Tag Archives: image of God

Kuyper, Common Grace, 1.21

26 Friday Mar 2021

Posted by in Abraham Kuyper, Image of God, imago dei

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The previous post may be found here.

Chapter 21 continues with the consideration of Adam’s original state and the image of God. The first half of the chapter concerns the question of what is meant by Adam’s original righteousness, holiness, and wisdom. First, Adam was simply created in a right relationship with God: he was thus righteous. Adam did not need to acquire this right standing, he was created in this place.

Since Adam was in a right standing with God, Adam by nature of the arrangement must possess original holiness. If had any sense been unholy, that right relationship could not exist (“Strive for … holiness without which no one will see God.” Heb. 12:14.) Our current holiness is of a different nature in this life, for our holiness is in a mediator. We are counted righteous in Christ. In the case of Adam, he stood in holiness by nature of his having been created without sin. 

This brings Kuyper to Adam’s wisdom. Here Kuyper looks to 1 Corinthians 1:30 where Christ is our righteousness, our holiness, and our wisdom (the final element in  1:30 is redemption, which would be unnecessary for Adam). 

Although not developed, Kuyper’s implicit argument seems to be that if we must received righteousness, holiness, and wisdom from Christ, then the triad must have been present with Adam (and in some manner lost). 

As to wisdom, he emphasizes that we know – we do not merely feel—the truth. When Satan comes to Eve, he comes to her with deceptive reasons. He compares these to pearls on a string which all must be present together: wisdom, righteousness, holiness. 

This leads to the question of the image of God: If these three make up the image of God, then when Adam fell whence the image? But we if make these things the image, then there is man and the image is something added to him (because we are human beings after the fall, even if we lack the original righteousness, holiness, and wisdom). 

The Roman theologian solve this problem by dividing between the image and likeness: Image is the essence of a man; likeness, an addition of righteousness, holiness, and wisdom. The likeness then acted like a bridal upon the image. 

Kuyper does not find that argument persuasive. Rather, he speaks of the essence of Adam as the image of God in that by essence, Adam was able to reflect God. There is also the actual display of those qualities in Adam.

This capacity to reflect is inherent in all that we are as human beings, including in the fact being physical creatures. We are organically body and soul; death is the grotesque sundering of the two. Our body is the means by which the spiritual reality of reflecting God physically displays. 

But our capacities for thought, memory, appreciation of joy and beauty go beyond being a bare animal, “and can be explained only on the basis of the reflection of the things of God in our human being.”

Human beings thus exist for God and God’s glory. From this, Kuyper argues to immorality: Since we exist for God and not ourselves: to display the glory of God, the individual (and not merely the race) must always exist, lest God lose that glory.

He does not argue the point further, but our continued existence after death in an eternal state fulfills that point. Even those who are lost display his glory in God’s patient endurance of their rebellion, in the display of his wrath. And a point made by Bray, God’s love continuing as such even toward the lost in that he refuses to utterly destroy even the Devil.

George Swinnock, The Christian Man’s Calling, 1.5

17 Wednesday Mar 2021

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In this fifth chapter, Swinnock contends that the purpose of our creation was to worship God. Hence, our final cause must be godliness.

I come in the third place to the reasons, Why godliness should be every man’s main and principal business.

God created us for the purpose of godliness: this was the ‘final cause’ for our creation. Although not explicitly set forth here, Aristotle’s fourth cause sets the basis for this argument. Aristotle broke causation down into four elements: For instance, if someone were to carve a statue, the artist, the hammer, and the stone would all contribute to the creation of the final statue: each would be a cause of what was created. But there is a fourth cause, the final cause which is the point of the whole thing. The point of God’s creation is to Glorify God and enjoy him forever. 

First, Because it is God’s chief end in sending man into, and continuing him in, this world.  It is without question, that the work should be for that end to which it is appointed, and for which it is maintained by a sovereign and intelligent workman. 

Analogous principle: a servant has a duty to fulfill that end whichhas been set out by his master. We are not our own master, and we are not at liberty to determine our own actions. 

Where the master hath authority to command, there his end and errand must be chiefly in the servant’s eye. Zeno well defines liberty to be ἐξουσία αὐτοπραγίας [authority over one’s own conduct] a power to act and practise at a man’s own pleasure; opposite to which, servitude must be a determination to act at, and according to, the will of another. 

A servant is, as the orator saith well, nomen officii, a word that speaks one under command; he is not one that moveth of himself, but the master’s living instrument, according to the philosopher, to be used at his pleasure. 

Now he applies the principle: If God has authority over us then our obedience must correspond to his authority:

According to the title or power which one hath over another, such must the service be. Where the right is absolute, the obedience must not be conditional; God having therefore a perfect sovereignty over his creatures, and complete right to all their services, his end and aim, his will and word, must be principally minded by them. Paul gathers this fruit from that root: ‘The God whose I am, and whom I serve,’ Acts 27:23. His subjection is founded on God’s dominion over him.

Having established the principle that a servant owes due obedience to his master, Swinnock returns to the principle of this chapter:

Now the great end to which man is designed by God, is the exercising himself to godliness.

God erected the stately fabric of the great world for man, but he wrought the curious piece of the little world [man] for himself. Of all his visible works he did set man apart for his own worship. 

Here is an important move in the argument. By being made for godliness, human beings were made for something more than the world. The world was made for human beings, but human beings were made for God. Godliness will then entail something more than merely getting by in the world on such terms are convenient or acceptable to us.

The force of this argument is apparent when it is raised in the opposite direction. When a standard for godly living is raised, we can object to it on the ground that it does not seem to create problems or have negative consequences. Such an argument would sound like this, “Why do you think X is wrong, who does it hurt?” Such an argument has implicit it in the proposition that the only final cause for a human being is oneself, and that only final cause for a rule must be ease or immediate good. This is incidentally, similar to the nature of therapy: The purpose of therapy is help you feel good about whatever you are doing. As long as you do not violate the right of consent in another person, you have fulfilled your moral obligations. 

The nature of godliness will not correspond to the therapeutic, consent-based morality. The final cause, the purpose of godliness is not that you should feel good right now. There may be some immediate pleasure or happiness from godliness, but 

godliness will not necessary entail immediate goods. Restraint, humility, kindness, chastity are not considered immediate goods.

The trouble is that our subjective emotional response is not identical to the ends for which God has created human beings. 

Swinnock’s argument that we are made for something more than this world, explains why immediate emotional response may not be a good indicator of highest end. To the extent our judgment is based upon an evaluation of what is best for me right now, my judgment will be impaired. He needs to establish this point early on, because the course of godliness will not always match my feelings or subjective evaluation.

Man, saith one, is the end of all in a semicircle, intimating that all things in the world were made for man, and man was made for God. It is but rational to suppose that if this world was made for us, we must be made for more than this world. 

It is an ingenious observation of Picus Mirandula, God created the earth for beasts to inhabit, the sea for fish, the air for fowls, the heavens for angels and stars, man therefore hath no place to dwell and abide in, but the Lord alone.

The great God, according to his infinite wisdom, hath designed all his creatures to some particular ends, and hath imprinted in their natures an appetite and propensity towards that end, as the point and scope of their being.2

He here gives a great many examples from nature showing a conformity of all things to their purpose.

Yea, the very inanimate and irrational creatures are serviceable to those ends and uses in their several places and stations. Birds build their nests exactly, bringing up their young tenderly. Beasts scramble and scuffle for their fodder, and at last become man’s food. The sun, moon, and stars move regularly in their orbs, and by their light and influence advantage the whole world. The little commonwealth of bees work both industriously and wonderfully for the benefit of mankind. 

Flowers refresh us with their scents; trees with their shade and fruits; fire moveth upward; earth falleth downward, each by nature hastening to its centre; thunder and winds, being exhalations drawn up from the earth by the heavenly bodies, are wholly at, though stubborn and violent creatures, the call and command of the mighty possessor of heaven and earth; and with them, as with besoms, he sweeps and purifieth the air; fish sport up and down in rivers; rivers run along, sometimes seen, sometimes secret, never ceasing or tiring till they empty themselves into the ocean; the mighty sea, like a pot of water, by its ebbing and flowing purgeth itself, boileth and prepareth sustenance for living creatures. 

Through this womb of moisture, this great pond of the world, as Bishop Halltermeth it, men travel in moveable houses, from country to country, transporting and exchanging commodities [ships and trading]. Thus the almighty Creator doth, γεωμετρεῖν, as Plato saith, observe a curious comely order in all his work, and appoints them to some use according to their nature. 

Since all created things are suitable to their ends, it must be so with human beings:

Surely much more is man, the point in which all those lines meet, designed to some noble end, suitable to the excellency of his being; and what can that be, but to worship the glorious and blessed God, and the exercising himself to godliness?

‘The Lord made all things for himself,’ Prov. 16:4. God made things without life and reason to serve him passively and subjectively, by administering occasion to man to admire and adore his Maker; but man was made to worship him actively and affectionately, as sensible of, and affected with, that divine wisdom, power, and goodness which appear in them.

Here Swinnock expressly raises the question of Aristotle’s causes:

As all things are of him as the efficient cause [God is the agent of causation] , so all things must necessarily be for him as the final cause [the end of everything which God makes is God’s glory]. 

But man in an especial manner is predestinated and created for this purpose: Isa. 43:1, 7, ‘Thou art mine; I have created him for my glory; I have formed him, yea, I have made him.’ There is both the author and the end of our creation: the author, ‘I have created him;’ the end, ‘for my glory.’ As man is the most exact piece, on which he bestowed most pains, so from him he cannot but expect most praise. Lactantius accounteth religion the most proper and essential difference between men and beasts.[1] The praises which beasts give God are dumb, their sacrifices are dead; but the sacrifices of men are living, and their praises lively.

Here Swinnock plays on the idea of the natural world as a theater of God’s Glory. The world as theater is certainly well known from Shakespeare. But the matter of a theater for God’s glory goes at least back to Calvin: “Therefore, however fitting it may be for man seriously to turn his eyes to contemplate God’s works, since he has been placed in this most glorious theater to be a spectator of them, it is fitting that he prick up his ears to the Word, the better to profit.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 72.

God did indeed set up the admirable house of the visible world (flooring it with the earth, watering it with the ocean, and ceiling it with the pearly heavens) for his own service and honour; but the payment of this rent[2] is expected from the hands of man, the inhabitant. He was made and put into this house upon this very account, that he might, as God’s steward, gather his rents from other creatures, and pay in to the great landlord his due and deserved praise. 

Note again this understanding of the image of God: We could look to the image in terms of the capacity to reflect God. But Swinnock here emphasizes the natre of image as the reflection (rather than the capacity to reflect):

Man is made as a glass, to represent the perfections that are in God. A glass can receive the beams of the sun into it, and reflect them back again to the sun. The excellencies of God appear abundantly in his works; man is made to be the glass where these beams of divine glory should be united and received, and also from him reflected back to God again.

A return to the final cause argument: If the human being is capable of worship and reflection, then the final cause of the human being must be congruent with that capacity. If we were merely fit for animal-actions, then there would have been no need to have made us as we are:

Oh, how absurd is it to conceive that God should work a body so ‘curiously in the lowest parts of the earth,’ embroider it with nerves, veins, variety and proportion of parts, (miracles enough, saith one, between head and foot to fill a volume,) and then enliven it with a spark of his own fire, a ray of his own light, an angelical and heaven-born soul, and send this picture of his own perfections, this comely creature, into the world, merely to eat, and drink, and sleep, or to buy, and sell, and sow, and reap. Surely the only wise God had a higher end and nobler design in forming and fashioning man with so much care and cost.

The upright figure of man’s body, as the poetical heathen could observe, may mind him [put him in mind to do so] of looking upward to those blessed mansions above; and that fifth muscle in his eye, whereby he differeth also from other creatures, who have only four—one to turn downward, another to hold forwards, a third to turn the eye to the right hand, a fourth to turn the eye to the left; but no unreasonable creature can turn the eye upward as man can—may admonish him of viewing those superior glories, and exercising himself to godliness, it being given him for this purpose, saith the anatomist, that by the help thereof he might behold the heavens.

Conclusion: we were made for the purpose of godliness:

Thus the blessed God, even by sensible demonstrations, speaks his mind and end in making man; but the nature of man’s soul being a spiritual substance, doth more loudly proclaim God’s pleasure, that he would have it conversant about spiritual things. He made it a heavenly spark, that it might mount and ascend to heaven.

Living at the time Swinnock, it was simply known that human beings were made to fit into a particular place in the world. 

A philosopher may get riches, saith Aristotle, but that is not his main business; a Christian may, nay, must follow his particular calling, but that is not his main business, that is not the errand for which he was sent into the world. God made particular callings for men, but he made men for their general callings. 

It was a discreet answer of Anaxagoras Clazamenius to one that asked him why he came into the world; That I might contemplate heaven.[3]

Heaven is my country, and for that is my chiefest care. May not a Christian upon better reason confess that to be the end of his creation, that he might seek heaven, and be serviceable to the Lord of heaven, and say, as Jerome, I am a miserable sinner, and born only to repent. [See, Phil. 3:2, “But our citizenship is in heaven.”]

The Jewish Talmud propounds this question, Why God made man on the Sabbath eve? and gives this answer: That he might presently enter upon the command of sanctifying the Sabbath, and begin his life with the worship of God, which was the chief reason and end why it was given him.

2 The ancient philosophers, and the old divines among the pagans, did portray their gods in wood and stone with musical instruments, not that they believed the gods to be fiddlers, or lovers of music, but to shew that nothing is more agreeable to the nature of God, than to do all in a sweet harmony and proportion.—Plutarch.

[1]

“It follows that I show for what purpose God made man himself. As He contrived the world for the sake of man, so He formed man himself on His own account, as it were a priest of a divine temple, a spectator of His works and of heavenly objects. For he is the only being who, since he is intelligent and capable of reason, is able to understand God, to admire His works, and perceive His energy and power; for on this account he is furnished with judgment, intelligence, and prudence. On this account he alone, beyond the other living creatures, has been made with an upright body and attitude, so that he seems to have been raised up for the contemplation of his Parent. On this account he alone has received language, and a tongue the interpreter of his thought, that he may be able to declare the majesty of his Lord. Lastly, for this cause all things were placed under his control, that he himself might be under the control of God, their Maker and Creator. If God, therefore, designed man to be a worshipper of Himself, and on this account gave him so much honour, that he might rule over all things; it is plainly most just that he should worship Him who bestowed upon him such great gifts, and love man, who is united with us in the participation of the divine justice.”

Lactantius, “A Treatise on the Anger of God,” in Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily, and Liturgies, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. William Fletcher, vol. 7, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886), 271.

[2] For this same idea, see, “The setting forth of his glory is a rent due to him from all creatures. We are to praise him both in word and deed, in mind, and heart, and practice, which we can never do unless we understand the dignity of his person.” Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 1 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1870), 432.

[3] “When some one asked him if the hills at Lampsacus would ever become sea, he replied, “Yes, it only needs time.” Being asked to what end he had been born, he replied, “To study sun and moon and heavens.” To one who inquired, “You miss the society of the Athenians?” his reply was, “Not I, but they miss mine.”” Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. R. D. Hicks (Kansas City Missouri: Harvard University Press, November 1, 2005), 141. ἐρωτηθείς ποτε εἰς τί γεγέννηται, “εἰς θεωρίαν,” ἔφη, “ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης καὶ οὐρανοῦ.” Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of Eminent Philosophers,” ed. R. D. Hicks (Kansas City Missouri: Harvard University Press, November 1, 2005), 140.

Edward Taylor, The Daintiest Draft.2

23 Wednesday Dec 2020

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The second stanza is perhaps the most difficult in the poem in that here the ambiguity of reference is focused. It looks upon the ruined imaged  and speaks of the heavenly sorrow at the tremendous loss:

What pity ‘s this? Oh! Sunshine art! What fall?

Thou that wast more glorious than glory’s wealth.

More golden far than gold! Lord, on whose wall

Thy scutcheons hung, the image of thyself!

It’s ruined, and must rue, though angels should

To hold it up heave while their heart strings hold.

What pity is this: What a thing is here to pity. 

Sunshine art must refer to the original, before it fell. Since Taylor was writing from a rural place in a Northern latitude during the “Little Ice Age,” a reference to sunshine would be especially potent.  

He is looking upon the ruined image which was “more glorious than glory’s wealth./More golden far than gold!” Rhythmically, note the inversion of the iamb to a trochee at the beginning of line 8:

THOU that was MORE GLORiou. 

The inversion of the “normal” order forces attention upon the “thou”. He focuses our attention upon the lost image. 

Jonathan Edwards who was a generation after Taylor, but whose father knew Taylor, writes of God’s glory in Christ (in the funeral sermon for David Brainerd) with similar imagery:

Their beatifical vision of God is in Christ; who is that brightness or effulgence of God’s glory, by which his glory shines forth in heaven, to the view of saints and angels there, as well as here on earth. This is the Sun of Righteousness, which is not only the light of this world, but is also the sun which enlightens the heavenly Jerusalem; by whose bright beams the glory of God shines forth there, to the enlightening and making happy of all the glorious inhabitants. “The Lamb is the light thereof; and so the Glory of God doth lighten it,” Rev. 21:23. No one sees God the Father immediately. He is the King eternal, immortal, invisible. Christ is the Image of that invisible God, by which he is seen by all elect creatures. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him and manifested him. No one has ever immediately seen the Father, but the Son; and no one else sees the Father in any other way, than by the Son’s revealing him.

Jonathan Edwards, The Works of President Edwards (New York: S. Converse, 1829), 459. 

The wall is the thus the human being created to display the image of God. God’s image was hung upon the walls. There are shields upon the walls which show the coat of arms of this royal family. But now it houses a treasonous family. 

The closing couplet (lines 11-12) are difficult in terms of their reference:

It’s ruined, and must rue, though angels should

To hold it up heave while their heart strings hold.

“It’s ruined” must refer to the house whose walls bear the image (or at least should do so). But what are we to make of “must rue.” Is that the house should rue it’s loss? Apparently so. But it could also be taken as a cohortative to the reader, you should rue this loss. Both are possible here. 

Angels are sent hold up house. This seems to be an oblique reference to Hebrews 1:14, where angels are explained to be ministering spirits sent out to care for those human beings who will inherit salvation on the basis of Christ’s work. 

We could also read this entire stanza as a reference to Christ in his passion, where he was struck down, killed and buried.  This removes much of the ambiguity of the stanza in-and-of itself. The reader sees this destruction and is called upon the rue the loss of such beauty, while the angels attend to the Savior. And it is angels who “long to look” into this salvation: a salvation which was granted to humanity but not to angels. 1 Peter 1:12.

As noted above, this ambiguity of reference makes theological sense because the image of God which is superlatively in Jesus Christ is by imitation the property of redeemed humanity. In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul writes that as the redeemed behold glory of the Lord, the redeemed are transformed into the image which they behold:

2 Corinthians 3:18 (KJV) 

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. 

Thus, that image is both Christ and also the property of renewed humanity. 

There is also reference to the First Adam, Adam of Genesis 2 who was created in the image of God and so quickly rebelled against his place of honor. 

Edward Polhill, A View of Some Divine Truths, 1.2 (God’s self-disclosure)

17 Wednesday Jul 2019

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This is an abridgment with notes on Edward Polhill’s first chapter of A View of Some Divine Truths. The previous notes on this chapter may be found here

God’s self-existence and self-sufficiency in all things means that God has no need of his creation. That such a great being would invade his own privacy, as one theologian one-time expressed it is a matter of “supereffluent goodness:

That such an infinite All-sufficient One should manifest himself, must needs be an act of admirable supereffluent goodness, such as indeed could not be done without stooping down below his own infinity, that he might gratify our weakness.

We have no words which could reach or describe God, who is so far above our ability and our reason. And yet God has disclosed himself to us in the Scripture and in the Incarnation:

His name is above every name; nevertheless, he humbles himself to appear to our minds in a scripture image; nay, to our very senses in the body of nature, that we might clasp the arms of faith and love about the holy beams, and in their light and warmth ascend up to their great Original, the Father of lights and mercies.

God hath manifested himself many ways.

He set up the material world, that he, though an invisible spirit, might render himself visible therein: all the hosts of creatures wear his colours.

The evidence of God’s self-disclosure in nature is a matter admitted in various ways by pagans and philosophers. And what is it that they have observed:

Almighty power hath printed itself upon the world, nay, upon every little particle of it: all the creatures came out of nothing, and between that and being is a very vast gulf.

First, creation shows infinite power:

It was an infinite power, which filled it up and fetched over the creatures into being; it was an Almighty word, which made the creatures at an infinite distance hear and rise up out of nothing. The old axiom, ex nihilo nihil fit, is nature’s limit and a true measure of finite powers; but when, as in the creation, nature overflows the banks, when nullity itself springs up and runs over into a world, we are sure that the moving power was an infinite one.

Second, creation displays God’s infinite wisdom:

And as infinite power appears in the being of the creatures, so doth infinite wisdom in their orders and harmonies. The curious ideas and congruities, which before were latent in the Divine breast, are limned out upon outward and sensible things, standing in delicate order and proportion before our eyes. The world is a system of contraries made up into one body, in which disagreeing natures conspire together for the common good: each creature keeps its station, and all the parts of nature hang one upon another in a sweet confederacy.

Here Polhill makes note of natural agency:

Mere natural agents operate towards their ends, as if they were masters of reason, and hit their proper mark, as if they had a providence within them. Such things as these teach us to conclude with Zeno, that λόγος, reason, is the great artist which made all; and to break out with the Psalmist, O Lord, how manifold are thy works? in wisdom hast thou made them all.

Creation also shows God’s goodness, which is a thing even pagans could observe:

And as the two former attributes show forth themselves in the creatures, so also doth infinite goodness: all the drops and measures of goodness in the creature lead us to that infinite goodness which is the fountain and spring of all. Pherecydes the philosopher, said, that Jupiter first transformed himself into love, and then made the world; he, who is essential love, so framed it, that goodness appears every where: it shines in the sun, breathes in the air, flows in the sea, and springs in the earth; it is reason in men, sense in brutes, life in plants, and more than mere being in the least particles of matter.

There is a belief held by the Manichees – and if you would like a modern version think about the “force” in Star Wars in there are two equally powerful principles – that the world is ruled by two equally power gods. Polhill will have none of this and points goodness of God displayed in creation:

The Manichees, who would have had their name from pouring out of manna, did brook their true name from mania, that is, madness, in denying so excellent a world to be from the good God. The light in their eyes, breath in their nostrils, bread in their mouths, and all the good creatures round about them, were pregnant refutations of their senseless heresy: the prints of goodness everywhere extant in nature, shew the good hand which framed all.

And the capstone of creation: the creation of man in the image of God:

In the making of man in his original integrity, there was yet a greater manifestation. In other creatures there were the footsteps of God, but in man there was his image; a natural image in the very make of his soul, in the essential faculties of reason and will, upon which were derived more noble and divine prints of a Deity than upon all the world besides.

The moral uprightness of original man could see this display of God’s glory in all things:

And in that natural image there was seated a moral one, standing in that perfect knowledge and righteousness, in which more of the beauty and glory of God did shine forth, than in the very essence of the soul itself. His mind was a pure lamp of knowledge, without any mists or dark shades about it, his will a mirror of sanctity and rectitude without any spot in it; and, as an accession to the two former images, there was an image of God’s sovereignty in him, he was made Lord over the brutal world; without, the beasts were in perfect subjection to him: and within, the affections. Now to such an excellent creature, in his primitive glory, with a reason in its just ἀκμὴor full stature, the world was a very rare spectacle; the stamps and signatures upon the creatures looked very fresh to his pure paradisical eyes: from within and from without he was filled with illustrious rays of a Deity: he saw God everywhere: within, in the frame and divine furniture of his soul, and without, in the creatures and the impresses of goodness on them: he heard God everywhere; in his own breast in the voice of a clear unveiled reason, and abroad in the high language and dialect of nature. All was in splendour; the world shone as an outward temple, and his heart was in lustre like an oracle or inward sanctuary; everything in both spake to God’s honour. Such an excellent appearance as this was worthy of a Sabbath to celebrate the praises of the Creator in.

Why then do we not see God’s glory so plainly? What has made it difficult to see this expression of God:

But, alas! sin soon entered, and cast a vail upon this manifestation; on the world there fell a curse, which pressed it into groans and travailing pains of vanity; the earth had its thistles, the heavens their spots and malignant influences, all was out of tune, and jarring into confusion.

At this point, Polhill takes up a very contested issue: in what way precisely did the Fall effect man:

In man all the images of God more or less suffered; the orient reason was miserably clouded, the holy rectitude utterly lost: without, the beasts turned rebels; and within, the affections.

Polhill lists irrationality, behavior and affection: the mind, the heart and the hands were all disordered. At point, God then turned to a new means of disclosing himself to man. If man could not accurately read God’s goodness in creation, God would give a new disclosure, first in the law; then in Christ. In this section of the essay, Polhill is generally tracking the argument of the first five chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans: God was manifest in creation but human beings became disordered in their reason, affections and behavior. Paul then turns to the law as evidence of God’s working and of Christ who redeemed.

First, God makes a promise of the redemption

Nevertheless God, who is unwearied in goodness, would further manifest himself. Promises of the Messiah, and of grace in him, brake forth unto lapsed man; and as appendants thereof, there came forth sacrifices and other types to be figures of heavenly things, and a kind of Astrolabe to the pious Jews, that by earthly things they might ascend unto celestial.

This would be the first evangel in Genesis 3:15:

Genesis 3:15 (NASB95)

15            And I will put enmity

Between you and the woman,

And between your seed and her seed;

He shall bruise you on the head,

And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

The sacrifices and other types were being developed in even before Moses and the law; such as Abraham offering Isaac.  Next comes the law of Moses

Also the moral law was given forth by God: the spiritual tables being broken, material ones were made; holiness and righteousness being by the fall driven out of their proper place, the heart of man, were set forth in letters and words in the decalogue.

Notice how he explains the works of the law; it works in a way to undo the effects of the Fall in disordering reason, affections and actions. First, it restore reason:

This was so glorious a manifestation, that the Rabbins say that mountains of sense hang upon every iota of it. The Psalmist, in the 19th Psalm, having set forth how the sun and heavens shew forth God’s glory, raises up his discourse to the perfect law, which, as it enlightens the inward man

It directs actions:

, is a brighter luminary than the sun which shines to sense; and, as it comprises all duties within itself, is a nobler circle in morality than the heavens, which environ all other bodies, are in nature.

Then it restores right affection, being designed to bring about love of God and man:

“The commandment,” saith the Psalmist, “is exceeding broad,” (Ps. 119:96🙂 it is an ocean of sanctity and equity, such as human reason, the soul and measure of civil laws, cannot search to the bottom. Love to God and our neighbour is the centre of it; and as many right lines as may be drawn thither, so many are the duties of it. Whatsoever it be that makes up the just posture of man towards his Maker or fellow-creatures, is required therein.

It surpasses all human laws:

Human laws are δίκαια κινούμενα, moveable orders, such as turn about with time; but the moral law is by its intrinsical rectitude so immortalized, that, as long as God is God, and man, it cannot be altered.

Then the final revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth:

After all these manifestations, God revealed himself to the world in and by Jesus Christ; this is the last and greatest appearance of all.

Jesus was able to display God in a way that no mere creature could:

In the inferior creatures there is a footstep of God, but not his image; in man there is his image, but a finite, a created one: but Jesus Christ is the infinite uncreated image of God. The nearer any creature doth in its perfections approach to God, the more it reveals him; life shews forth more of him than mere being, sense than life, reason than all the rest: but, oh! what a spectacle hath faith, when a human nature shall be taken into the person of God, when the fulness of the Godhead shall dwell in a creature hypostatically!

This display of God in the Incarnation was to display the Creator and show his power, wisdom and goodness; just as the original creation had displayed God before Man’s sin marred his ability to see. Moreover, this display of God encompasses the written revelation of God by being a living word:

Here the eternal word which framed the world was made flesh; the infinite wisdom which lighted up reason in man assumed a humanity; never was God so in man, never was man so united to God, as in this wonderful dispensation; more glory breaks forth from hence, than from all the creation. We have here the centre of the promises, the substance of the types and shadows, the complement of the moral law, and holiness and righteousness, not in letters and syllables, but living, breathing, walking, practically exemplified in the human nature of Jesus Christ.

 

Some notes on the Son of Man and Jesus’ Kingdom

03 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by in Christology, Genesis, Hebrews, Romans, Uncategorized

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(These are some notes to work out a study or sermon)

Genesis 1:26–27 (NASB95)

26        Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27        God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

 

Humanity was granted a universal kingdom. That was our original state.

 

 

Genesis 3: Adam sins is driven from the Garden.

 

Adam forfeits that kingdom – even though exercising that Kingdom was the purpose of man (Son of Man).

 

Romans 5:12 (NASB95)

12        Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—

 

The only Kingdom which mankind possesses of itself is being a subject to the kingdom of death.

 

 

 

 

Psalm 8 (NASB95)

PSALM 8

For the choir director; on the Gittith. A Psalm of David.

1            OLord, our Lord,

How majestic is Your name in all the earth,

Who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens!

2            From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established strength

Because of Your adversaries,

To make the enemy and the revengeful cease.

3            When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;

4            What is man that You take thought of him,

And the son of man that You care for him?

5            Yet You have made him a little lower than God,

And You crown him with glory and majesty!

6            You make him to rule over the works of Your hands;

You have put all things under his feet,

7            All sheep and oxen,

And also the beasts of the field,

8            The birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea,

Whatever passes through the paths of the seas.

9            OLord, our Lord,

How majestic is Your name in all the earth!

 

 

Here the issue is raised: We are insignificant – and yet we were created to exercise a kingdom. It says here – after Adam’s fall – that man exercises a kingdom. This is a paradox: it is not true for us. Thus, it is true as a prophecy.

 

 

Daniel 7:13–14 (NASB95)

The Son of Man Presented

13        “I kept looking in the night visions,

And behold, with the clouds of heaven

One like a Son of Man was coming,

And He came up to the Ancient of Days

And was presented before Him.

14        “And to Him was given dominion,

Glory and a kingdom,

That all the peoples, nations and men of everylanguage

Might serve Him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion

Which will not pass away;

And His kingdom is one

Which will not be destroyed.

 

The Son of Man is a king and receives a kingdom which is (1) universal; (2) eternal; and (3) indestructible.

 

(Adam and Jesus are perfect parallels in a number of ways. Both are also called the Son of God, because they came directly from God. Everyone else comes from another human being.)

 

Jesus calls himself the Son of Man.

 

John 3:14–15 (NASB95)

14        “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up;

15        so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.

 

Here is another level of irony. The Son of Man will be “lifted up”: this was both a straight ahead statement: to be exalted. It was also a euphemism for crucifixion: lifted up on a cross.

 

So, the Son of Man – the one who was to obtain a universal kingdom – will give eternal life (rather than leaving human beings to being subjected to a kingdom of death), by dying.

 

Hebrews 2 explains that Jesus restores and fulfills what Adam lost (kingdom, life) by means of his death:

 

Hebrews 2:5–15 (NASB95)

5          For He did not subject to angels the world to come, concerning which we are speaking.

6          But one has testified somewhere, saying,

“What is man, that You remember him?

Or the son of man, that You are concerned about him?

7          “You have made him for a little while lower than the angels;

You have crowned him with glory and honor,

And have appointed him over the works of Your hands;

8          You have put all things in subjection under his feet.”

For in subjecting all things to him, He left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him.

9          But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.

10        For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.

11        For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father;for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren,

12        saying,

“I will proclaim Your name to My brethren,

In the midst of the congregation I will sing Your praise.”

13        And again,

“I will put My trust in Him.”

And again,

“Behold, I and the children whom God has given Me.”

14        Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,

15        and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.

 

Thus, God in Jesus Christ, fulfills what was originally intended for Adam. Jesus is born into the world under Adam’s curse. He through death conquers death and thus restores to humanity what was lost in Adam. He is subjected and overcomes – and therefore, he receives an everlasting kingdom. See also, Psalm 2.

Theophilus of Antioch, on the Creation Accounts

14 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by in Ante-Nicene, Anthropology, Creation, Creation, Image of God, imago dei, Uncategorized

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Theophilus next commences with a  long discussion of the Creation. It is interesting that he takes Creation as the great distinction between the pagan and Christian worldviews. Interestingly, Peter Jones makes exactly the same distinction as the “bedrock” for the difference between Christianity and other positions:

In either case, here we reach rock bottom. Either the transcendent Creator— one God in the unending interpersonal life and love of the Trinity— is at the origin of everything created and sustains it all, or the universe itself, in all its seeming variety, is all there is. And in either case, whether we worship nature or the Maker of nature, we are dealing with a statement of faith and an expression of worship. We cannot step out of the universe to find an objective point of view. We must make a faith decision between these two alternatives— and there are only two. If God and nature make up reality, then all is two, and everything is either Creator or creature. On the other hand, if the universe is all there is, then all is one.

This choice is exemplified in the stark separation between two points of perspective: that of the Bible, and that of Camille Paglia, a contemporary philosopher. The Bible begins by saying: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth [i.e., nature]” (Gen 1: 1). Paglia begins her book Sexual Personae very differently: “In the beginning was Nature.” [footnote] These two views of reality have always existed, but because we have lived for centuries in a Christian environment, the reemerging conflict startles us. Paglia wrote what she did in conscious opposition to the perspective on the world put forth in Genesis. Christian thinking starts not with Paglia’s view of existence but with that of the Bible.

Robert Sokolowski, a professor of philosophy at the Catholic University of America, puts it this way:

Christian theology is differentiated from pagan religious and philosophical reflections primarily by the introduction of a new distinction, the distinction between the world, understood as possibly not having existed, and God, understood as possibly being all that there is, with no diminution of goodness or greatness.

Jones, Peter (2015-06-24). The Other Worldview: Exposing Christianity’s Greatest Threat (Kindle Locations 252-267). Kirkdale Press. Kindle Edition.

In making this argument, Theophilus relies heavily upon the text of Scripture, quoting out long sections of Genesis as argument. A few observations about Theophilus’ rendition of the creation account. First, he gives the rationale for the creation of human beings:

And first, they taught us with one consent that God made all things out of nothing; for nothing was coeval with God: but He being His own place, and wanting nothing, and existing before the ages, willed to make man by whom He might be known; for him, therefore, He prepared the world. For he that is created is also needy; but he that is uncreated stands in need of nothing.

Theophilus of Antioch, “Theophilus to Autolycus,” in Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. Marcus Dods, vol. 2, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 97–98.

Second, he does engage in some allegorizing of the text. This is not in contrast to the “literal” meaning, which he takes as a given, but as an additional layer of meaning. For example:

And we say that the world resembles the sea. For as the sea, if it had not had the influx and supply of the rivers and fountains to nourish it, would long since have been parched by reason of its saltness; so also the world, if it had not had the law of God and the prophets flowing and welling up sweetness, and compassion, and righteousness, and the doctrine of the holy commandments of God, would long ere now have come to ruin, by reason of the wickedness and sin which abound in it. And as in the sea there are islands, some of them habitable, and well-watered, and fruitful, with havens and harbours in which the storm-tossed may find refuge,—so God has given to the world which is driven and tempest-tossed by sins, assemblies6—we mean holy churches7—in which survive the doctrines of the truth, as in the island-harbours of good anchorage; and into these run those who desire to be saved, being lovers of the truth, and wishing to escape the wrath and judgment of God. And as, again, there are other islands, rocky and without water, and barren, and infested by wild beasts, and uninhabitable, and serving only to injure navigators and the storm-tossed, on which ships are wrecked, and those driven among them perish,—so there are doctrines of error—I mean heresies8word of truth; but as pirates, when they have filled their vessels,9 drive them on the fore-mentioned places, that they may spoil them: so also it happens in the case of those who err from the truth, that they are all totally ruined by their error.

Theophilus of Antioch,  100. He also sees the period of testing in Paradise as analogous to a Father raising a child:

The tree of knowledge itself was good, and its fruit was good. For it was not the tree, as some think, but the disobedience, which had death in it. For there was nothing else in the fruit than only knowledge; but knowledge is good when one uses it discreetly. But Adam, being yet an infant in age, was on this account as yet unable to receive knowledge worthily. For now, also, when a child is born it is not at once able to eat bread, but is nourished first with milk, and then, with the increment of years, it advances to solid food. Thus, too, would it have been with Adam; for not as one who grudged him, as some suppose, did God command him not to eat of knowledge. But He wished also to make proof of him, whether he was submissive to His commandment. And at the same time He wished man, infant as he was,4 to remain for some time longer simple and sincere. For this is holy, not only with God, but also with men, that in simplicity and guilelessness subjection be yielded to parents. But if it is right that children be subject to parents, how much more to the God and Father of all things? Besides, it is unseemly that children in infancy be wise beyond their years; for as in stature one increases in an orderly progress, so also in wisdom. But as when a law has commanded abstinence from anything, and some one has not obeyed, it is obviously not the law which causes punishment, but the disobedience and transgression;—for a father sometimes enjoins on his own child abstinence from certain things, and when he does not obey the paternal order, he is flogged and punished on account of the disobedience; and in this case the actions themselves are not the [cause of] stripes, but the disobedience procures punishment for him who disobeys;—so also for the first man, disobedience procured his expulsion from Paradise. Not, therefore, as if there were any evil in the tree of knowledge; but from his disobedience did man draw, as from a fountain, labour, pain, grief, and at last fall a prey to death.

Theophilus of Antioch,  104. This probationary period could have resulted in immortality from the beginning, had Adam kept the law of God:

But some one will say to us, Was man made by nature mortal? Certainly not. Was he, then, immortal? Neither do we affirm this. But one will say, Was he, then, nothing? Not even this hits the mark. He was by nature neither mortal nor immortal. For if He had made him immortal from the beginning, He would have made him God. Again, if He had made him mortal, God would seem to be the cause of his death. Neither, then, immortal nor yet mortal did He make him, but, as we have said above, capable of both; so that if he should incline to the things of immortality, keeping the commandment of God, he should receive as reward from Him immortality, and should become God; but if, on the other hand, he should turn to the things of death, disobeying God, he should himself be the cause of death to himself. For God made man free, and with power over himself.1 That, then, which man brought upon himself through carelessness and disobedience, this God now vouchsafes to him as a gift through His own philanthropy and pity, when men obey Him.2 For as man, disobeying, drew death upon himself; so, obeying the will of God, he who desires is able to procure for himself life everlasting. For God has given us a law and holy commandments; and every one who keeps these can be saved, and, obtaining the resurrection, can inherit incorruption.

Theophilus of Antioch, 105.

We become monsters

12 Friday May 2017

Posted by in Image of God, imago dei, Psychology, Uncategorized

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One big idea unifies all of Nietzsche’s offspring — the Marxists, the Freudians, the French Existentialists, the critical theorists, the Deconstructionists, the queer theorists — and that is the right to self-invention. That is the cruelest hoax ever perpetrated on human beings, for we are not clever or strong enough to reinvent ourselves. To the extent we succeed, we become monsters.

David P. Goldman on self-invention

More Observations on the Image of God

02 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Image of God, imago dei, Theology of Biblical Counseling, Uncategorized

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Revising and developing my notes on the theology of psychology, with particular emphasis on biblical counseling. One important aspect of any psychological system is its anthropology: what is a human being? The answer to that question is a theological question: psychology as a discipline of observation cannot answer that question.

A critical element of biblical anthropology is that human beings are in the image of God. The discussion of this issue is enormous. Here are three voices on the issue. Biblical Doctrine, John MacArthur, explains there are three basic views as to the doctrine of the image of God:

Three views have been offered in answer to the question of how exactly man is in God’s image: substantive, functional, and relational. First, the substantive view says that the image of God is inherently structural to man it is a characteristic within the makeup of man….

 Second, the functional view asserts at the image of God is something that human beings do….

Third, the relational view claims that relationship is the image of God.

The best view however isn’t the image of God is substantive or structural to man. Function and relationship are the consequences of man being the image of God structurally….

The structure probably consist of the complex qualities and attributes of man that making human. This includes his physical and spiritual components. The image could also be linked to personhood and personality and to the powers to relate and operate.

 

MacArthur anr Biblical Doctrine, pp. 412 – 413.

 

  1. John S. Hammett, in the chapter “Human Nature” in A Theology for the Church, avoids the question of structural, functional or relational:

Despite the paucity of biblical teaching on the image of God, we may draw five biblical parameters. these guidelines do not answer all the questions we have concerning the image of God, but they give us guidelines by which we may evaluate suggested interpretations of the image of God.

Creation in the image of God is affirmed for all persons….

Creation in the image of God involves being like God in some unspecified way….

Creation in the image of God is the basis for human uniqueness and dignity (Gen 9:6; Jas 3:9-10)….

Even after the fall, humans are spoken of as being in the image of God, so the image is not completely lost in the fall. However, it does seem that the image was damaged in the fall, for there are verses that speak of the restoration of the divine image or conformity to the image of Christ as an ongoing process in the Christian life (2 Cor 3:18; Eph. 4:23-24; Col 3:10).

Moreover, since Christ is the perfect image of God (Heb 1:3) and the result of this process of restoration is being fully like Christ (Rom 8:29; 1 Cor 15:49; 1 John 3:1-2), we may speak of the image of God as being not only are created design but also our eschatological destiny.

Theology, p. 294.

Bavnick has an extensive discussion of the doctrine, the history of the doctrine and critiques of the various views.  He concludes:

In our treatment of the doctrine of the image of God, then, we must highlight, in accordance with Scripture and the Reformed confession, the idea that a human being does not bear or have the image of God but that he or she is the image of God. As a human being a man is the son, the likeness, or offspring of God (Gen. 1:26; 9:6; Luke 3:38; Acts 17:28; 1 Cor. 11:7; James 3:9).

Two things are implied in this doctrine. The first is that not something in God—one virtue or perfection or another to the exclusion of still others, nor one person—say, the Son to the exclusion of the Father and the Spirit—but that God himself, the entire deity, is the archetype of man. Granted, it has frequently been taught that man has specifically been made in the image of the Son or of the incarnate Christ,72 but there is nothing in Scripture that supports this notion. Scripture repeatedly tells us that humankind was made in the image of God, not that we have been modeled on Christ, but that he was made [human] in our likeness (Rom. 8:3; Phil. 2:7–8; Heb. 2:14), and that we, having been conformed to the image of Christ, are now again becoming like God (Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 15:49; 2 Cor. 3:18; Phil. 3:21; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10; 1 John 3:2). It is therefore much better for us to say that the triune being, God, is the archetype of man,73 while at the same time exercising the greatest caution in the psychological exploration of the trinitarian components of man’s being.74

On the other hand, it follows from the doctrine of human creation in the image of God that this image extends to the whole person. Nothing in a human being is excluded from the image of God. While all creatures display vestiges of God, only a human being is the image of God. And he is such totally, in soul and body, in all his faculties and powers, in all conditions and relations. Man is the image of God because and insofar as he is truly human, and he is truly and essentially human because, and to the extent that, he is the image of God. Naturally, just as the cosmos is an organism and reveals God’s attributes more clearly in some than in other creatures, so also in man as an organism the image of God comes out more clearly in one part than another, more in the soul than in the body, more in the ethical virtues than in the physical powers. None of this, however, detracts in the least from the truth that the whole person is the image of God. Scripture could not and should not speak of God in a human manner and transfer all human attributes to God, as if God had not first made man totally in his own image. And it is the task of Christian theology to point out this image of God in man’s being in its entirety.

Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 554–555.

So the whole human being is image and likeness of God, in soul and body, in all human faculties, powers, and gifts. Nothing in humanity is excluded from God’s image; it stretches as far as our humanity does and constitutes our humanness. The human is not the divine self but is nevertheless a finite creaturely impression of the divine. All that is in God—his spiritual essence, his virtues and perfections, his immanent self-distinctions, his self-communication and self-revelation in creation—finds its admittedly finite and limited analogy and likeness in humanity

Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 561.

 

What God says of our Identity 

23 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Image of God, imago dei, Preaching

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But his theology of the cross involved the recognition that God sometimes works “under the appearance of opposites.” Thus Luther strove to cultivate in the congregation a faith that rested in confidence on God’s presence and promise even when his strength was being perfected in their weakness, as God had told Paul he was doing in the apostle’s life (2 Cor. 12:9). In this sermon on Mark 5 Luther, in both temporal and spiritual dimensions of life, poses the contrast of what human beings see in the world and what Christ sees. David had seen himself as a poor shepherd, and so had the world, but Christ viewed him as a king. “All of you who have faith in me regard yourselves as poor sinners, but I regard you as precious saints; I regard you as like the angels. I simply speak not more than a single word, and sin, death, sickness have to yield, and righteousness, life, and health come in their place. The way I speak determines how things are; they cannot be otherwise.” 

Robert Kolb, Luther and the Stories of God, Chapter 3

More on Denying God’s Existence and Yet Oddly Confirming God’s Law

01 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in Image of God, imago dei, Uncategorized, Van Til

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This quotation from Van Til adds some nuance on the question of whether one must acknowledge God’s existence to be subject to God’s moral law:

After the fall, therefore, all men seek to suppress this truth, fixed in their being about themselves. They are opposed to God. This is the biblical teaching on human depravity. If we are to present the truth of the Christian religion to men we must take them where they are. They are: a) creatures made in God’s image, surrounded by a world that reveals in its every fact God’s power and divinity. Their antithesis to God can never be metaphysical. They can never be anything but image bearers of God. They can never escape facing God in the universe about them in their own constitution. Their antithesis to God is therefore an ethical one; b) because of God’s common grace, this ethical antithesis to God on the part of the sinner is restrained, and thereby the creative forces of man receive the opportunity of constructive effort. In this world the sinner does many ‘good’ things. He is honest. He helps to alleviate the sufferings of his fellow men. He ‘keeps’ the moral law. Therefore the ‘antithesis’ besides being ethical rather than metaphysical, is limited in a second way. It is one of principle, not one of full expression. If the natural man fully expressed himself as he is in terms of the principle of ethical hostility to God that dwells in his soul, he would be a veritable devil. Obviously he is nothing of the sort. He is not at all as ‘bad as he may be.’

Strange, Daniel; Strange, Daniel (2015-02-03). Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions (p. 92). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. Quoting: Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology, p. 45. (By the way, I am finding Dr. Daniel Strange’s book quite useful.