New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation
Being Human:
A Theological
Anthropology
Robert
Hughes, Psy.D.
Evangelical
Free Church of
Adult
Sunday School
January 28, 2007
Being
Contingent
Genesis Chapter 1 – Chapter 2: 3
Introduction: The purpose of this course is to prayerfully examine the Biblical teaching on what it means to be human as a foundation for living lives as bearers of God's image. A theological anthropology will inform how we are to live as social, personal, sexual, emotional, and spiritual beings, within the context of family and community.
A. Logos: The revealed meaning of something; a system of organizing
principles. For example, the logos
of society or the society logos we call "sociology.
B. Theos: God. Anthropos: Human
C. Thus,
a “theological anthropology” is an understanding of what it means to be human
from the perspective of understanding God.
Where to Begin:
A. The
theological starting point of the Old Testament is…
B. The
theological starting point for our own lives is the point at which we have had
a personal experience of the Word of God in Jesus Christ. All of our study and theologizing is done as
a response to the call which we have received. All we can “know” of God is that which He has
revealed to us.
Being Contingent: We begin with Genesis 1
where we hope to discover some foundational principles about being human in the
account of God’s creation of the human.
The first thing we find is that human being is contingent being. This is the difference between a theological
anthropology versus a non-theological anthropology.
A. Verses 1 & 2: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth. Now the earth was formless and
empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was
hovering over the waters.”
B. The
theological starting point for our own lives is the point at which we have had
a personal experience of the Word of God in Jesus Christ. All of our study and theologizing is done as
a response to the call which we have received. All we can “know” of God is that which He has
revealed to us.
Being Contingent: We begin with Genesis 1
where we hope to discover some foundational principles about being human in the
account of God’s creation of the human.
The first thing we find is that human being is contingent being. This is the difference between a theological
anthropology versus a non-theological anthropology.
A. Verses 1 & 2: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth. Now the earth was formless and
empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was
hovering over the waters.”
a. God created the cosmos ex
nihilo, “out of nothing.”
b. God is the foundation for
all that exists.
B. Verses 3 – 5: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was
light. God saw that the light was good,
and he separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And
there was evening, and there was morning – the first day.”
a. Ontology: the logos
of the Ontic or that which has “being.” Notice, God creates and that
which he creates is called “good.”
i. The
ontological precedes the ethical, and actuality precedes possibility. That which is, is the foundation for
that which can or should be.
ii. God
created light, He did not create darkness.
Before God created light there was no darkness, there was just
nothing. Darkness has no meaning except
that it is the absence of light. In
creating light, God differentiated it from the non-light (darkness).
C. Verses 24 – 27: “And God said, ‘Let the land produce living
creatures according to their kinds: live-stock, creatures that move along the
ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.’ And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their
kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move
along the ground according to their kinds.
And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let
them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the
livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the
ground.’ So God created man in his own
image, in the image of God he crated him; male and female He created them.”
a. “The solidarity of the
sixth day.” (Thielicke)
b. Being human is necessarily
to have creaturely existence. We have
bodily existence in a form similar to and consistent with all other
creatures. Example, Baby Fay.
c. Creaturely existence is a
necessary-but-not sufficient aspect of being human. The phrase “in the image and likeness of God”
specifies the qualitative difference between the human and the non-human
creature.
d. “’Being human’” is
therefore contingent upon a source and power of life outside of or beyond
creaturely existence itself – this is a theological assumption grounded in the
doctrine of creation ‘in the image and likeness of God.” (Anderson, expanded
course syllabus, 1995).
e. “Thus the fact that I am
born and die, that I eat and drink and sleep, that I develop and maintain
myself; that beyond this I assert myself in the face of others, and even
physically, propagate my species; that I enjoy and work and play in fashion and
possess; that I acquire and have and exercise powers; that I take part in all
the work of the race, either accomplished or in process of accomplishment; that
in all this, I satisfy religious needs and can realize religious possibilities,
and that in it all I fulfill my aptitudes as an understanding and thinking,
willing and feeing being – all this as such is not my humanity. It is only the field on which human being
either takes place or does not take place as history. As the encounter of the I and Thou; the field
on which it is revealed or obscured that “I am as Thou art.” That I exist on this field, and do so in a
particular way, does not of itself mean that I am human.” (K. Barth, Church
Dogmatics, III/2, p. 249).
f. Human
life as gift and task
i. “It
is generally characteristic of the Old Testament that it does not make
statements about “nature” and “being” but statements about “the task” or a
“relationship.” As the being who is like
God, man is supposed to do something…[the image of God] endows him with a
“gift” and a “task.”
g. Genesis 2: 1 – 3: Called into the “seventh day.” Human beings were the final glorious act
which crowned God’s creation.
i. That
which God thought first, he created last.
Like a chocolate cake.
ii. Immediately
we are to enter into the “seventh day” or “God’s rest.”
D. The Problem with a Theological Anthropology
a. How are humans to have a logos
of Theos? How are we to understand
the logos of Anthropos in view of our depravity?
i. “And
the difficulty which confronts us is this.
In these circumstances how can we possibly reach a doctrine of man in
the sense of his creaturely essence, of his human nature as such? For what we recognize to be human nature is
nothing other than the disgrace which covers his nature; his inhumanity,
perversion and corruption. If we try to
deny this or to tone it down, we have not yet understood the full import of the
truth that for the reconciliation of man with God nothing more nor less was
needed than the death of the Son of God, and for the manifestation of this
reconciliation of man with God nothing more nor less than the resurrection of
the Son of Man, Jesus Christ. But if we
know man only in the corruption and distortion of his being, how can we even
begin to answer the question about his creaturely nature?”(Barth, C.D., III/2,
p. 27).
ii. John 1: 1 & 14: “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Word became flesh…”
1. Jesus reveals to us the true nature of both divinity (God) and humanity.
Going Deeper
A. What
are some practical implications of the principle that “the ontological precedes
the ethical?”
a. How should we understand
the Ten Commandments, and all of God’s laws, given this principle?
b. How might this principle
affect what things we choose to dwell, reflect, or meditate on?
B. In
view of our contingency upon God, where are we to find the source and center of
our lives?
a. How does this perspective
differ from the general philosophy of the world?
b. What does it require of a
person to acknowledge God as the source and center of their life?
C. What
aspects of your life as a gift from God give you the greatest sense of
gratitude?
a. What aspects of your life
as a task from God give you the greatest sense of purpose and meaning?
D. As
the Word of God, how does Jesus reveal the nature of God to us today?
a. As the Word become flesh,
how does Jesus reveal the true nature of human being to us today?
b. What are some aspects of
Jesus’ life that you would like to use as a personal model for your own life
today and this week?