QUOTES - MAN
God created man, men, the human race as he also created the solar system and the sand of the sea. It hardly needs mention that the Bible teaches a theistic philosophy (Gordon Clark, The Biblical Doctrine of Man).
To put it another way: there can be no adequate anthropology without reference to an adequate and thoroughly Trinitarian doctrine of the nature of God (“Anthropology” in NDT).
The Scripture doctrine thus revealed is that man was created by God, being formed, as to his body, from earthy material, and as to his soul, by direct creation; that he was made male and female, one Adam, in the image after the likeness of God (James P. Boyce, Abstract of Systematic Theology).
The Bible could hardly teach more clearly than it does that man is the product of a direct and special creative act of God, rather than of a process of development out of the simian stock of animals (Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology).
According to Scripture the essence of man consist in this, that he is the image of God. As such he is distinguished from all other creatures and stands supreme as the head and crown of the entire creation (Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology).
In his own naturalistic theories, with the uniformity of cause and effect in a closed system, with an evolutionary concept of a mechanical, chance parade from the atom to man, man has lost his unique identity. As he looks out upon the world, as he faces the machine, he cannot tell himself from what he faces. He cannot distinguish himself from other things (Francis Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time).
God did not merely order the course of nature in such fashion that man should be produced, but He created man (J. Gresham Machen, The Christian View of Man).
For, a Christian doctrine of mankind ought to condition all our thoughts about the liberal arts we study and enjoy as well as about how we live (Robert Duncan Culver, Systematic Theology).
The Scriptures teach that the human race began in a single first man, male, who was brought into existence by creative acts of God (Robert Duncan Culver, Systematic Theology).
The Scriptures teach the organic unity of the human race in an original, single, human, male specimen out of whom all others, including the first female, were formed (Robert Duncan Culver, Systematic Theology).
Scripture knows of no evolutionary ‘ascent of man’ from brute via savage and barbarian to civilized Homo sapiens (Robert Duncan Culver, Systematic Theology).
Rather, man is a creature of God, indeed, the crowning work of God’s creative activity; uniquely the “image of God” with whom God has entered into covenant, and as a covenant creature man is accordingly homo religiosus before he is homo sapiens (Robert Reymond, A Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith).
One of the proponents of the evolutionary view admitted it bluntly: the choice is between evolutionary descent or miracle; since miracle is absolutely impossible we are compelled to take the first position. And such an admission demonstrates that the theory of the descent of man from lower animal forms does not rest on careful scientific investigation but is rather the postulate of a materialistic or pantheistic philosophy (Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith).
A divine counsel precedes the creation of man. By this means the singular dignity of man is very strongly stressed. From every point of view man is seen to be the crown and climax of God’s creation (H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis).
But even though our physical bodies should in no way be taken to imply that God has a physical body, are there still some ways in which our bodies reflect something of God’s own character and thereby constitute part of what it means to be created in the image of God? Certainly this is true in some respects. . . . It is important that we recognize that it is man himself who is created in the image of God, not just his spirit or his mind (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology).
Many a person comes to understand the Christian message itself, simply because he has learned to think more deeply about himself (Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt).
This means that man can only understand himself when he knows God is His Word. All merely natural understanding of man is a misunderstanding (Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt).
Materialism, in whatever form of evolution, exposes its weakness in any and every endeavor to account for the origin of man and the faculties of mind. . . . The powers of mind so differentiate it from all else in the realm of nature, so elevate it above the plane of all other forms of existence, that its naturalistic evolution is a manifest impossibility. Only the creative agency of God can account for the origin and existence of mind (John Miley, Systematic Theology).
Given the assumptions and tenets of this book, the two most viable options are theistic evolution and progressive creationism. Both have been and are held by committed, Bible-believing scholars, and each can assimilate or explain both the biblical and the empirical data (Millard Erickson, Christian Theology).
Without the presuppositions of the Christian faith the individual is either nothing or becomes nothing (Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man).
The glory of God is a silver thread which must run through all our actions (Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity).
Meantime, two truths are to be held tenaciously. One is that man was made a spiritual being in God’s image and not as the product of matter. The other is that when we fully understand them and correctly interpret them, the Scriptures and natural science will not bear discordant witness (E. Y. Mullins, The Christian Religion in Its Doctrinal Expression).
The biblical writers treat man, at least in the main, as a unity (John MacQuarrie, Principles of Christian Theology). If man were ‘just an animal’ he would never have found that fact out” (David Elton Trueblood, Philosophy of Religion).
Thus being created in God’s image enables man to embrace His rationality and His freedom and His personality, and to have a capacity for a spiritual relationship with God (Terry L. Miethe, A Christian’s Guide to Faith and Reason).
That aspect of God’s image in man in accordance with which man is intended to rule over the created world as a vice-regent under the Divine Providence is not yet realized. Sin has come in and man cannot rule as he was intended to do. His dominion is to be exercised by God’s grace insofar as possible under the exigencies of this present age, but it is to come to its full realization in the future kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ when we “shall reign with him” (Oliver Buswell, A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion).
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