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Part Two: The Doctrine of Man in Relation to God
Man in His Original State
I. The Origin of Man
A. THE DOCTRINE OF MAN IN DOGMATICS.
The transition from Theology to Anthropology, that is, from the study of God to the study of
man, is a natural one. Man is not only the crown of creation, but also the object of God’s special
care. And God’s revelation in Scripture is a revelation that is not only given to man, but also a
revelation in which man is vitally concerned. It is not a revelation of God in the abstract, but a
revelation of God in relation to His creatures, and particularly in relation to man. It is a record
of God’s dealings with the human race, and especially a revelation of the redemption which
God has prepared for, and for which He seeks to prepare, man. This accounts for the fact that
man occupies a place of central importance in Scripture, and that the knowledge of man in
relation to God is essential to its proper understanding. The doctrine of man must follow
immediately after the doctrine of God, since the knowledge of it is presupposed in all the
following loci of Dogmatics. We should not confuse the present subject of study with general
Anthropology or the science of mankind, which includes all those sciences which have men as
the object of study. These sciences concern themselves with the origin and history of mankind,
with the physiological structure and the psychical characteristics of man in general and of the
various races of mankind in particular, with their ethnological, linguistic, cultural and religious
development, and so on. Theological Anthropology is concerned only with what the Bible says
respecting man and the relation in which he stands and should stand to God. It recognizes
Scripture only as its source, and reads the teachings of human experience in the light of God’s
Word.
B. SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF ORIGIN OF MAN.
Scripture offers us a twofold account of the creation of man, the one in Gen. 1:26,27, and the
other in Gen. 2:7,21-23. Higher criticism is of the opinion that the writer of Genesis pieced
together two creation narratives, the first found in Gen. 1:1—2:3, and the second in Gen. 2:4-
25; and that these two are independent and contradictory. Laidlaw in his work on The Bible
Doctrine of Man[pp. 25f.] is willing to admit that the author of Genesis made use of two
sources, but refuses to find here two different accounts of creation. He very properly denies
that in the second chapter we have “a different account of creation, for the plain reason that it
takes no account of the creation at large.” In fact, the introductory words of the narrative
beginning with Gen. 2:4, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they
were created,” seen in the light of the repeated use of the words “these are the generations” in