The Mannishness of Man
Referenced in: Creative Acts as Evidence of Personhood
Schaeffer’s term for the irreducible qualities of human beings that cannot be explained by purely materialistic or deterministic frameworks. These include: personality (we are not machines), creativity (we make things that did not exist before), moral categories (we cannot stop using words like “ought” and “should” even when our philosophy denies them), love that transcends biological utility, and the universal human sense that death is an enemy, not just a biological endpoint. The “mannishness of man” is not an argument from design; it is an argument from the data of human experience. Every human being lives as though these things are real, regardless of what their stated philosophy says. A materialist who insists that love is just neurochemistry still grieves at a funeral. Schaeffer argued that this is because we are made in the image of a personal God; the mannishness of man is the fingerprint of the Creator on the creature.