Module 3 - Anthropology: The Doctrine of Man

The scope of this third module is to explore what the Bible teaches about man. And what we learn from Scripture about God leads us to a right understanding of man. Men are tireless in their pursuit of understanding themselves. Their origin, their makeup, their identity, their purpose, and destiny, and so on. But true knowledge of man is not found within himself. It is discovered in what God reveals in Scripture. So if you wish to gain a deeper understanding of man, these lectures aim to benefit you. The lectures in this third module, on the Doctrine of Man, are introductory, not exhaustive, and they are intended to furnish you with a foundation that you can build upon in your further studies.

What if I were to ask you the question, What makes a rock different from a fruit tree? Well, you might think to yourself, Well, a rock is something that doesn’t move—it’s hard, it stays the same, whereas, a fruit tree grows. You see it come up out of the ground, it grows to maturity, it has leaves, it drops those leaves in the winter, and then eventually, after a few years, it begins to bear fruit, and so on. Well, true enough. Well then, what makes the difference between a tree and a fly—like a housefly. What makes the difference between those? And you’d say, Well, a fly is more animated. It has movement, it has more complexity. So it has eyes that can see, and patterns through which it moves, and its lifespan in obviously shorter, and so on. And that’s true as well. Well then, what makes the difference between a fly and a dog. Here again, we have some similarities, in this case, they’re both animated—they’re active creatures. But a dog has more capabilities, doesn’t it? It can do all sorts of things that a fly can’t do, and it has a relationship with people, and so, you can have a pet dog and train it tricks, and so on. Well, what is the difference between a dog and a person? In other words, what exactly makes a person a person? And you can’t say that they’re animated, right? They both run, they both eat, they both feel pain, they can even have a capacity for companionship, and so on. Dogs even communicate—they communicate to one another, and there is some measure of communication between people and dogs. So what is it? I mean, you can train a dog to do all sorts of things, and you can train a person to do all sorts of things. What exactly makes a person a person?

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Rev. Robert McCurley is the minister of the Gospel at Greenville Presbyterian Church in Taylors, SC, a congregation of the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing). https://www.greenvillepresbyterian.com