“What is man that you are mindful of him?” Psalm 8:4
We seem to be stuck in a diseased culture that cannot get past the first three words: What is man? Transgenderism, feminism, same-sex marriage, gender theory, transhumanism, and any number of the future iterations of the + in LGBTQ+ seem to demand instant attention and immediate compliance from the watching world. While these topics get all the attention in our current zeitgeist, I want to point your attention beyond the pundits and politicians to the words that follow: “that you are mindful of him” (Ps. 8:4). The question of man is never answered by looking at man. Anthropology follows theology.
David’s Psalm doesn’t begin with man, but with God. “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Ps. 8:1). He then moves to sing of creation, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place” (Ps. 8:3). Only when David acknowledges his Creator, the sovereign God of the universe, does he realize that he himself is the ultimate masterpiece of God’s good world. “Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (Ps. 8:5).
Everything in David’s vision is oriented Godward. When he looks at the things of the earth, his heart leaps for joy and that joy points him to the source of all joy, God himself. David’s anthropology is rooted in his theology. As Calvin points out at the beginning of his Institutes, true wisdom “consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves” (1.1.1).
When David rightly understands who God is, he can consider who he is, a man made in the very image of the Creator God. This ontology (what a thing is) precedes function (what a thing does), and when these things are properly ordered, David can then proceed to meditate on his function as vice-regent, one who has dominion over all creation and carries out the cultural mandate to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). Cultivation flourishes when it goes with the grain of the world God made. David sings of that ordered dominion:
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas (Ps. 8:6–8).
David’s vocational work ends with doxology, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Ps. 8:9).
The pattern of biblical anthropology is evident: God, man, creation. Mess up the order and rather than man ruling over creation, creation will rule over man. The rotten fruit of a secular age sprouts from its decaying roots. Ideology has replaced ontology. Psychology has replaced biology. Paganism has replaced theology. Man has replaced God.
It’s easy to watch the news and be outraged. But shouting at your TV or phone screen will do little to remedy the disease. We live in a sick culture and a confused generation when it comes to issues surrounding anthropology. The diagnosis is spiritual amnesia. The remedy is retrieving the God-oriented view of man as created in the image of God, male and female (Gen. 1:27). When Christians recover this vision to its fullest, our neighbors will take notice and witness true human flourishing. We can only hope they will be awakened from their delusions, look up, and behold the God of Creation in Jesus Christ, who loves them and gave himself for their sins (Gal. 1:4; 2:20).
