Theopedia

Humanity

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

— Genesis 1:27

Definition

The doctrine of humanity, also called anthropology, is the area of Christian theology that studies mankind according to Scripture: how human beings are constituted (body and soul), what it means that they bear God’s image, and how the Fall and redemption have shaped the human condition. Humans are formed from the dust of the ground and become “a living soul” by God’s own breath (Gen. 2:7), a combination that sets humanity apart from both pure matter and mere emanations of God.1

Confessional Definition

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession states that God “created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, rendering them fit unto that life to God for which they were created; being made after the image of God, in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness; having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfill it, and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject to change.”2

This paragraph makes several claims together. Humanity’s souls are “reasonable,” rational by nature, and “immortal,” not passing out of existence. The image consists specifically in “knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness,” not bare rationality or dominion alone. And humanity was created upright but mutable: able to keep God’s law, yet “under a possibility of transgressing,” which is exactly what the Fall actualizes.

Biblical Basis

Genesis 1:26-27 grounds human dignity directly in the divine image: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… So God created man in his own image… male and female he created them.” Genesis 2:7 adds how that creature came to be: “the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Ephesians 4:24 and Colossians 3:10 tie the image to specific moral content, describing the “new self” believers put on as “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” and “renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” — the same knowledge/righteousness/holiness triad the confession draws on.

Historical Development

The constitution of man: dichotomy and trichotomy

Reformed theology has generally held that humanity consists of two elements, one material (the body) and one immaterial, with “soul” and “spirit” naming the same immaterial nature rather than two distinct substances.3 Herman Bavinck reaches the same conclusion independently: “Scripture uses these anthropological terms interchangeably [so] it is a mistake to attribute scientific precision to them; they do not denote two distinct substances and yield a trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit.”1 He grants that distinguishing “spirit” from “soul” still marks something real: by God’s own breath, humans are “spirit” in a way animals are not (Gen. 2:7), even though this does not amount to a third substance.1

The origin of the soul: creationism and traducianism

Historic Christian theology has debated how each individual’s soul comes to exist. Charles Hodge surveys three positions: an ancient and long-abandoned theory of the soul’s pre-existence; traducianism, that the soul (like the body) is propagated from parent to child; and creationism, that God directly creates each soul, united to a body conceived by ordinary generation. Hodge argues for creationism, on the grounds that the soul’s immateriality makes it indivisible, so it cannot be “traduced” from a parent’s soul without dividing it, and that traducianism, applied consistently, would implicate Christ’s own human soul in Adam’s guilt, since Christ too was “born of a woman” with a true human soul.4 Bavinck is more cautious than Hodge, judging that “traducianism and creationism advance weighty arguments for their respective positions, so both are incapable of solving the difficulties.”1

The image of God

Interpreters have sometimes narrowed the image of God to a single faculty: rational nature alone, or dominion over creation alone. Hodge reports that “the Reformed theologians take the middle ground between the extremes of making the image of God to consist exclusively in man’s rational nature, or exclusively in his moral conformity to his Maker. They distinctly include both.”5 This matches the confession’s own wording above, which names both a rational, immortal soul and moral “knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness.”

Opposing Views

Trichotomy. Body, soul, and spirit are three distinct substances, not two, so that a human being is composed the way the confession describes the Trinity’s three persons composing one God. Genesis 1:26’s plural “let us make” and the separate mention of “spirit and soul and body” (1 Thess. 5:23) or “soul and spirit” (Heb. 4:12) are the usual supporting texts.

Traducianism. Each person’s soul, not merely their body, is propagated by ordinary generation from their parents, rather than created individually by God at some point in gestation. See Historical Development above for Hodge’s specific case against this view.

Objections and Responses

Scripture names spirit and soul separately, so they must be distinct substances. Both Hodge and Bavinck answer that Scripture uses the two terms interchangeably elsewhere, so a passage naming both is poetic parallelism, not precise technical vocabulary. Even where a real distinction is intended, it marks an aspect of the one immaterial nature rather than a second, separable substance: treating soul and spirit as separable substances, one of which could be holy while the other is not, “is inconsistent with the unity of our interior life.”3

If souls aren’t propagated from parents like bodies are, how is Adam’s sin transmitted to his descendants? This is traducianism’s strongest positive argument. Hodge’s creationist answer holds that a sinful nature can be really transmitted without the soul’s substance itself being inherited: it is corrupted upon union with a body descended from Adam, not created already sinful.4 Bavinck is less confident either view fully succeeds, granting real difficulties on both sides rather than treating creationism’s account of that transmission as fully sufficient.1

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 11, “The Image of God.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 4, “Of Creation,” para. 2. ↩

  3. Charles Hodge, “Chapter II. Nature of Man,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 42-63. ↩ ↩2

  4. Charles Hodge, “Chapter III. The Origin of the Soul,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 64-75. ↩ ↩2

  5. Charles Hodge, “Chapter V. Original State of Man,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 96-97. ↩