Today, many Westerners are stumbling over questions that previous ages took for granted, like “What is a woman?”1 This new confusion points to a deficit in our age; we lack the resources to know and name ourselves as we are. The enduring secular materialism of the West, so often presumed in its public institutions, media and discourses, has left us with a stunted imagination concerning the purposes and possibilities for which humans live and move and have our being. What does it mean to be human? And what’s a human for, anyway?
To answer such basic questions we may be tempted to begin with classical philosophical resources or contemporary sciences. Vern Poythress insists that the only sure starting point for true knowledge of self is attentive listening to that which has been revealed in the Scriptures. “Making Sense of Man” (P&R, 2024) is accordingly a courageous exposition of the Bible’s varied texts concerning the doctrine of man.
Poythress engages such topics as the imago Dei, human origins and composition, the intermediate state, living within covenants, sexual difference, and free agency. At each point he proves his commitment to searching and expositing the Scriptures, using marked linguistic and exegetical skill and sensitivity, along with humble acknowledgments of interpretive limitations. “[T]he purpose of the Bible is never to undertake to give detailed answers to all the philosophical curiosities” but to provide “what people need to know” (309).
Beginning with exegetical explorations of Genesis 1-3 (Part 1), Poythress pivots to present four main resources for interpretation (Part 2) which he develops throughout the remainder of his book. These resources serve as his interpretive guides through the remaining sections (Parts 3-7). Poythress claims to offer nothing new here in substance, but simply a fresh perspective on “the teachings that the tradition of Reformed theology has expounded for several hundred years” (625).
What Poythress sees as his unique contribution, then, is not the substance of his conclusions, but his methodological commitments. For this reason it is worth outlining each of these commitments in turn.
Presuppositional Apologetics
Poythress commends the methodological insights of “presuppositional apologetics” for illuminating topics in the doctrine of man. The Christian cannot construct his understanding of humanity from a neutral standpoint, but only from the standpoint of faith seeking understanding. Presupposing the truth of the Scriptures as revelation from the trinitarian God, Christians, enabled by the Spirit, humbly seek to hear what God has already spoken concerning his creation.
We cannot arrive at the truth concerning ourselves apart from God’s speech and the work of his Spirit. Whatever else we may discover concerning man in the world, God has made clear the foundational tenets of who we are: we are creatures of God, male and female, in his image and likeness, with material bodies and reasonable souls, created in righteousness and wholeness yet in Adam fallen and broken, and in need of an alien righteousness through a Redeemer who makes us whole again.
A presuppositional methodology likewise calls the Christian to interrogate the assumptions that undergird and shape every interpretation of God’s Word and world (9). Poythress argues throughout the book, through each topic, that non-Christian presuppositions will invariably hinder the interpreter’s ability to hear the voice of God in the Scriptures concerning man. Indeed, in a fast-paced critique of Western modernist (and postmodernist) assumptions (individualism, methodological naturalism, etc.), Poythress indicates the ways that we twist the data before us, making little sense of man.
Semantics
When seeking to understand a biblical doctrine of man, interpreters must take great care to understand the way language is used in particular contexts to prevent misunderstanding and misappropriating particular words and concepts. Interpreters are always at risk of wrongly imposing their own developed concepts onto a word whose meaning is to be grasped within its own cultural-linguistic context. For example, the word “soul” conjures opposing concepts in ancient Greek philosophical contexts compared to biblical uses of the term. Interpreters need to be attentive to these concerns, allowing our terms and concepts alike to be shaped and reshaped according to the words and concepts as given and developed in Scripture.
Metaphysical Frameworks
Attending to metaphysical frameworks comes as an extension of the presuppositional task (above). Poythress draws the reader’s attention to the fact that one’s underlying assumptions about the world’s structures inevitably shape one’s reading of God’s Word and world. For example, if one assumes that the world is fundamentally material, devoid of anything “spiritual” or “transcendent,” this will shape one’s conclusions and expectations concerning what a human is and what a human is for. Our interpretive conclusions are shaped by the stories we live by. In order to hear clearly what God says concerning man, we need to be aware of how our underlying beliefs may hinder our hearing.
Analogy
Humans relate to God, and come to the knowledge of God, by analogy. Humans likewise come to knowledge of the world, as we encounter new things and new ideas, by analogy. Analogy illuminates that which is less known or unknown through comparison to what is better or more clearly known. For example, that humans are created in the image of God draws us into an analogy with God.
One of the key analogies that Poythress applies to each topic throughout the book is the lex Christi, the “law of Christ.” Lex Christi refers to the Ten Commandments as given and fulfilled in Christ, which serve in turn as ten “perspectives” on the doctrine of man.
In short, since each commandment reveals something of who man is created to be, each commandment offers a perspective on the nature and calling of man in relation to God. For example, since the first commandment calls humanity to have no other gods before God, we infer from this that humans are obligated to live in a manner that honors God’s absolute supremacy in every aspect of their lives. In this way, the law of Christ leads us to knowledge of self, adding clarity to what it means to be fully human. Furthermore, since God’s law is universal, its implications are likewise universal for our understanding of the doctrine of man.
There is much to be commended in this voluminous work (more than 600 pages). Poythress proves his absolute commitment to expositing the Scriptures with rigor and a keen attention to how each part fits within the canonical whole. In the remainder of what follows I offer a mix of concerns and commendations.
Poythress utilizes a multiperspectival approach, engaging every topic in the book from multiple vantage points. For example, he looks at the nature of humanity through the offices of Christ as prophet, priest, and king; through the lens of each of the ten commandments; from the vantage point of Acts 2, the theme of Sonship, etc. Often several perspectives will be applied as lenses to a single topic.
While often engaging and insightful, at times the multiplicity of perspectives can feel overbearing and cumbersome. The sheer volume of what Poythress is attempting to accomplish with these varied perspectives may, for some readers, detract from the clarity of his arguments.
For all its merits, I likewise fear that deploying multiple perspectives could tempt readers to an endless pursuit of more perspectives, as though the surest way to exegetical clarity is to find yet another angle from which one can examine the same text.
This approach also seems to presume that biblical interpretation is the task of the sole interpreter as he considers and reconsiders texts from various perspectives. The historic and Reformational practices of biblical interpretation were also multiperspectival, but the emphasis was not on the sole interpreter’s multiple perspectives, but on multiple perspectives from multiple interpreters – namely, on reading Scripture with the tradition.
In this sense, some may criticize Poythress for being overly optimistic about his own exegetical powers to interpret Scripture with recourse to a multiplicity of perspectives without a multiplicity of persons.
While readers may not agree with all of his conclusions, they will find in this work an insightful and consistently exegetical approach to the doctrine of man by an experienced and proficient guide, another voice to be heard in the long tradition of Christian thinkers seeking to make sense of man.
Lyndon Jost serves as associate pastor of Christ Church (PCA) in Toronto and director of the Reformed House of Studies at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto.
1 The question is pressed in the controversial documentary by Matt Walsh, “What Is a Woman?” The Daily Wire, 2022.