Johannes Marck’s Marrow of Christian Theology, Didactic-Elenctic XIII
James Dodson
CHAPTER XIII
Of Man
I. After God we consider man, whose name is commonly derived by allusion from humus [earth], just as the Greek ἄνθρωπος [man] is commonly derived from looking upward. But here neither sex, nor a special state, nor Adam as the first man is denoted, but the nature common to both sexes, to every state, and to all individuals, as in Gen. 1:27—
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—“and God created man,” etc.; “male and female created He them”; Gen. 5:1, “in the day that God created man,” etc.; “male and female created He them,” etc.
II. Man, who, if he is sane, cannot doubt his own existence, is defined as: a creature consisting of an organic and erect body, and of a rational soul united to it; made for the acknowledgment and proclamation of the divine glory; created by God in a most blessed first state; from there fallen through sin into the greatest misery; from that misery to be restored in great part through Christ, and to be made eternally blessed.
III. Man is a creature of God: Eccles. 12:1, “remember thy Creator”; Acts 17:26, 28, “He hath made of one blood all nations of men,” etc.; “for in Him we live, and move, and have our being,” etc. For He both infuses each soul: Heb. 12:9, “shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?” etc.; and wonderfully forms the body: Job 10:9–10, “remember, I beseech Thee, that Thou hast made me as the clay,” etc.; “hast Thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?” And He once produced the human race, with all other things.
IV. Man was thus created on the sixth day, after all other things, as being more imperfect; and woman on the same day indeed with man: Gen. 1:27, whence all things were then very good: Gen. 1, last verse, compared with Gen. 2:18, “it is not good that man should be alone,” etc. But the most excellent counsel of the Triune God preceded: Gen. 1:26, “let Us make man in Our image,” etc., which argues the excellency of this work.
V. First man was created, on account of excellence: 1—
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—Cor. 11:8–9, “for the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man; neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man,” etc. Then woman was made, one for one. Hence the fable is foolish that the first man was two-bodied and ἀνδρόγυνον [androgynous], since Adam was at first alone and perfect, not monstrous.
The Jews object:
1. Man is said to have been created singularly: Gen. 1:27.
Reply: The name is taken collectively; hence the plural follows.
2. The name איש denotes a side, from which Eve was formed.
Reply: It is more rightly translated “husband”; nor was the side anything except the material of the woman.
3. Adam is said to have been formed before and behind: Ps. 139:5.
Reply: This concerns David and God’s surrounding protection.
VI. As the man was first called Adam, so the woman was first called Ishah; but after the fall she was called Eve, חוה, Gen. 3:20, because she was the mother of all living, with respect to natural life, which afterward flowed from her to all. This is clear from “all living,” as in Ps. 143:2, etc.; from the origin of all men from Eve; and from the connection of the name with the promised birth of children just before.
Yet others wish rather to refer life here to spiritual life. They object:
1. The promise of the gospel concerning the seed of the woman preceded: Gen. 3:15.
Reply: There explicit mention of life was not made, nor was its whole force at once understood by Adam.
2. Men after sin should be called dead rather than living.
Reply: They are spiritually dead, yet naturally living, and are commonly called living.
3. This sense is more excellent.
Reply: The use of the phrase, the connection of the matters, and the state of Adam must be considered.
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VII. There were no men before Adam. Moses relates that he alone was immediately created, and Paul teaches that from him as the first all men flowed: Acts 17:26, “He hath made of one blood all nations of men”; 1 Cor. 15:45, ἐγένετο ὁ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος Ἀδὰμ εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν [the first man Adam was made a living soul], etc.
Objection 1. Sin is placed before the law: Rom. 5:12–14.
Reply: Before the law of Moses, not before the precept given to Adam.
Objection 2. In the history of Cain, there appear to be many earlier men.
Reply: Many years had then passed, and the human race from Adam had been multiplied.
Objection 3. Men could have inhabited places from which no passage appears to our part of the world.
Reply: Shipwrecks, earthquakes, etc., could have separated them from us.
Objection 4. The years of the Orientals ascend above Adam.
Reply: These computations are fabulous.
VIII. First, Adam’s body was formed from the dust of the earth, of size not gigantic but ordinary, since Josh. 15:13 speaks not of Adam but of Arba: “this was a great man among the Anakims.” Then the soul was breathed in: Gen. 2:7, “and He breathed into his nostrils נשמת חיים [the breath of life],” that is, it was created in him by the immediate power of God. This is believed to have happened outside Paradise, from Gen. 2:8, “and He planted,” etc.; “and there He put the man whom He had formed”; and Gen. 3:23, “therefore Jehovah God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.”
IX. Eve’s body was formed from Adam’s rib, which rested in him as the author of the human race, while Adam was overcome with sleep; and indeed in Paradise, after the names of the animals had been given: Gen. 2:15–21. But Eve’s soul must be believed to have been breathed in the same way as Adam’s.
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X. One part of man is the body, which we know sooner and more than the soul, and which is most skillfully made: Ps. 139:14–15, “I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” etc.; “my substance was not hid from Thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth,” etc. It is also superior to others in its erect form. If in some respects the bodies of other animals seem to excel, yet in disposition for the use of reason, this body must be set before them all.
XI. But the soul is the other part—not manifold, but one in each person: Matt. 10:28; Matt. 16:26; Ps. 22:21, “deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog,” etc. When Paul speaks of spirit and soul, he understands different faculties of the soul: 1 Thess. 5:23; Heb. 4:12. Among the Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins its names are taken from breath, because by breath it was placed in man, and because it is shown to be in man by breathing. This soul is called rational, to distinguish it from the vegetative soul in plants and the sensitive soul in beasts. It is not lawful, either by Scripture or daily experience, to deny all life and sense to beasts.
XII. Concerning the rational soul, which we know with greatest difficulty, it must be held:
1. That it is by no means corporeal: Eccles. 12:7, “and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it”; Luke 24:39, πνεῦμα σάρκα καὶ ὀστέα οὐκ ἔχει [a spirit hath not flesh and bones]; Matt. 10:28,—
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—τῶν δὲ μὴ δυναμένων ἀποκτεῖναι [of them which are not able to kill], etc.; against various philosophers and Tertullian.
Objection 1. A finger and tongue are attributed to the soul: Luke 16:24.
Reply: This is only for the propriety of the parable.
Objection 2. Souls were seen by John: Rev. 6:9.
Reply: Not in essence, but in certain emblems, as God Himself is represented.
Objection 3. Similar marks of soul are found in parents and children.
Reply: Not always; and these flow from the soul’s close union with the body.
2. That it is not bare thought; for thought is an action, and indeed a new action in each moment, sometimes even absent, especially in infants, who do not yet actually sin: Rom. 5:14; 9:11, καὶ γὰρ τῶν μὴ ἀμβρισάντων ἐπὶ τῷ ὁμοιώματι τῆς παραβάσεως Ἀδάμ [even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression]; Rom. 9:11, μήπω γὰρ γεννηθέντων, μηδὲ πραξάντων τι ἀγαθὸν ἢ κακόν [for the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil], etc.
Objection 1. General thought must be distinguished from particular thought.
Reply: Each is an action; nor is there any general thought except by abstraction of the mind.
Objection 2. The soul, whether it wills, affirms, denies, etc., always thinks.
Reply: These rational actions are not always present; nor therefore is the soul changed into its own actions.
Objection 3. Nothing but thought is conceived by us in the soul.
Reply: This is false, since substance with the faculty of thinking must be presupposed in the concept of thought; nor must things always be judged from our concept.
XIII. Therefore the soul is a spiritual substance, which, when united with the body, constitutes man. To spirituality belongs, besides the power of outward operation, the faculty of intellect, perceiving and judging; and insofar as it reflects upon the man himself, it is called conscience. A further species of this—
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—is memory. Then there is the faculty of will, desiring or turning away from good and evil, true or apparent. And this is especially the seat of liberty, which consists solely in rational willingness: 1 Cor. 7:36; 2 Cor. 8:3, αὐθαίρετοι [willing of themselves], etc.; 2 Cor. 9:7, ἕκαστος καθὼς προαιρεῖται τῇ καρδίᾳ [every man according as he purposeth in his heart], etc. Nor can this ever be so lost by man. But the affections and passions of the soul are referred to both faculties; and our body cooperates much in stirring up and fostering them.
XIV. Even today the soul is created in each individual immediately by God: Eccles. 12:7, “and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it”; Zech. 12:1, “who formeth the spirit of man within him”; Heb. 12:9, τῷ πατρὶ τῶν πνευμάτων [to the Father of spirits], etc. This is also taught by the indivisible and incorporeal nature of our soul.
Yet some ancients and moderns wish that souls are propagated by parents. They object:
1. Man begets the whole man.
Reply: Yet not the whole of man, just as this also holds in the killing of a man: Matt. 10:28.
2. Souls come forth from the thigh: Gen. 46:26.
Reply: This must be understood synecdochically, just as corpses themselves come under the name “soul.”
3. Similarity of manners proves this.
Reply: That flows from the close union of the soul with the body, and it does not always obtain.
4. Souls are compared to lamps, and therefore are propagated like the light of a candle: Prov. 20:27.
Reply: This likeness must not be extended beyond the knowledge of all things.
XV. The soul is also immortal, so that it does not perish or dissolve in the death of man: Eccles.—
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—12:7, “and the spirit shall return unto God”; Matt. 10:28, “which are not able to kill the soul”; Luke 16:22–23, “and it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried into Abraham’s bosom,” etc. This is also taught by its incorporeal nature.
The Thnetopsychites and Psychopannychites object:
1. The saying of Solomon: Eccles. 3:19, “that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one spirit; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity,” etc.
Reply: This must be understood either of the wish of the ungodly, or of outward appearance, compared with verse 21, “who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?”
2. The dead do not exist, nor do they praise God: Job 7:8; Ps. 6:5.
Reply: This is to be understood of these earthly places, and of the bodily part.
3. Only the godly abide after death and onward: 1 John 2:17.
Reply: A blessed abiding is denoted here, and exclusion from it is grievous, as may be gathered by comparison with other phrases.
XVI. The union between soul and body is most close, so that no like union is found among created things. It is:
1. Local, so that the soul is in the body without extension or any division, according to Acts 20:10, ἡ γὰρ ψυχὴ αὐτοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ ἐστιν [for his life is in him]; and its operations are through the whole body.
2. Natural, so that one third nature arises from soul and body united to one another.
3. Productive of the mutual communication of actions and passions, so that through the senses the soul knows external objects, even with sufficient infallibility if all requisites are present; and the members, being rightly disposed, are moved at the command of the soul. Yet this mutual communication of works does not complete the union itself.
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XVII. The soul, separated in death, will one day be restored to its own body; nor is it therefore transferred from body into body, as the Jews suppose in their Pythagorean μετεμψύχωσιν [transmigration of souls], wrongly adducing the law concerning raising up seed to one’s brother, which concerns inheritance and name.
XVIII. The end of created man is the glory of God: Prov. 16:4, “Jehovah hath made all things for Himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil,” etc. This glory is demonstrated by God in man; and man alone, among bodily things, is fit to acknowledge and proclaim it.