ECTION B

PERSONALITY

{55}

CHAPTER IV

THE ESTIMATE OF MAN

Having thus far laid the foundations of our study by a discussion of its
presuppositions and sources, we are now prepared to consider man as the
personal subject of the new life. The spirit of God which takes hold of
man and renews his life must not be conceived as a foreign power breaking
the continuity of consciousness. The natural is the basis of the
supernatural. It is not a new personality which is created; it is the
old that is transformed and completed. If there was not already implicit
in man that which predisposed him for the higher life, a consciousness to
which the spirit could appeal, then Christianity would be simply a
mechanical or magical influence without ethical significance and having
no relation to the past history of the individual. But that is not the
teaching of our Lord or of His apostles. We are bound, therefore, to
assume a certain substratum of powers, physical, mental and moral, as
constituting the raw material of which the new personality is formed.
The spirit of God does not quench the natural faculties of man, but works
through and upon them, raising them to a higher value.[1]

I. But before proceeding to a consideration of these elements of human
consciousness to which Christianity appeals, we must glance at two
opposite theories of human nature, either of which, if the complete view
of man, would be inimical to Christianity.[2]

{56}

1. The first view is that man _by nature is morally good_. His natural
impulses are from birth wholly virtuous, and require only to be left to
their own operation to issue in a life of perfection. Those who favour
this contention claim the support of Scripture. Not only does the whole
tone of the Bible imply the inherent goodness of primitive man, but many
texts both in the Old and New Testaments suggest that God made man
upright.[3] Among the Greeks, and especially the Stoics, this view
prevailed. All nature was regarded as the creation of perfect reason,
and the primitive state as one of uncorrupted innocence. Pelagius
espoused this doctrine, and it continued to influence dogmatic theology
not only in the form of Semi-Pelagianism, but even as modifying the
severer tenets of Augustine. The theory received fresh importance during
the revolutionary movement of the eighteenth century, and found a strong
exponent in Rousseau. 'Let us sweep away all conventions and
instituti