God could never create an intelligent being evenly balanced between good and evil—“on the razor’s edge”—“on the fence.” The preacher who took for his text “_Adam, where art thou?_” had for his first head: “It is every man’s business to be somewhere;” for his second: “Some of you are where you ought not to be;” and for his third: “Get where you ought to be, as soon as possible.” A simple capacity for good or evil is, as Augustine says, already sinful. A man who is neutral between good and evil is already a violator of that law, which requires likeness to God in the bent of his nature. Delitzsch, Bib. Psychol., 45-84—“Personality is only the basis of the divine image,—it is not the image itself.” Bledsoe says there can be no created virtue or viciousness. Whedon (On the Will, 388) objects to this, and says rather: “There can be no created moral desert, good or evil. Adam’s nature as created was pure and excellent, but there was nothing meritorious until he had freely and rightly exercised his will with full power to the contrary.” We add: There was nothing meritorious even then. For substance of these objections, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:346. Lessing said that the character of the Germans was to have no character. Goethe partook of this cosmopolitan characterlessness (Prof. Seely). Tennyson had Goethe in view when he wrote in The Palace of Art: “I sit apart, holding no form of creed, but contemplating all.” And Goethe is probably still alluded to in the words: “A glorious devil, large in heart and brain, That did love beauty only, Or if good, good only for its beauty”; see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 331; Robert Browning, Christmas Eve: “The truth in God’s breast Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed: Though he is so bright, and we so dim, We are made in his image to witness him.” B. The image of God as consisting simply in man’s natural capacity for religion. This view, first elaborated by the scholastics, is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. It distinguishes between the image and the likeness of God. The former (צלם—Gen. 1:26) alone belonged to man’s nature at its creation. The latter (דמות) was the product of his own acts of obedience. In order that this obedience might be made easier and the consequent likeness to God more sure, a third element was added—an element not belonging to man’s nature—namely, a supernatural gift of special grace, which acted as a curb upon the sensuous impulses, and brought them under the control of reason. Original righteousness was therefore not a natural endowment, but a joint product of man’s obedience and of God’s supernatural grace.