As the result of Adam’s transgression, all his posterity are born in the
same state into which he fell. But since law is the all-comprehending
demand of harmony with God, all moral consequences flowing from
transgression are to be regarded as sanctions of law, or expressions of
the divine displeasure through the constitution of things which he has
established. Certain of these consequences, however, are earlier
recognized than others and are of minor scope; it will therefore be useful
to consider them under the three aspects of depravity, guilt, and penalty.
I. Depravity.
By this we mean, on the one hand, the lack of original righteousness or of
holy affection toward God, and, on the other hand, the corruption of the
moral nature, or bias toward evil. That such depravity exists has been
abundantly shown, both from Scripture and from reason, in our
consideration of the universality of sin.
Salvation is twofold: deliverance from the evil—the penalty and
the power of sin; and accomplishment of the good—likeness to God
and realization of the true idea of humanity. It includes all
these for the race as well as for the individual: removal of the
barriers that keep men from each other; and the perfecting of
society in communion with God; or, in other words, the kingdom of
God on earth. It was the nature of man, when he first came from
the hand of God, to fear, love, and trust God above all things.
This tendency toward God has been lost; sin has altered and
corrupted man’s innermost nature. In place of this bent toward God
there is a fearful bent toward evil. Depravity is both
negative—absence of love and of moral likeness to God—and
positive—presence of manifold tendencies to evil. Two questions
only need detain us:
1. Depravity partial or total?
The Scriptures represent human nature as totally depraved. The phrase
“total depravity,” however, is liable to misinterpretation, and should not
be used without explanation. By the total depravity of universal humanity
we mean:
A. Negatively,—not that every sinner is: (_a_) Destitute of
conscience,—for the existence of strong impulses to right, and of remorse
for wrong-doing, show that conscience is often keen; (_b_) devoid of all
qualities pleasing to men, and useful when judged by a human standard,—for
the existence of such qualities is recognized by Christ; (_c_) prone to
every form of sin,—for certain forms of sin exclude certain others; (_d_)
intense as he can be in his selfishness and opposition to God,—for he
becomes worse every day.
(_a_) _John 8:9_—“_And they, when they heard it, went out one by
one, beginning from the eldest, even unto the last_” (_John
7:53-8:11_, though not written by John, is a perfectly true
narrative, descended from the apostolic age). The muscles of a
dead frog’s leg will contract when a current of electricity is
sent into them. So the dead soul will thrill at touch of the
divine law. Natural conscience, combined with the principle of
self-love, may even prompt choice of the good, though no love for
God is in the choice. Bengel: “We have lost our likeness to God;
but there remains notwithstanding an indelible nobility which we
ought to revere both in ourselves and in others. We still have
remained men, to be conformed to that likeness, through the divine
blessing to which man’s will should subscribe. This they forget
who speak evil of human nature. Absalom fell out of his father’s
favor; but the people, for all that, recognized in him the son of
the king.”
(_b_) _Mark 10:21_—“_And Jesus looking upon him loved him._” These
very qualities, however, may show that their possessors are
sinning against great light and are the more guilty; _cf._ _Mal.
1:6_—“_A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: if
then I am a father, where is mine honor? and if I am a master,
where is my fear?_” John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity,
2:75—“The assertor of the total depravity of human nature, of its
absolute blindness and incapacity, presupposes in himself and in
others the presence of a criterion or principle of good, in virtue
of which he discerns himself to be wholly evil; yet the very
proposition that human nature is wholly evil would be
unintelligible unless it were false.... Consciousness of sin is a
negative sign of the possibility of restoration. But it is not in
itself proof that the possibility will become actuality.” A ruined
temple may have beautiful fragments of fluted columns, but it is
no proper habitation for the god for whose worship it was built.
(_c_) _Mat. 23:23_—“_ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have
left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy,
and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left
the other undone_”; _Rom. 2:14_—“_when Gentiles that have not the
law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law,
are the law unto themselves; in that they show the work of the law
written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness
therewith._” The sin of miserliness may exclude the sin of luxury;
the sin of pride may exclude the sin of sensuality. Shakespeare,
Othello, 2:3—“It hath pleased the devil Drunkenness to give place
to the devil Wrath.” Franklin Carter, Life of Mark Hopkins,
321-323—Dr. Hopkins did not think that the sons of God should
describe themselves as once worms or swine or vipers. Yet he held
that man could sink to a degradation below the brute: “No brute is
any more capable of rebelling against God than of serving him; is
any more capable of sinking below the level of its own nature than
of rising to the level of man. No brute can be either a fool or a
fiend.... In the way that sin and corruption came into the
spiritual realm we find one of those analogies to what takes place
in the lower forms of being that show the unity of the system
throughout. All disintegration and corruption of matter is from
the domination of a lower over a higher law. The body begins to
return to its original elements as the lower chemical and physical
forces begin to gain ascendancy over the higher force of life. In
the same way all sin and corruption in man is from his yielding to
a lower law or principle of action in opposition to the demands of
one that is higher.”
(_d_) _Gen. 15:16_—“_the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet
full_”; _2 Tim. 3:13_—“_evil men and impostors shall wax worse and
worse._” Depravity is not simply being deprived of good.
Depravation (_de_, and _pravus_, crooked, perverse) is more than
deprivation. Left to himself man tends downward, and his sin
increases day by day. But there is a divine influence within which
quickens conscience and kindles aspiration for better things. The
immanent Christ is “_the light which lighteth every man_” (_John
1:9_). Prof. Wm. Adams Brown: “In so far as God’s Spirit is at
work among men and they receive ‘_the Light which lighteth every
man_,’ we must qualify our statement of total depravity. Depravity
is not so much a state as a tendency. With growing complexity of
life, sin becomes more complex. Adam’s sin was not the worst. ‘_It
shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of
judgment, than for thee_’ (_Mat. 11:24_).”
Men are not yet in the condition of demons. Only here and there
have they attained to “a disinterested love of evil.” Such men are
few, and they were not born so. There are degrees in depravity. E.
G. Robinson: “There is a good streak left in the devil yet.” Even
Satan will become worse than he now is. The phrase “total
depravity” has respect only to relations to God, and it means
incapability of doing anything which in the sight of God is a good
act. No act is perfectly good that does not proceed from a true
heart and constitute an expression of that heart. Yet we have no
right to say that every act of an unregenerate man is displeasing
to God. Right acts from right motives are good, whether performed
by a Christian or by one who is unrenewed in heart. Such acts,
however, are always prompted by God, and thanks for them are due
to God and not to him who performed them.
B. Positively,—that every sinner is: (_a_) totally destitute of that love
to God which constitutes the fundamental and all-inclusive demand of the
law; (_b_) chargeable with elevating some lower affection or desire above
regard for God and his law; (_c_) supremely determined, in his whole
inward and outward life, by a preference of self to God; (_d_) possessed
of an aversion to God which, though sometimes latent, becomes active
enmity, so soon as God’s will comes into manifest conflict with his own;
(_e_) disordered and corrupted in every faculty, through this substitution
of selfishness for supreme affection toward God; (_f_) credited with no
thought, emotion, or act of which divine holiness can fully approve; (_g_)
subject to a law of constant progress in depravity, which he has no
recuperative energy to enable him successfully to resist.
(_a_) _John 5:42_—“_But I know you, that ye have not the love of
God in yourselves._” (_b_) _2 Tim. 3:4_—“_lovers of pleasure
rather than lovers of God_”; _cf._ _Mal 1:6_—“_A son honoreth his
father, and a servant his master: if then I am a father, where is
mine honor? and if I am a master, where is my fear?_” (_c_) _2
Tim. 3:2_—“_lovers of self_”; (_d_) _Rom. 8:7_—“_the mind of the
flesh is enmity against God._” (_e_) _Eph. 4:18_—“_darkened in
their understanding.... hardening of their heart_”; _Tit.
1:15_—“_both their mind and their conscience are defiled_”; _2
Cor. 7:1_—“_defilement of flesh and spirit_”; _Heb. 3:12_—“_an
evil heart of unbelief_”; (_f_) _Rom. 3:9_—“_they are all under
sin_”; _7:18_—“_in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good
thing._” (_g_) _Rom. 7:18_—“_to will is present with me, but to do
that which is good is not_”; _23_—“_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._”
Every sinner would prefer a milder law and a different
administration. But whoever does not love God’s law does not truly
love God. The sinner seeks to secure his own interests rather than
God’s. Even so-called religious acts he performs with preference
of his own good to God’s glory. He disobeys, and always has
disobeyed, the fundamental law of love. He is like a railway train
on a down grade, and the brakes must be applied by God or
destruction is sure. There are latent passions in every heart
which if let loose would curse the world. Many a man who escaped
from the burning Iroquois Theatre in Chicago, proved himself a
brute and a demon, by trampling down fugitives who cried for
mercy. Denney, Studies in Theology, 83—“The depravity which sin
has produced in human nature extends to the whole of it. There is
no part of man’s nature which is unaffected by it. Man’s nature is
all of a piece, and what affects it at all affects it altogether.
When the conscience is violated by disobedience to the will of
God, the moral understanding is darkened, and the will is
enfeebled. We are not constructed in water-tight compartments, one
of which might be ruined while the others remained intact.” Yet
over against total depravity, we must set total redemption; over
against original sin, original grace. Christ is in every human
heart mitigating the affects of sin, urging to repentance, and
“_able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God
through him_” (_Heb. 7:25_). Even the unregenerate heathen may
“_put away ... the old man_” and “_put on the new man_” (_Eph.
4:23, 24_), being delivered “_out of the body of this death ...
through Jesus Christ our Lord_” (_Rom. 7:24, 25_).
H. B. Smith, System, 277—“By total depravity is never meant that
men are as bad as they can be; nor that they have not, in their
natural condition, certain amiable qualities; nor that they may
not have virtues in a limited sense (_justitia civilis_). But it
is meant (1) that depravity, or the sinful condition of man,
infects the whole man: intellect, feeling, heart and will; (2)
that in each unrenewed person some lower affection is supreme; and
(3) that each such is destitute of love to God. On these
positions: as to (1) the power of depravity over the _whole_ man,
we have given proof from Scripture; as to (2) the fact that in
every unrenewed man some lower affection is supreme, experience
may be always appealed to; men know that their supreme affection
is fixed on some lower good—intellect, heart, and will going
together in it; or that some form of selfishness is
predominant—using selfish in a general sense—self seeks its
happiness in some inferior object, giving to that its supreme
affection; as to (3) that every unrenewed person is without
supreme love to God, it is the point which is of greatest force,
and is to be urged with the strongest effect, in setting forth the
depth and ‘totality’ of man’s sinfulness: unrenewed men have not
that supreme love of God which is the substance of the first and
great command.” See also Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 248; Baird,
Elohim Revealed, 510-522; Chalmers, Institutes, 1:519-542;
Cunningham, Hist. Theology, 1:516-531; Princeton Review, 1877:470.
2. Ability or inability?
In opposition to the plenary ability taught by the Pelagians, the gracious
ability of the Arminians, and the natural ability of the New School
theologians, the Scriptures declare the total inability of the sinner to
turn himself to God or to do that which is truly good in God’s sight (see
Scripture proof below). A proper conception also of the law, as reflecting
the holiness of God and as expressing the ideal of human nature, leads us
to the conclusion that no man whose powers are weakened by either original
or actual sin can of himself come up to that perfect standard. Yet there
is a certain remnant of freedom left to man. The sinner _can_ (_a_) avoid
the sin against the Holy Ghost; (_b_) choose the less sin rather than the
greater; (_c_) refuse altogether to yield to certain temptations; (_d_) do
outwardly good acts, though with imperfect motives; (_e_) seek God from
motives of self-interest.
But on the other hand the sinner _cannot_ (_a_) by a single volition bring
his character and life into complete conformity to God’s law; (_b_) change
his fundamental preference for self and sin to supreme love for God; nor
(_c_) do any act, however insignificant, which shall meet with God’s
approval or answer fully to the demands of law.
So long, then, as there are states of intellect, affection and
will which man cannot, by any power of volition or of contrary
choice remaining to him, bring into subjection to God, it cannot
be said that he possesses any sufficient ability of himself to do
God’s will; and if a basis for man’s responsibility and guilt be
sought, it must be found, if at all, not in his plenary ability,
his gracious ability, or his natural ability, but in his
_original_ ability, when he came, in Adam, from the hands of his
Maker.
Man’s present inability is natural, in the sense of being
inborn,—it is not acquired by our personal act, but is congenital.
It is not natural, however, as resulting from the original
limitations of human nature, or from the subsequent loss of any
essential faculty of that nature. Human nature, at its first
creation, was endowed with ability perfectly to keep the law of
God. Man has not, even by his sin, lost his essential faculties of
intellect, affection, or will. He has weakened those faculties,
however, so that they are now unable to work up to the normal
measure of their powers. But more especially has man given to
every faculty a bent away from God which renders him morally
unable to render spiritual obedience. The inability to good which
now characterizes human nature is an inability that results from
sin, and is itself sin.
We hold, therefore, to an inability which is both natural and
moral,—moral, as having its source in the self-corruption of man’s
moral nature and the fundamental aversion of his will to
God;—natural, as being inborn, and as affecting with partial
paralysis all his natural powers of intellect, affection,
conscience, and will. For his inability, in both these aspects of
it, man is responsible.
The sinner can do one very important thing, _viz._: give attention
to divine truth. _Ps. 119:59_—“_I thought on my ways, And turned
my feet unto thy testimonies._” G. W. Northrup: “The sinner can
seek God from: (_a_) self-love, regard for his own interest; (_b_)
feeling of duty, sense of obligation, awakened conscience; (_c_)
gratitude for blessings already received; (_d_) aspiration after
the infinite and satisfying.” Denney, Studies in Theology, 85—“A
witty French moralist has said that God does not need to grudge to
his enemies even what they call their virtues; and neither do
God’s ministers.... But there is _one_ thing which man cannot do
_alone_,—he cannot bring his state into harmony with his nature.
When a man has been discovered who has been able, without Christ,
to reconcile himself to God and to obtain dominion over the world
and over sin, _then_ the doctrine of inability, or of the bondage
due to sin, may be denied; _then_, but _not till then_.” The Free
Church of Scotland, in the Declaratory Act of 1892, says “that, in
holding and teaching, according to the Confession of Faith, the
corruption of man’s whole nature as fallen, this church also
maintains that there remain tokens of his greatness as created in
the image of God; that he possesses a knowledge of God and of
duty; that he is responsible for compliance with the moral law and
with the gospel; and that, although unable without the aid of the
Holy Spirit to return to God, he is yet capable of affections and
actions which in themselves are virtuous and praiseworthy.”
To the use of the term “natural ability” to designate merely the sinner’s
possession of all the constituent faculties of human nature, we object
upon the following grounds:
A. Quantitative lack.—The phrase “natural ability” is misleading, since it
seems to imply that the existence of the mere powers of intellect,
affection, and will is a sufficient quantitative qualification for
obedience to God’s law, whereas these powers have been weakened by sin,
and are naturally unable, instead of naturally able, to render back to God
with interest the talent first bestowed. Even if the moral direction of
man’s faculties were a normal one, the effect of hereditary and of
personal sin would render naturally impossible that large likeness to God
which the law of absolute perfection demands. Man has not therefore the
natural ability perfectly to obey God. He had it once, but he lost it with
the first sin.
When Jean Paul Richter says of himself: “I have made of myself all
that could be made out of the stuff,” he evinces a
self-complacency which is due to self-ignorance and lack of moral
insight. When a man realizes the extent of the law’s demands, he
sees that without divine help obedience is impossible. John B.
Gough represented the confirmed drunkard’s efforts at reformation
as a man’s walking up Mount Etna knee-deep in burning lava, or as
one’s rowing against the rapids of Niagara.
B. Qualitative lack.—Since the law of God requires of men not so much
right single volitions as conformity to God in the whole inward state of
the affections and will, the power of contrary choice in single volitions
does not constitute a natural ability to obey God, unless man can by those
single volitions change the underlying state of the affections and will.
But this power man does not possess. Since God judges all moral action in
connection with the general state of the heart and life, natural ability
to good involves not only a full complement of faculties but also a bias
of the affections and will toward God. Without this bias there is no
possibility of right moral action, and where there is no such possibility,
there can be no ability either natural or moral.
Wilkinson, Epic of Paul, 21—“Hatred is like love Herein, that it,
by only being, grows. Until at last usurping quite the man, It
overgrows him like a polypus.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas, 1:53—“The
ideal is the revelation in me of a power that is mightier than my
own. The supreme command ‘Thou oughtest’ is the utterance, only
different in form, of the same voice in my spirit which says ‘Thou
canst’; and my highest spiritual attainments are achieved, not by
self-assertion, but by self-renunciation and self-surrender to the
infinite life of truth and righteousness that is living and
reigning within me.” This conscious inability in one’s self,
together with reception of “_the strength which God supplieth_”
(_1 Pet. 4:11_), is the secret of Paul’s courage; _2 Cor.
12:10_—“_when I am weak, then am I strong_”; _Phil. 2:12,
13_—“_work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it
is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good
pleasure._”
C. No such ability known.—In addition to the psychological argument just
mentioned, we may urge another from experience and observation. These
testify that man is cognizant of no such ability. Since no man has ever
yet, by the exercise of his natural powers, turned himself to God or done
an act truly good in God’s sight, the existence of a natural ability to do
good is a pure assumption. There is no scientific warrant for inferring
the existence of an ability which has never manifested itself in a single
instance since history began.
“Solomon could not keep the Proverbs,—so he wrote them.” The book
of Proverbs needs for its complement the New Testament explanation
of helplessness and offer of help: _John 15:5_—“_apart from me ye
can do nothing_”; _6:37_—“_him that cometh to me I will in no wise
cast out._” The palsied man’s inability to walk is very different
from his indisposition to accept a remedy. The paralytic cannot
climb the cliff, but by a rope let down to him he may be lifted
up, provided he will permit himself to be tied to it. Darling, in
Presb. and Ref. Rev., July, 1901:505—“If bidden, we can stretch
out a withered arm; but God does not require this of one born
armless. We may ‘_hear the voice of the Son of God_’ and ‘_live_’
(_John 5:25_), but we shall not bring out of the tomb faculties
not possessed before death.”
D. Practical evil of the belief.—The practical evil attending the
preaching of natural ability furnishes a strong argument against it. The
Scriptures, in their declarations of the sinner’s inability and
helplessness, aim to shut him up to sole dependence upon God for
salvation. The doctrine of natural ability, assuring him that he is able
at once to repent and turn to God, encourages delay by putting salvation
at all times within his reach. If a single volition will secure it, he may
be saved as easily to-morrow as to-day. The doctrine of inability presses
men to immediate acceptance of God’s offers, lest the day of grace for
them pass by.
Those who care most for self are those in whom self becomes
thoroughly subjected and enslaved to external influences. _Mat.
16:25_—“_whosoever would save his life shall lose it._” The
selfish man is a straw on the surface of a rushing stream. He
becomes more and more a victim of circumstance, until at last he
has no more freedom than the brute. _Ps. 49:20_—“_Man that is in
honor, and understandeth not, Is like the beasts that perish_;”
see R. T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God, 121. Robert
Browning, unpublished poem: “ ‘Would a man ’scape the rod?’ Rabbi
Ben Karshook saith, ‘See that he turn to God The day before his
death.’ ‘Aye, could a man inquire When it shall come?’ I say. The
Rabbi’s eye shoots fire—‘Then let him turn to-day.’ ”
Let us repeat, however, that the denial to man of all ability, whether
natural or moral, to turn himself to God or to do that which is truly good
in God’s sight, does not imply a denial of man’s power to order his
external life in many particulars conformably to moral rules, or even to
attain the praise of men for virtue. Man has still a range of freedom in
acting out his nature, and he may to a certain limited extent act down
upon that nature, and modify it, by isolated volitions externally
conformed to God’s law. He may choose higher or lower forms of selfish
action, and may pursue these chosen courses with various degrees of
selfish energy. Freedom of choice, within this limit, is by no means
incompatible with complete bondage of the will in spiritual things.
_John 1:13_—“_born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but of God_”; _3:5_—“_Except one be born
of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of
God_”; _6:44_—“_No man can come to me, except the Father that sent
me draw him_”; _8:34_—“_Every one that committeth sin is the
bondservant of sin_”; _15:4, 5_—“_the branch cannot bear fruit of
itself ... apart from me ye can do nothing_”; _Rom. 7:18_—“_in me,
that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing; for to will is
present with me, but to do that which it good is not_”;
_24_—“_Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the
body of this death?_” _8:7, 8_—“_the mind of the flesh is enmity
against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither
indeed can it be: and they that are is the flesh cannot please
God_”; _1 Cor. 2:14_—“_the natural man receiveth not the things of
the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; __ and he
cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged_”; _2 Cor.
3:5_—“_not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account
anything as from ourselves_”; _Eph. 2:1_—“_dead through your
trespasses and sins_”; _8-10_—“_by grace have ye been saved
through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works_”; _Heb.
11:6_—“_without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing unto
him._”
Kant’s “I ought, therefore I can” is the relic of man’s original
consciousness of freedom—the freedom with which man was endowed at
his creation—a freedom, now, alas! destroyed by sin. Or it may be
the courage of the soul in which God is working anew by his
Spirit. For Kant’s “Ich soll, also Ich kann,” Julius Müller would
substitute: “Ich sollte freilich können, aber Ich kann nicht”—“I
ought indeed to be able, but I am not able.” Man truly repents
only when he learns that his sin has made him unable to repent
without the renewing grace of God. Emerson, in his poem entitled
“Voluntariness,” says: “So near is grandeur to our dust, So near
is God to man, When duty whispers low, _Thou must_, The youth
replies, _I can_.” But, apart from special grace, all the ability
which man at present possesses comes far short of fulfilling the
spiritual demands of God’s law. Parental and civil law implies a
certain kind of power. Puritan theology called man “_free among
the dead_” (_Ps. 88:5_, A. V.). There was a range of freedom
inside of slavery,—the will was “a drop of water imprisoned in a
solid crystal” (Oliver Wendell Holmes). The man who kills himself
is as dead as if he had been killed by another (Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 2:106).
Westminster Confession, 9:3—“Man by his fall into a state of sin
hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good
accompanying salvation; so, as a natural man, being altogether
averse from that good and dead in sin, he is not able by his own
strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.”
Hopkins, Works, 1:233-235—“So long as the sinner’s opposition of
heart and will continues, he cannot come to Christ. It is
impossible, and will continue so, until his unwillingness and
opposition be removed by a change and renovation of his heart by
divine grace, and he be made willing in the day of God’s power.”
Hopkins speaks of “utter inability to obey the law of God, yea,
utter impossibility.”
Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:257-277—“Inability consists, not in the
loss of any faculty of the soul, nor in the loss of free agency,
for the sinner determines his own acts, nor in mere disinclination
to what is good. It arises from want of spiritual discernment, and
hence want of proper affections. Inability belongs only to the
things of the Spirit. What man cannot do is to repent, believe,
regenerate himself. He cannot put forth any act which merits the
approbation of God. Sin cleaves to all he does, and from its
dominion he cannot free himself. The distinction between natural
and moral ability is of no value. Shall we say that the uneducated
man can understand and appreciate the Iliad, because he has all
the faculties that the scholar has? Shall we say that man can love
God, if he will? This is false, if will means volition. It is a
truism, if will means affection. The Scriptures never thus address
men and tell them that they have power to do all that God
requires. It is dangerous to teach a man this, for until a man
feels that he can do nothing, God never saves him. Inability is
involved in the doctrine of original sin; in the necessity of the
Spirit’s influence in regeneration. Inability is consistent with
obligation, when inability arises from sin and is removed by the
removal of sin.”
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:213-257, and in South Church Sermons,
33-59—“The origin of this helplessness lies, not in creation, but
in sin. God can command the ten talents or the five which he
originally committed to us, together with a diligent and faithful
improvement of them. Because the servant has lost the talents, is
he discharged from obligation to return them with interest? Sin
contains in itself the element of servitude. In the very act of
transgressing the law of God, there is a reflex action of the
human will upon itself, whereby it becomes less able than before
to keep that law. Sin is the suicidal action of the human will. To
do wrong destroys the power to do right. Total depravity carries
with it total impotence. The voluntary faculty may be ruined from
within; may be made impotent to holiness, by its own action; may
surrender itself to appetite and selfishness with such an
intensity and earnestness, that it becomes unable to convert
itself and overcome its wrong inclination.” See Stevenson, Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,—noticed in Andover Rev., June, 1886:664. We
can merge ourselves in the life of another—either bad or good; can
almost transform ourselves into Satan or into Christ, so as to say
with Paul, in _Gal 2:20_—“_it is no longer I that live, but Christ
liveth in me_”; or be minions of “_the spirit that now worketh in
the sons of disobedience_” (_Eph. 2:2_). But if we yield ourselves
to the influence of Satan, the recovery of our true personality
becomes increasingly difficult, and at last impossible.
There is nothing in literature sadder or more significant than the
self-bewailing of Charles Lamb, the gentle Elia, who writes in his
Last Essays, 214—“Could the youth to whom the flavor of the first
wine is delicious as the opening scenes of life or the entering of
some newly discovered paradise, look into my desolation, and be
made to understand what a dreary thing it is when he shall feel
himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a passive will;
to see his destruction, and have no power to stop it; to see all
goodness emptied out of him, and yet not be able to forget a time
when it was otherwise; to bear about the piteous spectacle of his
own ruin,—could he see my fevered eye, fevered with the last
night’s drinking, and feverishly looking for to-night’s repetition
of the folly; could he but feel the body of this death out of
which I cry hourly, with feebler outcry, to be delivered, it were
enough to make him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth, in
all the pride of its mantling temptation.”
For the Arminian “gracious ability,” see Raymond, Syst. Theol.,
2:130; McClintock & Strong, Cyclopædia, 10:990. _Per contra_, see
Calvin, Institutes, bk. 2, chap. 2 (1:282); Edwards, Works, 2:464
(Orig. Sin, 3:1); Bennet Tyler, Works, 73; Baird, Elohim Revealed,
523-528; Cunningham, Hist. Theology, 1:567-639; Turretin, 10:4:19;
A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 260-269; Thornwell, Theology,
1:394-399; Alexander, Moral Science, 89-208; Princeton Essays,
1:224-239; Richards, Lectures on Theology. On real as
distinguished from formal freedom, see Julius Müller, Doct. Sin,
2:1-225. On Augustine’s _lineamenta extrema_ (of the divine image
in man), see Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 119, note. See
also art. by A. H. Strong, on Modified Calvinism, or Remainders of
Freedom in Man, in Bap. Rev., 1883:219-242; and reprinted in the
author’s Philosophy and Religion, 114-128.
II. Guilt.
1. Nature of guilt.
By guilt we mean desert of punishment, or obligation to render
satisfaction to God’s justice for self-determined violation of law. There
is a reaction of holiness against sin, which the Scripture denominates
“the wrath of God” (Rom. 1:18). Sin is in us, either as act or state;
God’s punitive righteousness is over against the sinner, as something to
be feared; guilt is a relation of the sinner to that righteousness,
namely, the sinner’s desert of punishment.
Guilt is related to sin as the burnt spot to the blaze. Schiller,
Die Braut von Messina: “Das Leben ist der Güter höchstes nicht;
Der Uebel grösstes aber ist die Schuld”—“Life is not the highest
of possessions; the greatest of ills, however, is guilt.”
Delitzsch: “Die Schamröthe ist die Abendröthe der untergegangenen
Sonne der ursprünglichen Gerechtigkeit”—“The blush of shame is the
evening red after the sun of original righteousness has gone
down.” E. G. Robinson: “Pangs of conscience do not arise from the
fear of penalty,—they are the penalty itself.” See chapter on
Fig-leaves, in McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture,
142-154—“Spiritual shame for sin sought an outward symbol, and
found it in the nakedness of the lower parts of the body.”
The following remarks may serve both for proof and for explanation:
A. Guilt is incurred only through self-determined transgression either on
the part of man’s nature or person. We are guilty only of that sin which
we have originated or have had part in originating. Guilt is not,
therefore, mere liability to punishment, without participation in the
transgression for which the punishment is inflicted,—in other words, there
is no such thing as constructive guilt under the divine government. We are
accounted guilty only for what we have done, either personally or in our
first parents, and for what we are, in consequence of such doing.
_Ez. 18:20_—“_the son shall not bear the iniquity of the
father_”—, as Calvin says (Com. _in loco_): “The son shall not
bear the father’s iniquity, since he shall receive the reward due
to himself, and shall bear his own burden.... All are guilty
through their own fault.... Every one perishes through his own
iniquity.” In other words, the whole race fell in Adam, and is
punished for its own sin in him, not for the sins of immediate
ancestors, nor for the sin of Adam as a person foreign to us.
_John 9:3_—“_Neither did this man sin, nor his parents_” (that he
should be born blind)—Do not attribute to any special later sin
what is a consequence of the sin of the race—the first sin which
“brought death into the world, and all our woe.” Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 2:195-213.
B. Guilt is an objective result of sin, and is not to be confounded with
subjective pollution, or depravity. Every sin, whether of nature or
person, is an offense against God (Ps. 51:4-6), an act or state of
opposition to his will, which has for its effect God’s personal wrath (Ps.
7:11; John 3:18, 36), and which must be expiated either by punishment or
by atonement (Heb. 9:22). Not only does sin, as unlikeness to the divine
purity, involve _pollution_,—it also, as antagonism to God’s holy will,
involves _guilt_. This guilt, or obligation to satisfy the outraged
holiness of God, is explained in the New Testament by the terms “debtor”
and “debt” (Mat. 6:12; Luke 13:4; Mat. 5:21; Rom. 3:19; 6:23; Eph. 2:3).
Since guilt, the objective result of sin, is entirely distinct from
depravity, the subjective result, human nature may, as in Christ, have the
guilt without the depravity (2 Cor. 5:21), or may, as in the Christian,
have the depravity without the guilt (1 John 1:7, 8).
_Ps. 51:4-6_—“_Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, And done
that which is evil in thy sight; That thou mayest be justified
when thou speakest, And be clear when thou judgest_”; _7:11_—“_God
is a righteous judge, Yea, a God that hath indignation every
day_”; _John 3:18_—“_he that believeth not hath been judged
already_”; _36_—“_he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life,
but the wrath of God abideth on him_”; _Heb. 9:22_—“_apart from
shedding of blood there is no remission_”; _Mat. 6:12_—“_debts_”;
_Luke 13:4_—“_offenders_” (marg. “_debtors_”); _Mat. 5:21_—“_shall
be in danger of_ [exposed to] _the judgment_”; _Rom. 3:19_—“_that
... all the world may be brought under the judgment of God_”;
_6:23_—“_the wages of sin is death_”—death is sin’s desert; _Eph.
2:3_—“_by nature children of wrath_”; _2 Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew
no sin he made to be sin on our behalf_”; _1 John 1:7, 8_—“_the
blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin._ [Yet] _If we
say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is
not in us._”
Sin brings in its train not only depravity but guilt, not only
_macula_ but _reatus_. Scripture sets forth the _pollution_ of sin
by its similies of “a cage of unclean birds” and of “wounds,
bruises, and putrefying sores”; by leprosy and Levitical
uncleanness, under the old dispensation; by death and the
corruption of the grave, under both the old and the new. But
Scripture sets forth the _guilt_ of sin, with equal vividness, in
the fear of Cain and in the remorse of Judas. The revulsion of
God’s holiness from sin, and its demand for satisfaction, are
reflected in the shame and remorse of every awakened conscience.
There is an instinctive feeling in the sinner’s heart that sin
will be punished, and ought to be punished. But the Holy Spirit
makes this need of reparation so deeply felt that the soul has no
rest until its debt is paid. The offending church member who is
truly penitent loves the law and the church which excludes him,
and would not think it faithful if it did not. So Jesus, when
laden with the guilt of the race, pressed forward to the cross,
saying: “_I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I
straitened till it be accomplished!_” (_Luke 12:50; Mark 10:32_).
All sin involves guilt, and the sinful soul itself demands
penalty, so that all will ultimately go where they most desire to
be. All the great masters in literature have recognized this. The
inextinguishable thirst for reparation constitutes the very
essence of tragedy. The Greek tragedians are full of it, and
Shakespeare is its most impressive teacher: Measure for Measure,
5:1—“I am sorry that such sorrow I procure, And so deep sticks it
in my penitent heart That I crave death more willingly than mercy;
’Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it”; Cymbeline, 5:4—“and so,
great Powers, If you will take this audit, take this life, And
cancel these cold bonds!... Desired, more than constrained, to
satisfy, ... take No stricter render of me than my all”; that is,
settle the account with me by taking my life, for nothing less
than that will pay my debt. And later writers follow Shakespeare.
Marguerite, in Goethe’s Faust, fainting in the great cathedral
under the solemn reverberations of the Dies Iræ; Dimmesdale, in
Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, putting himself side by side with
Hester Prynne, his victim, in her place of obloquy; Bulwer’s
Eugene Aram, coming forward, though unsuspected, to confess the
murder he had committed, all these are illustrations of the inner
impulse that moves even a sinful soul to satisfy the claims of
justice upon it. See A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 215,
216. On Hawthorne, see Hutton, Essays, 2:370-416—“In the Scarlet
Letter, the minister gains fresh reverence and popularity as the
very fruit of the passionate anguish with which his heart is
consumed. Frantic with the stings of unacknowledged guilt, he is
yet taught by these very stings to understand the hearts and stir
the consciences of others.” See also Dinsmore, Atonement in
Literature and Life.
Nor are such scenes confined to the pages of romance. In a recent
trial at Syracuse, Earl, the wife-murderer, thanked the jury that
had convicted him; declared the verdict just; begged that no one
would interfere to stay the course of justice; said that the
greatest blessing that could be conferred on him would be to let
him suffer the penalty of his crime. In Plattsburg, at the close
of another trial in which the accused was a life-convict who had
struck down a fellow-convict with an axe, the jury, after being
out two hours, came in to ask the Judge to explain the difference
between murder in the first and second degree. Suddenly the
prisoner rose and said: “This was not a murder in the second
degree. It was a deliberate and premeditated murder. I know that I
have done wrong, that I ought to confess the truth, and that I
ought to be hanged.” This left the jury nothing to do but render
their verdict, and the Judge sentenced the murderer to be hanged,
as he confessed he deserved to be. In 1891, Lars Ostendahl, the
most famous preacher of Norway, startled his hearers by publicly
confessing that he had been guilty of immorality, and that he
could no longer retain his pastorate. He begged his people for the
sake of Christ to forgive him and not to desert the poor in his
asylums. He was not only preacher, but also head of a great
philanthropic work.
Such is the movement and demand of the enlightened conscience. The
lack of conviction that crime ought to be punished is one of the
most certain signs of moral decay in either the individual or the
nation (_Ps. 97:10_—“_Ye that love the Lord, hate evil_”;
_149:6_—“_Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, And a
two-edged sword in their hand_”—to execute God’s judgment upon
iniquity).
This relation of sin to God shows us how Christ is “_made sin on
our behalf_” (_2 Cor. 5:21_). Since Christ is the immanent God, he
is also essential humanity, the universal man, the life of the
race. All the nerves and sensibilities of humanity meet in him. He
is the central brain to which and through which all ideas must
pass. He is the central heart to which and through which all pains
must be communicated. You cannot telephone to your friend across
the town without first ringing up the central office. You cannot
injure your neighbor without first injuring Christ. Each one of us
can say of him: “_Against thee, thee only, have I sinned_” (_Ps.
51:4_). Because of his central and all-inclusive humanity, Christ
can feel all the pangs of shame and suffering which rightfully
belong to sinners, but which they cannot feel, because their sin
has stupefied and deadened them. The Messiah, if he be truly man,
must be a suffering Messiah. For the very reason of his humanity
he must bear in his own person all the guilt of humanity and must
be “_the Lamb of God who_” takes, and so “_takes away the sin of
the world_” (_John 1:29_).
Guilt and depravity are not only distinguishable in thought,—they
are also separable in fact. The convicted murderer might repent
and become pure, yet he might still be under obligation to suffer
the punishment of his crime. The Christian is freed from guilt
(_Rom. 8:1_), but he is not yet freed from depravity (_Rom.
7:23_). Christ, on the other hand, was under obligation to suffer
(_Luke 24:26_; _Acts 3:18_; _26:23_), while yet he was without sin
(_Heb. 7:26_). In the book entitled Modern Religious Thought,
3-29, R. J. Campbell has an essay on The Atonement, with which,
apart from its view as to the origin of moral evil in God, we are
in substantial agreement. He holds that “to relieve men from their
sense of guilt, objective atonement is necessary,”—we would say:
to relieve men from guilt itself—the obligation to suffer. “If
Christ be the eternal Son of God, that side of the divine nature
which has gone forth in creation, if he contains humanity and is
present in every article and act of human experience, then he is
associated with the existence of the primordial evil.... He and
only he can sever the entail between man and his responsibility
for personal sin. Christ has not _sinned_ in man, but he takes
responsibility for that experience of evil into which humanity is
born, and the yielding to which constitutes sin. He goes forth to
suffer, and actually does suffer, in man. The eternal Son in whom
humanity is contained is therefore a sufferer since creation
began. This mysterious passion of Deity must continue until
redemption is consummated and humanity restored to God. Thus every
consequence of human ill is felt in the experience of Christ. Thus
Christ not only assumes the guilt but bears the punishment of
every human soul.” We claim however that the necessity of this
suffering lies, not in the needs of man, but in the holiness of
God.
C. Guilt, moreover, as an objective result of sin, is not to be confounded
with the subjective consciousness of guilt (Lev. 5:17). In the
condemnation of conscience, God’s condemnation partially and prophetically
manifests itself (1 John 3:20). But guilt is primarily a relation to God,
and only secondarily a relation to conscience. Progress in sin is marked
by diminished sensitiveness of moral insight and feeling. As “the greatest
of sins is to be conscious of none,” so guilt may be great, just in
proportion to the absence of consciousness of it (Ps. 19:12; 51:6; Eph.
4:18, 19—ἀπηλγηκότες). There is no evidence, however, that the voice of
conscience can be completely or finally silenced. The time for repentance
may pass, but not the time for remorse. Progress in holiness, on the other
hand, is marked by increasing apprehension of the depth and extent of our
sinfulness, while with this apprehension is combined, in a normal
Christian experience, the assurance that the guilt of our sin has been
taken, and taken away, by Christ (John 1:29).
_Lev. 5:17_—“_And if any one sin, and do any of the things which
Jehovah hath commanded not to be done; though he knew it not, yet
is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity_”; _1 John
3:20_—“_because if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our
heart, and knoweth all things_”; _Ps. 19:12_—“_Who can discern his
errors? Clear thou me from hidden faults_”; _51:6_—“_Behold, thou
desirest truth in the inward parts; And in the hidden part thou
wilt make me to know wisdom_”; _Eph. 4:18, 19_—“_darkened in their
understanding ... being past feeling_”; _John 1:29_—“_Behold, the
Lamb of God, that taketh away_ [marg. “_beareth_”] _the sin of the
world._”
Plato, Republic, 1:330—“When death approaches, cares and alarms
awake, especially the fear of hell and its punishments.” Cicero,
De Divin., 1:30—“Then comes remorse for evil deeds.” Persius,
Satire 3—“His vice benumbs him; his fibre has become fat; he is
conscious of no fault; he knows not the loss he suffers; he is so
far sunk, that there is not even a bubble on the surface of the
deep.” Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:1—“Thus conscience doth make cowards
of us all”; 4:5—“To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is, Each
toy seems prologue to some great amiss; So full of artless
jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt”;
Richard III, 5:3—“O coward conscience, how thou dost afflict
me!... My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, and every
tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a
villain”; Tempest, 3:3—“All three of them are desperate; their
great guilt, Like poison given to work a great time after, Now
’gins to bite the spirits”; Ant. and Cleop., 3:9—“When we in our
viciousness grow hard (O misery on’t!) the wise gods seel our
eyes; In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us Adore our
errors; laugh at us, while we strut To our confusion.”
Dr. Shedd said once to a graduating class of young theologians:
“Would that upon the naked, palpitating heart of each one of you
might be laid one redhot coal of God Almighty’s wrath!” Yes, we
add, if only that redhot coal might be quenched by one red drop of
Christ’s atoning blood. Dr. H. E. Robins: “To the convicted sinner
a merely external hell would be a cooling flame, compared with the
agony of his remorse.” John Milton represents Satan as saying:
“Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” James Martineau, Life
by Jackson, 190—“It is of the essence of guilty declension to
administer its own anæsthetics.” But this deadening of conscience
cannot last always. Conscience is a mirror of God’s holiness. We
may cover the mirror with the veil of this world’s diversions and
deceits. When the veil is removed, and conscience again reflects
the sunlike purity of God’s demands, we are visited with
self-loathing and self-contempt. John Caird, Fund. Ideas,
2:25—“Though it may cast off every other vestige of its divine
origin, our nature retains at least this one terrible prerogative
of it, the capacity of preying on itself.” Lyttelton in Lux Mundi,
277—“The common fallacy that a self-indulgent sinner is no one’s
enemy but his own would, were it true, involve the further
inference that such a sinner would not feel himself guilty.” If
any dislike the doctrine of guilt, let them remember that without
wrath there is no pardon, without guilt no forgiveness. See, on
the nature of guilt, Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:193-267;
Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 208-209; Thomasius, Christi Person
und Werk, 1:346; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 461-473; Delitzsch, Bib.
Psychologie, 121-148; Thornwell, Theology, 1:400-424.
2. Degrees of guilt.
The Scriptures recognize different degrees of guilt as attaching to
different kinds of sin. The variety of sacrifices under the Mosaic law,
and the variety of awards in the judgment, are to be explained upon this
principle.
_Luke 12:47, 48_—“_shall be beaten with many stripes ... shall be
beaten with few stripes_”; _Rom. 2:6_—“_who will render to every
man according to his works._” See also _John 19:11_—“_he that
delivered me unto thee hath greater sin_”; _Heb. 2:2, 3_—if
“_every transgression ... received a just recompense of reward;
how shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation?_” _10:28,
29_—“_A man that hath set at nought Moses’ law dieth without
compassion on the word of two or three witnesses: of how much
sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath
trodden under foot the Son of God?_”
Casuistry, however, has drawn many distinctions which lack Scriptural
foundation. Such is the distinction between venial sins and mortal sins in
the Roman Catholic Church,—every sin unpardoned being mortal, and all sins
being venial, since Christ has died for all. Nor is the common distinction
between sins of omission and sins of commission more valid, since the very
omission is an act of commission.
_Mat. 25:45_—“_Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these
least_”; _James 4:17_—“_To him therefore that knoweth to do good,
and doeth it not, to him it is sin._” John Ruskin: “The
condemnation given from the Judgment Throne—most solemnly
described—is for all the ‘undones’ and not the ‘dones.’ People are
perpetually afraid of doing wrong; but unless they are doing its
reverse energetically, they _do it all day long_, and the degree
does not matter.” The Roman Catholic Church proceeds upon the
supposition that she can determine the precise malignity of every
offence, and assign its proper penance at the confessional.
Thornwell, Theology, 1:424-441, says that “all sins are venial but
one—for there is a sin against the Holy Ghost,” yet “not one is
venial in itself—for the least proceeds from an apostate state and
nature.” We shall see, however, that the hindrance to pardon, in
the case of the sin against the Holy Spirit, is subjective rather
than objective.
J. Spencer Kennard: “Roman Catholicism in Italy presents the
spectacle of the authoritative representatives and teachers of
morals and religion themselves living in all forms of deceit,
corruption, and tyranny; and, on the other hand, discriminating
between venial and mortal sin, classing as venial sins lying,
fraud, fornication, marital infidelity, and even murder, all of
which may be atoned for and forgiven or even permitted by the mere
payment of money; and at the same time classing as mortal sins
disrespect and disobedience to the church.”
The following distinctions are indicated in Scripture as involving
different degrees of guilt:
A. Sin of nature, and personal transgression.
Sin of nature involves guilt, yet there is greater guilt when this sin of
nature reasserts itself in personal transgression; for, while this latter
includes in itself the former, it also adds to the former a new element,
namely, the conscious exercise of the individual and personal will, by
virtue of which a new decision is made against God, special evil habit is
induced, and the total condition of the soul is made more depraved.
Although we have emphasized the guilt of inborn sin, because this truth is
most contested, it is to be remembered that men reach a conviction of
their native depravity only through a conviction of their personal
transgressions. For this reason, by far the larger part of our preaching
upon sin should consist in applications of the law of God to the acts and
dispositions of men’s lives.
_Mat. 19:14_—“_to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven_”—relative
innocence of childhood; _23:32_—“_Fill ye up then the measure of
your fathers_”—personal transgression added to inherited
depravity. In preaching, we should first treat individual
transgressions, and thence proceed to heart-sin, and race-sin. Man
is not wholly a spontaneous development of inborn tendencies, a
manifestation of original sin. Motives do not _determine_ but they
_persuade_ the will, and every man is guilty of conscious personal
transgressions which may, with the help of the Holy Spirit, be
brought under the condemning judgment of conscience. Birks,
Difficulties of Belief, 169-174—“Original sin does not do away
with the significance of personal transgression. Adam was
pardoned: but some of his descendants are unpardonable. The second
death is referred, in Scripture, to our own personal guilt.”
This is not to say that original sin does not involve as great sin
as that of Adam in the first transgression, for original sin _is_
the sin of the first transgression; it is only to say that
personal transgression is original sin _plus_ the conscious
ratification of Adam’s act by the individual. “We are guilty for
what we _are_, as much as for what we _do_. Our _sin_ is not
simply the sum total of all our _sins_. There is a _sinfulness_
which is the common denominator of all our sins.” It is customary
to speak lightly of original sin, as if personal sins were all for
which man is accountable. But it is only in the light of original
sin that personal sins can be explained. _Prov. 14:9,
marg._—“_Fools make a mock at sin._” Simon, Reconciliation,
122—“The sinfulness of individual men varies; the sinfulness of
humanity is a constant quantity.” Robert Browning, Ferishtah’s
Fancies: “Man lumps his kind i’ the mass. God singles thence unit
by unit. Thou and God exist—So think! for certain: Think the
mass—mankind—Disparts, disperses, leaves thyself alone! Ask thy
lone soul what laws are plain to thee,—Thou and no other, stand or
fall by them! That is the part for thee.”
B. Sins of ignorance, and sins of knowledge.
Here guilt is measured by the degree of light possessed, or in other
words, by the opportunities of knowledge men have enjoyed, and the powers
with which they have been naturally endowed. Genius and privilege increase
responsibility. The heathen are guilty, but those to whom the oracles of
God have been committed are more guilty than they.
_Mat 10:15_—“_more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in
the day of judgment, than for that city_”; _Luke 12:47, 48_—“_that
servant, who knew his Lord’s will ... shall be beaten with many
stripes; but he that knew not ... shall be beaten with few
stripes_”; _23:34_—“_Father, forgive them; for they know not what
they do_”—complete knowledge would put them beyond the reach of
forgiveness. _John 19:11_—“_he that delivered me unto thee hath
greater sin_”; _Acts 17:30_—“_The times of ignorance therefore God
overlooked_”; _Rom. 1:32_—“_who, knowing the ordinance of God,
that they that practise such things are worthy of death, not only
do the same, but also consent with them that practise them_”;
_2:12_—“_For as many as have sinned without the law shall also
perish without the law: and as many as have sinned under the law
shall be judged by the law_”; _1 Tim. 1:13, 15, 16_—“_I obtained
mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief._”
_Is. 42:19_—“_Who is blind ... as Jehovah’s servant?_” It was the
Pharisees whom Jesus warned of the sin against the Holy Spirit.
The guilt of the crucifixion rested on Jews rather than on
Gentiles. Apostate Israel was more guilty than the pagans. The
greatest sinners of the present day may be in Christendom, not in
heathendom. Satan was an archangel; Judas was an apostle;
Alexander Borgia was a pope. Jackson, James Martineau,
362—“Corruptio optimi pessima est, as seen in a drunken Webster, a
treacherous Bacon, a licentious Goethe.” Sir Roger de Coverley
observed that none but men of fine parts deserve to be hanged.
Kaftan, Dogmatik, 317—“The greater sin often involves the lesser
guilt; the lesser sin the greater guilt.” Robert Browning, The
Ring and the Book, 227 (Pope, 1975)—“There’s a new tribunal now
Higher than God’s,—the educated man’s! Nice sense of honor in the
human breast Supersedes here the old coarse oracle!” Dr. H. E.
Robins holds that “palliation of guilt according to light is not
possible under a system of pure law, and is possible only because
the probation of the sinner is a probation of grace.”
C. Sins of infirmity, and sins of presumption.
Here the guilt is measured by the energy of the evil will. Sin may be
known to be sin, yet may be committed in haste or weakness. Though haste
and weakness constitute a palliation of the offence which springs
therefrom, yet they are themselves sins, as revealing an unbelieving and
disordered heart. But of far greater guilt are those presumptuous choices
of evil in which not weakness, but strength of will, is manifest.
_Ps. 19:12, 13_—“_Clear thou me from hidden faults. Keep back thy
servant also from presumptuous sins_”; _Is. 5:18_—“_Woe unto them
that draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, and sin as it were
with a cart-rope_”—not led away insensibly by sin, but earnestly,
perseveringly, and wilfully working away at it; _Gal.
6:1_—“_overtaken in any trespass_”; _1 Tim. 5:24_—“_Some men’s
sins are evident, going before unto judgment; and some men also
they follow after_”—some men’s sins are so open, that they act as
officers to bring to justice those who commit them; whilst others
require after-proof (An. Par. Bible). Luther represents one of the
former class as saying to himself: “Esto peccator, et pecca
fortiter.” On sins of passion and of reflection, see Bittinger, in
Princeton Rev., 1873:219.
_Micah 7:3_, marg.—“_Both hands are put forth for evil, to do it
diligently._” So we ought to do good. “My art is my life,” said
Grisi, the prima donna of the opera, “I save myself all day for
that one bound upon the stage.” H. Bonar: “Sin worketh,—Let me
work too. Busy as sin, my work I ply, Till I rest in the rest of
eternity.” German criminal law distinguishes between intentional
homicide without deliberation, and intentional homicide with
deliberation. There are three grades of sin: 1. Sins of ignorance,
like Paul’s persecuting; 2. sins of infirmity, like Peter’s
denial; 3. sins of presumption, like David’s murder of Uriah. Sins
of presumption were unpardonable under the Jewish law; they are
not unpardonable under Christ.
D. Sin of incomplete, and sin of final, obduracy.
Here the guilt is measured, not by the objective sufficiency or
insufficiency of divine grace, but by the degree of unreceptiveness into
which sin has brought the soul. As the only sin unto death which is
described in Scripture is the sin against the Holy Spirit, we here
consider the nature of that sin.
_Mat 12:31_—“_Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men;
but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven_”;
_32_—“_And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it
shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy
Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor
in that which is to come_”; _Mark 3:29_—“_whosoever shall
blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is
guilty of an eternal sin_”; _1 John 5:16, 17_—“_If any man see his
brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and God will
give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin
into death: not concerning this do I say that he should make
request. All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto
death_”; _Heb. 10:26_—“_if we sin wilfully after that we have
received the knowledge of the truth, then remaineth no more a
sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment,
and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries._”
Ritschl holds all sin that comes short of definitive rejection of
Christ to be ignorance rather than sin, and to be the object of no
condemning sentence. This is to make the sin against the Holy
Spirit the only real sin. Conscience and Scripture alike
contradict this view. There is much incipient hardening of the
heart that precedes the sin of final obduracy. See Denney, Studies
in Theology, 80. The composure of the criminal is not always a
sign of innocence. S. S. Times, April 12, 1902:200—“Sensitiveness
of conscience and of feeling, and responsiveness of countenance
and bearing, are to be retained by purity of life and freedom from
transgression. On the other hand composure of countenance and
calmness under suspicion and accusation are likely to be a result
of continuance in wrong doing, with consequent hardening of the
whole moral nature.”
Weismann, Heredity, 2:8—“As soon as any organ falls into disuse,
it degenerates, and finally is lost altogether.... In parasites
the organs of sense degenerate.” Marconi’s wireless telegraphy
requires an attuned “receiver.” The “transmitter” sends out
countless rays into space: only one capable of corresponding
vibrations can understand them. The sinner may so destroy his
receptivity, that the whole universe may be uttering God’s truth,
yet he be unable to hear a word of it. The Outlook: “If a man
should put out his eyes, he could not see—nothing could make him
see. So if a man should by obstinate wickedness destroy his power
to believe in God’s forgiveness, he would be in a hopeless state.
Though God would still be gracious, the man could not see it, and
so could not take God’s forgiveness to himself.”
The sin against the Holy Spirit is not to be regarded simply as an
isolated act, but also as the external symptom of a heart so radically and
finally set against God that no power which God can consistently use will
ever save it. This sin, therefore, can be only the culmination of a long
course of self-hardening and self-depraving. He who has committed it must
be either profoundly indifferent to his own condition, or actively and
bitterly hostile to God; so that anxiety or fear on account of one’s
condition is evidence that it has not been committed. The sin against the
Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven, simply because the soul that has committed
it has ceased to be receptive of divine influences, even when those
influences are exerted in the utmost strength which God has seen fit to
employ in his spiritual administration.
The commission of this sin is marked by a loss of spiritual sight;
the blind fish of the Mammoth Cave left light for darkness, and so
in time lost their eyes. It is marked by a loss of religious
sensibility; the sensitive-plant loses Its sensitiveness, in
proportion to the frequency with which it is touched. It is marked
by a loss of power to will the good; “the lava hardens after it
has broken from the crater, and in that state cannot return to its
source” (Van Oosterzee). The same writer also remarks (Dogmatics,
2:438): “Herod Antipas, after earlier doubt and slavishness,
reached such deadness as to be able to mock the Savior, at the
mention of whose name he had not long before trembled.” Julius
Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:425—“It is not that divine grace is
absolutely refused to any one who in true penitence asks
forgiveness of this sin; but he who commits it never fulfills the
subjective conditions upon which forgiveness is possible, because
the aggravation of sin to this ultimatum destroys in him all
susceptibility of repentance. The way of return to God is closed
against no one who does not close it against himself.” Drummond,
Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 97-120, illustrates the
downward progress of the sinner by the law of degeneration in the
vegetable and animal world: pigeons, roses, strawberries, all tend
to revert to the primitive and wild type. “_How shall we escape,
if we neglect so great a salvation?_” (_Heb.2:3_).
Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3:5—“You all know security Is mortals’
chiefest enemy.” Moulton, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist,
90-124—“Richard III is the ideal villain. Villainy has become an
end in itself. Richard is an artist in villainy. He lacks the
emotions naturally attending crime. He regards villainy with the
intellectual enthusiasm of the artist. His villainy is ideal in
its success. There is a fascination of irresistibility in him. He
is imperturbable in his crime. There is no effort, but rather
humor, in it; a recklessness which suggests boundless resources;
an inspiration which excludes calculation. Shakespeare relieves
the representation from the charge of monstrosity by turning all
this villainous history into the unconscious development of
Nemesis.” See also A. H. Strong, Great Poets, 188-193. Robert
Browning’s Guido, in The Ring and the Book, is an example of pure
hatred of the good. Guido hates Pompilia for her goodness, and
declares that, if he catches her in the next world, he will murder
her there, as he murdered her here.
Alexander VI, the father of Cæsar and Lucrezia Borgia, the pope of
cruelty and lust, wore yet to the day of his death the look of
unfailing joyousness and geniality, yes, of even retiring
sensitiveness and modesty. No fear or reproach of conscience
seemed to throw gloom over his life, as in the cases of Tiberius
and Louis XI. He believed himself under the special protection of
the Virgin, although he had her painted with the features of his
paramour, Julia Farnese. He never scrupled at false witness,
adultery, or murder. See Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia, 294, 295.
Jeremy Taylor thus describes the progress of sin in the sinner:
“First it startles him, then it becomes pleasing, then delightful,
then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed; then the man is
impenitent, then obstinate, then resolved never to repent, then
damned.”
There is a state of utter insensibility to emotions of love or
fear, and man by his sin may reach that state. The act of
blasphemy is only the expression of a hardened or a hateful heart.
B. H. Payne: “The calcium flame will char the steel wire so that
it is no longer affected by the magnet.... As the blazing cinders
and black curling smoke which the volcano spews from its rumbling
throat are the accumulation of months and years, so the sin
against the Holy Spirit is not a thoughtless expression in a
moment of passion or rage, but the giving vent to a state of heart
and mind abounding in the accumulations of weeks and months of
opposition to the gospel.”
Dr. J. P. Thompson: “The unpardonable sin is the knowing, wilful,
persistent, contemptuous, malignant spurning of divine truth and
grace, as manifested to the soul by the convincing and
illuminating power of the Holy Ghost.” Dorner says that “therefore
this sin does not belong to Old Testament times, or to the mere
revelation of law. It implies the full revelation of the grace in
Christ, and the conscious rejection of it by a soul to which the
Spirit has made it manifest (_Acts 17:30_—‘_The times of
ignorance, therefore, God overlooked_’; _Rom. 3:25_—‘_the passing
over of the sins done aforetime_’).” But was it not under the Old
Testament that God said: “_My Spirit shall not strive with man
forever_” (_Gen. 6:3_), and “_Ephraim is joined to idols; let him
alone_” (_Hosea 4:17_)? The sin against the Holy Ghost is a sin
against grace, but it does not appear to be limited to New
Testament times.
It is still true that the unpardonable sin is a sin committed
against the Holy Spirit rather than against Christ: _Mat.
12:32_—“_whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it
shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy
Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor
in that which is to come._” Jesus warns the Jews against it,—he
does not say they had already committed it. They would seem to
have committed it when, after Pentecost, they added to their
rejection of Christ the rejection of the Holy Spirit’s witness to
Christ’s resurrection. See Schaff, Sin against the Holy Ghost;
Lemme, Sünde wider den Heiligen Geist; Davis, in Bap. Rev.,
1862:317-326; Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine, 283-289. On the general
subject of kinds of sin and degrees of guilt, see Kahnis,
Dogmatik, 3:284, 298.
III. Penalty.
1. Idea of penalty.
By penalty, we mean that pain or loss which is directly or indirectly
inflicted by the Lawgiver, in vindication of his justice outraged by the
violation of law.
Turretin, 1:213—“Justice necessarily demands that all sin be
punished, but it does not equally demand that it be punished in
the very person that sinned, or in just such time and degree.” So
far as this statement of the great Federal theologian is intended
to explain our guilt in Adam and our justification in Christ, we
can assent to his words; but we must add that the reason, in each
case, why we suffer the penalty of Adam’s sin, and Christ suffers
the penalty of our sins, is not to be found in any
covenant-relation, but rather in the fact that the sinner is one
with Adam, and Christ is one with the believer,—in other words,
not covenant-unity, but life-unity. The word “penalty,” like
“pain,” is derived from pœna, ποινή, and it implies the
correlative notion of desert. As under the divine government there
can be no constructive _guilt_, so there can be no _penalty_
inflicted by legal fiction. Christ’s sufferings were penalty, not
arbitrarily inflicted, nor yet borne to expiate personal guilt,
but as the just due of the human nature with which he had united
himself, and a part of which he was. Prof. Wm. Adams Brown: “Loss,
not suffering, is the supreme penalty for Christians. The real
penalty is separation from God. If such separation involves
suffering, that is a sign of God’s mercy, for where there is life,
there is hope. Suffering is always to be interpreted as an appeal
from God to man.”
In this definition it is implied that:
A. The natural consequences of transgression, although they constitute a
part of the penalty of sin, do not exhaust that penalty. In all penalty
there is a personal element—the holy wrath of the Lawgiver,—which natural
consequences but partially express.
We do not deny, but rather assert, that the natural consequences
of transgression are a part of the penalty of sin. Sensual sins
are punished, in the deterioration and corruption of the body;
mental and spiritual sins, in the deterioration and corruption of
the soul. _Prov. 5:22_—“_His own iniquities shall take the wicked,
And he shall be holden with the cords of his sin_”—as the hunter
is caught in the toils which he has devised for the wild beast.
Sin is self-detecting and self-tormenting. But this is only half
the truth. Those who would confine all penalty to the reaction of
natural laws are in danger of forgetting that God is not simply
immanent in the universe, but is also transcendent, and that “_to
fall into the hands of the living God_” (_Heb. 10:31_) is to fall
into the hands, not simply of the law, but also of the Lawgiver.
Natural law is only the regular expression of God’s mind and will.
We abhor a person who is foul in body and in speech. There is no
penalty of sin more dreadful than its being an object of
abhorrence to God. _Jer. 44:4_—“_Oh, do not this abominable thing
that I hate!_” Add to this the law of continuity which makes sin
reproduce itself, and the law of conscience which makes sin its
own detecter, judge, and tormentor, and we have sufficient
evidence of God’s wrath against it, apart from any external
inflictions. The divine feeling toward sin is seen in Jesus’
scourging the traffickers in the temple, his denunciation of the
Pharisees, his weeping over Jerusalem, his agony in Gethsemane.
Imagine the feeling of a father toward his daughter’s betrayer,
and God’s feeling toward sin may be faintly understood.
The deed returns to the doer, and character determines
destiny—this law is a revelation of the righteousness of God.
Penalty will vindicate the divine character in the long run,
though not always in time. This is recognized in all religions.
Buddhist priest in Japan: “The evil doer weaves a web around
himself, as the silkworm weaves its cocoon.” Socrates made Circe’s
turning of men into swine a mere parable of the self-brutalizing
influence of sin. In Dante’s Inferno, the punishments are all of
them the sins themselves; hence men are in hell before they die.
Hegel: “Penalty is the other half of crime.” R. W. Emerson:
“Punishment not follows, but accompanies, crime.” Sagebeer, The
Bible in Court, 59—“Corruption is destruction, and the sinner is a
suicide; penalty corresponds with transgression and is the outcome
of it; sin is death in the making; death is sin in the final
infliction.” J. B. Thomas, Baptist Congress, 1901:110—“What
matters it whether I wait by night for the poacher and
deliberately shoot him, or whether I set the pistol so that he
shall be shot by it when he commits the depredation?” Tennyson,
Sea Dreams: “His gain is loss; for he that wrongs his friend
Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about A silent court of
justice in his breast, Himself the judge and jury, and himself The
prisoner at the bar, ever condemn’d: And that drags down his life:
then comes what comes Hereafter.”
B. The object of penalty is not the reformation of the offender or the
ensuring of social or governmental safety. These ends may be incidentally
secured through its infliction, but the great end of penalty is the
vindication of the character of the Lawgiver. Penalty is essentially a
necessary reaction of the divine holiness against sin. Inasmuch, however,
as wrong views of the object of penalty have so important a bearing upon
our future studies of doctrine, we make fuller mention of the two
erroneous theories which have greatest currency.
(_a_) Penalty is not essentially reformatory.—By this we mean that the
reformation of the offender is not its primary design,—as penalty, it is
not intended to reform. Penalty, in itself, proceeds not from the love and
mercy of the Lawgiver, but from his justice. Whatever reforming influences
may in any given instance be connected with it are not parts of the
penalty, but are mitigations of it, and they are added not in justice but
in grace. If reformation follows the infliction of penalty, it is not the
effect of the penalty, but the effect of certain benevolent agencies which
have been provided to turn into a means of good what naturally would be to
the offender only a source of harm.
That the object of penalty is not reformation appears from Scripture,
where punishment is often referred to God’s justice, but never to God’s
love; from the intrinsic ill-desert of sin, to which penalty is
correlative; from the fact that punishment must be vindicative, in order
to be disciplinary, and just, in order to be reformatory; from the fact
that upon this theory punishment would not be just when the sinner was
already reformed or could not be reformed, so that the greater the sin the
less the punishment must be.
Punishment is essentially different from chastisement. The latter
proceeds from love (_Jer. 10:24_—“_correct me, but in measure; not
in thine anger_”; _Heb. 12:6_—“_Whom the Lord loveth he
chasteneth_”). Punishment proceeds not from love but from
justice—see _Ez. 28:22_—“_I shall have executed judgments in her,
and shall be sanctified in her_”; _36:21, 22_—in judgment, “_I do
not this for your sake, but for my holy name_”; _Heb. 12:29_—“_our
God is a consuming fire_”; _Rev. 15:1, 4_—“_wrath of God ... thou
only art holy ... thy righteous acts have been made manifest_”;
_16:5_—“_Righteous art thou, ... thou Holy One, because thou didst
thus judge_”; _19:2_—“_true and righteous are his judgments; for
he hath judged the great harlot._” So untrue is the saying of Sir
Thomas More’s Utopia: “The end of all punishment is the
destruction of vice, and the saving of men.” Luther: “God has two
rods: one of mercy and goodness; another of anger and fury.”
Chastisement is the former; penalty the latter.
If the reform-theory of penalty is correct, then to punish crime,
without asking about reformation, makes the state the
transgressor; its punishments should be proportioned, not to the
greatness of the crime, but to the sinner’s state; the
death-penalty should be abolished, upon the ground that it will
preclude all hope of reformation. But the same theory would
abolish any final judgment, or eternal punishment; for, when the
soul becomes so wicked that there is no more hope of reform, there
is no longer any justice in punishing it. The greater the sin, the
less the punishment; and Satan, the greatest sinner, should have
no punishment at all.
Modern denunciations of capital punishment are often based upon
wrong conceptions of the object of penalty. Opposition to the
doctrine of future punishment would give way, if the opposers
realized what penalty is ordained to secure. Harris, God the
Creator, 2:447, 451—“Punishment is not primarily reformatory; it
educates conscience and vindicates the authority of law.” R. W.
Dale: “It is not necessary to prove that hanging is beneficial to
the person hanged. The theory that society has no right to send a
man to jail, to feed him on bread and water, to make him pick hemp
or work a treadmill, except to reform him, is utterly rotten. He
must deserve to be punished, or else the law has no right to
punish him.” A House of Refuge or a State Industrial School is
primarily a penal institution, for it deprives persons of their
liberty and compels them against their will to labor. This loss
and deprivation on their part cannot be justified except upon the
ground that it is the desert of their wrong doing. Whatever
gracious and philanthropic influences may accompany this
confinement and compulsion, they cannot of themselves explain the
penal element in the institution. If they could, a _habeas corpus_
decree could be sought, and obtained, from any competent court.
God’s treatment of men in this world also combines the elements of
penalty and of chastisement. Suffering is first of all deserved,
and this justifies its infliction. But it is at the beginning
accompanied with all manner of alleviating influences which tend
to draw men back to God. As these gracious influences are
resisted, the punitive element becomes preponderating, and penalty
reflects God’s holiness rather than his love. Moberly, Atonement
and Personality, 1-25—“Pain is not the immediate object of
punishment. It must be a means to an end, a moral end, namely,
penitence. But where the depraved man becomes a human tiger, there
punishment must reach its culmination. There is a punishment which
is not restorative. According to the spirit in which punishment is
received, it may be internal or external. All punishment begins as
discipline. It tends to repentance. Its triumph would be the
triumph within. It becomes retributive only as the sinner refuses
to repent. Punishment is only the development of sin. The ideal
penitent condemns himself, identifies himself with righteousness
by accepting penalty. In proportion as penalty fails in its
purpose to produce penitence, it acquires more and more a
retributive character, whose climax is not Calvary but Hell.”
Alexander, Moral Order and Progress, 327-333 (quoted in Ritchie,
Darwin, and Hegel, 67)—“Punishment has three characters: It is
retributive, in so far as it falls under the general law that
resistance to the dominant type recoils on the guilty or resistant
creature; it is preventive, in so far as, being a statutory
enactment, it aims at securing the maintenance of the law
irrespective of the individual’s character. But this latter
characteristic is secondary, and the former is comprehended in the
third idea, that of reformation, which is the superior form in
which retribution appears when the type is a mental ideal and is
affected by conscious persons.” Hyslop on Freedom, Responsibility,
and Punishment, in Mind, April, 1894:167-189—“In the Elmira
Reformatory, out of 2295 persons paroled between 1876 and 1889,
1907 or 83 per cent. represent a probably complete reformation.
Determinists say that this class of persons cannot do otherwise.
Something is wrong with their theory. We conclude that 1. Causal
responsibility justifies preventive punishment; 2. Potential moral
responsibility justifies corrective punishment; 3. Actual moral
responsibility justifies retributive punishment.” Here we need
only to point out the incorrect use of the word “punishment,”
which belongs only to the last class. In the two former cases the
word “chastisement” should have been used. See Julius Müller,
Lehre von der Sünde, 1:334; Thornton, Old Fashioned Ethics, 70-73;
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:238, 239 (Syst. Doct., 3:134,135);
Robertson’s Sermons, 4th Series, no. 18 (Harper’s ed., 752); see
also this Compendium, references on Holiness, A. (_d_), page 273.
(_b_) Penalty is not essentially deterrent and preventive.—By this we mean
that its primary design is not to protect society, by deterring men from
the commission of like offences. We grant that this end is often secured
in connection with punishment, both in family and civil government and
under the government of God. But we claim that this is a merely incidental
result, which God’s wisdom and goodness have connected with the infliction
of penalty,—it cannot be the reason and ground for penalty itself. Some of
the objections to the preceding theory apply also to this. But in addition
to what has been said, we urge:
Penalty cannot be primarily designed to secure social and governmental
safety, for the reason that it is never right to punish the individual
simply for the good of society. No punishment, moreover, will or can do
good to others that is not just and right in itself. Punishment does good,
only when the person punished deserves punishment; and that _desert_ of
punishment, and not the good effects that will follow it, must be the
ground and reason why it is inflicted. The contrary theory would imply
that the criminal might go free but for the effect of his punishment on
others, and that man might rightly commit crime if only he were willing to
bear the penalty.
Kant, Praktische Vernunft, 151 (ed. Rosenkranz)—“The notion of
ill-desert and punishableness is necessarily implied in the idea
of voluntary transgression; and the idea of punishment excludes
that of happiness in all its forms. For though he who inflicts
punishment may, it is true, also have a benevolent purpose to
produce by the punishment some good effect upon the criminal, yet
the punishment must be justified first of all as pure and simple
requital and retribution.... In every punishment as such, justice
is the very first thing and constitutes the essence of it. A
benevolent purpose, it is true, may be conjoined with punishment;
but the criminal cannot claim this as his due, and he has no right
to reckon on it.” These utterances of Kant apply to the deterrent
theory as well as to the reformatory theory of penalty. The
element of desert or retribution is the basis of the other
elements in punishment. See James Seth, Ethical Principles,
333-338; Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:717; Hodge, Essays, 133.
A certain English judge, in sentencing a criminal, said that he
punished him, not for stealing sheep, but that sheep might not be
stolen. But it is the greatest injustice to punish a man for the
mere sake of example. Society cannot be benefited by such
injustice. The theory can give no reason why one should be
punished rather than another, nor why a second offence should be
punished more heavily than the first. On this theory, moreover, if
there were but one creature in the universe, and none existed
beside himself to be affected by his suffering, he could not
justly be punished, however great might be his sin. The only
principle that can explain punishment is the principle of
_desert_. See Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2:348.
“Crime is most prevented by the conviction that crime deserves
punishment; the greatest deterrent agency is conscience.” So in
the government of God “there is no hint that future punishment
works good to the lost or to the universe. The integrity of the
redeemed is not to be maintained by subjecting the lost to a
punishment they do not deserve. The wrong merits punishment, and
God is bound to punish it, whether good comes of it or not. Sin is
intrinsically ill-deserving. Impurity must be banished from God.
God must vindicate himself, or cease to be holy” (see art. on the
Philosophy of Punishment, by F. L. Patton, in Brit. and For.
Evang. Rev., Jan. 1878:126-139).
Bowne, Principles of Ethics, 186, 274—Those who maintain
punishment to be essentially deterrent and preventive “ignore the
metaphysics of responsibility and treat the problem ‘positively
and objectively’ on the basis of physiology, sociology, etc., and
in the interests of public safety. The question of guilt or
innocence is as irrelevant as the question concerning the guilt or
innocence of wasps and hornets. An ancient holder of this view set
forth the opinion that ‘_it was expedient that one man should die
for the people_’ (_John 18:14_), and so Jesus was put to death....
A mob in eastern Europe might be persuaded that a Jew had
slaughtered a Christian child as a sacrifice. The authorities
might be perfectly sure of the man’s innocence, and yet proceed to
punish him because of the mob’s clamor, and the danger of an
outbreak.” Men high up in the French government thought it was
better that Dreyfus should suffer for the sake of France, than
that a scandal affecting the honor of the French army should be
made public. In perfect consistency with this principle, McKim,
Heredity and Human Progress, 192, advocates infliction of painless
death upon idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, habitual drunkards,
insane criminals, murderers, nocturnal house breakers, and all
dangerous and incorrigible persons. He would change the place of
slaughter from our streets and homes to our penal institutions; in
other words, he would abandon punishment, but protect society.
Failure to recognize holiness as the fundamental attribute of God,
and the affirmation of that holiness as conditioning the exercise
of love, vitiates the discussion of penalty by A. H. Bradford, Age
of Faith, 243-250—“What is penal suffering designed to accomplish?
Is it to manifest the holiness of God? Is it to express the
sanctity of the moral law? Is it simply a natural consequence?
Does it manifest the divine Fatherhood? God does not inflict
penalty simply to satisfy himself or to manifest his holiness, any
more than an earthly father inflicts suffering on his child to
show his wrath against the wrongdoer or to manifest his own
goodness. The idea of punishment is essentially barbaric and
foreign to all that is known of the Deity. Penalty that is not
reformatory or protective is barbarism. In the home, punishment is
always discipline. Its object is the welfare of the child and the
family. Punishment as an expression of wrath or enmity, with no
remedial purpose beyond, is a relic of barbarism. It carries with
it the content of vengeance. It is the expression of anger, of
passion, or at best of cold justice. Penal suffering is
undoubtedly the divine holiness expressing its hatred of sin. But,
if it stops with such expression, it is not holiness, but
selfishness. If on the other hand that expression of holiness is
used or permitted in order that the sinner may be made to hate his
sin, then it is no more punishment, but chastisement. On any other
hypothesis, penal suffering has no justification except the
arbitrary will of the Almighty, and such a hypothesis is an
impeachment both of his justice and his love.” This view seems to
us to ignore the necessary reaction of divine holiness against
sin; to make holiness a mere form of love; a means to an end and
that end utilitarian; and so to deny to holiness any independent,
or even real, existence in the divine nature.
The wrath of God is calm and judicial, devoid of all passion or
caprice, but it is the expression of eternal and unchangeable
righteousness. It is vindicative but not vindictive. Without it
there could be no government, and God would not be God. F. W.
Robertson: “Does not the element of vengeance exist in all
punishment, and does not the feeling exist, not as a sinful, but
as an essential, part of human nature? If so, there must be wrath
in God.” Lord Bacon: “Revenge is a wild sort of justice.” Stephen:
“Criminal law provides legitimate satisfaction of the passions of
revenge.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:287. _Per contra_, see Bib.
Sac., Apr. 1881:286-302; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 46, 47;
Chitty’s ed. of Blackstone’s Commentaries, 4:7; Wharton, Criminal
Law, vol. 1, bk. 1, chap. 1.
2. The actual penalty of sin.
The one word in Scripture which designates the total penalty of sin is
“death.” Death, however, is twofold:
A. Physical death,—or the separation of the soul from the body, including
all those temporal evils and sufferings which result from disturbance of
the original harmony between body and soul, and which are the working of
death in us. That physical death is a part of the penalty of sin, appears:
(_a_) From Scripture.
This is the most obvious import of the threatening in Gen. 2:17—“thou
shalt surely die”; _cf._ 3:19—“unto dust shalt thou return.” Allusions to
this threat in the O. T. confirm this interpretation: Num. 16:29—“visited
after the visitation of all men,” where פקד = judicial visitation, or
punishment; 27:3 (LXX.—δι᾽ ἁμαρτίαν αὐτοῦ). The prayer of Moses in Ps. 90:
7-9, 11, and the prayer of Hezekiah in Is. 38:17, 18, recognize plainly
the penal nature of death. The same doctrine is taught in the N. T., as
for example, John 8:44; Rom. 5:12, 14, 16, 17, where the judicial
phraseology is to be noted (_cf._ 1:32); see 6:23 also. In 1 Pet. 4:6,
physical death is spoken of as God’s judgment against sin. In 1 Cor.
15:21, 22, the bodily resurrection of all believers, in Christ, is
contrasted with the bodily death of all men, in Adam. Rom. 4:24, 25; 6:9,
10; 8:3, 10, 11; Gal. 3:13, show that Christ submitted to physical death
as the penalty of sin, and by his resurrection from the grave gave proof
that the penalty of sin was exhausted and that humanity in him was
justified. “As the resurrection of the body is a part of the redemption,
so the death of the body is a part of the penalty.”
_Ps. 90:7, 9_—“_we are consumed in thine anger ... all our days
are passed away in thy wrath_”; _Is. 38:17, 18_—“_thou hast in
love to my soul delivered it from the pit ... thou hast cast all
my sins behind thy back. For Sheol cannot praise thee_”; _John
8:44_—“_He_ [Satan] _was a murderer from the beginning_”;
_11:33_—Jesus “_groaned in the spirit_” = was moved with
indignation at what sin had wrought; _Rom. 5:12, 14, 16,
17_—“_death through sin ... death passed unto all men, for that
all sinned ... death reigned ... even over them that had not
sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression ... the judgment
came of one_ [trespass] _unto condemnation ... by the trespass of
the one, death reigned through the one_”; _cf._ the legal
phraseology in _1:32_—“_who, knowing the ordinance of God, that
they that practise such things are worthy of death._” _Rom.
6:23_—“_the wages of sin is death_” = death is sin’s just due. _1
Pet. 4:6_—“_that they might be judged indeed according to men in
the flesh_” = that they might suffer physical death, which to men
in general is the penalty of sin. _1 Cor. 15:21, 22_—“_as in Adam
all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive_”; _Rom. 4:24,
25_—“_raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up
for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification_”; _6:9,
10_—“_Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no
more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died
unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God_”;
_8:3, 10, 11_—“_God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh ... the body is dead
because of sin_” (= a corpse, on account of sin—Meyer; so Julius
Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:291) ... “_he that raised up Christ Jesus
from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies_”; _Gal.
3:13_—“_Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having
become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that
hangeth on a tree._”
On the relation between death and sin, see Griffith-Jones, Ascent
through Christ, 169-185—“They are not antagonistic, but
complementary to each other—the one spiritual and the other
biological. The natural fact is fitted to a moral use.” Savage,
Life after Death, 33—“Men did not at first believe in natural
death. If a man died, it was because some one had killed him. No
ethical reason was desired or needed. At last however they sought
some moral explanation, and came to look upon death as a
punishment for human sin.” If this has been the course of human
evolution, we should conclude that the later belief represents the
truth rather than the earlier. Scripture certainly affirms the
doctrine that death itself, and not the mere accompaniments of
death, is the consequence and penalty of sin. For this reason we
cannot accept the very attractive and plausible theory which we
have now to mention:
Newman Smyth, Place of Death in Evolution, holds that as the bow
in the cloud was appointed for a moral use, so death, which before
had been simply the natural law of the creation, was on occasion
of man’s sin appointed for a moral use. It is this _acquired_
moral character of death with which Biblical Genesis has to do.
Death becomes a curse, by being a fear and a torment. Animals have
not this fear. But in man death stirs up conscience. Redemption
takes away the fear, and death drops back into its natural aspect,
or even becomes a gateway to life. Death is a curse to no animal
but man. The retributive element to death is the effect of sin.
When man has become perfected, death will cease to be of use, and
will, as the last enemy, be destroyed. Death here is Nature’s
method of securing always fresh, young, thrifty life, and the
greatest possible exuberance and joy of it. It is God’s way of
securing the greatest possible number and variety of immortal
beings. There are many schoolrooms for eternity in God’s universe,
and a ceaseless succession of scholars through them. There are
many folds, but one flock. The reaper Death keeps making room.
Four or five generations are as many as we can individually love,
and get moral stimulus from.
Methuselahs too many would hold back the new generations. Bagehot
says that civilization needs first to form a cake of custom, and
secondly to break it up. Death, says Martineau, Study, 1:372-374,
is the provision for taking us abroad, before we have stayed too
long at home to lose our receptivity. Death is the liberator of
souls. The death of successive generations gives variety to
heaven. Death perfects love, reveals it to itself, unites as life
could not. As for Christ, so for us, it is expedient that we
should go away.
While we welcome this reasoning as showing how God has overruled
evil for good, we regard the explanation as unscriptural and
unsatisfactory, for the reason that it takes no account of the
ethics of natural law. The law of death is an expression of the
nature of God, and specially of his holy wrath against sin. Other
methods of propagating the race and reinforcing its life could
have been adopted than that which involves pain and suffering and
death. These do not exist in the future life,—they would not exist
here, if it were not for the fact of sin. Dr. Smyth shows how the
evil of death has been overruled,—he has not shown the reason for
the original existence of the evil. The Scriptures explain this as
the penalty and stigma which God has attached to sin: _Psalm 90:7,
8_ makes this plain: “_For we are consumed in thine anger, And in
thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before
thee, Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance._” The whole
psalm has for its theme: Death as the wages of sin. And this is
the teaching of Paul, in _Rom. 5:12_—“_through one man sin entered
into the world, and death through sin._”
(_b_) From reason.
The universal prevalence of suffering and death among rational creatures
cannot be reconciled with the divine justice, except upon the supposition
that it is a judicial infliction on account of a common sinfulness of
nature belonging even to those who have not reached moral consciousness.
The objection that death existed in the animal creation before the Fall
may be answered by saying that, but for the fact of man’s sin, it would
not have existed. We may believe that God arranged even the geologic
history to correspond with the foreseen fact of human apostasy (_cf._ Rom.
8:20-23—where the creation is said to have been made subject to vanity by
reason of man’s sin).
On _Rom. 8:20-23_—“_the creation was subjected to vanity, not of
its own will_”—see Meyer’s Com., and Bap. Quar., 1:143; also _Gen.
3:17-19_—“_cursed is the ground for thy sake._” See also note on
the Relation of Creation to the Holiness and Benevolence of God,
and references, pages 402, 403. As the vertebral structure of the
first fish was an “anticipative consequence” of man, so the
suffering and death of fish pursued and devoured by other fish
were an “anticipative consequence” of man’s foreseen war with God
and with himself.
The translation of Enoch and Elijah, and of the saints that remain at
Christ’s second coming, seems intended to teach us that death is not a
necessary law of organized being, and to show what would have happened to
Adam if he had been obedient. He was created a “natural,” “earthly” body,
but might have attained a higher being, the “spiritual,” “heavenly” body,
without the intervention of death. Sin, however, has turned the normal
condition of things into the rare exception (_cf._ 1 Cor. 15:42-50). Since
Christ endured death as the penalty of sin, death to the Christian becomes
the gateway through which he enters into full communion with his Lord (see
references below).
Through physical death all Christians will pass, except those few
who like Enoch and Elijah were translated, and those many who
shall be alive at Christ’s second coming. Enoch and Elijah were
possible types of those surviving saints. On _1 Cor. 15:51_—“_We
shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,_” see Edward
Irving, Works, 5:135. The apocryphal Assumption of Moses, verse 9,
tells us that Joshua, being carried in vision to the spot at the
moment of Moses’ decease, beheld a double Moses, one dropped into
the grave as belonging to the earth, the other mingling with the
angels. The belief in Moses’ immortality was not conditioned upon
any resuscitation of the earthly corpse; see Martineau, Seat of
Authority, 364. When Paul was caught up to the third heaven, it
may have been a temporary translation of the disembodied spirit.
Set free for a brief space from the prison house which confined
it, it may have passed within the veil and have seen and heard
what mortal tongue could not describe; see Luckock, Intermediate
State, 4. So Lazarus probably could not tell what he saw: “He told
it not; or something sealed The lips of that Evangelist”; see
Tennyson, In Memoriam, xxxi.
Nicoll, Life of Christ: “We have every one of us to face the last
enemy, death. Ever since the world began, all who have entered it
sooner or later have had this struggle, and the battle has always
ended in one way. Two indeed escaped, but they did not escape by
meeting and mastering their foe; they escaped by being taken away
from the battle.” But this physical death, for the Christian, has
been turned by Christ into a blessing. A pardoned prisoner may be
still kept in prison, as the best possible benefit to an exhausted
body; so the external fact of physical death may remain, although
it has ceased to be penalty. Macaulay: “The aged prisoner’s chains
are needed to support him; the darkness that has weakened his
sight is necessary to preserve it.” So spiritual death is not
wholly removed from the Christian; a part of it, namely,
depravity, still remains; yet it has ceased to be punishment,—it
is only chastisement. When the finger unties the ligature that
bound it, the body which previously had only chastised begins to
cure the trouble. There is still pain, but the pain is no longer
punitive,—it is now remedial. In the midst of the whipping, when
the boy repents, his punishment is changed to chastisement.
_John 14:3_—“_And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come
again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye
may be also_”; _1 Cor. 15:54-57_—“_Death is swallowed up in
victory ... O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is
sin; and the power of sin is the law_”—_i. e._, the law’s
condemnation, its penal infliction; _2 Cor. 5:1-9_—“_For we know
that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved we have a
building from God ... we are of good courage, I say, and are
willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with
the Lord_”; _Phil. 1:21, 23_—“_to die is gain ... having the
desire to depart and be with Christ; for it is very far better._”
In Christ and his bearing the penalty of sin, the Christian has
broken through the circle of natural race-connection, and is saved
from corporate evil so far as it is punishment. The Christian may
be chastised, but he is never punished: _Rom. 8:1_—“_There is
therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus._”
At the house of Jairus Jesus said: “_Why make ye a tumult, and
weep?_” and having reproved the doleful clamorists, “_he put them
all forth_” (_Mark 5:39, 40_). The wakes and requiems and masses
and vigils of the churches of Rome and of Russia are all heathen
relics, entirely foreign to Christianity.
Palmer, Theological Definition, 57—“Death feared and fought
against is terrible; but a welcome to death is the death of death
and the way to life.” The idea that punishment yet remains for the
Christian is “the bridge to the papal doctrine of purgatorial
fires.” Browning’s words, in The Ring and the Book, 2:60—“In His
face is light, but in his shadow healing too,” are applicable to
God’s fatherly chastenings, but not to his penal retributions. On
_Acts 7:60_—“_he fell asleep_”—Arnot remarks: “When death becomes
the property of the believer, it receives a new name, and is
called sleep.” Another has said: “Christ did not send, but came
himself to save; The ransom-price he did not lend, but gave;
Christ _died_, the shepherd for the sheep; We only _fall asleep_.”
_Per contra_, see Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre, 375, and
Hengstenberg, Ev. K.-Z., 1864:1065—“All suffering is punishment.”
B. Spiritual death,—or the separation of the soul from God, including all
that pain of conscience, loss of peace, and sorrow of spirit, which result
from disturbance of the normal relation between the soul and God.
(_a_) Although physical death is a part of the penalty of sin, it is by no
means the chief part. The term “death” is frequently used in Scripture in
a moral and spiritual sense, as denoting the absence of that which
constitutes the true life of the soul, namely, the presence and favor of
God.
_Mat. 8:22_—“_Follow me; and leave the_ [spiritually] _dead to
bury their own_ [physically] _dead_”; _Luke 15:32_—“_this thy
brother was dead, and is alive again_”; _John 5:24_—“_He that
heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal
life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death
into life_”; _8:51_—“_If a man keep my word, he shall never see
death_”; _Rom. 8:13_—“_if ye live after the flesh, ye must die;
but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye
shall live_”; _Eph. 2:1_—“_when ye were dead through your
trespasses and sins_”; _5:14_—“_Awake, thou that sleepest, and
arise from the dead_”; _1 Tim. 5:6_—“_she that giveth herself to
pleasure is dead while __ she liveth_”; _James 5:20_—“_he who
converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul
from death_”; _1 John 3:14_—“_He that loveth not abideth in
death_”; _Rev. 3:1_—“_thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou
art dead._”
(_b_) It cannot be doubted that the penalty denounced in the garden and
fallen upon the race is primarily and mainly that death of the soul which
consists in its separation from God. In this sense only, death was fully
visited upon Adam in the day on which he ate the forbidden fruit (Gen.
2:17). In this sense only, death is escaped by the Christian (John 11:26).
For this reason, in the parallel between Adam and Christ (Rom. 5:12-21),
the apostle passes from the thought of mere physical death in the early
part of the passage to that of both physical and spiritual death at its
close (verse 21—“as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign
through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord”—where “eternal life” is more than endless physical existence, and
“death” is more than death of the body).
_Gen. 2:17_—“_in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die_”; _John 11:26_—“_whosoever liveth and believeth on me
shall never die_”; _Rom. 5:14, 18, 21_—“_justification of life ...
eternal life_”; contrast these with “_death reigned ... sin
reigned in death._”
(_c_) Eternal death may be regarded as the culmination and completion of
spiritual death, and as essentially consisting in the correspondence of
the outward condition with the inward state of the evil soul (Acts 1:25).
It would seem to be inaugurated by some peculiar repellent energy of the
divine holiness (Mat. 25:41; 2 Thess. 1:9), and to involve positive
retribution visited by a personal God upon both the body and the soul of
the evil-doer (Mat. 10:28; Heb. 10:31; Rev. 14:11).
_Acts 1:25_—“_Judas fell away, that he might go to his own
place_”; _Mat. 25:41_—“_Depart from me, ye cursed, into the
eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels_”; _2
Thess. 1:9_—“_who shall suffer punishment, even eternal
destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his
might_”; _Mat. 10:28_—“_fear him who is able to destroy both soul
and body in hell_”; _Heb. 10:31_—“_It is a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God_”; _Rev. 14:11_—“_the smoke of
their torment goeth up for ever and ever._”
Kurtz, Religionslehre, 67—“So long as God is holy, he must
maintain the order of the world, and where this is destroyed,
restore it. This however can happen in no other way than this: the
injury by which the sinner has destroyed the order of the world
falls back upon himself,—and this is penalty. Sin is the negation
of the law. Penalty is the negation of that negation, that is, the
reëstablishment of the law. Sin is a thrust of the sinner against
the law. Penalty is the adverse thrust of the elastic because
living law, which encounters the sinner.”
Plato, Gorgias, 472 E; 509 B; 511 A; 515 B—“Impunity is a more
dreadful curse than any punishment, and nothing so good can befall
the criminal as his retribution, the failure of which would make a
double disorder in the universe. The offender himself may spend
his arts in devices of escape and think himself happy if he is not
found out. But all this plotting is but part of the delusion of
his sin; and when he comes to himself and sees his transgression
as it really is, he will yield himself up the prisoner of eternal
justice and know that it is good for him to be afflicted, and so
for the first time to be set at one with truth.”
On the general subject of the penalty of sin, see Julius Müller,
Doct. Sin, 1:245 _sq._; 2:286-397; Baird, Elohim Revealed,
263-279; Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 194-219; Krabbe,
Lehre von der Sünde und vom Tode; Weisse, in Studien und Kritiken,
1836:371; S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 369-384; Bartlett, in New
Englander, Oct. 1871:677, 678.