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certain proof how, where, and when man was originated. If any true knowledge of it is to come
to us, it must come from some source other than present modern anthropology.”[The Origin of
Mankind, p. 76.]
D. THE ORIGIN OF MAN AND THE UNITY OF THE RACE.
1. SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY TO THE UNITY OF THE RACE.
Scripture teaches that the whole
human race descended from a single pair. This is the obvious sense of the opening chapters of
Genesis. God created Adam and Eve as the beginning of the human species, and commanded
them to be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. Moreover, the subsequent narrative
in Genesis clearly shows that the following generations down to the time of the flood stood in
unbroken genetic relation with the first pair, so that the human race constitutes not only a
specific unity, a unity in the sense that all men share the same human nature, but also a genetic
or genealogical unity. This is also taught by Paul in Acts 17:26, “And God made of one every
nation of man to dwell on all the face of the earth.” The same truth is basic to the organic unity
of the human race in the first transgression, and of the provision for the salvation of the race in
Christ, Rom. 5:12,19; I Cor. 15:21,22. This unity of the race is not to be understood realistically,
as it is represented by Shedd, who says: “Human nature is a specific or general substance
created in and with the first individuals of a human species, which is not yet individualized, but
which by ordinary generation is subdivided into parts, and those parts are formed into distinct
and separate individuals of the species. The one specific substance, by propagation, is
metamorphosed into millions of individual substances, or persons. An individual is a fractional
part of human nature separated from the common mass, and constituted a particular person,
having all the essential properties of human nature.”[Dogm. Theol. II, p. 72.] The objections to
this view will be stated in another connection.
2. THE TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO THE UNITY OF THE RACE.
Science in various ways confirms
the testimony of Scripture as to the unity of the human race. Scientific men have not always
believed in this. The ancient Greeks had their theory of autochtonism, to the effect that men
sprang from the earth by a sort of spontaneous generation, a theory that has no solid
foundation whatever, since spontaneous generation has never been proved but rather
discredited. Agassiz propounded the theory of the Coadamites, which assumes that there were
different centers of creation. As early as 1655 Peyrerius developed the theory of the
Preadamites, which proceeds on the assumption that there were men before Adam was
created. This theory was revived by Winchell, who did not deny the unity of the race, but
regarded Adam as the first ancestor of the Jews rather than as the head of the human race. And
in recent years Fleming, without being dogmatic in the matter, says that there are reasons to
assume that there were inferior races of man preceding the appearance of Adam on the scene