Commentary on Romans; Systematic Theology

What God created, therefore, was not an individual man, but the species homo, or generic humanity, —an intelligent, rational, and voluntary essence; individual men are the manifestations of this substance numerically and specifically one and the same, in connection with their several corporeal organizations. Their souls are not individual essences, but one common essence revealed and acting in many separate organisms.

This answer to the question proposed above, What is human nature generically considered, which makes it an essence or substance common to all the individuals of the race, is the most common and the most intelligible. Scientific men adopt a somewhat different phraseology. Instead of substances, they speak of forces. Nature is defined to be the sum of the forces operating in the external world. Oxygen is a force; magnetism, electricity, etc., are forces. "A species is.... based on a specific amount or condition of concentred force, defined in the act or law of creation."¹ Humanity, or human nature, is the sum of the forces which constitute man what he is. The unity of the race consists in the fact that these forces are numerically as well as specifically the same in all the individuals of which it is composed.

The German theologians, particularly those of the school of Schleiermacher, use the terms life, law, and organic law. Human nature is a generic life, i.e., a form of life manifested in a multitude of individuals of the same kind. In the individual it is not distinct or different from what it is in the genus. It is the same organic law. A single oak may produce ten thousand other oaks; but the whore forest is as much an inward organic unity as any single tree.

These may be convenient formulas to prevent the necessity of circumlocutions, and to express a class of facts; but they do not convey any definite idea beyond the facts themselves. To say that a whole forest of oaks have the same generic life, that they are as truly one as any individual tree is one, means simply that the nature is the same in all, and that all have been derived from a common source. And to say that mankind are a unit because they have the same generic life, and are all descended from a common parent, either means nothing more than that all men are of the same species, i.e., that humanity is specifically the same in all mat kind or it means all that is intended by those who teach that genera and species are substances of which the individual is the mere modus existendi. As agency implies an agent, so force, which is the manifestation of power, supposes something, a subject or substance in which that power resides. Nothing, a nonentity, can have no power and manifest no force. Force, of necessity, supposes a substance of which it is the manifestation. If, therefore, the forces are numerically the same, the substance must be numerically the same. And, consequently, if humanity be a given amount and kind of concentred force, numerically and not merely specifically the same in all men, then are men homoousioi, partakers of one and the same identical essence. The same remarks apply to the term life. Life is a predicable, not an essence. It supposes a subject of which it is predicable. There can be no life unless something lives. It is not a thing by itself. if, therefore, the generic life of man means anything more than the same kind of life, it must mean that that which lives in all men is identically the same numerical substance.

According to the common doctrine, the soul of every man is an individual subsistence, of the same kind but not of the same numerical substance as the souls of his fellow-men, so that men are homoi-, but not homoousioi. In support of this view and in opposition to the doctrine that "all men are one man," or, that human nature is numerically one and the same essence of which individual men are the modes of manifestation, it may be remarked, —

1. That the latter doctrine is a mere philosophical hypothesis. It is a simple assumption founded on what is possible. It is possible that the doctrine in question may be true. So in itself it is possible that there should be an anima mundi, a principle of life immanent in the world, of which all living organisms are the different manifestations; so that all vegetables, all animals, and man himself, are but different forms of one and the same numerical living substance, just as the multitudinous waves of the sea in all their infinite diversity of size, shape, and hue, are but the heavings of one and the same vast ocean. In like manner it is possible that all the forms of life should be only the various manifestations of the life of God. This is not only possible, but it is such a simple and grand idea that it has fascinated the minds of men in all ages, so that the prevailing hypothesis of philosophers as to the constitution of the universe has been. and still is, pantheistic. Nevertheless, pantheism is demonstrably false, because it contradicts the intuitive convictions of our moral and religious nature. It is not enough, therefore, that a theory be possible or conceivable. It must have the support of positive proof.

2. Such proof the doctrine under consideration does not find in the Bible. It is simply a hypothesis on which certain facts of the Scriptures may be explained. All men are alike; they have the same faculties, the same instincts and passions; and they are all born in sin. These and other similar facts admit of an easy explanation on the assumption that humanity is numerically one and the same substance of which individuals are only so many different manifestations; just as a thousand different magnets reveal the magnetic force which is the same in all, and therefore all magnets are alike. But as the facts referred to may be explained on divers other assumptions, they afford no proof of this particular theory. It is not pretended that the Bible directly teaches the doctrine in question. Nor does it teach anything which necessitates its adoption. On the contrary, it teaches much that is irreconcilable with it.

3. The hypothesis under consideration derives no support from consciousness. We are conscious of our own existence. We are (in one sense) conscious of the existence of other men. But we are not conscious of a community of essence in ourselves and all other men. So far from this being the common interpretation which men put on their consciousness, it is diametrically opposed to it. Every man believes his soul to be a distinct, individual substance, as much as he believes his body to be distinct and separate from every other human body. Such is the common judgment of men. And nothing short of the direct assertion of the Bible, or arguments which amount to demonstration, can rationally be admitted to invalidate that judgment. It is inconceivable that anything concerning the constitution of our nature so momentous in its consequences, should be true, which does not in some way reveal itself in the common consciousness of men. There is nothing more characteristic of the Scriptures, and there are few things which more clearly prove its divine origin, than that it takes for granted and authenticates all the facts of consciousness. It declares us to be what we are revealed to ourselves as being in the very constitution and present condition of our nature. It recognizes the soul as rational, free, and responsible. It assumes that it is distinct from the body. All this we know from consciousness. But we do not know that the essence or substance of our soul is numerically the same as the substance of the souls of all men. If the Bible teaches any such doctrine it teaches something outside of the teachings of consciousness, and something to which those teachings, in the judgment of the vast majority of men, even the most enlightened, are directly opposed.

4. The Scriptures not only do not teach the doctrine in question, but they also teach what is inconsistent with it. We have already seen that it is a clearly revealed doctrine of the Bible, and part of the faith of the Church universal, that the soul continues to exist after death as a self-conscious, individual person. This fact is inconsistent with the theory in question. A given plant is a material organization, animated by the general principle of vegetable life. If the plant is destroyed the principle of vegetable life no longer exists as to that plant. It may exist in other plants; but that particular plant ceased to exist when the material organization was dissolved. Magnetism continues to exist as a force in nature, but any particular magnet ceases to be when it is melted, or volatilized. In like manner, if a man is the manifestation of a generic life, or of humanity as an essence common to all men, then when his body dies the man ceases to exist. Humanity continues to be, but the individual man no longer exists. This is a difficulty which some of the advocates of this theory endeavour to avoid by giving up what is essential to their own doctrine. Its genuine and consistent advocates admit it in its full force. The anti-Christian portion of them acknowledge that their doctrine is inconsistent with the personal immortality of man. The race, they say, is immortal, but individual men are not. The same conclusion is admitted by those who hold the analogous pantheistic, or naturalistic doctrines. If a man is only the modus existendi, a form in which a common substance or life reveals itself, it matters not whether that substance be humanity, nature, or God, when the form, the material organism, is destroyed, the man as a man ceases to exist. Those advocates of the doctrine who cling to Christianity, while they admit the difficulty, endeavour to get over it in different ways. Schleiermacher admits that all philosophy is against the doctrine of the personal existence of man in a future state. His whole system leads to the denial of it. But he says that the Christian must admit it on the authority of Christ. Olshausen, in his commentary on the New Testament, says, when explaining 1 Cor. xv. 19, 20, and verses 42-44, that the Bible knows nothing of the immortality of the soul. He pronounces it to be a heathen. idea. A soul without a body loses its individuality. It ceases to be a person, and of course loses self-consciousness and all that is connected with it. As, however, the Scriptures teach that men are to exist hereafter, he says their bodies must also continue to exist, and the only existence of the soul during the interval between death and the resurrection, which he admits, is in connection (i.e., vital union) with the disintegrated particles of the body in the grave or scattered to the ends of the earth. This is a conclusion to which his doctrine legitimately leads, and which he is sufficiently candid to admit. Dr. Nevin, a disciple of Schleiermacher, has to grapple with the same difficulty. His book entitled "The Mystical Presence," is the clearest and ablest exposition of the theology of Schleiermacher which has appeared in our language, unless Morell's "Philosophy of Religion" be its equal. He denies² all dualism between the soul and body. They are "one life." The one cannot exist without the other. He admits that what the Bible teaches of the separate existence of the soul between death and the resurrection, is a difficulty "which it is not easy, at present, to solve." He does not attempt to solve it. He only says that the difficulty is "not to reconcile Scripture with a psychological theory, but to bring it into harmony with itself." This is no solution. It is a virtual admission that he cannot reconcile the Bible with his psychological theory. The doctrine that man is a modus existendi of a generic humanity, or the manifestation of the general principle of humanity, in connection with a given corporeal organization, is inconsistent with the Scriptural doctrine of the separate existence of the soul, and therefore must be false.

5. This theory is inconsistent with the Scriptural doctrine of the Trinity. It necessitates the conclusion that the Father, Son, and Spirit are no more one God than Peter, James, and John are one man. The persons of the Trinity are one God, because the Godhead is one essence; but if humanity be one essence numerically the same in all men, then all men are one man in the same sense that the Father, Son, and Spirit are one God. This is a reductio ad absurdum. It is clearly taught in Scripture and universally believed in the Church that the persons of the Trinity are one God in an infinitely higher sense than that in which all men are one man. The precise difference is, that the essence common to the persons of the Godhead is numerically the same whereas the essence common to all men is only specifically the same, i.e., of the same kind, although numerically different. The theory which leads to the opposite conclusion must therefore be false. It cannot be true that all mankind are one essence, substance, or organic life, existing or manifesting itself in a multitude of individual persons. This is a difficulty so obvious and so fatal that it could not fail to arrest the attention of realists in all ages and of every class. The great point of dispute in the Council of Nice between the Arians and orthodox was, whether the persons of the Trinity are homoi- or homoousioi, of a like or of the same essence. If homoousioi, it was on both sides admitted that they are one God; because if the same in substance they are equal in power and glory. Now it is expressly asserted that all men are not homoi- but homoousioi, and therefore, by parity of reasoning, they must constitute one man in the same sense as there is one God, and all be equal in every attribute of their nature.³ Of course it is admitted that there is a legitimate sense of the word in which all men may be said to be homoousioi, when by homos (same) is meant similar, or of a like kind. In this sense the Greeks said that the bodies of men and of other animals were consubstantial, as all were made of flesh; and that angels, demons, and human souls, as spiritual beings, are also homoousioi. But this is not the sense in which the word is used by realists, when speaking either of the persons of the Trinity or of men. In both cases the word same means numerical oneness; men are of the same numerical essence in the same sense in which the Father and the Son and the Spirit are the same in substance. The difference, it is said, between the two cases does not relate to identity of essence, which is the same in both, but is found in this, that "the whole nature or essence is in the divine person; but the human person is only a part of the common human nature. Generation in the Godhead admits no abscission or division of substance; but generation in the instance of the creature implies separation or division of essence. A human person is an individualized portion of humanity."⁴ It must, however, be remembered that humanity is declared to be a spiritual substance. It is the same in nature with the soul, which is called an individualized portion of human nature, possessing consciousness, reason, and will. But, if spiritual, it is indivisible. Divisibility is one of the primary properties of matter. Whatever is divisible is material. If therefore humanity, as a generic substance, admits of "abscission and division," it must be material. A part of reason, a piece of consciousness, or a fragment of will, are contradictory, or unintelligible forms of expression. If humanity is of the same essence as the soul, it no more admits of division than the soul. One part of a soul cannot be holy and another unholy; one part saved and the other lost. The objection to the theory under consideration, that it makes the relation between individual men identical with that between the persons of the Trinity, remains, therefore, in full force. It is not met by the answer just referred to, which answer supposes mind to be extended and divisible.

Realism Inconsistent with what the Bible teaches of the Person and Work of Christ.

6. It is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the doctrine in question with what the Scriptures teach of the person and work of Christ. According to the Bible, the Son of God became man by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul. According to the realistic doctrine, he did not assume a reasonable soul, but generic humanity. What is this but the whole of humanity, of which, according to the advocates of this doctrine, individual men are the portions. Human nature as a generic life, humanity as a substance, and a whole substance, was taken into personal union with the Son of God. The Logos became incarnate in the race. This is certainly not the Scriptural doctrine. The Son of God became a man; not all men. He assumed an individual rational soul, not the general principle of humanity. Besides this, it is the doctrine of those who adopt this theory that humanity sinned and fell in Adam. The rational, moral, voluntary substance called human nature, is, or at least was, an agent. The sin of Adam was the sin not of an individual, but of this generic substance, which by that sin became the subject both of guilt and of depravity. By reason of this sin of human nature, the theory is, that all individual men, in their successive generations, in whom this nature is revealed, or in whom, as they express it, it is individualized, mine into the world in a state of guilt and pollution. We do not now refer to the numerous and serious difficulties connected with this theory as a method of accounting for original sin. We speak of it only in its relation to Christ's person. If human nature, as a generic life, a substance of which all men partake, became both guilty and polluted by the apostasy; and that generic humanity, as distinguished from a newly created and holy rational soul, was assumed by the Son of God, how can we avoid the conclusion that Christ was, in his human nature, personally guilty and sinful? This is a legitimate consequence of this theory. And this consequence being not only false but blasphemous, the theory itself must be false As the principle that humanity is one substance, and all men are homoousioi in the sense of partaking of the same numerical essence, involves consequences destructive of the Scriptural doctrines of the Trinity and of the person of Christ, so it might easily be shown that it overthrows the common faith of the Protestant churches on the doctrines of justification, regeneration, the sacraments, and the Church. It is enough for our present purpose to remark that, as a historical fact, the consistent and thorough-going advocates of this doctrine do teach an entirely different method of salvation. Many men adopt a principle, and do not carry it out to its legitimate consequences. But others, more logical, or more reckless, do not hesitate to embrace all its results. In the works of Morell and of Dr. Nevin, above referred to, the theological student may find a fearless pressing of the genuine principle of realism, to the utter overthrow of the Protestant, and, it may be added, of the Christian faith.

7. Other objections to this theory may be more appropriately considered when we come to speak of the several doctrines to which it is applied. It is sufficient in the conclusion of the present discussion to say that what is said to be true of the genus homo, is assumed to be true of all genera and species in the animal and vegetable worlds. The individual in all cases is assumed to be only the manifestation or modus existendi of the generic substance. Thus there is a bovine, an equine, and a feline substance, having an objective existence of which all oxen, all horses, and all animals of the cat-race, are the manifestations. And so of all species, whether of plants or animals. This is almost inconceivable. Compared to this theory, the assumption of a naturgeist, or anima mundi, or of one universal substance, is simplicity itself. That such a theory should be set forth and made the foundation, or rather the controlling principle of all Christian doctrine, is most unreasonable and dangerous. This realistic doctrine, until recently, has been as much exploded as the eternal ideas of Plato or the forms of Aristotle.

§ 4. Another form of the Realistic Theory.

There is, however, another phase of this doctrine, which it is necessary to mention. The doctrine that genera and species are real substances existing prior to individuals, and independent of them, is the old, genuine, and most intelligible form of Realism. It was expressed in the schools by saying that Universalia are ante rem. The other form of the doctrine asserts that the Universalia are in re. That is that the universals exist only in the individuals; and that the individuals alone are real. "L'identité des individus," says Cousin⁵ in his exposition of this form of the doctrine, "d'un même genre ne vient pas de leur essence même, car cette essence est différente en chacun d'eux, mais de certains éléments qui se retrouvent dans tous ces individus sans aucune différence, indifferenter. Cette nouvelle théorie diffère de la première en ce que les universaux ne sont plus 1'essence de 1'être, la substance m—me des choses; mais elle s'en rapproche en ce que les universaux existent réellement, et qu'existant dans plusieurs individus sans différence, ils forment leur identité et par là leur genre." Again,⁶ he says, "Le principe de la nouvelle théorie est que 1'essence de chaque chose est leur individualité, que les individus seuls existent, et qu'il n'y a point en dehors des individus d'essence appelèes les universaux, les espèces et les genres; mais que l'individu lui-même contient tout cela, selon les divers points de vue sous lequels on le considére."⁷ Thus Socrates as an individual man has his own essence, which, with its peculiarities, makes him Socrates. Neglect those peculiarities and consider him as rational and mortal, then you have the idea of species; neglect rationality and mortality, and consider him as an animal, then you have the idea of the genus; neglect all these forms ("relictis omnibus formis"), and you have only the idea of substance. According to this view "les espèces et les genres, les plus élevés comme les plus inférieurs, sont les individus eux-mêmes, considérés sous divers point de vue."⁸ This, according to the plain sense of the terms, amounts to the common doctrine. Individuals alone exist. Certain individuals have some distinguishing properties or attributes in common. They constitute a particular species. These and other individuals of different species have other properties common to them all, and they constitute a genus, and so orders, and classes, until we get to the highest category of being, which includes all. But if all beings are assumed to be one substance, which substance with certain added qualities or accidents constitutes a class, with certain other additions, an order, with still further modifications, a genus, a species, an individual, then we have the old theory back again, only extended so as to have a pantheistic aspect.

Some scientific men, instead of defining species as a gi cm' of individuals having certain characteristics in common, say with Professor Dana, that it "corresponds to the specific amount or condition of concentred force, defined in the act or law of creation;" or with Dr. Morton, that it is "a primordial organic form;" or with Agassiz, that it is an original immaterial principle which determines the form or characteristics of the individuals constituting a distinct group. These are only different modes of accounting for the fact that all the individuals of a given species have certain characteristics or fundamental qualities in common. To such statements there is no objection. But when it is assumed that these original primordial terms, as in the case of humanity, for example, are by the law of propagation transmitted from generation to generation, so as to constitute all the individuals of the species essentially one, that is, one in essence or substance, so that the act of the first individual of the species (of Adam, for example) being the act of the substance numerically the same in all the members of that species, is the act of each individual member, then something essentially new is added to the above given scientific definition of species, and we return to the original and genuine form of Realism in its most offensive features. It would be easy to show, (1st.) that generation or the law of propagation both in plants and in animals is absolutely inscrutable; as much so as the nature of matter, mind, or life, in themselves considered. We can no more tell what generation is, than what matter is, or what mind is. (2d.) That it is therefore unreasonable and dangerous to make a given theory as to the nature of generation or the law of propagation the basis for the explanation of Christian doctrines. (3d.) That whatever may be the secret and inscrutable process of propagation, it does not involve the transmission of the same numerical essence, so that a progenitor and his descendants are one and the same substance. This assumption is liable to all the objections already urged against the original form of the realistic doctrine. The theory is moreover destitute of all evidence either from experience or analogy. There is no conceivable sense in which all the oaks now on the earth are identical as to their substance with the oaks originally created. And there is no conceivable sense in whirl. we and all mankind are identically the same substance with Adam. If a thousand candles are successively lighted from one candle they do not thereby become one candle. There is not a communication of the substance of the first to the second, and of the second to the others in their order, so as to make it in any sense true that the substance of the first is numerically the same with that of all the others. The simple fact is that by the laws of matter ordained by God, the state in which a lighted candle is, produces certain changes or movements in the constituent elements of the wick of another candle when the two are brought into contact. which movements induce other movements in the constituent particles of the surrounding atmosphere, which are connected with the evolution of light and heat. But there is no communication of substance involved in the process. An acorn which falls from an oak to-day, is composed not of the same particles of matter from which the original acorn was formed, but of matter of the same kind, and arranged in the same way. It may be said to be imbued with chemical and vital forces of the same kind with the original acorn, but not with numerically the same forces. So of all plants and animals. We are of the same nature with Adam in the same sense that all animals of one species are the same. The sameness does not consist in numerical identity of essence or of vital forces, or of reason or will, but in the sameness of kind and community of origin.

Besides the origin and the nature of man, there are two other questions, which are more or less involved in what the Scriptures teach concerning mankind, and which demand attention before we turn to the moral and religious condition of the race. The first of these concerns the Origin of the Soul, and the second the Unity of the Race.