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SIN From Jonathan Edwards: A Mini-Theology
http://www.dallas.net/~trigsted/text/JGSin.htm ^ | 4/25/02 | John H. Gerstner

Posted on 04/25/2002 7:32:50 AM PDT by RnMomof7

SIN

From Jonathan Edwards: A Mini-Theology, By John H. Gerstner


When man sinned he lost all the beauty of his nature. There is nothing left but a filthy and devilish nature that reigns in the hearts of natural men. Edwards constantly preached that man is devoid of the love and presence of God and that this is the root of all evil. We learn from Original Sin that God withdrew when Adam rebelled, and this occasioned man's natural corruption. No infusion or transfusion of corruption was necessary.

The theme was developed in the manuscript sermon on Genesis 3:11.(1) Nothing more was needed to explain the invariable and incorrigible wickedness of mankind than privation of the love of God. Marls evil actions begin at birth and continue through life.(2) Environment and example make no difference because the cause is internal.

The Matthew 10:17 sermon is an especially vivid description of the brutality and cruelty that can be accounted for by the mere absence of God in the soul. ""The nature of man is so corrupted that he is become a very evil and hurtful creature.", Many other sermons are like it. For example, the Romans 5:10 sermon makes it clear that man, being devoid of the divine presence, does indeed actively hate God.(4) Men do not admit it (one thinks of the remark of Henry David Thoreau: "I am not at war with God"), but they are the sworn enemies of God.

In fact, man the sinner claims to be at peace and friendly, but he is at peace with false gods. All true religion professed by unregenerates is "forced."(5) Men do not attack God openly because he is out of their reach, just as a serpent will not strike at a person who is at a distance (6) But men's actions show clearly how they feel. God is placed below the world in their scale of values; even vile lusts are placed above God.(7) There is actually a never­ending struggle going on between God and man to see who will be chief.(8) Human worms raise themselves up in defiance of their Creator, and this is why all unconverted persons are wicked and unable to escape the damnation of hell.(9) Jeremiah 44:4 teaches that sinners hate God,(10) Habakkuk 1:13 that God hates sinners,(11) and Zechariah 11:8 that there is mutual loathing,(12) Man's heart without God is as a stone, and God hardens it only by with. drawing further and further. (13)' Needless to say, it is futile for the sinner to argue that God is to blame for hardening his heart, for man's heart becomes hardened only when God is absent.(14)

Christianity and Christian culture make the world still more sinful if the faith is not savingly embraced, as usually it is not. Consequently, the Indians ("savage Americans" in Edwards' terminology), though suffering from original sin, are less wicked than those who conquered them, as is characteristic of the whole history of this fallen world. The "cut flower" civilization Elton Trueblood spoke of turns out to be a garden of weeds:

And as to the Gentile nations, though there was a glorious success of the gospel amongst them in the Apostles' days; yet probably not one in ten of those that had the gospel preached to them embraced it.... And the greater part of the ages which have now elapsed have been spent in the duration of that grand and general apostasy, under which the Christian world, as it is called, has been transformed into that which has been vastly more deformed, more dishonorable and hateful to God, and repugnant to true virtue, than the state of the heathen world before: which is agreeable to the prophetical descriptions given of it by the Holy Spirit (15)

ORIGINAL SIN IS UNIVERSAL, INCLUDING INFANTS

The most tragic evidence of this universal disobedience is not the heathen nations, the savage Americans, and the secularized Christian culture, but the human infant. Edwards exhaustively gathers the texts to show that the Word of God finds infants under condemnation:

Here, not to stay to be particular concerning the command by Moses, concerning the destruction of the infants of the Midianites (Num. 31:17). And that given to Saul to destroy all the infants of the Amalekites (I Sam. 15:3), and what is said concerning Edom (Ps. 137:9), "Happy shall he be that shall take thy little ones, and dash them against the stones." I proceed to take notice of something remarkable concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, represented in Ezekiel 9 when command was given to them that had charge over the city, to destroy the inhabitants (vv. 1 8). And this reason is given for it, that their iniquity required it, and it was a just recommence of their sin (vv. 9, 10).... Command was given to the angel, to go through the city, and set a mark upon their foreheads, and the destroying angel had a strict charge not to come near any man on whom was the mark; yet the infants were not marked, nor a word said of sparing them: on the contrary, infants were expressly mentioned as those that should be utterly destroyed, without pity (vv. 5, 6). "Go . . . through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity. Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark."(16)

Edwards continues: "No care was taken to preserve the infants of the city. "He concludes that they were involved in that destruction just as the children to whom Christ alludes when he says of the coming tribulation: "Blessed are the barren, and the womb that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck."

All the above is direct evidence that the Bible teaches the condemnation of children in Adam. Edwards cites some negative evidence also which is, perhaps, even more impressive. He observes that God has offered Abraham to spare Sodom if there were but ten righteous in the city. There were not, though there must have been more than that many infants. Nor is Edwards insensitive to the contrary appeal to Christ's taking the children in his arms and saying that of such is the kingdom of heaven. For Edwards, these children are no more virtuous than the doves who have that same image. Grimly he reminds his readers that vipers too, when young, are cute and harmless, though their malignant nature will later appear clearly. If this doctrine is considered harsh, Wesley's Arminianism did not save him from it either, for he, too, argued that since children suffer they must deserve to suffer.

DISOBEDIENCE UNIVERSALLY

Not only is mankind disobedient universally, but its disobedience is universal. That is, not only is disobedience as extensive as mankind, but it pertains to each individual in the universality of his being. The totality of mankind is totally depraved according to Edwards, who, if anything, is more thoroughgoing than John Calvin on this crucial Calvinistic doctrine. For Edwards, though the image of God in the broader sense is intact, the image in the narrower or proper sense is utterly eradicated.

Lacking all virtue, there is nothing men do (according to numerous sermons) that is good.(17) In fact, all that they do is wrong.(18)) Their minds are carnal,(19) and their bodies are the sepulchers of their dead minds.(20) Their life's trade, or business, is sin.(21) There is always room for further wickedness and only the common grace of God limits it. Men are so wicked that when Christ first told his disciples to beware of wolves he changed it to say beware of men because men are far more ferocious and cruel than animals.(22)

SIN INVOLVES INFINITE GUILT

Edwards maintains that virtue does not have finite merit,(23) but sin has infinite demerit:

There is no great merit in paying a debt we owe, and by the highest possible obligations in strict justice are obliged to pay; but there is great demerit in refusing to pay it. That on such accounts as these there is an infinite demerit in all sin against God which must therefore immensely outweigh all the merit which can be supposed to be in our virtue, I think, is capable of full demonstration; and that the futility of the objections, which some have made against the argument, might most plainly be demonstrated.(24)

Sin is against an infinitely worthy being and is therefore infinitely heinous. Every sin, according to Edwards, is an in finite aggravation against an infinitely holy God.(25) He observes in many sermons that an offense against an excellent person is doubtless more serious than against a less excellent person. By a straight line of logical reasoning he concludes that a sin against an infinitely excellent person is an in. finitely heinous deed. Even more clearly he states in the Matthew 25:46 sermon that "if the obligation to love, honor and obey God be infinite, then sin, which is the violation of this obligation, is a violation of infinite obligation, and so is an infinite evil." The same theme is fundamental in Justification by Faith:

We are under greater obligations to love a more lovely being than a less lovely; and if a being be infinitely excellent and lovely, our obligations to love him are therein infinitely great.... The unworthiness of sin or opposition to God rises and is great in proportion to the dignity of the object and inferiority of the subject; but on the contrary, the value of respect rises in proportion to the value of the subject…(26)

Likewise, in one of his most famous sermons, Edwards labors this point in establishing the "justice of God in the damnation of sinners":

Every crime or fault deserves a greater or less punishment, in proportion as the crime itself is greater or less.... The faulty nature of anything is the formal ground and reason of its desert of punishment; and therefore the more anything hath of this nature, the more punishment it deserves. And therefore the terribleness of the degree of punishment, let it be never so terrible, is no argument against the justice of it, if the proportion does but hold....

A crime is more or less heinous, according as we are under greater or less obligations to the contrary.... So the faultiness of one being hating another, is in proportion to his obligation to love him.... And therefore if there be any being that we are under infinite obligations to love, and honour, and obey, the contrary to wards him must be infinitely faulty Our obligation to love, honour, and obey any being, is in proportion to his loveliness, honourableness, and authority; for that is the very meaning of the words. When we say anyone is very lovely, it is the same as to say, that he is one very much to be loved....

So that sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime infinitely heinous, and so deserving infinite punishment.(27)

"MORAL" MEN ARE UTTERLY SINFUL

Joseph G. Haroutunian has written what is one of the most interesting studies of Edwardsean and New England theology(28) It is titled Piety Versus Moralism, and that very title states its theme: New England theology after Edwards turned away from theology ­ and piety ­ to a mere moralism. What he says is undoubtedly true, but there is a deficiency in Haroutuniads understanding of "moralism" in Edwards. He seems to think that though Edwards does not deny that the natural man may be good, Edwards will not permit himself to lose sight of the fact that to be religious and to be moral are indeed two different things. What Haroutunian does not seem to realize is that, for Jonathan Edwards, to be truly moral without being religious is impossible.

Outward morality is, of course, possible and sometimes highly cultivated by some human sinners; but real morality is something else again. In his sermon on Romans 3:11, Edwards preached: "When they (natural men) do an act of justice it is not wrong as an act of justice and when they do an act of liberality is it not wrong as an act of liberality.... What is done is only a shadow without substance. There is the shell of the duty but the inside is hollow.(29) The natural man may have a "shadow" of morality, but never the real thing.

Edwards puts the same principle in somewhat more technical language:

Thus when a natural man speaks the truth, when he is just in his dealings, when he gives to the poor, he does those things that are right as to the matter of them though altogether wrong as to the manner. As to what is visible in the action it is right. That which is as it were the body of the actions; but, if we look at the inward principle and aim which is, as it were, the soul of the act and is what God looks at and which the rule does chiefly regard it is altogether wrong.(30)

Again, he says in the same unpublished sermons (surely some of the most important ethical deliverances he ever wrote) that natural men do what is "negatively and comparatively right, i.e., that they may do those things whereby they avoid those things that are much more wrong."(31) There are, after all, degrees of sinfulness even where there is no true virtue present "They can avoid many sins."(32) Again, "when natural men do avoid willfully doing that which is directly contrary to a known command of God they may be said to do right.... 'Tis not in itself so wrong as what they avoid.... The path that a man walks in may be comparatively straight as compared with some other paths but yet the path he goes in may be notwithstanding indeed crooked. Of crooked paths there may be a great deal of difference. Some may be much less crooked than others and so as to avoid many great crooks that are in others (yet) 'tis not straight."(33) There are, we would say, bad good works; bad as to motive, good as to appearance.

In a sermon which carries the title Wicked Men Are the Children of Hell, Edwards remarks that "there are many in a natural condition that are a very good sort of man, are sober and moral in their behavior...."(34) Of course, he means moral in the sense of outwardly moral, because Edwards would never say that truly moral men are children of hell.

Likewise, in a sermon entitled The Gadarenes Loved Their Swine Better Than Jesus Christ, Edwards says that if natural men ever part with anything it is not for Christ's sake but to avoid hell. So the morality of swinish people is really centered on hell, not toward heaven.(35)

The famous metaphors of Edwards about the soul destroying character of even one sin have led Haroutunian to suppose that Edwards believed natural men were capable of true morality. We will skip the one in which Edwards mentions that if a boat crossing the Atlantic only sank once it would nevertheless be fatal and cite this one about a servant and a wife:

Therefore how absurd must it be for Christians to object against the depravity of man's nature, a greater number of innocent and kind actions, than of crimes; and to talk of a prevailing innocency, good nature, industry and cheerfulness of the greater part of mankind? Infinitely more absurd, than it would be to insist that the domestic of a prince was not a bad servant because though sometimes he condemned and affronted his master to a great degree yet he did not spit in his master's face so often as he performed acts of service; or than it would be to affirm, that his spouse was a good wife to him, because' although she committed adultery, and that with the slaves and scoundrels sometimes, yet she did not do this so often as she did the duties of a wife. (36)

Since most people cannot see little sins and must be, as it were, hit over the head with gross ones, Edwards is vividly pointing out that one sin would be enough to vitiate the morality of any person. If a servant only spit in his master's face once a year, this would surely label him a bad servant no matter how impeccable his behavior the rest of the time. Edwards never for a moment supposes that there is any time when any man does anything truly virtuous, even though most of the time most men abstain from the gross, conspicuous acts of immorality. Because man is basically sinful in all he does, the atonement is necessary.


TOPICS: General Discusssion
KEYWORDS: calvin; doctrinesofgrace; thefall; theology
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To: Concerto in D
The question regarding 'How was Satan capable of falling?" boils down to acknowledging volition in the souls of creatures with souls, accountability for that volition, and touches upon the meaning of sin and evil.

I would amplify a bit upon RnMomof7's comments to note that some doctrine regarding the Angelic Conflict notes how Lucifer was in a Perfect Environment, the Most Beautiful, Most Intelligent angel, called the Son of the Morning.

When Lucifer initiated the "I Wills",...he operated outside of God's plan based upon his own independent volition.

This is a very significant doctrine. Other doctrinal studies regarding prehuman history indicate that when Lucifer and a third of the angels who joined him in rebellion, were judged and cast out of heaven and he became Satan, as the Adversary he challenged God's just and immutable character. The doctrine continues that man was created parallel to the angelic domain as a evidence test for all to see that God's judgment was indeed just.

So just as things were before man and before the fall in God's Garden, where Lucifer became Satan and initiated sin with thought, decision and action,...likewise sin also originated in the Garden of Eden based upon volition in the soul, with thought, decision and action.

In both cases there is penalty for sin.

Some other interesting notes are that in both cases, lessor creations were then elevated past those who had originally been created perfect.

In the case of angels, Lucifer was the perfect, highest angel, a cherub,...but after the fall, the seraphim were given 6 wings as a sign of promotion over the cherubs with 4 wings by some doctrinal studies. Also upon the death of Christ on the Cross, we see a man descends to Abraham's bosom and returns 3 days later, victorious over death. Death had previously been the devil's domain where souls fell under the domain of a still powerful cherub, yet Christ unlocked the doors for the elect. Again, born a bit lower than the angels, He was elevated in authority over the Adversary.

A parallel again exists with respect to man and a relationship to Satan from the Garden of Eden. At the time of Adam before the fall in the Garden of Eden, Lucifer had already fallen along with a third of the angels. Some doctrine regarding the Gap Theory, suggests that chaos was a consequence after the fall in the Garden of God by Satan, then with respect to man, a Gap between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2 existed where a perfect creation became chaos, but it wasn't originally chaotic per Isaiah 45:18. Then came the Creation as we are concerned, in 6 days and Adam was in the Garden of Eden, perfect and created in the image of God.

This had to have attracted the attention of Satan who had been cast down but was still prince of this world.

So in the Garden of Eden we have the father of lies, the originator of sin, introduce the temptation to Eve. The thought, decision and action was shared by Adam and again we have a fall,....but note in both cases, Satan was the originator of evil.

Of note, is that although Satan obviously intended to use the creation of man as an example of how Satan could substitute for God, God was stil of immutable character. Furthermore, when man, with separate volition from Satan, sinned,...he incurred the wrath of God.

So again, God's judgment is still immutable and perfect. Also so there is risk involved for those who act independently from God, note that God then placed enmity in the heart of Eve and her seed towards the shining one, the serpent, i.e. even though Satan succeeded in encouraging man to sin, Satan failed to win worship of God's creation of man in His image, as a new kingdom for Satan. Instead a new player is on deck with volition, namely man.

This doctrine is important because it explains why 'do-gooders' and humanists are still considered evil. namely they are acting independent of God's plan, which is the very issue which Satan is promoting because Satan wants to establish his will instead of God's.

This is why one might read seemingly extreme conspiracy theorists ranting about "Freemasons" as being Luciferians or Satanists. Some sincerely are, because they are worshipping a 'human good will' independent of God's plan. I suspect there have been Christians and saints who may have sought a body of believers to perform good works after salvation and were lessor freemasons, but this is the foundations for that doctrine.

I make the point because the original sin, I believe is based more upon independent thought, decision and acts away from God's will, rather than simply poignantly explicitly stating they are going to elevate themselves above God. (Their actions do that also, but perhaps not cognitively,...like some Wiccans who might be truthful, although most are liars.)

21 posted on 05/01/2002 9:52:23 PM PDT by Cvengr
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To: drstevej

Indeed.


22 posted on 05/05/2005 5:38:22 AM PDT by Gamecock ("It is absurd for the Creator to depend upon the creature..." Francis Turretin)
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