We have shown that sin is a state, a state of the will, a selfish state of
the will. We now proceed to show that this selfish state of the will is
universal. We divide our proof into two parts. In the first, we regard sin
in its aspect as conscious violation of law; in the second, in its aspect
as a bias of the nature to evil, prior to or underlying consciousness.
I. Every human being who has arrived at moral consciousness has committed
acts, or cherished dispositions, contrary to the divine law.
1. _Proof from Scripture._
The universality of transgression is:
(_a_) Set forth in direct statements of Scripture.
_1 K. 8:46_—“_there is no man that sinneth not_”; _Ps.
143:2_—“_enter not into judgment with thy servant; For in thy
sight no man living is righteous_”; _Prov. 20:9_—“_Who can say, I
have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?_”; _Eccl.
7:20_—“_Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth
good, and sinneth not_”; _Luke 11:13_—“_If ye, then, being evil_”;
_Rom. 3:10, 12_—“_There is none righteous, no, not one.... There
is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one_”; _19, 20_—“_that
every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under
the judgment of God: because by the works of the law shall no
flesh be justified in his sight; for through the law cometh the
knowledge of sin_”; _23_—“_for all have sinned, and fall short of
the glory of God_”; _Gal. 3:22_—“_the scripture shut up all things
under sin_”; _James 3:2_—“_For in many things we all stumble_”; _1
John 1:8_—“_If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves,
and the truth is not in us._” Compare _Mat. 6:12_—“_forgive us our
debts_”—given as a prayer for all men; _14_—“_if ye forgive men
their trespasses_”—the condition of our own forgiveness.
(_b_) Implied in declarations of the universal need of atonement,
regeneration, and repentance.
Universal need of atonement: _Mark 16:16_—“_He that believeth and
is baptised shall be saved_” (Mark 16:9-20, though probably not
written by Mark, is nevertheless of canonical authority); _John
3:16_—“_God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish_”;
_6:50_—“_This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a
man may eat thereof, and not die_”; _12:47_—“_I came not to judge
the world, but to save the world_”; _Acts 4:12_—“_in none other is
there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven,
that is given among men, wherein we must be saved._” Universal
need of regeneration: _John 3:3, 5_—“_Except one be born anew, he
cannot see the kingdom of God.... Except one be born of water and
the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God._” Universal
need of repentance: _Acts 17:30_—“_commandeth men that they should
all everywhere repent._” Yet Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, in her
“Unity of Good,” speaks of “the illusion which calls sin real and
man a sinner needing a Savior.”
(_c_) Shown from the condemnation resting upon all who do not accept
Christ.
_John 3:18_—“_he that believeth not hath been judged already,
because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son
of God_”; _36_—“_he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life,
but the wrath of God abideth on him_”; Compare _1 John 5:19_—“_the
whole world lieth in_ [_i. e._, in union with] _the evil one_”;
see Annotated Paragraph Bible, _in loco_. Kaftan, Dogmatik,
318—“Law requires love to God. This implies love to our neighbor,
not only abstaining from all injury to him, but righteousness in
all our relations, forgiving instead of requiting, help to enemies
as well as friends in all salutary ways, self-discipline,
avoidance of all sensuous immoderation, subjection of all sensuous
activity as means for spiritual ends in the kingdom of God, and
all this, not as a matter of outward conduct merely, but from the
heart and as the satisfaction of one’s own will and desire. This
is the will of God respecting us, which Jesus has revealed and of
which he is the example in his life. Instead of this, man
universally seeks to promote his own life, pleasure, and honor.”
(_d_) Consistent with those passages which at first sight seem to ascribe
to certain men a goodness which renders them acceptable to God, where a
closer examination will show that in each case the goodness supposed is a
merely imperfect and fancied goodness, a goodness of mere aspiration and
impulse due to preliminary workings of God’s Spirit, or a goodness
resulting from the trust of a conscious sinner in God’s method of
salvation.
In _Mat 9:12_—“_They that are whole have no need of a physician,
but they that are sick_”—Jesus means those who in their own esteem
are whole; _cf._ _13_—“_I came not to call the righteous, but
sinners_”—“if any were truly righteous, they would not need my
salvation; if they think themselves so, they will not care to seek
it” (An. Par. Bib.). In _Luke 10:30-37_—the parable of the good
Samaritan—Jesus intimates, not that the good Samaritan was not a
sinner, but that there were saved sinners outside of the bounds of
Israel. In _Acts 10:35_—“_in every nation he that feareth him, and
worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him_”—Peter declares, not
that Cornelius was not a sinner, but that God had accepted him
through Christ; Cornelius was already justified, but he needed to
know (1) _that_ he was saved, and (2) _how_ he was saved; and
Peter was sent to tell him of the fact, and of the method, of his
salvation in Christ. In _Rom. 2:14_—“_for when Gentiles that have
not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having
the law, are a law unto themselves_”—it is only said that in
certain respects the obedience of these Gentiles shows that they
have an unwritten law in their hearts; it is not said that they
perfectly obey the law and therefore have no sin—for Paul says
immediately after (_Rom. 3:9_)—“_we before laid to the charge both
of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin._”
So with regard to the words “_perfect_” and “_upright_,” as
applied to godly men. We shall see, when we come to consider the
doctrine of Sanctification, that the word “_perfect_,” as applied
to spiritual conditions already attained, signifies only a
relative perfection, equivalent to sincere piety or maturity of
Christian judgment, in other words, the perfection of a sinner who
has long trusted in Christ, and in whom Christ has overcome his
chief defects of character. See _1 Cor. 2:6_—“_we speak wisdom
among the perfect_” (Am. Rev.: “_among them that are
full-grown_”); _Phil. 3:15_—“_let us therefore, as many as are
perfect, be thus minded_”—_i. e._, to press toward the goal—a goal
expressly said by the apostles to be not yet attained (_v.
12-14_).
“Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.” God is the “spark
that fires our clay.” S. S. Times, Sept. 21, 1901:609—“Humanity is
better and worse than men have painted it. There has been a kind
of theological pessimism in denouncing human sinfulness, which has
been blind to the abounding love and patience and courage and
fidelity to duty among men.” A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation,
287-290—“There is a natural life of Christ, and that life pulses
and throbs in all men everywhere. All men are created in Christ,
before they are recreated in him. The whole race lives, moves, and
has its being in him, for he is the soul of its soul and the life
of its life.” To Christ then, and not to unaided human nature, we
attribute the noble impulses of unregenerate men. These impulses
are drawings of his Spirit, moving men to repentance. But they are
influences of his grace which, if resisted, leave the soul in more
than its original darkness.
2. _Proof from history, observation, and the common judgment of mankind._
(_a_) History witnesses to the universality of sin, in its accounts of the
universal prevalence of priesthood and sacrifice.
See references in Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 161-172, 335-339.
Baptist Review, 1882:343—“Plutarch speaks of the tear-stained
eyes, the pallid and woe-begone countenances which he sees at the
public altars, men rolling themselves in the mire and confessing
their sins. Among the common people the dull feeling of guilt was
too real to be shaken off or laughed away.”
(_b_) Every man knows himself to have come short of moral perfection, and,
in proportion to his experience of the world, recognizes the fact that
every other man has come short of it also.
Chinese proverb: “There are but two good men; one is dead, and the
other is not yet born.” Idaho proverb: “The only good Indian is a
dead Indian.” But the proverb applies to the white man also. Dr.
Jacob Chamberlain, the missionary, said: “I never but once in
India heard a man deny that he was a sinner. But once a Brahmin
interrupted me and said: ‘I deny your premisses. I am not a
sinner. I do not need to do better.’ For a moment I was abashed.
Then I said: ‘But what do your neighbors say?’ Thereupon one cried
out: ‘He cheated me in trading horses’; another: ‘He defrauded a
widow of her inheritance.’ The Brahmin went out of the house, and
I never saw him again.” A great nephew of Richard Brinsley
Sheridan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, when a child, wrote in a few
lines an “Essay on the Life of Man,” which ran as follows: “A
man’s life naturally divides itself into three distinct parts: the
first when he is contriving and planning all kinds of villainy and
rascality,—that is the period of youth and innocence. In the
second, he is found putting in practice all the villainy and
rascality he has contrived,—that is the flower of mankind and
prime of life. The third and last period is that when he is making
his soul and preparing for another world,—that is the period of
dotage.”
(_c_) The common judgment of mankind declares that there is an element of
selfishness in every human heart, and that every man is prone to some form
of sin. This common judgment is expressed in the maxims: “No man is
perfect”; “Every man has his weak side”, or “his price”; and every great
name in literature has attested its truth.
Seneca, De Ira, 3:26—“We are all wicked. What one blames in
another he will find in his own bosom. We live among the wicked,
ourselves being wicked”; Ep., 22—“No one has strength of himself
to emerge [from this wickedness]; some one must needs hold forth a
hand; some one must draw us out.” Ovid, Met., 7:19—“I see the
things that are better and I approve them, yet I follow the
worse.... We strive even after that which is forbidden, and we
desire the things that are denied.” Cicero: “Nature has given us
faint sparks of knowledge; we extinguish them by our
immoralities.”
Shakespeare, Othello, 3:3—“Where’s that palace whereinto foul
things Sometimes Intrude not? Who has a breast so pure, But some
uncleanly apprehensions keep leets [meetings in court] and
law-days, and in sessions sit With meditations lawful?” Henry VI.,
II:3:3—“Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.” Hamlet, 2:2,
compares God’s influence to the sun which “breeds maggots in a
dead dog, Kissing carrion,”—that is, God is no more responsible
for the corruption in man’s heart and the evil that comes from it,
than the sun is responsible for the maggots which its heat breeds
in a dead dog; 3:1—“We are arrant knaves all.” Timon of Athens,
1:2—“Who lives that’s not depraved or depraves?”
Goethe: “I see no fault committed which I too might not have
committed.” Dr. Johnson: “Every man knows that of himself which he
dare not tell to his dearest friend.” Thackeray showed himself a
master in fiction by having no heroes; the paragons of virtue
belonged to a cruder age of romance. So George Eliot represents
life correctly by setting before us no perfect characters; all act
from mixed motives. Carlyle, hero-worshiper as he was inclined to
be, is said to have become disgusted with each of his heroes
before he finished his biography. Emerson said that to understand
any crime, he had only to look into his own heart. Robert Burns:
“God knows I’m no thing I would be, Nor am I even the thing I
could be.” Huxley: “The best men of the best epochs are simply
those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.”
And he speaks of “the infinite wickedness” which has attended the
course of human history. Matthew Arnold: “What mortal, when he
saw, Life’s voyage done, his heavenly Friend, Could ever yet dare
tell him fearlessly:—I have kept uninfringed my nature’s law: The
inly written chart thou gavest me, to guide me, I have kept by to
the end?” Walter Besant, Children of Gibeon: “The men of ability
do not desire a system in which they shall not be able to do good
to themselves first.” “Ready to offer praise and prayer on Sunday,
if on Monday they may go into the market place to skin their
fellows and sell their hides.” Yet Confucius declares that “man is
born good.” He confounds conscience with will—the _sense_ of right
with the _love_ of right. Dean Swift’s worthy sought many years
for a method of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Human nature
of itself is as little able to bear the fruits of God.
Every man will grant (1) that he is not perfect in moral
character; (2) that love to God has not been the constant motive
of his actions, _i. e._, that he has been to some degree selfish;
(3) that he has committed at least one known violation of
conscience. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 86, 87—“Those
theorists who reject revealed religion, and remand man to the
first principles of ethics and morality as the only religion that
he needs, send him to a tribunal that damns him”; for it is simple
fact that “no human creature, in any country or grade of
civilization, has ever glorified God to the extent of his
knowledge of God.”
3. _Proof from Christian experience._
(_a_) In proportion to his spiritual progress does the Christian recognize
evil dispositions within him, which but for divine grace might germinate
and bring forth the most various forms of outward transgression.
See Goodwin’s experience, in Baird, Elohim Revealed, 409; Goodwin,
member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, speaking of his
conversion, says: “An abundant discovery was made to me of my
inward lusts and concupiscence, and I was amazed to see with what
greediness I had sought the gratification of every sin.” Töllner’s
experience, in Martensen’s Dogmatics: Töllner, though inclined to
Pelagianism, says: “I look into my own heart and I see with
penitent sorrow that I must in God’s sight accuse myself of all
the offences I have named,”—and he had named only deliberate
transgressions;—“he who does not allow that he is similarly
guilty, let him look deep into his own heart.” John Newton sees
the murderer led to execution, and says: “There, but for the grace
of God, goes John Newton.” Count de Maistre: “I do not know what
the heart of a villain may be—I only know that of a virtuous man,
and that is frightful.” Tholuck, on the fiftieth anniversary of
his professorship at Halle, said to his students: “In review of
God’s manifold blessings, the thing I seem most to thank him for
is the conviction of sin.”
Roper Ascham: “By experience we find out a short way, by a long
wandering.” _Luke 15:25-32_ is sometimes referred to as indicating
that there are some of God’s children who never wander from the
Father’s house. But there were two prodigals in that family. The
elder was a servant in spirit as well as the younger. J. J.
Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 41, 42—“In the wish of
the elder son that he might sometimes feast with his own friends
apart from his father, was contained the germ of that desire to
escape the wholesome restraints of home which, in its full
development, had brought his brother first to riotous living, and
afterwards to the service of the stranger and the herding of
swine. This root of sin is in us all, but in him it was not so
full-grown as to bring death. Yet he says: ‘_Lo, these many years
do I serve thee_’ (δουλεύω—as a bondservant), ‘_and I never
transgressed a commandment of thine._’ Are the father’s
commandments grievous? Is service true and sincere, without love
from the heart? The elder brother was calculating toward his
father and unsympathetic toward his brother.” Sir J. R. Seelye,
Ecce Homo: “No virtue can be safe, unless it is enthusiastic.”
Wordsworth: “Heaven rejects the love Of nicely calculated less or
more.”
(_b_) Since those most enlightened by the Holy Spirit recognize themselves
as guilty of unnumbered violations of the divine law, the absence of any
consciousness of sin on the part of unregenerate men must be regarded as
proof that they are blinded by persistent transgression.
It is a remarkable fact that, while those who are enlightened by
the Holy Spirit and who are actually overcoming their sins see
more and more of the evil of their hearts and lives, those who are
the slaves of sin see less and less of that evil, and often deny
that they are sinners at all. Rousseau, in his Confessions,
confesses sin in a spirit which itself needs to be confessed. He
glosses over his vices, and magnifies his virtues. “No man,” he
says, “can come to the throne of God and say: ‘I am a better man
than Rousseau.’... Let the trumpet of the last judgment sound when
it will: I will present myself before the Sovereign Judge with
this book in my hand, and I will say aloud: ‘Here is what I did,
what I thought, and what I was.’ ” “Ah,” said he, just before he
expired, “how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason
for remorse or self-reproach!” And then, addressing himself to the
Almighty, he said: “Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to
give thee back is as pure at this moment as it was when it
proceeded from thee; render it a partaker of thy felicity!” Yet,
in his boyhood, Rousseau was a petty thief. In his writings, he
advocated adultery and suicide. He lived for more than twenty
years in practical licentiousness. His children, most of whom, if
not all, were illegitimate, he sent off to the foundling hospital
as soon as they were born, thus casting them upon the charity of
strangers, yet he inflamed the mothers of France with his eloquent
appeals to them to nurse their own babies. He was mean,
vacillating, treacherous, hypocritical, and blasphemous. And in
his Confessions, he rehearses the exciting scenes of his life in
the spirit of the bold adventurer. See N. M. Williams, in Bap.
Review, art.: Rousseau, from which the substance of the above is
taken.
Edwin Forrest, when accused of being converted in a religious
revival, wrote an indignant denial to the public press, saying
that he had nothing to regret; his sins were those of omission
rather than commission; he had always acted upon the principle of
loving his friends and hating his enemies; and trusting in the
justice as well as the mercy of God, he hoped, when he left this
earthly sphere, to “wrap the drapery of his couch about him, and
lie down to pleasant dreams.” And yet no man of his time was more
arrogant, self-sufficient, licentious, revengeful. John Y. McCane,
when sentenced to Sing Sing prison for six years for violating the
election laws by the most highhanded bribery and ballot-stuffing,
declared that he had never done anything wrong in his life. He was
a Sunday School Superintendent, moreover. A lady who lived to the
age of 92, protested that, if she had her whole life to live over
again, she would not alter a single thing. Lord Nelson, after he
had received his death wound at Trafalgar, said: “I have never
been a great sinner.” Yet at that very time he was living in open
adultery. Tennyson, Sea Dreams: “With all his conscience and one
eye askew, So false, he partly took himself for true.” Contrast
the utterance of the apostle Paul: _1 Tim. 1:15_—“_Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief_.” It has
been well said that “the greatest of sins is to be conscious of
none.” Rowland Hill: “The devil makes little of sin, that he may
retain the sinner.”
The following reasons may be suggested for men’s unconsciousness
of their sins: 1. We never know the force of any evil passion or
principle within us, until we begin to resist it. 2. God’s
providential restraints upon sin have hitherto prevented its full
development. 3. God’s judgments against sin have not yet been made
manifest. 4. Sin itself has a blinding influence upon the mind. 5.
Only he who has been saved from the penalty of sin is willing to
look into the abyss from which he has been rescued.—That a man is
unconscious of any sin is therefore only proof that he is a great
and hardened transgressor. This is also the most hopeless feature
of his case, since for one who never realizes his sin there is no
salvation. In the light of this truth, we see the amazing grace of
God, not only in the gift of Christ to die for sinners, but in the
gift of the Holy Spirit to convince men of their sins and to lead
them to accept the Savior. _Ps. 90:8_—“_Thou hast set ... Our
secret sins in the light of thy countenance_” = man’s inner
sinfulness is hidden from himself, until it is contrasted with the
holiness of God. Light = a luminary or sun, which shines down into
the depths of the heart and brings out its hidden evil into
painful relief. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:248-259;
Edwards, Works, 2:326; John Caird, Reasons for Men’s
Unconsciousness of their Sins, in Sermons, 33.
II. Every member of the human race, without exception, possesses a
corrupted nature, which is a source of actual sin, and is itself sin.
1. _Proof from Scripture._
A. The sinful acts and dispositions of men are referred to, and explained
by, a corrupt nature.
By “nature” we mean that which is _born_ in a man, that which he
has by birth. That there is an inborn corrupt state, from which
sinful acts and dispositions flow, is evident from _Luke
6:43-45_—“_there is no good tree that bringeth forth corrupt
fruit.... the evil man out of the evil treasure_ [of his heart]
_bringeth forth that which is evil_”; _Mat. 12:34_—“_Ye offspring
of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things?_” _Ps.
58:3_—“_The wicked are estranged from the womb: They go astray as
soon as they are born, speaking lies._”
This corrupt nature (_a_) belongs to man from the first moment of his
being; (_b_) underlies man’s consciousness; (_c_) cannot be changed by
man’s own power; (_d_) first constitutes him a sinner before God; (_e_) is
the common heritage of the race.
(_a_) _Ps. 51:5_—“_Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in
sin did my mother conceive me_”—here David is confessing, not his
mother’s sin, but his own sin; and he declares that this sin goes
back to the very moment of his conception. Tholuck, quoted by H.
B. Smith, System, 281—“David confesses that sin begins with the
life of man; that not only his works, but the man himself, is
guilty before God.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:94—“David mentions the
fact that he was born sinful, as an aggravation of his particular
act of adultery, and not as an excuse for it.” (_b_) _Ps.
19:12_—“_Who can discern his errors? Clear thou me from hidden
faults_”; _51:6, 7_—“_Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward
parts; And in the hidden part thou wilt make me to know wisdom.
Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Wash me, and I shall
be whiter than snow._” (_c_) _Jer. 13:23_—“_Can the Ethiopian
change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do
good, that are accustomed to do evil_”; _Rom. 7:24_—“_Wretched man
that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?_”
(_d_) _Ps. 51:6_—“_Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward
parts_”; _Jer. 17:9_—“_The heart is deceitful above all things and
it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it? I, Jehovah, search the
mind, I try the heart,_”—only God can fully know the native and
incurable depravity of the human heart; see Annotated Paragraph
Bible, _in loco_, (_e_) _Job 14:4_—“_Who can bring a clean thing
out of an unclean? not one_”; _John 3:6_—“_That which is born of
the flesh is flesh,_” _i. e._, human nature sundered from God.
Pope, Theology, 2:53—“Christ, who knew what was in man, says: ‘_If
ye then, being evil_’ (_Mat. 7:11_), and ‘_That which is born of
the flesh is flesh_’ (_John 3:6_), that is—putting the two
together—‘men are evil, because they are born evil.’ ”
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story of The Minister’s Black Veil portrays
the isolation of every man’s deepest life, and the awe which any
visible assertion of that isolation inspires. C. P. Cranch: “We
are spirits clad in veils; Man by man was never seen; All our deep
communing fails To remove the shadowy screen.” In the heart of
every one of us is that fearful “black drop,” which the Koran says
the angel showed to Mohammed. Sin is like the taint of scrofula in
the blood, which shows itself in tumors, in consumption, in
cancer, in manifold forms, but is everywhere the same organic
evil. Byron spoke truly of “This ineradicable taint of sin, this
boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree.”
E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theol., 161, 162—“The objection that
conscience brings no charge of guilt against inborn depravity,
however true it may be of the nature in its passive state, is
seen, when the nature is roused to activity, to be unfounded. This
faculty, on the contrary, lends support to the doctrine it is
supposed to overthrow. When the conscience holds intelligent
inquisition upon single acts, it soon discovers that these are
mere accessories to crime, while the principal is hidden away
beyond the reach of consciousness. In following up its
inquisition, it in due time extorts the exclamation of David: _Ps.
51:5_—‘_Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in sin did my
mother conceive me._’ Conscience traces guilt to its seat in the
inherited nature.”
B. All men are declared to be by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:3). Here
“nature” signifies something inborn and original, as distinguished from
that which is subsequently acquired. The text implies that: (_a_) Sin is a
nature, in the sense of a congenital depravity of the will. (_b_) This
nature is guilty and condemnable,—since God’s wrath rests only upon that
which deserves it. (_c_) All men participate in this nature and in this
consequent guilt and condemnation.
_Eph. 2:3_—“_were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest._”
Shedd: “Nature here is not substance created by God, but
corruption of that substance, which corruption is created by man.”
“Nature” (from _nascor_) may denote anything inborn, and the term
may just as properly designate inborn evil tendencies and state,
as inborn faculties or substance. “_By nature_” therefore = “by
birth”; compare _Gal. 2:15_—“_Jews by nature._” E. G. Robinson:
“Nature = not οὐσία, or essence, but only qualification of
essence, as something born in us. There is just as much difference
in babes, from the beginning of their existence, as there is in
adults. If sin is defined as ‘voluntary transgression of known
law,’ the definition of course disposes of original sin.” But if
sin is a selfish state of the will, such a state is demonstrably
inborn. Aristotle speaks of some men as born to be savages (φύσει
βάρβαροι), and of others as destined by nature to be slaves (φύσει
δοῦλοι). Here evidently is a congenital aptitude and disposition.
Similarly we can interpret Paul’s words as declaring nothing less
than that men are possessed at birth of an aptitude and
disposition which is the object of God’s just displeasure.
The opposite view can be found in Stevens, Pauline Theology,
152-157. Principal Fairbairn also says that inherited sinfulness
“is _not_ transgression, and is _without_ guilt.” Ritschl, Just.
and Recon., 344—“The predicate ‘children of wrath’ refers to the
former actual transgression of those who now as Christians have
the right to apply to themselves that divine purpose of grace
which is the antithesis of wrath.” Meyer interprets the verse; “We
_become_ children of wrath by following a natural propensity.” He
claims the doctrine of the apostle to be, that man incurs the
divine wrath by his _actual_ sin, when he submits his will to the
inborn sin principle. So N. W. Taylor, Concio ad Clerum, quoted in
H. B. Smith, System, 281—“We were by nature such that we became
through our own act children of wrath.” “But,” says Smith, “if the
apostle had meant this, he could have said so; there is a proper
Greek word for ‘became’; the word which is used can only be
rendered ‘were.’ ” So _1 Cor. 7:14_—“_else were your children
unclean_”—implies that, apart from the operations of grace, all
men are defiled in virtue of their very birth from a corrupt
stock. Cloth is first died in the wool, and then dyed again after
the weaving. Man is a “double-dyed villain.” He is corrupted by
nature and afterwards by practice. The colored physician in New
Orleans advertised that his method was “first to remove the
disease, and then to eradicate the system.” The New School method
of treating this text is of a similar sort. Beginning with a
definition of sin which excludes from that category all inborn
states of the will, it proceeds to vacate of their meaning the
positive statements of Scripture.
For the proper interpretation of _Eph. 2:3_, see Julius Müller,
Doct. of Sin, 2:278, and Commentaries of Harless and Olshausen.
See also Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:212 _sq._; Thomasius, Christi
Person und Werk, 1:289; and an excellent note in the Expositor’s
Greek N.T., _in loco_. _Per contra_, see Reuss, Christ. Theol. in
Apost. Age, 2:29, 79-84; Weiss, Bib. Theol. N.T., 239.
C. Death, the penalty of sin, is visited even upon those who have never
exercised a personal and conscious choice (Rom. 5:12-14). This text
implies that (_a_) Sin exists in the case of infants prior to moral
consciousness, and therefore in the nature, as distinguished from the
personal activity. (_b_) Since infants die, this visitation of the penalty
of sin upon them marks the ill-desert of that nature which contains in
itself, though undeveloped, the germs of actual transgression. (_c_) It is
therefore certain that a sinful, guilty, and condemnable nature belongs to
all mankind.
_Rom. 5:12-14_—“_Therefore, as through one man sin entered into
the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all
men, for that all sinned:—for until the law sin was in the world;
but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death
reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned
after the likeness of Adam’s transgression_”—that is, over those
who, like infants, had never personally and consciously sinned.
See a more full treatment of these last words in connection with
an exegesis of the whole passage—_Rom. 5:12-19_—under Imputation
of Sin, pages 625-627.
N. W. Taylor maintained that infants, prior to moral agency, are
not subjects of the moral government of God, any more than are
animals. In this he disagreed with Edwards, Bellamy, Hopkins,
Dwight, Smalley, Griffin. See Tyler, Letters on N. E. Theol., 8,
132-142—“To say that animals die, and therefore death can be no
proof of sin in infants, is to take infidel ground. The infidel
has just as good a right to say: Because animals die without being
sinners, therefore adults may. If death may reign to such an
alarming extent over the human race and yet be no proof of sin,
then you adopt the principle that death may reign to any extent
over the universe, yet never can be made a proof of sin in any
case.” We reserve our full proof that physical death is the
penalty of sin to the section on Penalty as one of the
Consequences of Sin.
2. _Proof from Reason._
Three facts demand explanation: (_a_) The universal existence of sinful
dispositions in every mind, and of sinful acts in every life. (_b_) The
preponderating tendencies to evil, which necessitate the constant
education of good impulses, while the bad grow of themselves. (_c_) The
yielding of the will to temptation, and the actual violation of the divine
law, in the case of every human being so soon as he reaches moral
consciousness.
The fundamental selfishness of man is seen in childhood, when
human nature acts itself out spontaneously. It is difficult to
develop courtesy in children. There can be no true courtesy
without regard for man as man and willingness to accord to each
man his place and right as a son of God equal with ourselves. But
children wish to please themselves without regard to others. The
mother asks the child: “Why don’t you do right instead of doing
wrong?” and the child answers: “Because it makes me so tired,” or
“Because I do wrong without trying.” Nothing runs itself, unless
it is going down hill. “No other animal does things habitually
that will injure and destroy it, and does them from the love of
it. But man does this, and he is born to do it, he does it from
birth. As the seedlings of the peach-tree are all peaches, not
apples, and those of thorns are all thorns, not grapes, so all the
descendants of man are born with evil in their natures. That sin
continually comes back to us, like a dog or cat that has been
driven away, proves that our hearts are its home.”
Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s novel, Robert Elsmere, represents the
milk-and-water school of philanthropists. “Give man a chance,”
they say; “give him good example and favorable environment and he
will turn out well. He is more sinned against than sinning. It is
the outward presence of evil that drives men to evil courses.” But
God’s indictment is found in _Rom. 8:7_—“_the mind of the flesh is
enmity against God._” G. P. Fisher: “Of the ideas of natural
religion, Plato, Plutarch and Cicero found in the fact that they
are in man’s _reason_, but not obeyed and realized in man’s
_will_, the most convincing evidence that humanity is at schism
with itself, and therefore depraved, fallen, and unable to deliver
itself. The reason why many moralists fail and grow bitter and
hateful is that they do not take account of this state of sin.”
Reason seeks an underlying principle which will reduce these multitudinous
phenomena to unity. As we are compelled to refer common physical and
intellectual phenomena to a common physical and intellectual nature, so we
are compelled to refer these common moral phenomena to a common moral
nature, and to find in it the cause of this universal, spontaneous, and
all-controlling opposition to God and his law. The only possible solution
of the problem is this, that the common nature of mankind is corrupt, or,
in other words, that the human will, prior to the single volitions of the
individual, is turned away from God and supremely set upon
self-gratification. This unconscious and fundamental direction of the
will, as the source of actual sin, must itself be sin; and of this sin all
mankind are partakers.
The greatest thinkers of the world have certified to the
correctness of this conclusion. See Aristotle’s doctrine of “the
slope,” described in Chase’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Ethics,
XXXV and 32—“In regard to moral virtue, man stands on a slope. His
appetites and passions gravitate downward; his reason attracts him
upward. Conflict occurs. A step upward, and reason gains what
passion has lost; but the reverse is the case if he steps
downward. The tendency in the former case is to the entire
subjection of passion; in the latter case, to the entire
suppression of reason. The slope will terminate upwards in a level
summit where men’s steps will be secure, or downwards in an
irretrievable plunge over the precipice. Continual self-control
leads to absolute self-mastery; continual failure, to the utter
absence of self-control. But _all we can see is the slope_. No man
is ever at the ἠρεμία of the summit, nor can we say that a man has
irretrievably fallen into the abyss. How it is that men constantly
act against their own convictions of what is right, and their
previous determinations to follow right, is a mystery Which
Aristotle discusses, but leaves unexplained.
“Compare the passage in the Ethics, 1:11—‘Clearly there is in them
[men], besides the Reason, some other Inborn principle (πεφυκός)
which fights with and strains against the Reason.... There is in
the soul also somewhat besides the Reason which is opposed to this
and goes against it.’—Compare this passage with Paul, in _Rom.
7:23_—‘_I see a different law in my members, warring against the
law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of
sin which is in my members._’ But as Aristotle does not explain
the cause, so he suggests no cure. Revelation alone can account
for the disease, or point out the remedy.”
Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 1:102—“Aristotle makes the significant
and almost surprising observation, that the character which has
become evil by guilt can just as little be thrown off again at
mere volition, as the person who has made himself sick by his own
fault can become well again at mere volition; once become evil or
sick, it stands no longer within his discretion to cease to be so;
a stone, when once cast, cannot be caught back from its flight;
and so is it with the character that has become evil.” He does not
tell “how a reformation in character is possible,—moreover, he
does not concede to evil any other than an individual
effect,—knows nothing of any natural solidarity of evil in
self-propagating, morally degenerated races” (Nic. Eth., 3:6, 7;
5:12; 7:2, 3; 10:10). The good nature, he says, “is evidently not
within our power, but is by some kind of divine causality
conferred upon the truly happy.”
Plato speaks of “that blind, many-headed wild beast of all that is
evil within thee.” He repudiates the idea that men are naturally
good, and says that, if this were true, all that would be needed
to make them holy would be to shut them up, from their earliest
years, so that they might not be corrupted by others. Republic, 4
(Jowett’s translation, 11:276)—“There is a rising up of part of
the soul against the whole of the soul.” Meno, 89—“The cause of
corruption is from our parents, so that we never relinquish their
evil way, or escape the blemish of their evil habit.” Horace, Ep.,
1:10—“Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.” Latin
proverb: “Nemo repente fuit turpissimus.” Pascal: “We are born
unrighteous; for each one tends to himself, and the bent toward
self is the beginning of all disorder.” Kant, in his Metaphysical
Principles of Human Morals, speaks of “the indwelling of an evil
principle side by side with the good one, or the radical evil of
human nature,” and of “the contest between the good and the evil
principles for the control of man.” “Hegel, pantheist as he was,
declared that original sin is the nature of every man,—every man
begins with it” (H. B. Smith).
Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, 4:3—“All is oblique: There’s nothing
level in our cursed natures, But direct villainy.” All’s Well,
4:3—“As we are in ourselves, how weak we are! Merely our own
traitors.” Measure for Measure, 1:2—“Our natures do pursue, Like
rats that ravin down their proper bane, A thirsty evil, and when
we drink, we die.” Hamlet, 3:1—“Virtue cannot so inoculate our old
stock, but we shall relish of it.” Love’s Labor Lost, 1:1—“Every
man with his affects is born, Not by might mastered, but by
special grace.” Winter’s Tale, 1:2—“We should have answered Heaven
boldly, Not guilty; the imposition cleared Hereditary ours”—that
is, provided our hereditary connection with Adam had not made us
guilty. On the theology of Shakespeare, see A. H. Strong, Great
Poets, 196-211—“If any think it irrational to believe in man’s
depravity, guilt, and need of supernatural redemption, they must
also be prepared to say that Shakespeare did not understand human
nature.”
S. T. Coleridge, Omniana, at the end: “It is a fundamental article
of Christianity that I am a fallen creature ... that an evil
ground existed in my will, previously to any act or assignable
moment of time in my consciousness; I am born a child of wrath.
This fearful mystery I pretend not to understand. I cannot even
conceive the possibility of it; but I know that it is so, ... and
what is real must be possible.” A sceptic who gave his children no
religious training, with the view of letting them each in mature
years choose a faith for himself, reproved Coleridge for letting
his garden run to weeds; but Coleridge replied, that he did not
think it right to prejudice the soil in favor of roses and
strawberries. Van Oosterzee: Rain and sunshine make weeds grow
more quickly, but could not draw them out of the soil if the seeds
did not lie there already; so evil education and example draw out
sin, but do not implant it. Tennyson, Two Voices: “He finds a
baseness in his blood, At such strange war with what is good, He
cannot do the thing he would.” Robert Browning, Gold Hair: a
Legend of Pornic: “The faith that launched point-blank her dart At
the head of a lie—taught Original Sin, The corruption of Man’s
Heart.” Taine, Ancien Régime: “Savage, brigand and madman each of
us harbors, in repose or manacled, but always living, in the
recesses of his own heart.” Alexander Maclaren: “A great mass of
knotted weeds growing in a stagnant pool is dragged toward you as
you drag one filament.” Draw out one sin, and it brings with it
the whole matted nature of sin.
Chief Justice Thompson, of Pennsylvania: “If those who preach had
been lawyers previous to entering the ministry, they would know
and say far more about the depravity of the human heart than they
do. The old doctrine of total depravity is the only thing that can
explain the falsehoods, the dishonesties, the licentiousness, and
the murders which are so rife in the world. Education, refinement,
and even a high order of talent, cannot overcome the inclination
to evil which exists in the heart, and has taken possession of the
very fibres of our nature.” See Edwards, Original Sin, in Works,
2:309-510; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:259-307; Hodge, Syst.
Theol., 2:231-238; Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 226-236.