturely condition — is known to us in the Word
of judgment of the cross: that the Law issues in the death
of Christ. That is because sin is just as universal and just
as constant as the manifestation and the Word of God the
Creator. Biblically, none of the affirmations which relate
to the sovereignty and the providence of God makes the dec-

53 Cf. Rom. 1:20. 24 Gen. 1:26-30. 25 Rom. 7:10.

256 The Christian Understanding of Man

laration of the radical corruption of the fallen creation any
the less severe. Because he is a sinner, man does not know
at all the God by whom he lives and whose perfections are
visible everywhere about him. His ignorance breaks out
in his idolatry; his religious sense is capable only of creating
false gods, of adoring the creature instead of the Creator.26
In a world where God is omnipresent, this man is “ god¬
less,” “ without God.” 27 Because he is a sinner, man does
not know God in the Law of God. He does not hear in it
the Word of grace; on the contrary, he finds in it the occa¬
sion to assert himself, to justify himself in his autonomy;
the occasion to sin. “ Sin seduced me by the command¬
ment, and by it made me die.” 28 The moral sense is able
only “ to multiply the offence.” More: because he is a
sinner, man cannot do what he would,29 he cannot love
God, he cannot not sin; he has become irremediably the
slave of himself, the slave of sin.30

Without a doubt, the essential thing in Christian anthro¬
pology consists in maintaining these two contradictory facts
of human nature at the same time. For the temptation is
great to limit the one by the other, to try to work out a
synthesis of them. Usually the attempt is made to reduce
the extent or the absoluteness of sin; only a part of our
being (the body, or the flesh, or the will, but not the soul
or the mind, etc. . . .) is considered to be irremediably
fallen; or again, the revolt of the creature is reduced to an
insufficiency, an incapacity, a weakness. Thus one ends by
excusing or even justifying sin, by divinizing the creature
through declaring it to be capable by itself of knowing and
obeying God. Now it is necessary to understand that no
human synthesis of this antagonism is possible, any more

26 Rom. 1:21-25.

27 Eph. 2:12.

28 Rom. 7:8-9.

29 Rom. 7:19.
so Rom. 6:17.

Pierre Maury

257

than it is humanly possible to make the cross wisdom; it is
and remains folly. Likewise it is necessary to renounce
the attempt to identify the knowledge of these two contra¬
dictory facts with a philosophical pessimism or optimism.
It is in faith , by divine revelation, that they are appre¬
hended. And that special knowledge unveils to us at the
same time the synthesis which is humanly impossible but
divinely realized. We learn by it that what is forever folly
for our wisdom is nevertheless wisdom by and for God.
“ Howbeit we speak wisdom.” 31 To put it otherwise: be¬
cause we know the contradictory facts of our nature in the
cross which is also, which is firstly the act of reconciliation,
the act which abolishes the contradiction, we know at the
same time that the synthesis exists in God and that it is im¬
possible to realize by any other than by him, that is, impos¬
sible by ourselves. The word of judgment on Calvary,
which reveals the whole content of Christian anthropology,
is revelatory only because it is a word of grace; man knows
who he is at the moment when he knows that he is freely
saved from his perdition.

It is in this central affirmation of Christian theology, and
notably of the theology of the Reformation, that the doc¬
trine of man and the doctrine of the salvation of man meet.
Without entering upon the content of the latter, we must
recall in what way it qualifies the former. Let us say quite
simply that anthropology always considers the creature in
the perspective of the intention of God, who “ will have
all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the
truth ” 32; who “ hath concluded them all in unbelief, that
he might have mercy upon all.” 33 It is the eschatological
promise which lights up the temporal reality. It is the
resurrection which contains and unveils the meaning of the
cross. Thus the whole of human existence is referred to

si 1 Cor. 2:6. 32 1 Tim. 2:4. 33 Rom. 11:32.

258 The Christian Understanding of Man

the fulfilment which is promised it by the divine mercy; the
creation finds its signification in the new creation of which
Christ is “ the first fruits ” 34 and for which it groans.35 It
is thus, for example, that the biblical revelation recalls with
regard to the doctrine of the imago Dei 36 that only Jesus
Christ is in our world the image of God, and that for us
this resemblance is promised only for the future 37 and in
the measure in which we, “ beholding as in a glass the glory
of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to
glory.” 38

From this point of view there also appears the meaning
— which is of capital significance for anthropology — of
the world of the present age in which we are living, of the
aeon between the fall and the resurrection. For we are
living in the contradictory economy of the cross; we are
at present being conserved in our impossible state of crea¬
tures in revolt. This time which is ours must not be under¬
stood to be anything other than that of the patience of God,
the time which is left us to repent.39 For biblical anthro¬
pology, the form of this world is destined to pass, the truth
of man is to come. It is of mercy that God seems to post¬
pone the manifestation of this truth. During this period
of human disobedience and divine patience, we subsist
strictly speaking by the pardon of God. In our present
state, dependence on God is dependence on his mercy.
Just as God the creator is God the reconciler, just as Christ,
“ in whom, by whom and also for whom we are created,” is
he who redeems us from our vain manner of life,40 so if we
“ live, and move, and have our being,” that is not because
we are created beings who have not fallen, but because we

s* 1 Cor. 15:22-23.

85 Rom. 8:18-25.

80 11 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15.
1 John 3:2.

38 11 Cor. 3:18; cf. Rom. 8:29.
8» 11 Peter 3:9; cf. Heb. 3:7-18.
*0 1 Pet. 1:18.

Pierre Maury

259

are beings to whom God gives grace, will give grace, by re¬
storing the vital bond which we refuse.

That is why this grace allows us to subsist, even in our
condemnation and despite it. When we accept it in Christ,
it is the end of the condemnation and the promise of our
final reestablishment in our original imago Dei.

So, as long as the life of man here below goes on, it is
called to repentance, to faith and to hope. The revelation
discerns and awakens this great expectation in every human
conscience and in the whole universe. And so the Chris¬
tian does not work out two anthropologies: that of the
Christian and that of the pagan. He knows that “ the
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together
until now; and not only they, but ourselves also, which
have the first fruits of the Spirit ” 41 ; and he leaves to Christ
the last judgment which will make a separation between
men.

This exposition, which we have endeavored to keep
strictly within the limits and language of the Bible, carries
with it several consequences as regards the relations of the
Christian anthropology with the secular anthropologies
and also with such theologies as we shall call the pseudo-
Christian anthropologies. Although these consequences
have been indicated as occasion arose, it will doubtless be
useful to present them more systematically. Perhaps this
summary will also show at the same time that the facts of
the scriptural revelation, despite the strict and negative
concepts and the special language in which it is expressed,
do not constitute an abstract scholasticism, but that on the
contrary this hidden and mysterious wisdom 42 is always di¬
rected, in the act which unveils it, to the very real man, to
the most concrete human situations; and even, as a matter
of fact, that it is the most realistic of the interpretations of
41 Rom. 8:22-23. 42 I Cor. 2:7.

260 The Christian Understanding of Man

man — the only realistic one, just because it proceeds not
from man but from God.

(1) In the first place, this relation of Christian anthro¬
pology with the humanistic anthropologies (in certain re¬
spects one may use this one term to describe both the secu¬
lar and the pseudo-Christian anthropologies, because they
both take their starting point and set their criterion in the
natural man) — this relation cannot be anything but nega¬
tive and critical. It is on principle that an anthropology
based upon the revelation of the cross refuses to allow any
doctrine of man based on the knowledge which that man
has of himself the possibility of being a final knowledge.
For the cross, that word of judgment, is precisely a verdict
pronounced on all human nature. Man is there declared
to be, not only incapable of knowing God completely but
incapable of knowing him partially; he is denounced there,
not only as partially bad but as totally in revolt. The
natural man — he who is considered by the non-Christian
anthropologies — is he who crucifies the Son of God and it
is he who in the crucified humanity of Jesus Christ is given
up to the mortal anger of God; how could that man have
any kind of knowledge of himself and of God? All that he
is and all that he has, all that he thinks and all that he does
is absolutely condemned. It is all the more important to
emphasize the consistently critical nature of this relation¬
ship because Christian anthropology uses concepts which it
is easy to confuse with the secular concepts of the humanist
anthropologies: is not sin assimilable to moral evil, ethics
to the Law of God, salvation by the promise of the resur¬
rection to redemption by the development of the true, the
best human self?

(2) The critical nature of this relation appears more
clearly in the nature of the knowledge which it presupposes.
Whereas the humanist anthropologies (and here we are

Pierre Maury

261

thinking in particular of the pseudo-Christian anthropolo¬
gies) consider everything, including the divine revelation,
from the point of view of man, Christian anthropology en¬
visages nothing, not even human destiny, except in the
light of God in Christ. Thus, the former judge and justify
the revelation according to its consistency with nature, the
development which it ensures for nature, and they end by
making salvation equivalent to the supreme realization of
the highest possibilities of man; the latter accepts that the
revelation should really be a revelation, that is, that it
should be able to contradict and judge all that we are and
know, what we call good and evil; it accepts that our na¬
ture should have to be re-created and not developed, that
the goal of our life should be elsewhere than in this life,
radically heterogeneous from this life, truly another life.
For the humanist anthropologies, the reality of this world
prefigures and announces the beyond to which it tends;
for Christian anthropology it is the beyond — known in
the merciful revelation of God — which determines the
knowledge and the evaluation of the reality of this world.
The former enclose human life in the limits of the present
world, even if these be extended to infinity; the latter con¬
siders that the new, radically new creation promised in
Christ is alone able to give its meaning to this world which
is destined to pass away and to our life in this world. Thus,
to know God, the good, man and his destiny by oneself is
absolutely opposed to knowing God, the good, man and his
destiny by God , that is, by faith.

(3) This relation exists nonetheless for being a critical
one: that is to say that the Christian anthropologist is not
ignorant of the other anthropologies, or, more simply, that
the revelation does not purely and simply deny the fallen
nature. It is true that man does not cease to be a creature,
it is true that God manifests himself in the world, as the

262 The Christian Understanding of Man

religious sense and the moral sense testify. And equally it
is true that the human unrest, expressed in all the anthro¬
pologies, testifies in them to the truth which they seek with¬
out being able to find it. Yes, indeed, this relation exists.
It is necessary always to take care in defining it to maintain
its critical character: that is to say, that the manifestation
of God must not be confused with the knowledge of God
or revelation, nor the religious sense in any of its forms with
the Christian faith. God manifests himself; but man, far
from discovering him in this manifestation, finds in it an
occasion for idolatry. God makes known his will; but man
finds in this law the occasion for a mortal righteousness of
works, and remains always without excuse.43

So, far from being a point of departure for a true knowl¬
edge of God and a true obedience to his commandment, the
human religions and moralities, because they are a total per¬
version of the normal relation with the Creator, do nothing
but emphasize the culpability of sinful man; they do not in
any degree constitute a natural theology which would need
only to be completed by the revelation; on the contrary,
they are denounced by that revelation as irrefutable proofs
of forfeiture. But such as they are, they are the sign of the
responsible nature of man. Man is not a plant or an animal;
and when the Word of God, which accuses him by giving
him grace on Calvary, is addressed to him, he can receive it
and discover in it the hidden truth of his being, that truth
which he had perverted; while recognizing himself to be
culpable and inexcusable, he can recognize the mercy of
God by which he lived without knowing it, the goodness
by which he was created and which incomprehensibly has
not ceased to sustain him even in the act by which he re¬
fused that goodness. To sum up, if the revelation is in no
case the development of natural religion, it is nevertheless
43 Rom. 1:20; 2:1.

Pierre Maury

263

from the revelation that natural religion draws its signifi¬
cance; the false gods are really false before the living God,
but in their falsity they testify to the expectant waiting for
the living God.

It is not necessary to develop at length the applications
of these remarks to the various anthropologies which claim
to oppose or to be compared with the Christian anthro¬
pology. All of them can by definition end only in a glorifi¬
cation of man. Even if they are pessimistic, they still exalt
man, who is capable of knowing the misery of his condi¬
tion; they see in this revolt a supreme dignity. Even if
they believe a harmonious realization of the human to be
impossible, they find a higher value in that knowledge.
And in any case, most of the secular anthropologies are
more or less explicitly and naively optimistic. Whether
they conceive the realization of their humanism as being
bound up with a progressive knowledge of nature, or as
being determined by the expansion of the vital instinct, or
again as being dependent upon certain external economic
and social conditions; whether they be moralistic, vitalistic
or Marxist, they start from this postulate: man is capable
of realizing his destiny to “ become what he is ” and even
of surpassing himself. For these doctrines, history tells us
these magnificent attempts of our species; it describes to
us the movement of that progress. Each of these anthro¬
pologies also considers that it can serve as the basis of an
ethic, the duties of man being written in his nature and
being ultimately reducible to living in conformity with the
real demands of that nature. When the secular anthro¬
pologies define evil, it is always as an inner contradiction,
as an infidelity to oneself, as a treason of the given human
being. For them, man sins against himself. And that con¬
ception implies that man has the possibility of overcoming
that violence which he does himself, that his freedom may

264 The Christian Understanding of Man

triumph over it, if external conditions allow this freedom
the possibility of exercise.

In face of all these efforts which desire to legitimize man,
a truly biblical anthropology begins by accepting the truth
of the proposition that “ before God, man is always in the
wrong ” 44; but in doing so it maintains that that condem¬
nation of nature is known only before God and pronounced
only in Christ , that is to say, that it is a revelation of the
cross and in no way the conclusion of an autonomous cri¬
tique. The Christian faith is no more pessimistic than it is
optimistic in the philosophical sense of the term. The per¬
fectible man of the doctrines of progress is not the man who
is called to be restored by a new creation to the original
imago Dei ; the bad man of the moralists is not the sinful
man of the gospel. But at the same time a truly biblical
anthropology will affirm that this mortal verdict is revealed
in the divine act which by the vicarious sacrifice of Christ
absolves the revolt and blots out the condemnation, and
thus that it is in salvation that sin is at once denounced and
redeemed. So it will not profess only or primarily a nega¬
tive knowledge of man; on the contrary, it will always
announce positively the redemptive sovereignty of God.
It will call to faith and not to despair. Because of this
gospel which it preaches it will include and teach an ethic
of obedience — not an obedience which saves, as the other
religious moralities do, but an ethic of obedience in grate¬
ful recognition of the salvation freely accorded in Christ.
The works of man, who is at the same time condemned and
redeemed, will be in it, not meritorious works, but works of
gratitude and witness. Finally, a truly biblical anthro¬
pology will recall that the world lives by the patience of
God; that repentance must be preached in it at the same
time as salvation, but that our human impatience must not
44 Kierkegaard.

Pierre Maury

265

set itself in the place of this divine patience, that we do not
have to pronounce the last judgment on human works —
moralities, civilizations, histories — but that we have to ac¬
cept them as the place where the message of grace must
providently be proclaimed, and also as the “ groans of crea¬
tion ” after the promised resurrection.

Practically, anthropology must be for Christian theology
not the occasion for making the folly of the cross acceptable
to the human mind, but as the occasion for announcing
that folly, which is known only by the spiritual man, but
which enables that spiritual man to judge all things with¬
out himself being judged of any man.45 Some will fear
that a message which is so exclusive, so deliberately indiffer¬
ent to the positive efforts of the natural man to understand
himself and the enigma of his destiny, may end by making
the Christian faith yet more foreign to those who do not
profess it. Even if this fear were based on practical experi¬
ence, it ought not to be retained; for the church well knows
that its criterion resides in its faithfulness to the revelation
and not in the human success of its preaching. But it has
no such basis. For if man expects anything of the church,
it is that it should let him know, not what he already knows
about himself but what he does not know, not the way in
which he can best realize himself but the way in which God
has himself fully realized his redemption.

It is, therefore, important that the church and the the¬
ology of the church should see strictly to it that they con¬
serve the purity of the gospel message in the matter of
anthropology. When we think, for example, of the affirma¬
tions of an anthropological character upon which several
contemporary theories of the state, nation or class are based,
it seems to us that the church will have to adopt an attitude
which is at once negative and positive. Negatively, it will
45 1 Cor. 2:15.

266 The Christian Understanding of Man

have to defend itself against all the solicitations which
come to it from outside to adulterate its doctrine, and
against the efforts made to mobilize it in the service of
human values of any order. In face of the totalitarian
state and its designs, the church will refuse to admit or to
teach any theoretical and practical affirmation which would
assign to man any final dependence (race, blood, nation,
class, etc.) other than his dependence with regard to God;
it will refuse to admit that any unconditional obedience —
whether that be given to the state as personified in a dic¬
tator, or to institutional democracy, or to the organized
proletariat — may be demanded of that man. And that be¬
cause it knows only one Lord of all men, who tolerates no
other master beside him.46

Again, the church will refuse to admit or to teach that
the fall is not real or complete; that a democracy or a dic¬
tatorship of the proletariat is legitimated by the natural
goodness of man or of the class in question; or that mem¬
bership of any race or nation, said to be based in the order
of creation, assures to man any integrity, any kind of inno¬
cence which has no need to be redeemed by the cross.

Again, the church will refuse to admit or to teach that
there can be any knowledge of God and of his will other
than the knowledge given in the scriptural revelation, that

is, outside the witness given by the prophets and the apostles
to Jesus Christ. And so it will refuse to allow that any
temporal circumstances or any tradition should be substi¬
tuted for this exclusive knowledge or claim to correct or
complete it. Neither flesh nor blood, and so neither race
nor history, can inspire the conduct of man by unveiling
to him the intentions of his Creator.

Positively, stimulated by these snares which are laid for

it, warned by these solicitations of every kind, the church

46 “ No man can serve two masters ” (Matt. 6:24) .

Pierre Maury

267

will take knowledge of the anthropology of its faith, and
will proclaim it in word and in deed with a strict biblical
fidelity. Seeing in every man (and not only in its mem¬
bers) a creature in the image of God, it will defend in each
and for each one among them, not the sacred rights of hu¬
man personality, not any moral value, but “ the brother for
whom Christ died 47 it will refuse on principle to aban¬
don any man (and not only its members) to the totalitarian
attempts and claims of any earthly master and lord, or to
entrust the salvation of anyone to any other than the sole
Savior Jesus Christ: at the same time it will claim the right
to proclaim its own message with a perfectly clear purity,
even if it contradicts the ideologies of the day, and it will
openly protest against these ideologies and the practices
which are inspired by them.

At the same time, because we are living in the time of
the divine patience, the church will recognize the way in
which, according to the Bible, God shows this patience.
For example, it will recognize the limited rights of the
state — limited, but legitimate within their limits. It will
therefore refuse to substitute itself for this authority which
the mercy of God has instituted to maintain the existence
of a creation in revolt; it will pray for it, and recommend
everyone to submit himself to it as to a divine will — to an
order, ephemeral but real, imposed upon our fallen nature.
In the same way, it will recognize the existence of the na¬
tion as the place where we receive our Christian vocation
and not as a restriction imposed upon that vocation. The
communion of grace always transcends national frontiers
like all human frontiers; it is communio sanctorum; but it
is lived in the national community where God has brought
us into the world. It is in our earthly fatherland that we
await the true fatherland, which is heavenly. Because God

47 1 Cor. 8:11.

268 The Christian Understanding of Man

has “ put us in our place/’ we do not hold this place to be
indifferent, and we love our people with a love which grate¬
fully recognizes a divine intention in it and which is re¬
sponsible, and engages our Christian loyalty.

Above all else, in face of all the human anthropologies,
ethics and realities, the church declares the things which
God hath prepared for them that love him, and which have
not entered into the heart of man.48 It will not try to
legitimize or to prove this revelation by showing how it
agrees with human aspirations or reason. But it will
preach that that revelation is altogether turned toward man
and the world, that man and that world so loved by God
that he gave his only-begotten Son to save them, to make
them really that new creation where all old things are
passed away, “ the tabernacle of God with men.” 49 So, by
declaring the gospel, as is its only task, the church will teach
man, not only to know himself as he is known of God, but,
what is infinitely more important, with what an incompre¬
hensible Love he is always loved.

48 i Cor. 2.9. 49 Rev. 21:3.

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