7 Chapter 1: Human Nature and the Christian Marc Clauson Human Nature and the Christian Theologians and philosophers have debated the question of what humans are like for thousands of years. Whether Christian or not, the questions are the same: Do we as humans have a fixed or changing basic nature? If so, what is it like? What makes us human? What happened (or did not happen) to human nature at the Fall? And how do the answers to these questions influence the way we think about politics, economics, psychology, sociology, theology, philosophy, and even science? This chapter seeks to answer these questions from an explicitly biblical standpoint, taking the Scriptures as the fundamental set of presuppositions on which to build any and all arguments. We will classify and articulate the various views on human nature into four categories, each having its historical antecedent, but only one consistent with Scripture. These four traditions are (1) AugustinianProtestant Reformed, (2) Semi-Pelagian-Arminian, (3) the philosophical view of John Locke, and (4) the Psychological-Nihilist. We believe that of the above views of human nature, the closest to the biblical view is the Augustinian-Protestant Reformed approach (No. 1). As such, we will now examine the biblical view of man, based explicitly on Scripture itself. This is where we must ultimately look for the truest idea of human nature. The Biblical View of Human Nature The first statement from God about man’s nature is the crucial one: Genesis 1:26–31 tells us that God made man and woman “in the image of God.” The phrase means first that in some sense humans were created to be like God — though not in His power or omniscience. Most theologians have said that the ways in which humans are like God (but not God) include our capacity for a right relationship with God, ability to reason, creativity, sociability, dominion over creation, and freedom or choice. Some of these are implied in the Genesis text (dominion in Gen. 1:26, sociability in 1:27). The Fall, however, changed all that in profound ways. Everyone knows the Genesis 3 account of the sin of Adam and Eve, their expulsion from the Garden, and the fundamental alteration in their nature. What changed
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