II. The Biblical View of Man
Now then, what is man? Man, like every animal on the planet, is a creature. Man is the result of God’s ingenious, wonderful work of creation.
Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Genesis 1:26-27 “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
But as we see in those passages that is not the end of it. Unlike all of the other creatures we are in God’s image. This means human life has tremendous value, a concept lost in today’s world.
Monotomy
The next important question is what is man made up of? There are three major views concerning this matter. First of all, the view that man has only a physical body. Not surprisingly this is the view is held by the world at large today. We can easily dismiss this view as wrong and unfounded by looking at several passages of Scripture. Genesis 1:27 shows, from the beginning, that there is more than a physical body to man. Man has the image of god in him.
Acts 17:29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone– an image made by man’s design and skill.” (Emphasis mine).
1 Corinthians 11:7 “A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.” (Emphasis mine)
This image of God in us includes our souls, minds and consciences.
Matthew 22:37 “Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’”
Philippians 4:7 “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Titus 1:15 “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.”
Our souls are the spiritual part of us. No one can truly deny the fact that we are more than just physical beings without shunning Scripture and human experience also. Our minds are tools that God has given us. With them we can imaging, contemplate, etc. They are not just our brains. Animals have brains, but no minds. Their brains control their bodily functions, but they have no mind to comprehend or contemplate those functions. The very fact that we can contemplate our own existence is evidence of our minds and spirituality. Our consciences are what God has given all of us from conception to differentiate between right and wrong and to have a realization that God exists. Ever felt really bad after doing something you shouldn’t have done? That’s your conscience. We are not born with “Tabula Rasa” or a blank slate.
Another thing pointed out is that the conscience lies between the spirit and soul and the cognizance. That is, awareness and perception lies between the soul and body. Thus man becomes five parts. Now a further distinction is made between the three basic parts. The spirit is said to be perfect. The soul is somewhat corrupt and the physical body is even more corrupt.
This fact also explains John 4:24. The fact that we are in God’s image does not mean that we must also have three parts. We are less than God, but the fact that we still have more than one part to us is a testament to God’s image in us.
Another huge problem is that in this view there is a perfect part to us. Even after sin the spirit is still perfect it is just repressed. Biblically this is clearly false. We are sinful and totally corrupt. There is nothing good in and of ourselves.
Romans 3:10-18 “As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes
Romans 7:18 “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.“
Dichotomy
Colossians 2:13 “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,“Similarly our bodies die due to the curse of sin, but our spirit (soul) can still be alive if we are in Christ.
Romans 8:10 “But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.“
If the soul is not alive in Christ it suffers eternally in hell in what is often called the second, eternal death.
Matthew 10:28 “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
All of these Scriptures plus many more provide adequate support for this view.
Life and Death
Now that we know the parts of man we can ask the question of the century: when does life begin? It is at conception, after birth, at 8 weeks, or at the start of the second trimester? If it is at, say the start of the second trimester, when exactly is that? Can we nail it down to the very second? All of these questions are serious especially when dealing with abortion. I believe life begins at conception. The moment the male sperm cell hits the female egg cell life begins. It may be a mystery to us how God creates the child’s soul or how sin is passed on during this process, but nevertheless life has begun.
Before we look at what the Bible has to say we must realise that the Bible isn’t a medical textbook and does not give specific answers in this area. However, there are still principles that can be applied.
Psalm 139:13-16 “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Luke 1:44 “As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.”
Job 31:15 “Did not he who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same one form us both within our mothers?”
All these passages speak of the child in the womb as a live human being made by God.
Exodus 21:22-25 sees the child as having life that is the same life that “grown-ups” have:
“If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.“
Of course people object and say the child is not really alive yet because God is only starting the forming process and at birth he is finished. This is foolish for a few reasons. First this objection is made to justify abortion (murder of unborn children). However, even if their objection were true, aborting this “thing” in the womb would be just as bad as murder because we are still destroying God’s handiwork which in this case is his image which he is working into us. Secondly, the objection implies that there are stages in between life and death. This is utter nonsense. A person no matter how old, prenatal or postnatal, is either alive or dead. There is no intermediate state where God is trying desperately to finish his project before 9 months is up. Lastly, look again at Luke 1:44. In the womb the child leapt for joy! It sounds to me like the child already has life!
While these passages do not explicitly say life begins at conception they do show that the child in the womb is alive and in the image of God. Conception is the only logical answer however. What authority do we have to say that life only begins at birth anyway?
Now then, when is a person dead? Please note that I am on speaking in terms of the physical body, but at the same time recognizing that the body cannot live without the soul. After all death is when the soul leaves the body. The body and soul are intricately connected. When the body stops functioning due to damage, the soul will leave. Yet the body cannot function on its own. The difficulty today is determining when a person is really dead. Ventilators can artificially keep the body running, but is the soul still there? You see there is a difference between true life which includes the spiritual and pure biological life which is just the body breathing, the heart beating, etc. Now that we have the definition of what death is, however, we can answer some of the questions later on.
Let us recap. Man is in the image of God. This separates us from animals. Man is sinful and deserves death. This death is the curse of sin. Man, however, is redeemable by God. Though our bodies will die, our souls will live on if Christ has redeemed them. Body and soul are the two parts to man. The body is physical and the soul is immaterial. Lastly, I will add that the purpose of man is to glorify God. Hopefully this paper will help show how to better do so in the area of medicine.
There are five major issues I will be dealing with: Abortion, Infanticide, Euthanasia, Artificial Fertilization and Cloning. It is important to note that in a lot of cases black and white rules cannot be set down. As we will see certain situations can become very complex. We need to take one situation at a time.
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), pp.472-486.
