Tag Archives: Original Sin

Measure for Measure, Human Nature, and Original Sin

26 Friday Feb 2021

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Claudio to Lucio

From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty.

As surfeit is the father of much fast,

So every scope by the immoderate use

Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue,

Like rats that ravin down their proper bane,

A thirsty evil, and when we drink, we die.

Measure for Measure, Act I, ii, 122-127.

These lines are fascinating from a few perspectives. First, they present a theme (perhaps  the theme) of the play. But I am interested in the structure of this short argument, and it works both make a logical case and an affective case. It would be hard to make such a compressed and persuasive argument in such few words. 

Background on the lines. 

Claudio is being led through the street as a prisoner. Lucio, a friend, sees him and asks what he has done. Lucio has been making sexually charged jokes about prostitutes and disease with some acquaintances and with a pimp and a madam. 

Claudio has been arrested for fornication. He got his fiancée pregnant (they were holding off on a dowery increase). The very strict and straightlaced interim ruler has enforced a law which the Duke (now “absent”) had allowed to go unheeded.

Claudio has been taken for the excess of his sexual behavior. Interestingly, Angelo, the interim ruler will face his own sexual politics and will be caught in the same vein as Claudio.

This short speech consists of three elements: First, a direct, albeit cryptic answer:

From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty.

Second: an observation of the general movement of human life. This is the pattern I followed to be destroyed:

As surfeit is the father of much fast,

So every scope by the immoderate use

Turns to restraint. 

Third: an explanation of the psychological process which gives rise to the pattern of human behavior.

                                    Our natures do pursue,

Like rats that ravin down their proper bane,

A thirsty evil, and when we drink, we die.

First, the answer:

Question (Lucio):

Why, how now, Claudio? Whence comes this restraint?

Answer:

From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty.

Lucio does not know what this means and will directly ask if it was murder.

The line is well constructed:

From too much LIBerty, my LUcio, LIBerty.

I’m not sure what to do with the other syllables: The accent could fall any of the other words, thus giving a different nuance of meaning. Why is clear is the alliteration on the L (and m: much, my). The L will drop out of the rest of the speech underscoring the use here. 

The answer is ironic: he speaks of liberty and that is precisely what he does not have. The nature of the liberty is unclear.

The characters have just been speaking of the bawdy houses being torn down, so the background of liberty and immorality in play.  Liberty and constraint will be a theme which will work out. 

In the next scene, the Duke will explain himself to a friar. There were many laws which the Duke had failed to enforce. He has left his position so that Angelo can reinstate and apply those laws. He explains the effect his failure to enforce laws has had:

For terror, not to use – in time the rod

More mocked than feared – so our decrees,

Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead,

And liberty plucks justice by the nose,

The baby beats the nurse, and quiet athwart 

Goes all decorum

I.3. xxvii-xxxii.

So a liberty which counters order and justice is an issue which the play will consider.

Second, the observation:

This is stated in the form of a natural law, like gravity:

As surfeit is the father of much fast,

So every scope by the immoderate use

Turns to restraint. 

Claudio notes a principle of human life: an excess ends in its opposite so as to bring balance. This principle of balance is a theme throughout Shakespeare and takes its origin from the Galen theory of humors and the need to balance humors in the body.

The physician’s task was to diagnose which humor was out of balance; treatment then focused on restoring equilibrium by diet or by reducing the offending, out-of-balance humor by evacuating it.

(For the theory in Shakespeare see here: ):

This statement of a natural principle and pattern is exactly 2.5 lines long. It will be matched by another line of 2.5 lines. 

There is a light alliteration which holds the lines together: S & F: Surfeit, Scope, Father- Fast. The R in the final word will tie these lines to the following.

The use of the word father is ironic: Claudio’s “fast”, his imprisonment is because he is a father. 

And so far we have moral principle: excessive liberty leads to restraint. A principle of medicine and psychology: when one aspect of human life (a humor) is in excess, a contrary principle must be put into place to bring balance. 

This leads to a question: If balance and order are the good which we should seek to achieve, then what would bring a human being to act beyond moderation?

Third: The psychological process:

                        Our natures do pursue,

Like rats that ravin down their proper bane,

A thirsty evil, and when we drink, we die.

This is a deeply Christian observation. It has to do with the concept of original sin. Original sin is often reduced to, guilt for a wrong I did not commit. (See, Finnegans Wake). Article 9 of the 39 Articles of the Church of England reads:

Original sin is not found merely in the following of Adam’s example (as the Pelagians foolishly say). It is rather to be seen in the fault and corruption which is found in the nature of every person who is naturally descended from Adam. The consequence of this is that man is far gone from his original state of righteousness. In his own nature he is predisposed to evil, the sinful nature in man always desiring to behave in a manner contrary to the Spirit. In every person born into this world there is fund this predisposition which rightly deserves God’s anger and condemnation. This infection within man’s nature persists even within those who are regenerate. This desire of the sinful nature, which in Greek is called fronema sarkos and is variously translated the wisdom or sensuality or affection or desire of the sinful nature, is not under control of God’s law. Although there is no condemnation for those that believe and are baptized, nevertheless the apostle states that any such desire is sinful. 

Look back at Claudio’s explanation: the fault springs from our “nature”.  Now consider carefully the article:

It is rather to be seen in the fault and corruption which is found in the nature of every person who is naturallydescended from Adam. The consequence of this is that man is far gone from his original state of righteousness. In his own nature he is predisposed to evil, the sinful nature in man always desiring to behave in a manner contrary to the Spirit…. This infection within man’s nature persists even within those who are regenerate. This desire of the sinful nature,

Our “natures pursue” their own destruction by a compulsion “man is always desiring”.

Our nature is like a rat – which is a striking image – that ravin: ravin is an act of rapine, it is a greedy, thoughtless criminal desire and action – ravin down poison: a “proper bane,” that is, my own poison, the poison that is “proper” to me. It is a “thirsty evil”: it is never satisfied, never quenched. Moreover, this desire is such that fulfilling it brings its own destruction:

When we drink, we die.

Musically, the lines are held together by the use of R which picks up the R in restraint found in Lucio’s question and in the middle of Claudio’s answer:

Restraint – restraint – rats that ravin.

We have pursue-proper. And finally, drink-die.

The use of this imagery to illustrate and explain the psychological process which leads to self-destruction is very effective. It would have even more to the point for the original audience, who were faced constantly with the menace and evil of filthy rats. 

There is one final point in this observation: Shakespeare is condemning the audience along with the character’s self-condemnation. He is making a categorical statement about humanity: Our nature. When we drink, we die. 

Which means that as we read this, we are drawn into the scope of the play. It is our nature, our drinking, our death.

Edward Taylor, Meditation 31, Begraced with Glory.4

10 Wednesday Feb 2021

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Stanza Four:

But that is not the worst: there’s worse than this.

My taste is lost; no bite tastes sweet to me

But what is dipped all over in this dish.

Of rank rank poison: this my sauce must be.

Hell heaven, heaven hell, yea bitter sweet:

Poison’s my food: food poison in’t doth keep.

Summary: I have come to love the Devil’s sauce sin that I cannot enjoy anything without this poison. I love the poison. I am so upside down that I must have sin mixed in with everything I do.

Notes:

This gets at something which was very important in much Puritans were quite interested, the way in which sin both twisted the human being and at the same time created the desire for sin itself:

“The example in Romans 7:8 of Paul, who by his own account, was one of the most morally degenerate men who ever lived (Phil. 3:6; 1 Tim. 1:13, 15), provides a gateway for Goodwin to understand how no man or woman in a carnal state is free from inclination to all sin. The struggling man in Romans 7 was viewed by the Puritans as a Christian,32 but verse 8 has reference to Paul in his unconverted state. The sin in Paul in this verse is original sin, and original sin produced in him “all manner of concupiscence,” that is, all kinds of covetous lust or desire for things forbidden.33 As Edward Reynolds put it, “It is as natural to the heart to lust, as it is to the eye to see.”34 Self-love, instead of love to God, results from original sin.” Beeke, Joel R.; Jones, Mark. A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (pp. 279-280). Reformation Heritage Books. Kindle Edition.

Jonathan Edwards notes that even though there is such variety in the circumstances among human beings, there is one thing which invariably shows up, sin: 

THE proposition laid down being proved, the consequence of it remains to be made out, viz. that the mind of man has a natural tendency or propensity to that event, which has been shewn universally and infallibly to take place (if this ben’t sufficiently evident of itself, without proof), and that this is a corrupt or depraved propensity.

Jonathan Edwards, Original Sin, ed. John E. Smith and Clyde A. Holbrook, Corrected Edition., vol. 3, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1997), 120. And:

The general continued wickedness of mankind, against such means and motives, proves each of these things, viz. that the cause is fixed, and that the fixed cause is internal, in man’s nature, and also that it is very powerful. It proves the first, namely, that the cause is fixed, because the effect is so abiding, through so many changes. It proves the second, that is, that the fixed cause is internal, because the circumstances are so various: the variety of means and motives is one thing that is to be referred to the head of variety of circumstances: and they are that kind of circumstances, which above all others proves this; for they are such circumstances as can’t possibly cause the effect, being most opposite to the effect in their tendency.

193. As Edwards’ explains in his Treatise Freedom of the Will, it is desire that binds the will. And thus this universal tendency to sin is the result of a universal desire. 

What Taylor does so well in this stanza is to couple desire and poison into a single movement: We desire our destruction.  There is an image from Jeremiah which helps here:

Jeremiah 2:23–25 (AV) 

23 How canst thou say, I am not polluted, I have not gone after Baalim? see thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done: thou art a swift dromedary traversing her ways; 24 A wild ass used to the wilderness, that snuffeth up the wind at her pleasure; in her occasion who can turn her away? all they that seek her will not weary themselves; in her month they shall find her. 25 Withhold thy foot from being unshod, and thy throat from thirst: but thou saidst, There is no hope: no; for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go. 

Taylor does not copy the image, but he does rely upon the concept.

Thomas Brooks provides a closer parallel:

Sin is from the greatest deceiver, it is a child of his own begetting, it is the ground of all the deceit in the world, and it is in its own nature exceeding deceitful. Heb. 3:13, ‘But exhort one another daily, while it is called To-day, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.’ It will kiss the soul, and pretend fair to the soul, and yet betray the soul for ever. It will with Delilah smile upon us, that it may betray us into the hands of the devil, as she did Samson into the hands of the Philistines. Sin gives Satan a power over us, and an advantage to accuse us and to lay claim to us, as those that wear his badge; it is of a very bewitching nature, it bewitches the soul, where it is upon the throne, that the soul cannot leave it, though it perish eternally by it.4 Sin so bewitches the soul, that it makes the soul call evil good, and good evil; bitter sweet and sweet bitter, light darkness and darkness light; and a soul thus bewitched with sin will stand it out to the death, at the sword’s point with God; let God strike and wound, and cut to the very bone, yet the bewitched soul cares not, fears no but will still hold on in a course of wickedness, as you may see in Pharaoh, Balaam, and Judas. Tell the bewitched soul that sin is a viper that will certainly kill when it is not killed, that sin often kills secretly, insensibly, eternally, yet the bewitched soul cannot, nor will not, cease from sin.

When the physicians told Theotimus that except he did abstain from drunkenness and uncleanness, &c., he would lose his eyes, his heart was so bewitched to his sins, that he answers, ‘Then farewell sweet light;’1 he had rather lose his eyes than leave his sin. So a man bewitched with sin had rather lose God, Christ, heaven, and his own soul than part with his sin. Oh, therefore, for ever take heed of playing or nibbling at Satan’s golden baits

Thomas Brooks, The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 1 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; G. Herbert, 1866), 15–16.

And this:

Many long to be meddling with the murdering morsels of sin, which nourish not, but rent and consume the belly, the soul, that receives them. Many eat that on earth that they digest in hell. Sin’s murdering morsels will deceive those that devour them. Adam’s apple was a bitter sweet; Esau’s mess was a bitter sweet; the Israelites’ quails a bitter sweet; Jonathan’s honey a bitter sweet; and Adonijah’s dainties a bitter sweet. After the meal is ended, then comes the reckoning. Men must not think to dance and dine with the devil, and then to sup with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; to feed upon the poison of asps, and yet that the viper’s tongue should not slay them

Thomas Brooks, The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 1 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; G. Herbert, 1866), 14.

Musical

But that is not the worst: there’s worse than this.

My taste is lost; no bite tastes sweet to me (20)

But what is dipped all over in this dish.

Of rank rank poison: this my sauce must be.

Hell heaven, heaven hell, yea bitter sweet:

Poison’s my food: food poison in’t doth keep.

The r’s and s’s work well together especially in the first line. 
“Worse than this” by itself is not a very promising “poetic” line. But the repetition of “worst/worse” “the worst there’s worse” also works. The next line picks up on these sound but now we the repetition of taste/tastes, and the sounds of “tastes sweet”, where the s’s and t’s: t-s-t-s-t. Line 21 again works on a alliteration: dipped-dish. 

This alliteration within the individual line gives a feel of Anglo-Saxon poetry where alliteration is a primary means to hold a line together

Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, 

monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, 

(Beowulf)

He uses the very same technique in the remainder of the stanza, but in the last two lines he uses the alliteration to underscore the reversals:

Of rank rank poison: this my sauce must be.

Hell heaven, heaven hell, yea bitter sweet:

Poison’s my food: food poison in’t doth keep.

Hl – hn / hn – hl

P-f/f-p

The word “poison” ties these lines together. 

He marks the transition into this section by means of the repetition of “rank-rank” which slows the movement of the stanza. It is then offset by a colon and the sad, “This my sauce must be.” Note again the m-s/m-s repetition. 

The line, “This my sauce must be” is a rather sad resignation. It reminds me of the tone of Hosea, “Ephraim is joined to idols;/Leave him alone.”

Final note: What is most devasting about the poet’s situation is that there is no rescue from this place. Even though he is destroying himself, he wants to be here. It is like finding someone in a prison and they refuse to leave.

Kuyper, Common Grace 1.18 (The Nature of Original Righteousness)

22 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by in Abraham Kuyper, Creation, Original Sin

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In the 18th chapter, Kuyper analyzes the nature of Adam’s original righteousness. He first considers the Roman Catholic position: In Adam’s pre-Fall state, he consisted of body and spirit, horse and rider. The body, the horse, was possessed by original nature of concupiscence: desire was in man by God’s creation:

This tendency, called concupiscence, was not itself sin, but could easily become the occasion and fuel for sin. (But cf. Rom. 7:8; Col. 3:5; 1 Thess. 4:5, Auth. Ver.). Man, then, as he was originally constituted, was by nature without positive holiness, but also without sin, though burdened with a tendency which might easily result in sin.

L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 209. Thus, to keep man in order God gave the spirit as a rider for the horse. But since this would easily let men fail, God also bestowed a supernatural grace upon man of righteousness. As Charles Hodge explains:

According to their theory, God created man soul and body. These two constituents of his nature are naturally in conflict. To preserve the harmony between them, and the due subjection of the flesh to the spirit, God gave man the supernatural gift of original righteousness. It was this gift that man lost by his fall; so that since the apostasy he is in the state in which Adam was before he was invested with this supernatural endowment. 

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 103. Thus, freedom of choice remained in humanity after the Fall:

But the capacity to choose by one’s free will nevertheless continued in the sinful part of the human spirit, and today free will remains the starting point of moving toward spiritual perfection, if not in the Pelagian sense then at least in the manner of the semi-Pelagians.

Thus, the conflict within the human being is a conflict between desire and reason; and it was by the addition of a supernatural grace that Adam was in a state of original righteousness. 

The Reformed view differs at this point. Original righteousness was part of the original nature of humanity; it was not added by supernatural power. The fall of the Fall was not the loss of supernatural grace but rather corruption. He cites to Lord’s Day question 7 of the Heidelberg Catechism, “hence our nature is become so corrupt.” 

Kuyper insists that it was not the loss of essence but the corruption of nature, the two terms being distinguished:

Essence and nature, so they maintained, must be distinguished. The essence is the abiding, while nature is the changeable, such that sin did change the functioning of the nature of man, but the essence of man has remained what it was, and will remain so, even if it descends forever into the place of damnation. In Satan as well, the essence of the angel remains unchangeably the same; only his nature has, with regard to its function, changed completely into its opposite. The same is equally true of mankind.

As he works through the warrants for these positions, Kuyper first notes that the Roman view implies that man was defective in that he needed an additional to be holy. The second argument is that man in and of himself was defective in this respect then some of a different kind must be added to keep him in line; as if an angel were given to protect him. 

There is an interesting implication of this distinction: is a desire toward something in and of itself. In Roman Catholicism a desire without acquiescence of the will is not sinful – because the capacity for such desire is inherent in the human being. As the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia explains:

From the explanation given, it is plain that the opposition between appetite and reason is natural in man, and that, though it be an imperfection, it is not a corruption of human nature. Nor have the inordinate desires (actual concupiscence) or the proneness to them (habitual concupiscence) the nature of sin; for sin, being the free and deliberate transgression of the law of God, can be only in the rational will; though it be true that they are temptations to sin, becoming the stronger and the more frequent the oftener they have been indulged.  

Bavinck explains the development of this position in Scholatisticism:

Scholasticism, furthermore, began gradually to distinguish between primo-primi, secundo-primi, and plane deliberati desires, that is, those thoughts and desires that arise in us spontaneously before any consent of the will and are not at all sinful; those against which the will has offered resistance but by which it has been overpowered and which are venial sins; and those to which the will has consciously and fully consented and which are mortal sins. Added to this was the fact that the conception of original sin was becoming ever weaker and original sin itself viewed as wholly eradicated by baptism. What remained, concupiscence, was itself not sinful but only a “possible incentive to sin.” Rome, accordingly, decreed that the guilt and pollution of original sin was totally removed by baptism, that though concupiscence remained, it does not injure those who do not consent to it and can only be called sin “because it is of sin, and inclines to sin.”

Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Sin and Salvation in Christ, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 142–143. But in Reformed doctrine, the desire itself is sinful; such sinful desires are culpable before God:

The idea that original righteousness was supernaturally added to man’s natural constitution, and that its loss did not detract from human nature, is an un-Scriptural idea, as was pointed out in our discussion of the image of God in man. According to the Bible concupiscence is sin, real sin, and the root of many sinful actions. 

L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 236. This had an interesting playout in the Reformed world with the Revoice Conference. You can read about it here.

ACBC Conference 2015 Plenary Session no. 2 (Albert Mohler)

07 Wednesday Oct 2015

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Romans 1
The Gospel when it is rightly set forth reveals the righteousness of God: (1) it reveals our sinfulness before the perfect God; and (2) the righteousness imputed to us; the righteousness which justifies us.

The Gospel is good because of the bad news.

Romans 1:18

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Who is suppressing? There is a pattern of preaching which says that “those people suppress the truth in unrighteousness”. But the truth is that is the children of Adam who suppress the truth.

This is the key to human epistmology:
Human beings suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

Continue reading →

As you ran like mad. Thinking about The Stranger

09 Saturday May 2015

Posted by in Culture, Literature

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At the end of Camus’ The Stranger Meursault finds himself sentenced to death after an almost comically painful trial (when sat down in the room and saw how everyone had their place, he has “the strange impression … of being odd man out, a kind of intruder”. A reporter cheerfully explains to the defendant, “You know, we’ve blown up your case a little. Summer is the slow season for news. And your story and the parricide were the only ones worth bothering about” (84)).

He sits in his cell, awaiting his execution, thinking, “All I care about now is escaping the machinery of justice, seeing if there’s any way out of the inevitable.” (108).

In the midst of his life was the verdict. Before it were the seeming unconnected, certainly unplanned events — as Celeste explains it, “The way I see it, it’s bad luck. Everybody knows what bad luck is. It leaves you defenseless. And there it is!” (92). Afterwards the absurdity of waiting to die.

[Note on the version. I used Matthew Ward’s translation which is excellent throughout. It reads as if were written originally in a laconic and quite distinctive English. It is quite a feat to write a translation which reads effortlessly. He has without question succeeded.]

What hope is there in such a circumstance? He learned to kill time in prison — in less pleasant way than he did before prison, but it was all just doing this and then that. “What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope, meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet.” (109).

I read this as a Christian, and all I can do is agree with Camus: What matters is escape. We are bore into a world in which the sentence has been cast, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). It is the litany of “and he died” in Genesis 5. It is absurdity of human suffering, and the pain we seem unable to not heap upon one-another.

We oddly also know, that another judgment is coming, “It is appointed for a man once to die, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). We all know this. Why would the threat of judgment, calling a thing “sin” drive people mad. I suffer through all sorts of propositions (often imposed upon me by those with more power) which don’t raise my anger.

Isn’t it odd that we can easily believe the threat of judgment; it bothers us. As a friend once said to when I asked, “You don’t believe any of this, do you?” “No,” he said, “but maybe you’re right.”

We feel the weight of the need to escape; the desire for escape. We desire to escape time and place — and sometimes even our own skin. But we know it can’t really work.

The world is far too rigged to ever escape. That is why the world needs to be undone, redone. The horror of life must be turned to joy; the sorrow of this world must be transferred to glory for any escape to ever really work”

“Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 1:13.

I read Camus and wanted to tell him, there is an escape. Not the insane magistrate who waved a crucifix about and blubbered at Meusault — he had no escape to offer. Not the chaplain, whom Meursault refused to meet. Meursault wanted an escape, but the chaplain was apparently not in the rescue business.

The great offer of Christ is that escape, “I am the way, the truth, the life” (John 14:6).

Camus is utterly correct, with the one caveat of Jesus: there is no escape; our judgment is ineluctable; the waiting is interminable:

20  But the eyes of the wicked will fail;
all way of escape will be lost to them,
and their hope is to breathe their last. Job 11:20 (ESV)

Yet, Jesus made a way of escape. He went through the grave, defeated death and came out the other side:

Psalm 124:7 (ESV)
7  We have escaped like a bird
from the snare of the fowlers;
the snare is broken,
and we have escaped!

How May Beloved Lusts be Discovered and Mortified.2

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Discipleship, Mortification, Original Sin, Romans

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The previous post in this series may be found here:https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/how-may-a-beloved-lust-be-discovered-and-mortified-part-1/

 

Needler proposes that every human being has a peculiar beloved lust:

Most men have some peccatum in deliciis, “some sweet morsel” that they roll under their tongue, which they will by no means spit out or part with.

James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 56.  A contemporary argument, seen predominately in sexual matters, is that this particular is so strong that it must be part of my character & nature: therefore, it cannot be wrong.

This an argument which derives from the civil rights legal work on matters of “race” – an utterly repellent term, because there is only a human race. Since one’s ancestry cannot be altered, nor one’s skin color be changed, these things cannot be taken into consideration for purposes of determining civil rights in civil society. The conclusion is correct: skin color & ancestry must be irrelevant when it comes to the law. However, the rationale is wrong. The basis of the distinction on
“race” is the proposition that there are different types, races, of human beings. And thus the distinction is close to the distinctions we make between species [see, it is a grotesque line of thought]. This is false: Genesis 1:27; Acts 17:27.

Christianity posits that all human beings are born with sin (original sin, both as to guilt & corruption). This sin corrupts our desires & behaviors.  All of us will experience such corruption as built into our very natures. That means we must have a transformation of our natures.

To argue that some-thing X, some desire (and related behavior) is part of my nature does not cross Christian claims in the least. The great stream of Christian thought has always maintained that such a corruption exists within humanity (yes, there has been a more-or-less constant debate).[1]

The “naturalness” of the desire does not determine the moral rectitude of the desire. That response to the desire requires a change of nature is precisely what Christianity claims.

He also makes an interesting sociological observation: sin has not merely a personal but also has a corporate aspect:

It would be no hard matter to show you, that several nations have their proper and peculiar sins,—as the Spaniards theirs, the French theirs, the Dutch theirs. Look into the scripture, and you will find, that the Corinthians had their sin, which is thought to be wantonness and uncleanness; and therefore the apostle, in the epistles that he writes to them, uses so many pressing arguments against this sin.

James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 56–57.

Again, Needler upsets certain cleavages in modern thought. There has been a tendency to see either the individual or the society as the ground of bad conduct.

[1] See, for example, the Council of Orange, 529, A.D.:

 

CANON 1. If anyone denies that it is the whole man, that is, both body and soul, that was “changed for the worse” through the offense of Adam’s sin, but believes that the freedom of the soul remains unimpaired and that only the body is subject to corruption, he is deceived by the error of Pelagius and contradicts the scripture which says, “The soul that sins shall die” (Ezek. 18:20); and, “Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey?” (Rom. 6:16); and, “For whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved” (2 Pet. 2:19).

CANON 2. If anyone asserts that Adam’s sin affected him alone and not his descendants also, or at least if he declares that it is only the death of the body which is the punishment for sin, and not also that sin, which is the death of the soul, passed through one man to the whole human race, he does injustice to God and contradicts the Apostle, who says, “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned” (Rom. 5:12)

 

 

Brief Directions Unto a Godly Life (Paul Baynes)

18 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Discipleship, Genesis, Mortification, Paul Baynes, Puritan

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(To the best of my knowledge, this book by Puritan Paul Baynes has remained unpublished since the 17th century. Here is the first bit of the book. I have modernized the spelling and some punctuation.)

Brief Directions Onto a Godly Life:

Wherein every Christian is furnished with most necessary helps for the furthering of him in a godly course here upon earth, that he so may attain eternal happiness.

Written by Mr. Paul Bayne, minister of God’s Word, to Mr. Nicholas Jordane, his brother.
London
Printed by A.G. for I.N. and are to be sold by Samuel Enderby at the Starre in Pope’s Head Alley, 1637

The Epistle Dedicatory

To the right worshipful, Mr. Nicholas Jordane, Esquire, and one of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace and Quorum, in the County of Suffolk’s,

Sir,
It has been an ancient custom to reserve some lively representation of worthy friends deceased, to thereby continue the remembrance of their virtues, persons, and love. This holy treatise ensuing has served you to that purpose, and that very fitly; for herein you have a true representation and remembrance of your most worthy and loving brother, especially of the most noble and worthy part of it, I mean of his excellent understanding of the mystery of godliness, his most zealous and earnest will and desire of all men’s practice of godliness; and a sincere love unto you in particular, unto whom he primarily directed these directions onto a godly life; which as they do lively express that he had put on the new man, created and renewed in knowledge, righteousness and true holiness. So it is most worthy of our reservation, both in the remembrance in imitation of him. Yea, I confidently affirm, that this faithful remembrance is most worthy and fit always to be carried about us, and daily to be looked upon by us: for it will help us well to put on that new man, and to be conformable to our head Jesus Christ, and to walk before the Lord in holiness and righteousness all the days of our life. For there is this difference between those former corporeal images of earthly bodies and this that men with too much love and use of them, easily fell into superstitious wickedness; but this the more it is loved and used of man, the more will all wickedness be rooted out of their hearts, and the more will they glorify God by a holy life and conversation [conversation means the sum total of on’s conduct] having received this holy treatise at your worship’s hands to publish unto to the world, I am bold to return it unto you for safeguard, both that the world may know unto whom it is obliged for so excellent a monument, as also for the great benefit that shall be reaped thereby. So, Sir, accounting it a wise part in him that cannot speak well, to say but little; I commend you and this treatise to God’s grace which is able to build us up further, even to do wondrously above all that we can ask or think.
Your Worship’s humbly at command,
N.N. (N.N. means anonymous — it would something like “so-and-so”).

Sure it is, that it was not thus with mankind in the beginning as now it is.

God created man happy, ye mutable [subject to change, able to change]; but Satan by deceit did cast him from that happy condition; whereby besides the loss of that felicity, he was plunged into extreme misery, which consists in two things.

First, in sin.

Second, the curse following upon it.

First, sin is not only that first transgression of Adam whereby we are all guilty, but also that infection of soul and body arising from the former. Hence it is that the understanding is filled with blindness; the conscience wounded, seared and defiled; the memory forgetting good things, or not remembering anything right.

The will captive, of no strength to good but only to evil; the affections altogether disordered. The cogitations about heavenly matters are error, falsehood, and lies. The wishes and desires of the heart are earthly and fleshly. The outward behavior is nothing else but a giving up of the members of the body as instruments of sin.

The curse makes them subject in this life for his use of the creatures to dearths, famine, etc. For his body, to sickness and other pains.

In his sense for his friends to like calamities; in his soul to vile affections, to blindness, hardness of heart, desperation, madness, etc. And both body and soul to endless and easeless torture in the world to come.

Objection: all are not in this case or estate.
Answer: all are subject by nature to the same wrath of God; they which feel it not, that case is no better, but rather worse than the other.

Mystical Bedlam.2

28 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by in Genesis, Luke, Preaching, Puritan, Thomas Adams

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Mystical Bedlam.2

The first entry on this sermon can be found here: https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/mystical-bedlam-1/

Puritan sermons typically follow a logical structure. The most common logical mechanism was to state a proposition and then break the proposition down into component parts. Adams’ structure follows that basic scheme.

The first major proposition: Man’s heart is a vessel. This proposition is developed in four subpoints:

I.          Man’s Heart is a Vessel.

            A.  The possessor: the sons of men.

            B.  The vessel is a heart.

            C.  The heart holds evil.

            D.  The vessel is full.

 

IA: The possessor: the sons of men.

            1. General discussion re: “sons of men”         

            2. Note on corruptibility

                        a. Spiritual corruption

                        b. Natural corruption

IA1: General discussion re: “sons of men”. 

Adams takes the proposition from Ecclesiastes 9:3, “The heart of the sons of men” and proceeds to define the term, “sons of men” by referencing Luke 3:38, “the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”  The movement from “sons man” to son of Adam may not be immediately apparent. The warrant for the move lies in the use of the word “adam” for man in Ecclesiastes 9:3: all the sons of adam (sons of Adam) possess hearts full of evil.

In making the move from Adam, the individual to adam the generic man, Thomas Adams has good exegetical grounds: Ecclesiastes as a whole concerns itself with the effects of the Fall which resulted from Adam’s sin. Thus, even though he speaks generically about “man” with the word “adam”, he has in view the unity and catastrophe of humanity in the first Adam.

Thomas Adams does not explain all the basis for his reference to Luke 3:38. This is a good model for a preacher: not exegetical decision can or should be laid bare before a congregation. While showing the point from the text is necessary, it is not necessary to explain the basis of every cross-reference.

From the reference to Adam, Thomas Adams draws the following point: “All his posterity [Adam’s posterity] [being] the sons of men; we receiving from him both flesh and the corruption of flesh, yea, and of the soul too”( 255).

Thomas Adams draws out two elements of corruption: spiritual and physical.

IA1a: The Spiritual Corruption we Inherited From Our Parents [Adam and Eve].[1]

i. The problem:

A. Our corruption begins at the very first moment of conception: Psalm 51:5. “I was born a sinner, saith a saint” (255).

B. Gen. 5:3: Adam begat Seth in his own likeness. “Adam could not propagate that which he did not have in himself; virtues are not given by birth, nor doth grace follow generation but regeneration….[the image of Adam means] that corruption which descended to Adam’s posterity by natural propagation” (255.). Further proof, Rom. 5:12.

C. “This title, then, ‘the sons of men,’ puts us in mind of our original contamination, whereby we stand guilty before God, and liable to present and eternal judgments” (255).

ii. The solution: From this flow of thought, Adams runs straight to the Gospel: If this is so, if I have necessarily inherited corruption, then we must ask “Who can be saved?” Note that Adams does not force the movement to the Cross (as is done too often by lesser preachers). Rather, merely by telling the story inherent in the text (because it lies in the overarching stream of the Bible’s narrative), Adams presents the problem which compels the response. The Bible tells the story for which only Christ is the answer.

A. “I answer, we derive from the first Adam sin and death; but from the second Adam, grace and life” (256).

1. The question is then whether we live after the flesh or afte the Spirit? Adams works with both 1 Cor. 15:50 and Romans 8:1, 13-14: “if we are led by the Spirit … with love and delight, we are the sons of men made into the sons of God” (256). Note that Thomas Adams uses the original phrase “sons of men” in contrast to the new status, “sons of God”. By referring back to his original topic, “sons men”, Thomas Adams keeps the hearer oriented. The similarity of sound between the phrases makes it easy for hearer to understand and remember the movement from first to second birth.

B.  “It is our happiness, not to be born, but to be new-born, John 3:3. The first birth kills, the second gives life”( 256). Adams returns to the general theme of his answer, this time working it in a slightly different manner. The repetition helps to drive home the point. The variation makes it interesting and helps to expand the understanding. Note the clever balanced sentences he uses to make the point clear and memorable, “Generation lost us; it must be regeneration that recovers us” (256).

C. He then considers a possible objection: But certainly not everything about our first birth is worthless. To this he answers, “Merely to be a son of man is to be corrupt and polluted” (256).

D. “There is no ambition good in the sons of men, but to be adopted the sons of God: under which degree there is no happiness; above which, no cause of aspiring” (256).

[1] Incidentally, the question of whether “Adam” was a symbol or a man plainly played no part in Thomas Adams’ theology – nor the theology of those in church.

Transmission of Original Sin

24 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by in Uncategorized

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Thus ’tis easy to give an account, how total corruption of heart should follow on man’s eating the forbidden fruit, though that was but one act of sin, without God’s putting any evil into his heart, or implanting any bad principle, or infusing any corrupt taint, and so becoming the author of depravity. Only God’s withdrawing, as it was highly proper and necessary that he should, from rebel-man, being as it were driven away by his abominable wickedness, and men’s natural principles being left to themselves, this is sufficient to account for his becoming entirely corrupt, and bent on sinning against God.

And as Adam’s nature became corrupt, without God’s implanting or infusing any evil thing into his nature; so does the nature of his posterity. God dealing with Adam as the head of his posterity (as has been shewn) and treating them as one, he deals with his posterity as having all sinned in him. And therefore, as God withdrew spiritual communion and his vital gracious influence from the common head, so he withholds the same from all the members, as they come into existence; whereby they come into the world mere flesh, and entirely under the government of natural and inferior principles; and so become wholly corrupt, as Adam did.

Edwards Original Sin, p. 383

 

Kierkegaard’s understanding of anxiety/dread as the ‘vertigo’ of freedom presupposes a spiritual vacuum around freedom – that is, a  fallen, alienated, condition.  In the beginning, it was not so, when God created man, he was created  in divine delight and was bathed continually in the sunshine of God’s favor. But anxiety, which brings forth sinful attitudes, was inevitable as soon as humankind lost its spiritual environment of love.

Clarification of what is meant by ‘transmission’ may also clear the way of unnecessary stumbling-blocks. With all due respect to the Reformed theology to which I am indebted, I have been led to question the doctrine of alien guilt transferred – that, the doctrine of the imputation to all of Adam’s own trespass, his act of transgression.  If Scripture definitely taught such a doctrine, however offensive to modern taste, I should readily bow to its authority. But where does Scripture require it? My investigation did not find it in the only passage from which is it draw, Romans 5.  Could it be, then, a case of laying heavy burdens upon people’ shoulders, beyond the express demands of God?

The following scheme seems to suit the language and logic of the Bible.  Alienation from God, the condition of being deprived and depraved, follows immediately upon the first act of sinning – for Adam himself and for his seed after him. It affects his descendents from the very start of their existence, because of their relationship to him. It is voluntary, in as much as it implies a disposition of the will, even in its most embryonic form; it is guilty.

Blocher, Henri. Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle. Downers Grove, IL.: IVP Academic, 2000.