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Abstract
Table of Contents
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
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Part V: A Christian World View: The
Framework of History
Chapter 1
Man: The Key to the Universe
THE WORLD was
made for the body, the body for the spirit, and the spirit for
God. Everything ultimately, therefore, finds its purpose in God.
In any field of research it is
most important to begin by asking the right questions. It is
not infrequently stated, in fact, that asking the right question
may be even more important than finding the right answer. But
contrary to popular opinion very few people do ask questions
at all. Most of us take things pretty much for granted, once
we have passed childhood.
One question that is not often
asked but is an important one for the present discussion is,
Why did God need to create anything at all? Viewing the situation
anthropomorphically, one might say that when we create something,
we have a genuine sense of achievement which gives us pleasure,
and therefore perhaps creative activity gives God pleasure. But
a moment's reflection tells us that only when the thing we have
created serves some purpose does it give us pleasure, though
"purpose" can be defined in very broad terms. In fact,
it is doubtful if we can create anything, pleasurably, which
does not have a purpose directly related to man himself. Superficially,
it would seem that one could find exceptions to this, but it
can be shown that the exceptions are only apparent, and by contrast
it is more readily demonstrated that creative activity is more
purposeful and more pleasurable as it more directly serves some
human interest. In other words, creation is for pleasure and
that pleasure stems from the fact that it is purposeful in relation
to man. It is doubtful if purpose has any meaning, ultimately,
unless it does in some way relate to human destiny.
If God created the universe, we
must assume, I think, that
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He had a purpose in mind.
It is inconceivable that He would create it merely for its own
sake, for if He did, one might ask immediately, What would He
do with it? If, on the other hand, we make the bold assumption
that God's ultimate objective in creating the physical order
was to place man within it, so that such a puny creature becomes
the justification for such a tremendous act, then we have to
find some way of explaining just how man could be so important
to God. David asked this question when he looked at the heavens
in all their magnitude and then said, "What is man that
Thou art mindful of him?" (Psalm 8:4).
Is it possible that the creation
of man really is the key to the meaning of the universe? To answer
this question, we have to think about two matters of great importance:
the first is, In what way is man unique in the universe, and
the second is, In what way is he uniquely related to God. The
answers to both questions are interdependent, yet they are also
capable of separate treatment.
There are three orders of creatures
which have conscious life: the angels, the animals, and man.
About the angels, we know nothing except by revelation, but from
revelation we learn that they are exceedingly numerous, that
they can act upon the physical order if they choose -- though
they are not dependent upon it for their existence -- and that
some of them at least have sinned against God. If the argument
from silence carries any weight in such matters, it would appear
that they are not redeemable, for Scripture gives no intimation
of such a thing. As we shall see, the reason for this appears
to lie in the fact that redemption depends upon an act of God
which, for very clearly defined reasons, involved the Incarnation.
A great many connected lines of cause and effect are involved
in the Incarnation and these must first be broadly set forth
before it will be clear why the plan of Redemption revealed in
Scripture does not allow for the redemption of purely spiritual
beings without bodies. Turning to the animals, a similar argument
from silence suggests that the plan of Redemption does not involve
them either because, though they do have bodies, they are not
held to be morally accountable before God. Thus the angels are
not redeemed because they have no necessary corporeal existence,
and the animals are not redeemed because they have no moral accountability.
(13)
Between these two orders of created
beings stands man who
13. Animal Accountability: The possibility
that animals are accountable is (continued)
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has a corporeal existence
� unlike the angels � which renders the Incarnation
necessary to make his redemption possible. At the same
time, the necessity for his redemption stems from the
fact that he is morally accountable � unlike the animals.
His possession of a body makes his redemption possible; the possession
of a fallen spirit makes his Redemption necessary.
Man is therefore neither animal
nor angel but a unique creature of God sharing something of both,
the moral accountability of the angels and the dependence upon
the physical order of the animals. He bears a relationship to
God as a consequence of his uniqueness, which makes him higher
than the angels. But this status which he may achieve, and for
which I believe he was created, is possible only because he has
a special kind of physical life, a special kind of mental capacity,
and a special kind of spiritual potential. And the Bible is deeply
concerned with the history of all three.
His spiritual potential can readily
be shown to be dependent ultimately upon his special kind of
mental capacity, and this in turn results from his possession
of a special kind of central nervous system which is only partly
shared by the animals. It is, however, dependent upon the world
in which he lives, the physical order of things in which he moves
and has his being, the air he breathes with its special composition,
the fluid which forms so large a part of his body, the temperature
of his environment, the gravitational forces which play upon
him, in short, his very existence in the right kind of a world.
And frorn here we move one step further and perceive that this
is the right kind of world for him because it is appropriately
set in the right kind of solar system and accompanied by the
right kind of satellite � the moon. So we rnove from God
to the human spirit, to the mind, to the human body, to the world
which he inhabits, and on out into a larger realm. . . . And
perhaps if we knew enough, into the galaxy of which our solar
systern is a part, and the universe within which our galaxy belongs.
We do not know enough to be sure that our solar system bears
some unique relationship to its galaxy or our galaxy to the universe,
but I think it is likely that such unique relationships do exist
and that we shall discover them in due time, just as we have
come to learn how important the size of our earth is and how
critical its distance from the sun is.
suggested by several passages of Scripture which Custance
has examined in "The Extent of the Flood", Part
I in The Flood: Local or Global? vol. 9 of The Doorway Papers
Series.
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But all these are ultimately related to man. This
is what makes them significant. Perhaps they might be matters
of interest in themselves, but I suspect that if we made inquiry
we should soon find, as indeed many students do find, that the
mere study of astronomy, geology, or any other science for its
own sake tends to lose its power to inspire action, unless it
is related to human destiny in some way. When one is young the
concept of "human destiny" may be adequately defined
in terms of personal ambition, but as ambition in terms of success
in this life tends for all but a very few people to become tarnished
and inadequate, there comes a time when human destiny has to
be defined in terms that are much broader, indeed that are transcendental.
It is then that men begin to feel the need for a sense of purpose
that reaches beyond personal ambition. It is at such times that
the possession of an adequate World View proves to be so important.
Without it life is impoverished, for man does not live by bread
alone. Even Julian Huxley admits the inadequacy of the present
scientific philosophy: (14)
Some system of beliefs is necessary.
Every human individual and every human society is faced with
three overshadowing questions: What am I, or what is man? What
is the world in which I find myself, or what is the environment
which man inhabits? And, What is my relation to the world, or
what is man's destiny?
Men cannot direct the course of
their lives until they have taken up an attitude to life: they
can only do that by giving, some sort of answer to these three
great questions; and their belief system embodies that answer.
It seems virtually
impossible to create such an adequate World View unless man is
made the key or the end for which the world was made, and the
world the end for which the universe was made. How beautifully
simple it is to believe that God made man for Himself, the world
for man, and the universe for the world. Such a simple framework
makes such a tidy neat little bundle out of experience. Perhaps
it is naive to hold such a belief in this day and age. Yet it
is surprising how much of what we know can be woven smoothly,
reasonably, satisfyingly, indeed even excitingly, into such a
World View.
I know that there are many intelligent
people who feel no
14. Huxley, Sir Julian, "New Bottles for New Wine:
Ideology and Scientific Knowledge", Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, vol.80, Parts 1 & 2, p.16. The whole question of the
need for a personal philosophy of life or world view is dealt with at
length by contrasting medieval times with the present, in "Medieval
Synthesis and Modern Fragmentation of Thought", Part
III in Science and Faith, vol.8 of The Doorway Papers Series.
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real need for this kind
of philosophy of life. But there are many who do feel a genuine
dis-ease whenever they read, as one does with increasing frequency
these days, that the universe and man are pure accident, and
that God is non-existent. To my mind, the evidence of purpose
is everywhere to be seen provided that one makes the single bold
assumption that purpose does exist, that it exists in relation
to man, and that it exists in relation to man as a special creation
of God. At any rate, we are making this assumption only because
I believe it is an entirely scriptural one; and we propose to
explore it without further apology. This exploration will involve
the study of the universe as a setting for man viewed as a creature
uniquely equipped for a certain kind of understanding which makes
possible a special relationship with God that sets him apart
from both animals and angels.
And so we begin with God Himself.
The character of any plan which God may have with respect to
man
will naturally depend upon what kind of a "Person"
God is. The Bible tells us that God is both love and light. We
cannot understand God's love for us except in terms of human
relationships, but our experience of human relationships is unfortunately
distorted by the fact that man is a fallen creature and all our
relationships are on this account troubled. We can only see His
love through the filter of our own nature as it now is. Had we
lived when Jesus Christ walked the earth and had we been able
to observe how He behaved towards men, we imagine our vision
would have been quite clear; seeing Him, we would have seen God
and our understanding of what God is like would have been perfect.
But this is not true. The disciples lived with Jesus daily, week
after week, month after month, and still did not see what He
was really like or that God was really like Him. Philip said,
"Show us the Father and it sufficeth us" And the Lord
answered, "Who hath seen me hath seen the Father."
But they had not seen Him at all, as His words to Philip clearly
show (John 14:9) .
We have in the New Testament, especially
in the Gospels, a portrait of what God is like. Nevertheless
we still see through a glass darkly. But this much is certain:
God loves man and seeks his company even at unimaginable cost
to Himself; and for all our indifference, His delight is still
with the sons of men. From Scripture as a whole it is clear that
God created man because He sought an order of beings capable
of entering into a unique relationship with Himself, a relationship
that was to result from an experience which man was to undergo,
an experience
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involving (1) a Fall
from a state of innocence to a state of conscious guilt, and
then (2) a redemption to an entirely new level of virtue and
fellowship with God as a direct consequence of that Fall. The
special relationship was therefore "special" because
it involved redemption.
It is apparent that angels worship
God and rejoice with Him and in some sense form His "Court":
yet I think it is implied in Scripture that while they may be
company they can never achieve the status of companions, for
they neither comprehend nor respond to His love, knowing only
His holiness. (15)
Yet love is the very essence of God's being. Angels cannot experience
the redemptive power of God as men are able to, and accordingly
they lack any personal realization of the love of God. It seems
that in some way, incomprehensible though it is, God also felt
this lack and therefore determined to create a being towards
whom He could make manifest His love and not merely His holiness,
by one single act that depended upon the existence of a physical
world and which, on this account necessitated its creation.
As far as we know, there was only
one way in which the love of God could be displayed comprehensibly,
and that was by sacrifice, a sacrifice in which God Himself would
become like His creatures in order to enter into their world,
experience their kind of life, and finally assume their guilt
and translate His great love into comprehensible terms by becoming
responsible for the very sin which had been a necessary element
of the experience.
The fact is that we can have, and
do have, no other clear proof of the reality of God's love for
man except that which was displayed at Calvary, (16) and if man had not sinned,
there could have been no occasion for the Cross. It is foolish
to speak of the love of God while at the same time ignoring the
meaning of the death of Jesus Christ His Son. The world is full
of contradictions of the idea that God loves man. Apart from
Calvary, the evidence of God's care for man is easily overwhelmed
by the facts of
15. Worship, of angels: the only indications
in Scripture of the attitude of angels toward God reveal recognition
of His holiness and His wisdom. At the completion of the initial
creation the angels "shouted for joy" (Job 38:7), and
in Isaiah's vision they are worshipping God and saying, "Holy,
holy, holy" (Isaiah 6:3).
16. I John 3:16: "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because
he laid down his life for us." This passage is especially
remarkable because the wording of it is such that the reader
cannot but go away with the realization that it was God
who laid down His life in order to demonstrate His love, thereby
leaving no doubt as to who it was who sacrificed Himself on our
behalf.
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history which suggest
rather His total indifference. Indeed, among the Jewish people
there are those today who believe that God could not have remained
silent in the face of Belsen and Dachau unless He really is dearl.
They have their "God is dead" people, too. The lot
of man through the centuries does not confirm faith in the love
of God. Only at Calvary does proof appear unequivocally. And
this fact alone is sufficient to show that here, therefore, is
the pivotal point in God's dealings with man.
We only deceive ourselves when
we suppose that the love of God is self-evident, that the Christian
understanding of the death of Jesus Christ is not essential to
the proclamation of God's love, that we can forget Calvary and
persuade men of God's love without reference to it. The man of
the world knows better. He contemplates the world about him and
seeing its tragedy and its pain, its poverty and hate and destruction,
he is not moved by assurances of God's benevolence.
But Scripture properly sees the
key to all history in this ultimate revelation of God's thoughts
towards Man, the death of Jesus Christ. And it is a comprehensible
revelation, a revelation which is bound up in historical events
occupying time and space in man's time-and-space world. It was
the climax of divine planning and preparation. It was no accident.
A whole series of circumstances were required to make it possible,
and these prerequisite conditions are analyzable; and their analysis
involves not merely the most rewarding of all intellectual exercises,
namely, theology, but also the study of natural science and history.
To fulfill God's desire for the
true companionship of creatures capable of responding to His
love, no other being seems to have been possible than such a
one as Man is. And such a being cannot be conceived without taking
into account his unique capacities as well as the physical environment
in which he lives out his life. These circumstances invite us
to examine the relationship between man and the universe in this
light. And his varied capacities require us to examine how God
undertook to preserve him against destroying himself completely
after he had sinned, while His purposes were being carried through
to completion. The animals do not belong in the spiritual world
as far as we know, and angels do not belong in the physical world;
but man belongs in both, and in this is neither animal nor angel.
He is unique because he is redeemable, and the mode of his redemption
is the key to the existence of the time-space universe of which
he is a part.
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But first
one might ask, Is there any other way that man might have been
redeemed? Centuries ago, Anselm wrote in answer to this question:
(17)
If God were unwilling that the
human race should be saved, except through the death of Christ,
when He could have saved them by His simple will, see how, in
so judging, you question His wisdom; for even if man were for
no sufficient reason to do with great labour that which he could
have done with ease, he would certainly not be judged wise by
any one.
In other words, why
did God adopt so painful a way to redeem man when He might have
accomplished it merely by an act of will? But, Anselm argues,
since we cannot doubt God's wisdom as we might doubt a man's,
we must think of the plan of Redemption taking the form that
it did as an objective "desirable to God's love, which infinite
power, guided by infinite wisdom, could not accomplish by a simple
act of the divine will, an objective by which God could show
that He was prepared to pay the great cost and self-sacrifice
it involved."
The easy way of merely exercising
His infinite power and saying "Let Man be redeemed,"
much as He had said "Let there be light," would never
have served to show at what personal cost God was prepared
to effect man's redemption as a showing-forth of His love. The
hard way was necessary: for otherwise there was no justification
for the creation of a race of men who were capable of falling
into sin. No good could have come out of the tragedy of human
experience, only the undoing of it.
And so we must examine carefully
the mode of our Redemption, (18) requiring as it did that God become Incarnate in
the world He had created and there subject Himself to many of
its laws for man's sake.
The Crucifixion stands as the pivotal
point upon which all else depends. All events, and all achievements,
acquire their significance only in its light. It was a unique
event requiring that
17. Anselm puts these words into the lips
of Boso in his Cur Deus Homo? Book I, Chapter 6.
18. The Incarnation: Hebrews 10:4-7 speaks first of the body
prepared to make the Incarnation possible, and then it proceeds
to show that because the sacrifice of such crearures as were
appointed in the Levitical code were totally inadequate to take
away sins, the Incarnation was necessary. I can never read this
passage without being reminded of Isaiah 9:6, "For unto
us a child is born, unto us a son is given . . ." where
the "child born'' looks forward to John 1:14, whereas perhaps
the son given" looks forward to John 3:16.
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certain circumstances
should come about which can be considered from two points of
view: First, there are those circumstances which relate to the
historical setting, the theatre as it were, upon the stage of
which the Lord at one particular and appropriate time in history
entered into the stream of human affairs and sacrificed Himself.
Secondly, there are those which relate to the manner in which
His physical death actually came about, circumstances which bear
critically upon the nature of Adam's body when he was first created,
(19) and therefore
upon the kind of physical world which had to be planned for him
from the very beginning.
The more I reflect upon the matter,
the more convinced I am that if there is meaning to the universe,
the key to that meaning is to be found in the birth and death
of Jesus Christ, the Second Adam, because the physical world
itself was required in order that these two unique events could
take place. And these unique events were required that God might
by a process of Redemption show forth His love toward an order
of beings whose very existence was made dependent upon the creation
of just such a physical world. Thus the birth and death of Jesus
Christ were not accommodated to a physical order already independently
in existence, but quite the reverse. The physical order was deliberately
structured to make these two events possible. These events were
the cause, not the consequence, of creation. They
preceded it: as Revelation 13:8 says, Jesus Christ was slain
from the foundation of the world.
Moreover, in the course of time,
acting according to the predeterminate counsel and foreknowledge
of God, (20) it
was these same creatures who brought to pass the very event by
which they themselves were to be redeemed, having after 4000
years or so of historical development under the guiding hand
of God, perfected the cultural setting in which that event was
to occur.
19. Directly bearing on this issue is Arthur Custance,
"If Adam Had Not Died," Part
III in The Virgin Birth and the Incarnation, vol.5 of The
Doorway Papers Series.
20. Acts 2:23: "Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified
and slain." Note that it was not merely by God's foreknowledge but
part of His predeterminate counsel. The omnipotence of God in the affairs
of men is explored in depth, depending almost entirely upon a very large
number of biblical references (over 200 passages are quoted) by Custance
in "The Omnipotence of God in the Affairs of Men," (Part
IV in Time and Eternity, vol.6 of The Doorway Papers Series).
In this study the fact emerges from Scripture that human history, both
the good and the bad in it, has been overruled by God for His own purposes
to an extent which few of us are probably aware.
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The
Incarnation and the Crucifixion together are, therefore, the
cause of all that is related to the planning of the natural order,
and of the creation of man as its most irnportant member. For
God's love is not shown forth here in a way which is self evident
so that angels or even animals could understand it merely by
witnessing it, but in such a way that only a creature such as
man could comprehend it. For this comprehension depends upon
a certain kind of spiritual and mental constitution, with the
power to see its meaning in the light of personal need, a need
which neither the animals nor the angels are aware of. This need
does not relate solely to the spirit, for then perhaps the angels
would have understood; nor does it relate solely to the body,
for then the animals might have been brought within its compass.
It relates to a need which is both spiritual and physical.
It relates to a death which is both spiritual and physical,
a death of a representative Man, which was not "natural"
in the sense that other events in the universe are "natural,"
but which was necessary in order to abolish the death (21) which all other men now
suffer "unnaturally," and in so doing to demonstrate
the love of God whose Son became that representative Man.
The death of Jesus Christ was unique
-- even from the physiological point of view. The uniqueness
of it was possible only because of the Virgin Birth. The Virgin
Birth was possible only because of the manner of the creation
of Adam as a potentially immortal creature out of whom Eve was
taken while he was yet in an immortal state. It is important
to understand that immortality here means not that Adarn could
not die, for he did so; but rather that he need not have died
if he had maintained the conditions of life originally appointed
to him. In another Doorway Paper (22) the significance of taking
Eve out of Adam while he was yet unfallen has been carefully
explored from the physiological point of view. What emerges frorn
this study is that while Eve partook of the same forbidden fruit
as Adam and thus like him became a mortal creature, the poison
in one irnportant
21. Hebrews 2:9: "But we see Jesus, who
was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of
death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of
God should taste death for every man," and 2 Timothy 1:10:
". . . But is now made manifest by the appearing of our
Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought
life and immortality to light through the gospel."
22. The derivation of Eve out of Adam has been made the subject of a special
study from the point of view of genetics in "The Nature of the Forbidden
Fruit," Part II
in The Virgin Birth and the Incarnation, vol.5 of The Doorway
Papers Series.
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respect affected their
bodies in a different way. It poisoned Adam's body, including
the seed he carried. Eve's body, however, was so structured by
divine appointment that the same corruption did not reach the
seed which she carried. The consequence was that in all succeeding
generations every woman's seed when naturally fertilized by the
male seed has been corrupted by it and this "infection"
has resulted in the birth of a mortal child. But because of what
has been appropriately termed "the continuity of the germ
plasm" (here, the still uncorrupted seed of woman), the
possibility has always remained that this uncorrupted seed of
woman, if brought to life apart from the introduction of the
male seed, would lead to the birth of an immortal Child, who
would thus have escaped the poison stream of death which has
rendered all other men mortal. This is the significance of the
term "the seed of the woman," as opposed to "the
seed of the man." Yet because Eve was taken out of Adam's
body in its unfallen state, her seed was originally part of the
uncorrupted seed of Adam whence she herself came, and thus in
the final analysis this same seed was initially Adam's seed and
the Saviour a lineal descendant of Adam though escaping Adam's
corruption. Such is the wisdom and power of God. The Incarnation
was therefore itself possible only because of the way that the
genetics and chemistry of human life and procreation have been
ordered, this "ordering" being clearly dependent upon
the natural order and clearly necessary to make the Incarnation
possible. So it came about that the whole plan of Redemption
was intimately bound up with the created world which herein finds
its raison d'etre.
In the light of revealed truth,
man therefore stands apart from the rest of creation because
though he is now a mortal creature and seemingly little different
from the rest of the animal world, yet he was not created as
such in the beginning. Death is quite natural for other creatures
but not for man. And indeed he has always been persuaded that
he need not or should not die at all -- or that if he must die
he will still live on in some other way. The death of a human
being has an element of tragedy about it which the death of an
animal in old age has not. As for the angels who, in their normal
estate, are purely spiritual beings, we do not know what the
meaning of "death" to them could be. We do know from
Scripture that some angels have sinned. But we have no idea whether
it would be possible for God to find some means of redeeming
them. To redeem man,
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God became Man and not
angel, (23) because
the process of Redemption required the sacrifice of a life which
was like that of the subjects to be redeemed. It is not within
our power to conceive of a vicarious sacrifice made on a purely
spiritual level by a purely spiritual being which would not at
the same time bring about the very cessation of the existence
of the one who made it. It had to be possible for God's love
to be displayed by a Sacrifice of Himself which would not lead
to His own annihilation. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is
an absolutely essential part of His Crucifixion, and it depended
entirely upon the fact that it took place within the framework
of a physical order of things. The universe as a substantial
reality was therefore needed not merely for the initiation of
the redemptive act in terms of Crucifixion but also for its completion
in the terms of a bodily Resurrection. It is in this sense that
I believe the universe has meaning. It has meaning because it
was essential to the plan whereby God displayed His love, and
because man was the special object of that display. Man becomes
the key to the universe, not man in himself but man as the special
creature of God's love for whom the physical world is essential
to his being.
As explored elsewhere, (24) the death of Jesus Christ
also involved certain conditions which demanded crucifixion rather
than some other form of legal death. No other kind of death would
have satisfied these conditions, for no other form of death would
have permitted the Lord to decide when He would dismiss His spirit
as a purely voluntary act while at the same time satisfying the
legal requirements of the death penalty being imposed. In any
other kind of death (poisoning, strangling, drowning, thrusting
through), only by a miracle could He have remained alive once
the process had been initiated. As it was, it was only by a miracle
that He died on the Cross when He did, for He died on
the Cross but not because of it. His death was entirely
an act of His own will, and not merely a willing surrender to
circumstance. On the Cross He did not simply choose the time
of dying, which would have been merely to commit suicide �
something any man may do. But rather, having power not to die
at all, He chose nevertheless to do so, by dismissing
23. Hebrews 2:16: "For verily he took
not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed
of Abraham."
24. The reasons why no other form of capital punishment would have satisfied
the requirements of the Lord's sacrificial death have been examined in
"The Unique Relationship Between the First and the Last Adam",
Part IX and also
"How Did Jesus Die?", Part
VII in The Virgin Birth and the Incarnation, vol.5 of The
Doorway Papers Series.
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His life as a man dismisses
a servant. He never was, like us, subject to death. He deliberately
chose to become so -- which no other man can ever do.
This event involved the voluntary
surrender � more precisely, the active termination �
of a physiologically constituted life process which, unlike the
life processes of all other animal forms including that of man
as he now is, was not subject to natural death at all. As man
now is, the spirit leaves the body when the body can no longer
support it. Jesus Christ dismissed His spirit by an act of will
that rendered His body thereby inviable. We are subject to death
by our fallen nature, He became subject to death by an
act of will. Had He willed, He might have lived on indefinitely.
As it was He submitted to a form of capital punishment but dismissed
His life before that penalty could take its naturally
expected effect.
But because this choice, the choice
of living on or of dying, had to be available to Him in order
to make His Sacrifice vicarious, it was also required that that
for which He substituted must at first have been similarly constituted.
Thus the creature upon whom God wished to bestow His grace and
to whom He wished to prove His love, had to be so constituted
at first as unfallen that the Son of God could truly represent
him. Otherwise, He would not have been a properly constituted
substitute. The Second Adam, an immortal Creature who need never
have died, truly represented the First Adam, an equally immortal
creature who need never have died. He thus stood as an exact
counterpart of the First Adam, accomplishing for man by an act
of will what the First Adam by an act of will failed to do. Unless
the Second Adam was physiologically so constituted as to be an
immortal creature, He could not have surrendered His immortality
on man's behalf; but unless the First Adam had once been an immortal
creature, the surrender of immortality by the Second Adam would
not have been substitutional for man. We thus find that the Crucifixion
was only possible because it took place within the framework
of physical and not merely spiritual life, and we must conclude
therefore that the creation of man as a physical and not merely
a spiritual being was essential in order to make possible God's
plan of Redemption. A purely spiritual human being, some kind
of human creature living independently of the physical world,
would not have provided God with the "means," the modus
operandi, of a plan of Redemption which
pg.13
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was to serve as a display
of His love through an act of Incarnation and Self-sacrifice.
So the First Adam's creation
was in such a form that in due time the Second Adam could both
represent him perfectly as a substitute and die for him vicariously
as a Saviour. The demands of the Cross, seen in the light of
its total theological context, involved not merely the creation
of a certain type of "first man" but also a certain
type of physical order in which he could be imbedded, though
transcending it. For him was needed a special kind of body, a
special kind of mind, and a special kind of spirit. And, in turn
there was needed a special kind of total environment for these
to operate in. Nor can we isolate this environment from the solar
system, nor the solar system from the universe. It is all of
a piece, it is a uni-verse we live in, where every thing relates
to every other thing and no thing is unnecessary. In a newsletter,
recently, one writer said: "Biologists tell us that not
a leaf falls in the forest or a raindrop into the sea but that
the consequences of each happening must go on for all time and
spread through all space." With pure poetic insight Francis
Thompson has that wonderful couplet which reads, "Thou canst
not stir a flower, without troubling a star." And more prosaically,
but nonetheless significantly, we find Sir C. N. Hinshelwood
saying: (25)
It may not be wholly unreasonable
to fancy that to almost every element there falls some unique
and perhaps indispensible role in the economy of nature.
It is customary
to look upon man's body as a burden to him, as though only his
spirit had eternal significance. And yet Scripture is very clear
in stating that the Crucifixion, by which his eternal destiny
was determined, was dependent upon One who sacrificed His body.
He was made flesh (John 1:14 and 1 Timothy 3:16) that He might
bear our sins in His own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24).
We are reconciled now in the body of His flesh through
death (Colossians 1:2 1, 22), and perfected for ever by the offering
of His body (Hebrews 10:10). Man is not a spiritual creature
who happens to have a body. His body is as much a part of his
total being as the Lord's glorious body of His total glory; and
man's bodily resurrection is as essential to his completion as
the Lord's bodily Resurrection was to his Sacrifice.
25. Hinshelwood, C. N., "Some Aspects
of the Chemistry of Hydrocarbons," Presidential address
to the Chemical Society, 1948, reported in Journal of the Chemuical
Society, Pt. I, 1948, p.531.
pg.14
of 15
For though we have already
been re-created in spirit, we still wait to be completed by the
adoption of, i.e., the redemption of, the body (Romans 8:25)
which is to be refashioned like His glorious body (Philippians
3:21). It is this fact which forces us to look for a vital connection
between man and the physical order, and to find in man its ultimate
significance.
But the processes of history also have
special significance because the Crucifixion could not be merely
an isolated event, occurring in some dark age of lawlessness
and barbarism, or in some corner of the earth where knowledge
of it might filter back into the world only by accident. It was
an event which had to be appropriately witnessed and recorded,
which had to be performed in an orderly legal way according to
an accepted standard of behaviour and judgment to which rmankind
as a whole would give rational assent. It had to occur at a time
when the event itself would be sufficiently public (one might
say, publicized) that there could never be any doubt about it
having happened. It had to come to pass when there was a sufficiently
sophisticated and dependable means of communicating the news
to a large population that was not merely numerous but fluid,
so that word of it would be carried far and wide. It required
the existence of a legal code of wide application to a large
number
of people, so that the "justice" of the event would
be comprehensible in the same terms to them all. Roads for travel
had to exist and be maintained in safety. A "police force"
(the military) had to exist, with sufficient strength to prevent
a lawlessness that would quickly have turned the trial into a
lynching. A lingua franca was needed which could interpret
the record of these events in the light of the Old Testament
so that the message would, culturally speaking, be a universal
and not merely a Jewish one. These circumstances may have occurred
repeatedly since that time and perhaps upon occasion in an even
more "effective" way. But it seems almost certain that
this was the first time the circumstance had occurred. The Roman
Empire guaranteed, at least for a short while, a world ideally
ordered as a proper setting, both culturally and legally.
Consequently, as we shall try to
show, the course of history has been overruled in a way which
has not hitherto been observed by any philosopher of history
(even those with Christian persuasion) which once again demonstrates
what a wealth of insight is sometimes unexpectedly to be found
by the serious study of Scripture.
pg.15
of 15
Copyright © 1988 Evelyn White. All rights
reserved
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