As per last week, the universal man does exist, for we must have a universal which the word ‘man’ refers to. The universal man does not exist, inasmuch as (contra liberalism) men are not interchangeable without regard for their history (which includes their physicality- see transsexual ideology). Clearly the meaning of the question ‘Is there a universal man?’ varies massively depending on what is meant by ‘universal man,’ as is typical of questions and statements both (if you ever want to debate fruitlessly, debate without establishing a shared semantic). Today, we’ll consider yet more answers to the question- including the Christian anthropology (view of man).

Is There a Universal Man? Yes #2

All men born of Adam have this in common: the sin nature. The sin of Adam in us is our will to disobey and to rebel, to say, “There is no God” (Ps. 14:1-3; Rom. 3:10-23). We all have this same twist in the fundamental nature of man, this same desecration of His image (Gen. 1:26; 3).

We have also the same solution offered to us. Not all are called, but all are offered salvation, if they will take it (the sin nature is such that men do not choose to take it (Rom. 1:18-21) unless they are called (Rom. 11:7)). For every man the promise is given: repent and believe (Mark 1:15), and the death of Christ will be your death, His life will be your life (Rom. 6:1-5). Thus calling; thus regeneration; thus justification. Adoption is component to this, that men are made His sons (Rom. 8:15), and sanctification is the fruit of this all, man living towards holiness (Matt. 5:48), even unto perfection of glorification after the death of the body (1 Cor. 15:45).

All men are called to the same sanctification, at its core. Thus all who are saved form one body (Romans 12:4-5), the church and the new Israel (which includes the old Israel insofar as it was faithful (Rom. 11:17-24; Eph. 3:6)). “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all,” declares Colossians 3:11, and in this sense the universal man is real: all men saved by Him are part of the body of the church.

Is There a Universal Man? No #2

All men have the same sin nature, but we must not think that therefore all men sin the same. Some men are driven to anger more easily; some men fall to greed. Some men live in lust. Many long for power, but what sort of power they desire can be of a thousand natures. Sauron, Saruman, Gollum, Melkor, Eol, and Lotho Sackville-Baggins were all evil, but they were evil all in different ways, different also from the wickedness of Denenthor, Turin, or Turgon, different likewise from the sin with which Frodo and Samwise struggled.

Different cultures too have differences in their besetting sins. One of the great sins which afflicted these United States prior to 1868 was the sin of chattel slavery (Ex. 21:16). Modern culture is not exempt from this. The West is full of beloved sins: baby-murder, homosexuality, parental neglect, materialism, blasphemy, pornography, and more. All these sins have a single essential character (rebellion against God), but different cultures indulge deeper in different expressions of that rebellion.

Different sins carve different paths in the sinner, and so while regeneration and justification is materially congruent in every person (for the first is the destruction and replacement of the sin nature (Ex. 36:26) and the second is the imputation of death away from and life into the person), sanctification must take a different course in every man. Every person exists in unique circumstances, with a unique character, with a unique pattern of sin. Each person, therefore, because of the contingent elements of his circumstance, requires a different course of teaching, chastening, and finally of death (though death itself is something all men share (Rom. 6:23)).

Men differ greatly also in whether they are called by God, whether they are called by Him to salvation or let to work out their own destruction (Rom. 8:1-2). The first group, those He calls, He makes into His own children, formed in the image of Christ (1 Cor. 15:49). The second group, those whom He destines for dishonorable use (Rom. 9:21), remain merely Adam’s children, lost in his sin (Job 14:4).

The universal man does exist in that all men have at their conception an inheritance of the Adam’s sin. It exists also in that all men may be saved, if they hear (though not all hear). Men are strictly bifurcated, however, in that some are called and therefore listen, while some are not called and therefore remain in self-enforced denial of the gospel salvation. This division is the root of a fundamental division between two classes of men: the righteous and the wicked. Then, within these groups, we have more variance still, each person’s particular spin on the human universal and each person’s particular history, individually and in relationship.

Is There a Universal Man? A Summary

The Universal Man of liberalism does not exist. Men are not ciphers which merely reflect their environment, without regard for history. Indeed, men have individual substance even beyond their history. Man does have a basic nature, though, a universal which is the substance of ‘man.’

What is this essence?

The proposal which seems natural to our age of empirical science is to find a least common denominator, some set of traits which at least the vast majority of people share. The reasoning is simple: what is shared between (nearly) all is common to all, while what is not shared is obviously specific. The method seems to work even to find the sinfulness of men, at least once we allow the Christian definition of sin.

The logical difficulty of this approach, viewed from within, is that we have no clear cut-off point. Is a conscience universal to men? But a noticeable subsection of people seem to lack a conscience. Is introspection? Certainly, some people seem never to engage in this activity; perhaps some even lack the capacity, whether by intellectual or spiritual cause. Is curiosity? The same holds. Is the ability to reason or empathize essential? Perhaps you want to say it is, but plenty of people lack one or both of these faculties, at least insofar as we can discover. Why should we consider them ‘exceptions’? A least common denominator, if it is consistent, must exclude anything which any member of the class excludes, however much the observer wants it included.

A strict observation of this principle leads to the thought-process which Lewis warns of in The Abolition of Man. The modern view of education and inculturation, Lewis states, is of shaping, not teaching. Man is to be freed of the chains of religion first, then of imagination and of reason, and then of existence: abolition, abolition, abolishment. Man, in this view, is merely a collection of material to be molded by proper environment, made into whatever the molder (himself a creation of the environment) desires. The man is a machine which other man-machines will make into whatever they desire, for man-as-such has no essential trait, nothing truly himself to bring to the table.

Do not think that this is merely a materialist point of view. Materialism is evil, doubtless, but it is only one species of one-substance philosophy, only one way of denying the Creator’s difference from His creation (and thus denying His authority and nature (Ps. 53:1)). Develop materialism far enough and it becomes indistinguishable from mysticism, from every other system which considers that ‘this world is all there is,’ whether by insisting that the other is essentially like this world (paganism, Mormonism, Spinoza, etc.) or by deeming the ‘other’ at best an epiphenomenon of a single-substance existence (materialism, Leibniz, any view which sees body as a substrate of the soul, Hegelianism). Note that some of the examples I give here could plausibly fall in either category, depending on formulation (Hegelianism, particularly).

The work of the shaping which Lewis portends is a magical labor. Why does it matter whether we use potions or chemicals, spells or propaganda? The essence of magic’s philosophy, as practiced throughout history, is that by precise manipulation of existence, man can control existence, whether his levers are demonic, aetheric, mechanical, electric, psychic, or some other fancy term. As the pagans believed sacrifices obliged favor from the gods, so modernity believes education can oblige a man to be perfect.

We must repudiate this reduction of man to a least common denominator, merely material or merely spiritual, without relationship to God (who is beyond all mechanism, being its basis and origin and authority). Yet, this possibility dismissed, what is the universal at the core of man? The dismissal of this question is a core flaw of Carl Benjamin’s postmodern traditionalism; he believes it impossible to pin down a universal at man’s core. This postmodernism, together with its corollaries which allow no true knowledge of God and thus no standard but only an ethic of ‘judgement,’[1] means that all the solutions he can offer are founded in the air, sky-cranes which assert ‘tradition’ merely on assertion, contrary to that tradition.

The nature of man is not added to or elaborated up by sin. The nature of man is rather broken down and destroyed by sin. The fundamental man is not mediocre, mere, minimum, or ‘average’ on the bell curve; the fundamental man which is present in potential (should God bring this forth (Ez. 11:19)) is exceptional. Why? Because the fundamental, universal man is: man made in His image (Gen. 1:26).

Therefore, God calls man to the fullness of man not by reduction, down to nirvana or to a shapeable mass. No, He calls man to remove all of himself which is willful nothingness (sin) and to become more substantial, more a person, more solid. Specifically, God calls men to imitate God (Ephesians 5:11), to be fitting and full images of Him (1 Cor. 15:49), not smirched by the idiocy and vileness of worshipping the image rather than the God the image portrays (Rom. 1:25). This call is the glory of sanctification, the fulfillment God calls His people to, which we will reach in heaven.

God bless.

---

[1] I don’t have sources for these as they relate to Benjamin on hand; I’m summarizing an understanding I’ve reached from viewing a quantity of his works.