Views of Humanity

The first of these competing views of man is the outlook of classical antiquity, that is, the dominant perspective of the Greco-Roman world. Classical views of man, though varying in points from thinker to thinker, nevertheless had one idea in common: since the highest element in the human being was the nous or reasoning faculty, a person was to be understood primarily from the standpoint of that characteristic. A human being thinks or reasons; and that, according to Plato, Aristotle and other Greek thinkers, sets him apart from the rest of the visible world. In Aristotle the nous is something that comes to us primarily from without. In Plato the nous is the highest element of the soul. But in both of these thinkers reason is the crucial element in which women and men find their uniqueness.
The consequences of giving such unique value to reason are well known. First, that emphasis tends to deify reason, making it the God-element in a human being. The justification for such deification is in the essential characteristics of reason, namely, its ability to rise above what it sees, to evaluate, to criticize, to form, to create. Each can be thought of as a “godlike” characteristic. A second consequence of the classical elevation of reason is a resulting dualism in which the body becomes something evil. If mind is good, matter is bad. Hence arises that eternal conflict between spirit and mind on the one hand, and flesh and matter on the other, which gives substance to the most characteristic expressions of Greek art, drama and philosophy.
Another strain in Greek thought, seen most clearly in the mystery religions, viewed human nature in mechanical or materialistic terms—but that was not the dominant view of antiquity.
Two more facts may be noted about the classical view, as Niebuhr points out in his analysis. First, there is a basic optimism in the classical outlook. If reason is good and man is essentially reason, then man is essentially good. He is linked to the divine at the most fundamental level of his personality and has no defect there. On the other hand, there is a strange but unmistakably tragic note in the classical perspective. Thus, in the Iliad of Homer, Zeus is quoted as saying, “There is nothing, methinks, more piteous than a man, of all things that creep and breathe upon earth.” Or as Aristotle comments, “Not to be born is the best thing, and death is better than life.” That pervasive pessimism is particularly marked in the Greek tragedies. They portray man as the victim of circumstances or of his own tragic flaws, neither of which he can change. The classical world saw no meaning to history.
A variation of the classical outlook is one of the competing views of man in modern culture: simple rationalism. In harmony with the major Greek thinkers, modern exponents of this view emphasize the supremacy of our reason as setting us apart from the remainder of creation and assume that we are essentially good at the core of our beings. But the tragic element, perceived so clearly by the Greeks and Romans, is missing. Its lack does not mean that modern rationalists regard man as actually better than the ancients perceived him or that man has become better over the intervening centuries, but rather that modern thinkers are strangely unwilling to face all reality. Georg Friedrich Hegel’s theory of historical development through thesis, antithesis and synthesis leaves no room for any real stalemate or regression due to human sin. The same is true of Karl Marx’s dialectical materialism and Charles Darwin’s biological evolution. Each assumes unending and inevitable progression. In recent years, as an aftermath of two world wars and current international unrest, there is enormous difficulty in maintaining an unlimited optimism. War, hatred, starvation, sickness and turmoil must be reckoned with. Nevertheless, the dominant contemporary view is that such problems can all be handled, granted the opportunity for us fully to employ our reason.
Only a few perceptive thinkers seem aware that the root problems of this and every age are not in circumstances alone or in lack of education but rather in the very make-up of the human being. The rational faculty is important, as the Greeks saw it to be, but it is neither divine nor perfect. And the body, like the mind, is of inestimable worth, though fallen. Such thinkers see that in all parts of our being, we are simply less than we were intended to be.
In the modern world, however, another perspective on man is competing, with increasing success, with the classical view. It is linked to the minority view of the ancients mentioned earlier, reflected in the mystery religions and in such thinkers as Heraclitus, Pythagoras and Epicurus. In this view man is essentially flesh or matter rather than mind or spirit. That is to say that the entire universe, including us, is mechanistic. There is nothing apart from matter. There is no universal mind or higher reason with which we are linked and which gives form and direction to human life. Consequently, life is the inevitable working out of basic but impersonal laws.
The modern world has various expressions of the mechanistic view. One is the deterministic stance of Charles Darwin, according to which evolution proceeds by the laws of natural selection. Another example is communism, which views history as the outworking of the fixed laws of economics and class struggle. The behavioral psychology of B. F. Skinner of Harvard University also fits this category. Obviously, as in the ancient world, there are many variations among those who hold to a materialistic nature of things, but they are united in their commitment to an essential and amoral naturalism. Man is an animal—that is the argument—and an animal is only an exceedingly complex machine.
Most people cannot be content with that kind of naturalism, just as they cannot be content with the modern version of the classical perspective. In fact, they are caught in a dilemma leading to deep perplexity. Niebuhr analyzes it, saying:
If man insists that he is a child of nature and that he ought not to pretend to be more than the animal, which he obviously is, he tacitly admits that he is, at any rate, a curious kind of animal who has both the inclination and the capacity to make such pretensions. If on the other hand he insists upon his unique and distinctive place in nature and points to his rational faculties as proof of his special eminence, there is usually an anxious note in his avowals of uniqueness which betrays his unconscious sense of kinship with the brutes.
Nothing in modern life explains our nature except the truths of Christianity, for both the greatness and tragedy of man exceed the comprehensions of our culture. We sense that we are more than matter. We sense that we are made in God’s image, to be his companions. But we are also aware that we have lost that image and that the bond that should exist between ourselves and the Creator has been broken. Hence, “Under the perpetual smile of modernity there is a grimace of disillusion and cynicism.”
Where should one begin in one’s effort to achieve self-understanding? Formally we must begin with the Bible, for there God reveals our true condition to us (at least according to the convictions of Christianity). More specifically, we must begin with the Bible’s analysis of the Fall of man, for there, above all, we see not only what man was intended to be but also what he has unfortunately become because of sin.

Boice, J. M. (1986). Foundations of the Christian faith : A comprehensive & readable theology (190). Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.