E.W. Bullinger — Anthropology
b1 — Number in Scripture
Human Physiology and the Number Seven
Bullinger treats human physiology extensively as evidence for the principle of the number seven in God’s creation. He describes the sevenfold division of human life:
“The days of man’s years are ‘Three-score years and ten’ (7×10). In seven years the whole structure of his body changes: and we are all familiar with ‘the seven ages of man.’ There are seven Greek words used to describe these seven ages, according to Philo: 1. Paidion (child), 2. Pais (boy), 3. Meirakion (lad, stripling), 4. Neaniskos (young man), 5. Aner (man), 6. Presbutes (old man), 7. Geron (aged man). The various periods of gestation also are commonly a multiple of seven, either of days or weeks. With the Human species it is 280 days (or 40×7).”
(E.W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture, Part I, ch. 1, section: PHYSIOLOGY)
Interpretation: Bullinger sees the sevenfold structure of human life not as coincidence but as divine imprint — man is designed according to the number seven.
Heartbeat and the Seven-Day Principle
“Moreover, man appears to be made on what we may call the seven-day principle. In various diseases the seventh, fourteenth, and twenty-first are critical days; and in others seven or 14 half-days. Man’s pulse beats on the seven-day principle, for Dr. Stratton points out that for six days out of the seven it beats faster in the morning than in the evening, while on the seventh day it beats slower. Thus the number seven is stamped upon physiology, and he is thus admonished, as man, to rest one day in seven. He cannot violate this law with impunity, for it is interwoven with his very being.”
(E.W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture, Part I, ch. 1, section: PHYSIOLOGY)
Interpretation: The Sabbath law for Bullinger is not only an external command but a physiological reality built into the body — the seven-day rhythmic pattern of the heartbeat is the bodily argument for the necessity of rest.
Human Autonomy vs. God’s Authority
Bullinger contrasts the human pretension of self-determination with the physiological legislation God has built into the body:
“He may say ‘I will rest when I please,’— one day in ten, or irregularly, or not at all. He might as well say of his eight-day clock, ‘It is mine, and I will wind it up when I please.’ Unless he wound it at least once in eight days, according to the principle on which it was made, it would be worthless as a clock. So with man’s body.”
(E.W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture, Part I, ch. 1, section: PHYSIOLOGY)
In Part II, the chapter on the number ONE, Bullinger formulates the contrast between human independence and God’s authority in direct theological-anthropological terms:
“Man’s ways and thoughts are the opposite of God’s. God says, ‘Seek first.’ Man says, ‘Take care of number one.’ He is in his own eyes this ‘number one,’ and his great aim is to be independent of God. Independence, in God, is His glory. Independence in man, is his sin, and rebellion, and shame.”
(E.W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture, Part II, ch. ONE)
Interpretation: This is Bullinger’s sharpest anthropological thesis. Aseity belongs to God alone; when man claims this attribute for himself, it is constitutive of sin and the Fall.
The “Old Nature” and the Flesh
In the chapter on the number ONE, Bullinger describes the modern social gospel as an attempt to improve human nature without God:
“It begins with man; its object is to improve the old nature apart from God, and to reform the flesh; and the measure of its success is the measure in which man can become ‘good’ without ‘God.‘”
(E.W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture, Part II, ch. ONE)
Interpretation: Bullinger explicitly uses the terms “old nature” and “flesh” as anthropological categories — indicators of his Reformed-dispensationalist view of man, though he does not develop this systematically in this work.
Human Imperfection
“Man, and all his thoughts are imperfect; so imperfect that he has failed even to take proper care of God’s perfect Word.”
(E.W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture, Part I, ch. II)
“But this is what man has done and is doing;—he is charging upon God the result of his own sin, neglect, and folly!”
(E.W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture, Part I, ch. II)
Human Dignity Through Creation
“The wonderful mechanism of the human voice, being created by God, far excels every instrument that man can make.”
(E.W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture, Part I, ch. 1, section: SOUND AND MUSIC)
At the conclusion of his treatment of God’s works in nature, Bullinger writes:
“The hand that made us is divine.”
(E.W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture, Part I, transition to ch. II — quoting Addison)
Interpretation: Human dignity in Bullinger is implicitly but consistently grounded in God’s creatorship. The superiority of the human frame (voice, physiology, sevenfold life-cycle) serves as an argument for the divine Author of life.
Scope Note
The extraction contains Part I complete (ch. 1: The Works of God; ch. 2: The Word of God) and from Part II only the introduction and the chapter on ONE. The chapters on SIX (the number of man), SEVEN, THREE and FOUR — which would be the primary loci for Bullinger’s teaching on the body-soul-spirit constitution of man, imago Dei, and the number six as the number of man — were absent from the extraction.