Chapter II. The Original State Of Man.
In determining man's original state, we are wholly dependent upon Scripture. This represents human nature as coming from God's hand, and therefore “very good” (Gen. 1:31). It moreover draws a parallel between man's first state and that of his restoration (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24). In interpreting these passages, however, we are to remember the twofold danger, on the one hand of putting man so high that no progress is conceivable, on the other hand of putting him so low that he could not fall. We shall the more easily avoid these dangers by distinguishing between the essentials and the incidents of man's original state.
Gen. 1:31—“And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good”; Col. 3:10—“the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him”; Eph. 4:24—“the new man that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.”
Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:337-399—“The original state must be (1) a contrast to sin; (2) a parallel to the state of restoration. Difficulties in the way of understanding it: (1) What lives in regeneration is something foreign to our present nature (‘it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me’—Gal. 2:20); but the original state was something native. (2) It was a state of childhood. We cannot fully enter into childhood, though we see it about us, and have ourselves been through it. The original state is yet more difficult to reproduce to reason. (3) Man's external circumstances and his organization have suffered great changes, so that the present is no sign of the past. We must recur to the Scriptures, therefore, as well-nigh our only guide.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:164-195, points out that ideal perfection is to be looked for, not at the outset, but at the final stage of the spiritual life. If man were wholly finite, he would not know his finitude.
Lord Bacon: “The sparkle of the purity of man's first estate.” Calvin: “It was monstrous impiety that a son of the earth should not be satisfied with being made after the similitude of God, unless he could also be equal with him.” Prof. Hastings: “The truly natural is not the real, but the ideal. Made in the image of God—between that beginning and the end stands God made in the image of man.” On the general subject of man's original state, see Zöckler, 3:283-290; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:215-243; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:267-276; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 374-375; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:92-116.
I. Essentials of Man's Original State.
These are summed up in the phrase “the image of God.” In God's image man is said to have been created (Gen. 1:26, 27). In what did this image of God consist? We reply that it consisted in 1. Natural likeness to God, or personality; 2. Moral likeness to God, or holiness.