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Created Soul—Eternal Spirit: A Continuing Theological Thorn
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Extract
Discussing in the Institutes the nature of God's image in man, Calvin refers to the dream of the Manichees, which Servetus has attempted in our own day to revive. Because it is said that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life (Gen. 2.7), they thought that the soul was a transmission of the substance of God; as if some portion of the boundless divinity had passed into man. It cannot take long time to show how many gross and foul absurdities this devilish error carries in its train.1
In our own day this view, which Calvin takes to be so fatal an error, is very much alive. Occasionally it is expressed in terms not dissimilar from those described by Calvin.2 More often, however, it appears in a more generalised form, where man's possession of a spiritual consciousness is taken to prove that the Divine is latent within him. Spirit is regarded above all as the vehicle by means of which the eternal penetrates the temporal. God himself moves in man, so that human consciousness cannot be satisfied with anything belonging to time and space, our transient world; instead, it strives continually to attain to its proper supramundane dimension.
The Platonic inspiration of such a view is evident when it is advanced as a distinctive argument: for example, in Rufus M. Jones' West Lectures, Spirit in Man.3
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1966
References
page 23 note 1 op. cit., trans. Henry Beveridge (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1895), I, p. 165 (Book I, xv, 5).
page 23 note 2 ‘Authentic Christian thought recognises that God has lodged within man something of His own Being, His Spirit, so that the basic relation of God and man is not “over-againstness” but rather kinship of essential nature’—Henry P. Van Dusen, Spirit, Son and Father (Scribner's Sons, N.Y., 1958), p. 99.
page 23 note 3 Stanford University, California: Stanford University Press, 1941.
page 23 note 4 op. cit., pp. 27–28.
page 23 note 5 ibid., pp. 4gff.
page 24 note 1 ibid., p. 70.
page 24 note 2 op. cit., p. 160 (Book I, xv, 2).
page 24 note 3 ibid., p. 166 (Book I, xv, 5).
page 24 note 4 Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (Epworth Press, London, 1948), 763.
page 24 note 5 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Swenson, David F. and Lowerie, Walter (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1941), p. 221.Google Scholar
page 25 note 1 The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Lowrie, Walter (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1941), p. 17.Google Scholar
page 25 note 2 ibid., p. 33.
page 25 note 3 ibid., p. 216.
page 25 note 4 The Christian Faith, trans. Mackintosh, H. R. and Stewart, J. S. (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1928), p. 245 (60.1).Google Scholar
page 25 note 5 ibid., p. 26 (6.1).
page 25 note 6 ibid., p. 64 (13.1).
page 25 note 7 ibid.
page 25 note 8 ibid., pp. 149ff (40.1–3).
page 25 note 9 Schleiermacher's translations of Plato were a labour of love.
page 26 note 1 The Abingdon Press, New York, 1924.
page 26 note 2 op. cit., pp. 188–9. The quotation from Bowne is taken from an article, ‘Gains for Religious Thought in the Last Generation’, appearing in the Hibbert Journal (1909–10)—quoted passage, p. 893.
page 26 note 3 ibid., p. 317.
page 26 note 4 ibid., pp. 318–19.
page 27 note 1 This is Barth's description of the purpose of his early theology as given in retrospect in The Humanity of God, trans. Thomas, John Newton and Wieser, Thomas (John Knox Press, Richmond, Virginia, 1960), p. 41.Google Scholar
page 27 note 2 The Principle of Authority (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1913), pp. 170–171.Google Scholar
page 27 note 3 ibid., p. 178.
page 27 note 4 ibid., p. 179.
page 28 note 1 Williams, Colin W., quoting Wesley's words about the spirit in man being the supernatural gift of God, comments: ‘It is literally true that God creates His own “point of contact”’ (John Wesley's Theology Today, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1960, p. 49).Google Scholar
page 28 note 2 op. cit., p. 167.
page 28 note 3 Gifford Lectures, 1939. Volume I, Human Nature (Scribner's Sons, New York, 1942), Volume II, Human Destiny (1943).
page 28 note 4 Human Nature, p. 12.
page 28 note 5 ibid., p. 126.
page 28 note 6 ibid.
page 29 note 1 ibid., p. 14.
page 29 note 2 ibid., p. 152.
page 29 note 3 Carnell, Edward John, The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, revised ed. 1960), p. 71.Google Scholar
page 29 note 4 op. cit., p. 162.
page 29 note 5 ibid.
page 29 note 6 ibid., p. 166.
page 30 note 1 ibid., p. 127.
page 30 note 2 ibid.
page 30 note 3 ibid., p. 128.
page 30 note 4 ibid., p. 127.
page 31 note 1 ibid., p. 266.
page 31 note 2 op. cit., p. 277 (68.2).
page 31 note 3 ibid., p. 484 (108.2).
page 31 note 4 Niebuhr admits that he was at first concerned almost exclusively with sin and that only later did he turn to consider grace. See ‘Intellectual Autobiography’ in Reinhold Niebuhr, His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, ed. Kegley, Charles W. and Bretall, Robert W. (Macmillan, New York, 1956), p. 10.Google Scholar
page 32 note 1 Human Nature, p. 178.
page 32 note 2 Human Destiny, p. 109. (My italics.)
page 32 note 3 ‘Mystery and Meaning’, in Pious and Secular America (Scribner's Sons, New York, 1958), p. 133.
page 33 note 1 Human Nature, pp. 269–70.
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page 33 note 3 op. cit., p. 260.
page 33 note 4 In another connexion, one critic has remarked on Niebuhr's ‘Platonic strain’. See Farley, Edward, The Transcendence of God (Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1960), pp. 69–70.Google Scholar
page 33 note 5 op. cit., p. 164.