2. Concomitants of man’s possession of the divine image

(a) Surroundings and society fitted to yield happiness and to assist a holy development of human nature (Eden and Eve). We append some recent theories with regard to the creation of Eve and the nature of Eden.

Eden = pleasure, delight. Tennyson: “When high in Paradise By the four rivers the first roses blew.” Streams were necessary to the very existence of an oriental garden. Hopkins, Script, Idea of Man, 107—“Man includes woman. Creation of a man without a woman would not have been the creation of man. Adam called her name Eve but God called their name Adam.” Mat. Henry: “Not out of his head to top him, nor out of his feet to be trampled on by him; but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be beloved.” Robert Burns says of nature: “Her ‘prentice hand she tried on man, And then she made the lasses, O!” Stevens, Pauline Theology, 329—“In the natural relations of the sexes there is a certain reciprocal dependence, since it is not only true that woman was made from man, but that man is born of woman (1 Cor. 11:11, 12).” Of the Elgin marbles Boswell asked: “Don’t you think them indecent?” Dr. Johnson replied: “No, sir; but your question is.” Man, who in the adult state possesses twelve pairs of ribs, is found in the embryonic state to have thirteen or fourteen. Dawson, Modern Ideas of Evolution, 148—“Why does not the male man lack one rib? Because only the individual skeleton of Adam was affected by the taking of the rib.… The unfinished vertebral arches of the skin-fibrous layer may have produced a new individual by a process of budding or gemmation.”

H. H. Bawden suggests that the account of Eve’s creation may be the “pictorial summary” of an actual phylogenetic evolutionary process by which the sexes were separated or isolated from a common hermaphroditic ancestor or ancestry. The mesodermic portion of the organism in which the urinogenital system has its origin develops later than the ectodermic or the endodermic portions. The word “rib” may designate this mesodermic portion. Bayard Taylor, John Godfrey’s Fortunes, 392, suggests that a genius is hermaphroditic, adding a male element to the woman, and a female element to the man. Professor Loeb, Am. Journ. Physiology, Vol. III, no. 3, has found that in certain chemical solutions prepared in the laboratory, approximately the concentration of sea-water, the unfertilized eggs of the sea-urchin will mature without the intervention of the spermatozoön. Perfect embryos and normal individuals are produced under these conditions. He thinks it probable that similar parthenogenesis may be produced in higher types of being. In 1900 he achieved successful results on Annelids, though it is doubtful whether he produced anything more than normal larvæ. These results have been criticized by a European investigator who is also a Roman priest. Prof. Loeb wrote a rejoinder in which he expressed surprise that a representative of the Roman church did not heartily endorse his conclusions, since they afford a vindication of the doctrine of the immaculate conception.

H. H. Bawden has reviewed Prof. Loeb’s work in the Psychological Review, Jan. 1900. Janósik has found segmentation in the unfertilized eggs of mammalians. Prof. Loeb considers it possible that only the ions of the blood prevent the parthenogenetic origin of embryos in mammals, and thinks it not improbable that by a transitory change in these ions it will be possible to produce complete parthenogenesis in these higher types. Dr. Bawden goes on to say that “both parent and child are dependent upon a common source of energy. The universe is one great organism, and there is no inorganic or non-organic matter, but differences only in degrees of organization. Sex is designed only secondarily for the perpetuation of species; primarily it is the bond or medium for the connection and interaction of the various parts of this great organism, for maintaining that degree of heterogeneity which is the prerequisite of a high degree of organization. By means of the growth of a lifetime I have become an essential part in a great organic system. What I call my individual personality represents simply the focusing, the flowering of the universe at one finite concrete point or centre. Must not then my personality continue as long as that universal system continues? And is immortality conceivable if the soul is something shut up within itself, unshareable and unique? Are not the many foci mutually interdependent, instead of mutually exclusive? We must not then conceive of an immortality which means the continued existence of an individual cut off from that social context which is really essential to his very nature.”

J. H. Richardson suggests in the Standard, Sept. 10, 1901, that the first chapter of Genesis describes the creation of the spiritual part of man only—that part which was made in the image of God—while the second chapter describes the creation of man’s body, the animal part, which may have been originated by a process of evolution. S. W. Howland, in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1903; 121–128, supposes Adam and Eve to have been twins, joined by the ensiform cartilage or breast-bone, as were the Siamese Chang and Eng. By violence or accident this cartilage was broken before it hardened into bone, and the two were separated until puberty. Then Adam saw Eve coming to him with a bone projecting from her side corresponding to the hollow in his own side, and said: “She is bone of my bone; she must have been taken from my side when I slept.” This tradition was handed down to his posterity. The Jews have a tradition that Adam was created double-sexed, and that the two sexes were afterwards separated. The Hindus say that man was at first of both sexes and divided himself in order to people the earth. In the Zodiac of Dendera, Castor and Pollux appear as man and woman, and these twins, some say, were called Adam and Eve. The Coptic name for this sign is Pi Mahi, “the United.” Darwin, in the postscript to a letter to Lyell, written as early as July, 1850, tells his friend that he has “a pleasant genealogy for mankind,” and describes our remotest ancestor as “an animal which breathed water, had a swim-bladder, a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull, and was undoubtedly a hermaphrodite.”

Matthew Arnold speaks of “the freshness of the early world.” Novalis says that “all philosophy begins in homesickness.” Shelley, Skylark: “We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those That tell of saddest thought.”—“The golden conception of a Paradise is the poet’s guiding thought.” There is a universal feeling that we are not now in our natural state; that we are far away from home; that we are exiles from our true habitation. Keble, Groans of Nature: “Such thoughts, the wreck of Paradise, Through many a dreary age, Upbore whate’er of good or wise Yet lived in bard or sage.” Poetry and music echo the longing for some possession lost. Jessica in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice: “I am never merry when I hear sweet music.” All true poetry is forward-looking or backward-looking prophecy, as sculpture sets before us the original or the resurrection body. See Isaac Taylor, Hebrew Poetry, 94–101; Tyler, Theol. of Greek Poets, 225, 226.

Wellhausen, on the legend of a golden age says: “It is the yearning song which goes through all the peoples: having attained the historical civilization, they feel the worth of the goods which they have sacrificed for it.” He regards the golden age as only an ideal image, like the millennial kingdom at the end. Man differs from the beast in this power to form ideals. His destination to God shows his descent from God. Hegel in a similar manner claimed that the Paradisaic condition is only an ideal conception underlying human development. But may not the traditions of the gardens of Brahma and of the Hesperides embody the world’s recollection of an historical fact, when man was free from external evil and possessed all that could minister to innocent joy? The “golden age” of the heathen was connected with the hope of restoration. So the use of the doctrine of man’s original state is to convince men of the high ideal once realized, properly belonging to man, now lost, and recoverable, not by man’s own powers, but only through God’s provision in Christ. For references in classic writers to a golden age, see Luthardt, Compendium, 115. He mentions the following: Hesiod, Works and Days, 109–208; Aratus, Phenom., 100–184; Plato, Tim., 233; Vergil, Ec., 4, Georgics, 1:135,. Æneid, 8:314.

(b) Provisions for the trying of man’s virtue.—Since man was not yet in a state of confirmed holiness, but rather of simple childlike innocence, he could be made perfect only through temptation. Hence the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:9). The one slight command best tested the spirit of obedience. Temptation did not necessitate a fall. If resisted, it would strengthen virtue. In that case, the posse non peccare would have become the non posse peccare.

Thomasius: “That evil is a necessary transition-point to good, is Satan’s doctrine and philosophy.” The tree was mainly a tree of probation, It is right for a father to make his son’s title to his estate depend upon the performance of some filial duty, as Thaddeus Stevens made his son’s possession of property conditional upon his keeping the temperance-pledge. Whether, besides this, the tree of knowledge was naturally hurtful or poisonous, we do not know.

(c) Opportunity of securing physical immortality.—The body of the first man was in itself mortal (1 Cor. 15:45). Science shows that physical life involves decay and loss. But means were apparently provided for checking this decay and preserving the body’s youth. This means was the “tree of life” (Gen. 2:9). If Adam had maintained his integrity, the body might have been developed and transfigured, without intervention of death. In other words, the posse non mori might have become a non posse mori.

The tree of life was symbolic of communion with God and of man’s dependence upon him. But this, only because it had a physical efficacy. It was sacramental and memorial to the soul, because it sustained the life of the body. Natural immortality without holiness would have been unending misery. Sinful man was therefore shut out from the tree of life, till he could be prepared for it by God’s righteousness. Redemption and resurrection not only restore that which was lost, but give what man was originally created to attain: 1 Cor. 15:45—“The first man Adam became a living soul. The last man Adam became a life-giving spirit”; Rev. 22:14—“Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have the right to come to the tree of life.”

The conclusions we have thus reached with regard to the incidents of man’s original state are combated upon two distinct grounds: