The section of Systematic Theology that deals with the nature of man is called Anthropology. The academic discipline of anthropology has the same name; some of its early practitioners thought that by studying small tribes they would find the true nature of man, uncorrupted by civilization. The Bible's anthropology teaches that man is like the animals, eating the same food as they do, and reproducing in the same way. But man is also made in God's image with an original knowledge, righteousness, and holiness and dominion over the creatures that makes him like God. He has an immortal soul that sets him apart from the animals. Since the entry of sin into the world, man has lost the image of God, having only remnants of it left in him, such as a sense of moral law. Finally, man is made male and female, mutually dependent on one another and equal heirs of eternal life. When people reject the Bible's anthropology, they produce huge errors in society. The rejection of man as male and female in our day has introduced the confusion of five “genders” to replace the two sexes. The claim that man is naturally good, or even morally neutral, led to Pol Pot's effort to cleanse Cambodia from evil by killing all of the corrupted educated people so that the society could get back to the purity of nature. And the Nazi embrace of the scientific teaching that man evolved at different times into superior and inferior races underpinned its policies of racial genocide. |
