The Christian idea of sin and original sin in the light of modern knowledge : being the Pringle-Stuart lectures for 1921 delivered at Keble college, Oxford

Front matter

The Christian idea of sin and original sin in the

THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF SIN AND ORIGINAL SIN

By the same Author

Preface

By the kind invitation of the Warden of Keble I was invited to deliver the lectures on the Pringle- Stuart foundation for 1921. This book is the lectures so delivered at Keble College in the summer term of that year, with slight alterations. In treating of the Christian idea of sin, I have avoided as far as possible those aspects of its history of which a full and satisfactory treatment has recently been given elsewhere. Thus I have only alluded to the chief points of the Pelagian controversy, since an admirable study of St. Augustine’s position has been given by Canon Lacey in the first of these series of lectures, published under the title of ‘ Nature, Miracle, and Sin,’ and many adequate histories of the controversy can be found. Again Dr. Tennant has given a detailed account of the teaching of post-canonical Jewish writings of the early Fathers on the origin of sin. May I take this opportunity of expressing my own great obligation to Dr. Tennant’s books, though at times I am unable to accept his position ? All Christian teachers owe him a debt of gratitude for his pioneer work and his reverent and fearless attempt to restate old truths in the light of modern knowledge.

VI

PREFACE

I have made bold to publish these lectures in the belief that they will fill a gap. It would appear that modern psychology has shed new light on the material of sin as consisting of misdirected in¬ stinct, and has made possible a fresh interpretation of original sin, as moral disease, due to the mis¬ shaping of the individual mind by bad social environment. If this is accepted, we get only one more instance of the fact that the traditional doctrines of the Church prove in the long run to be more fully in accord with a completer know¬ ledge of the truth than the popular denials of them. I have also attempted to show that Christianity provides the exact remedy that sin requires.

It is, I think, important to grasp that any real doctrine of sin carries with it certain psycho¬ logical and, still more, certain philosophical im¬ plications. In dwelling on this I have been com¬ pelled to wander over a wide field, and to make many assertions which may be felt to need a further defence. I can only appeal to the reader’s charity to believe that I am not unaware of this, and that silence on these matters is not due to ignorance or dogmatism, but to want of space. I refer in the course of the book to several modern writers, to which I am most conscious of being indebted.

Introduction

PAGES

ix-x

Lecture I

I-I5

The meaning of sin in the O.T., pp. 1-5 — In the teaching of Christ, pp. 5-10 — In the rest of the N.T., p. 10 — Sin contains its own punish¬ ment, since human life depends on fellowship with God, pp. 11-14 — The supernatural perfects the natural, pp. 14-15.

Lecture II Original Sin 16-28

The meaning of the term, pp. 16-18 — The teaching of the O.T., pp. 18-19 — Of the non-canonical writings, p. 19 — Of St. Paul, especially in the Epistle to the Romans, pp. 20-26 — Of St. Augustine, pp. 26-27 — Of the later Church, pp. 27-28.

Lecture III Objections to the Idea

of Original Sin

The nature of the story in Genesis, pp. 29-30 — Dr. Tennant’s limitation of the term ‘ sin,' pp. 30-32 — Sin is not simply moral evil, pp. 32-34 — Nor confined to the individual will, pp. 34-37 —

Christ’s teaching implies original sin, pp. 37-39 — In what sense can it be transmitted, pp. 39- 43 — Sin and the sense of sin and guilt, pp. 43-49.

Lecture IV Psychology and Sin a

The rise of the New Psychology, pp. 50-51 —

It regards all mental life as built up out of instincts, pp. 51-55 — And lays stress on the ' un¬ conscious mind,' pp. 55-56— -The direct bearing of this on the Christian idea of sin, pp. 56-59 —

The concept of ‘ moral disease,’ pp. 59-61 — But this psychology may be used to deny free-will and the objective truth of morality and religion, p. 61 — As against this we hold, that psychology can only describe conduct, pp. 61-63 — Its

29-49

50-78

ippbtte

CONTENTS

PAGES

Vlll apparent determinism is due to its limitations, pp. 63-65 — It can give a history of morality, pp. 65-67 — And explain the idea of God as a projection, pp. 67-68 — But fails to give any real account of moral judgments, pp. 68-69 — Which have as much claim to validity as intellectual judgments, pp. 69-72 — And substitutes the idea of God for God, pp. 72-79 — Its limitations are self-evident, pp. 75-76 — The idea of sin remains unaffected, pp. 76-78.

Lecture V Philosophy and Sin 79-96

The teaching of Christ implies a certain philo¬ sophical outlook, pp. 79-82 — The Christian doctrine of creation rules out certain views of sin, pp. 82-83 — Evil is not only negative, pp. 83- 85 — Its existence is compatible with the power and goodness of God, pp. 85-89 — While deter¬ minism is not, 89-90 — Pantheism denies all sin, pp. 90-92 — An undue insistence on the immanence of God has to explain away sin, pp. 92-95 —

In what sense God is the absolute, p. 96.

Lecture VI Has there been a Fall ? 97-112

Two explanations of the disorder of the world, pp. 97-98 — Dr. Tennant’s denial of any fall, pp. 98-100 — A criticism of his position, pp. 1 00-102 — Science may suggest a different view, pp. 102-103 — Sin is not being outgrown, pp. 103-104 — Moral does not keep pace with material progress, pp. 104-106 — The cause lies within man, pp. 106-108 — Sin is never a means of progress, p. 108 — The possibility of super¬ human forces of evil, pp. 108-111 — The teaching of Christ suggests a growing separation between good and evil, pp. m-112.

Lecture VII God’s Remedy for Sin t> 1 13-129

The nature of the disease, pp. 113-114 — Suggested remedies, pp. 115-116 — The Christian remedy, p. 116 — Christ reveals the possibilities xn of human nature, pp. 117-118 — And also God's ^ purpose and character, pp. 118-119 — He is the supreme example of personal influence, pp. 120- 123 — Which lives on in the Christian Church, pp. 1 23-1 2 5 — He has also made God’s forgive¬ ness possible, pp. 1 2 5-1 2 7 — His saving power is as wide as the world, pp. 127-129.

INTRODUCTION

The Christian idea of sin is essentially a religious idea. It implies a relationship to God. Hence any attempt to discuss the nature and meaning of sin that forgets or minimises its Godward aspect cannot satisfy the Christian consciousness. To an atheist the idea of sin can only be an ecclesiastical delusion. He may recognise the existence of moral evil as a problem for ethics or the existence of crime as a problem for political philosophy. He may be able to define sin as he would define any other fiction of the human mind — as, for instance, a centaur — but the term can have no real meaning for him. It corresponds to nothing that has actual existence. It must be explained away. One reason why many modern discussions of sin are unsatisfactory is that even Christian writers attempt to isolate sin from its relation to God. As Christians we protest that a sound theology can never be assisted by provisional lapses into naturalism and that the full meaning of sin must always elude the temporary atheist.

Again, the problem of sin is, in the first instance, a problem of religion as opposed not only to ethics or politics, but to theology. Any treatment of good or evil as subjects for merely theoretical

X

INTRODUCTION discussion runs the risk of blurring the distinction between them. Evil is primarily an enemy to be fought and conquered. To regard it in any other way is really to evade the problem. A solution that is not a practical solution is no real solution at all. When evil is viewed as sin against God this becomes doubly true. For religion the primary demand is for deliverance and restoration to fellow¬ ship with God. Christianity offers, in the first instance, a remedy for sin, not an explanation of it. Here, as always, a theology is necessary, but only in the wake of religion. Christian insistence on the gravity of sin can only be intelligible to those who are fighting against it. To the noncombatant critic Christians always seem to be making an unnecessary fuss about nothing.

These two thoughts control the treatment of sin in these lectures. The first two deal with the ideas of ‘ actual ’ and ‘ original 5 sin, and the treatment is largely historical. The three subse¬ quent lectures discuss some of the problems of psychology and philosophy that are involved in the idea of sin. This leads up to a discussion of the belief in the ‘ fall ’ of man in the sixth lecture. The last deals with the Gospel as containing God’s remedy for the practical problem of sin.

THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF SIN AND ORIGINAL SIN

LECTURE I

The Christian doctrine of sin, as it appears in the New Testament, springs out of the Old Testament doctrine of sin. This again has a long history behind it. We must begin by summarising its development.

Among the early Hebrews, as among all primitive peoples, sin was simply that which offended God. Disaster or sickness was regarded as the sign that God was angry, and search had to be made, if necessary, to discover what sin had offended Him and who had committed it. The deity of the savage is as fitful and capricious a being as the savage himself. His disapproval is often arbitrary. In the early stages of society sin and crime are hardly yet distinguished. Sin is practically co¬ extensive with the violation of tribal custom, which is viewed as expressing the will of the deity and being under his protection. In the ancient story of Exodus iv. 24-26 we may find an illus¬ tration of these principles. God met Moses and

B

' sought to kill him.’ In other words, Moses fell dangerously ill, and his illness was interpreted as a sign that Jehovah was offended. It was left to Zipporah’s wits to discover the cause. This was found in the neglect of the tribal custom of circumcision by Moses, whether for himself or his son is not quite clear. Jehovah’s wrath was appeased by the performance of the right action.

Further, the idea of sin in primitive times is limited in two ways. First, primitive thought deals with sins rather than sin. A sin is a definite and outward act, either the performance of what custom forbids or the failure to perform what custom enjoins. There is as yet no reference to inward desire or intention. Ignorance is no plea. By the mere fact of having committed the deed the doer is a sinner, and a sinner he remains until the sin is expiated. (Edipus, for example, in the Greek story is guilty even though he sinned in ignorance and had done his best to avoid the act. Secondly, the conception of individuality is undeveloped. The unit for religion, as for all life, is the family or the clan. Hence when the god is offended and punishes the offence by misfortune of some kind, no sense of injustice is caused if the punishment lights, not on the offender, but on the community to which he belongs. When Achan’s sin brings defeat on Israel, his family are included in the punishment.1

Traces of ideas such as these are to be found in many of the earliest parts of the Old Testament.

1 Joshua vii.

It is necessary to insist that they do not correspond with the fuller revelation in Christ. But it is more important for our purpose to notice how they are gradually transcended under the influence of the prophets. As men gained a fuller revelation of the character of Jehovah, so the idea of sin was purified and deepened. Sin is still that which offends God. But God’s disapproval is no longer arbitrary. He is a righteous God. His commands are for the highest good of His people always. His supreme demand from man is not for the punctilious performance of external actions, but for mercy and righteousness. And again He looks not only at the outward act, but searches the heart. Sin begins to include not only outward acts, but in¬ ward intention. ‘ He hath showed thee, 0 man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? ’ 1 So, too, from the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel the individual begins to come to his own. The idea of national or corporate sin is in no way weakened, but side by side there has emerged the conviction of individual responsibility to God. ‘ The soul that sinneth, it shall die.’ 2 A righteous member of an un¬ righteous nation can be acceptable to God. This growth of individual religion reinforces the growing sense of the inwardness of sin.

In the Psalms we find the Old Testament idea of sin in its most spiritual form. In such a Psalm as the fifty-first sin is felt to be personal disobedience

Micah vi. 8. s Ezekiel xviii. 4.

to a good and holy God. Whatever damage a man’s sin may have done to the community or to his neighbour or to himself, the thought of it is swallowed up in the sense of what it means to God. ‘ Against thee, and thee only, have I sinned.’ In his attitude to sin the Psalmist places himself on God’s side and asks not to be let off punishment, but for a new heart which will make possible a restored fellowship with God. The supreme penalty is the loss of the presence of God. Sin is no longer viewed as a mere external action ; it is rather the sinful heart and character that the Psalmist has in mind. It is seemingly compared to leprosy, as being a consuming disease of the soul. And God’s disapproval is no longer a merely external judg¬ ment : it is confirmed by the sinner’s highest self. ‘ I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.’ In Psalms such as this, where we are allowed to overhear the prayers of the saints of the old covenant, we can see what sin had come to mean to religion at its highest.

No doubt even to the end Judaism retained much of the old legalistic idea of sin. It was one of the results of the place that the Law came to hold. In the priestly code many of the regulations com¬ ing down from primitive times confuse moral and ceremonial purity. A man might easily become unclean unwittingly. A ‘ sin offering ’ is still required for a woman after child-birth. We do, however, find the distinction between unintentional sins and sins committed with a high hand.1 The

1 Numbers xv. 29-30.

teaching of the Law about sin must be judged by the upward tendency that it represents as compared with earlier codes, rather than by the actual de¬ velopment that it attained. At least it succeeded in bringing home to the mass of the people some conception of God’s holiness, when the prophets had failed.1

The teaching of Christ consummates that puri-w fication and deepening of the idea of sin whose course we have briefly traced in the Old Testament. He gives no definition of sin. He deals more often with particular sins than sins in general. He corrects the current estimate of sins. Yet His dis¬ courses and parables imply a definite idea of sin.

The leading characteristic of His teaching on sin is that He puts it into relation with the holy love 1 of God for every individual soul and for all mankind. God is pre-eminently the Father, the Father alike of Israel and of each human soul. As Father, God pierces behind the outward action to the state of heart and will from which it springs. Sin is at bottom the refusal of trust and obedience on the part of the child to the all-wise and all-loving Father. The truest illustrations of its meaning are to be found in the home. Imagine the perfect father. His commands are not arbitrary, but spring from a desire for his child’s highest welfare. They are guided by an experience and an insight that the child cannot yet possess. In this home there are many

1 On the O.T. doctrine of sin, see article ‘ Sin ' (Hebrew and Jewish) in Hastings's Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. xi.; Schultz, Old Testament Theology, vol. ii. pp. 281 ff. ; Davidson,

Old Testament Theology, pp. 203 ff.

children, but no favourites. The welfare of all is bound up with the welfare of each. The love and confidence for which the Father asks is in complete harmony with the love of the brethren. In glad obedience all alike will find their own true satisfaction and also forward the true happiness of others. In the parable of the Prodigal Son each brother in turn cuts himself off from the joy and fellowship of the home, the one by his desire to possess for him¬ self and to be free from all restraints, the other by his sullen refusal to share the largeness of the Father’s heart. Sin is still that of which God disapproves, but its whole meaning has become transfigured in the light of God’s fatherly love. No doubt in the Old Testament we find anticipations of this view, but Christ first made the thought of God’s holy love the controlling factor in the idea of sin.

The freshness of this standpoint can be best appreciated when we contrast the teaching of Christ with the current ideas of contemporary Judaism. As a result of the growing predominance of the Law since Maccabean days, the Jews increasingly came to construe man’s relation to God in legal terms. Sin tended to become a series of individual acts, the running up a debt with God. Further, the consequence of the development of oral tradition as an attempt to apply the Law to every possible situation of life led to a tendency to confuse sin with ignorance. The sinner was the man who had not learnt the right application of the Law to this or that problem of conduct, and so did not know how to please God by doing the right thing. Holiness became confused with correctness, and righteousness with religious etiquette. Moreover, the failure to distinguish between moral and ceremonial purity, that Pharisaism served to increase rather than diminish, produced a largely external view of sin. Sins were, so to say, detachable from the sinner.

As against this Christ insisted upon the inward- * ness of true religion. In His teaching upon eating with unwashen hands He swept away for ever the notion that man could be unfitted for fellowship with God by any merely outward defilement. Sin is no external stain. It resides in the heart and will. ‘ Perceive ye not that whatever from without goeth into the man, it cannot defile him ? . . . That which proceedeth out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed/ and then follows a long list of evil things.3 So, too, the angry thought, the lustful look, or the evil desire, even though they do not issue in any outward action, are sinful because they express the heart and will of the man.2 Christ never depreciates the importance of conduct, but Pie insists that sin is more than a series of sins : it is a corruption of the man’s inmost self. It disables him from true life. It cripples his freedom and, in effect, changes him from being a son in the liberty of his Father’s house into being a slave to a cruel and alien master.

In the teaching of Christ, just as the thought of God as Father is primary, so the thought of sin as

2 See especially Matthew v. 20-28.

related to holy love is primary. But the manifold relation in which we stand to God cannot be con¬ tained within the limits of a single metaphor. God is not only the Father but the King, the Master, and the Judge. The kingdom of God, whatever doubt there may be about the interpretation of the phrase, holds a large place in Christ’s teaching, and a kingdom implies a king. So sin is depicted as rebellion against God, who is bound to punish all disloyalty in His subjects. Or sin is the failure of the servant to render due service to his Master. In one parable, ‘ The Unforgiving Servant,’ sin is even represented as a debt,1 though it must be observed that the main lesson of the parable is to emphasize the infinity of the debt, our inability to pay it for ourselves, and our dependence upon God’s free forgiveness, which is conditioned by our willingness to forgive the tiny debts of our fellow-men. In short, the Fatherhood of God is nothing weak or sentimental. Because His love desires the highest welfare of every soul, He cannot spare it the discipline that it needs, and because He desires the welfare of the whole family He must punish the selfishness of one member that neglects or injures other members. The jealousy of God has a true meaning. If a father were not to be jealous when the love and loyalty due to him alone is withheld and squandered on some unworthy object, it would show that his own love for his child had grown cold. Nor is there anything unworthy in the idea of God’s wrath. A father must be angry

1 Matthew xviii. 21-35.

with all that mars the home. God’s wrath is the energy of perfect love against all that threatens the happiness of the loved ones. God’s hostility to sin is in no way watered down when He is re¬ garded as the Father. No excuse is given to those who would substitute the ideal of heartiness for the ideal of holiness.

To the Christian, however, the fullest revelation of the meaning of sin is to be found in the Cross. ^ Whatever else the Cross is, it is the showing up of sin. In Christ the goodness and holiness of God were displayed in a human life, and men found His presence so intolerable that they crucified Him. There is the essential nature of sin — incompati¬ bility with God. The awareness of God’s presence and claims can never leave men neutral. It com¬ pels a decision. It at once discloses and deepens the condition of men’s hearts and wills. The Cross is the public manifestation for all time of what we do when we reject God’s claims and God’s love, and use the power that we possess to silence His voice and banish Him from our lives. It demonstrates that sin is more than a negation, the refusal to attend or to obey ; it is active hostility. By the Cross the essential meaning of sin has for ever been laid bare. When we sin, we do our best to stifle all that is divine within us.

It is often said, and said truly, that the Cross destroys sin by showing it to be an offence against holy love. Men cannot go on wounding God when they see how meekly and lovingly He bears the blow. But that is only half the truth. It is well lo THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF SIN

to remember that Christ spoke of a day to come, when He should come no longer in weakness but in power, and when God’s holy love should be dis¬ closed not in the Cross but in wrath and judgment against sin.

In the rest of the New Testament we find the same doctrine of sin. In St. Paul, as we shall see in our next lecture, the term ‘ sin * is undoubtedly used so as to include more than actual sin. It is applied to conduct and conditions for which the will of the individual is not responsible. But with him actual sin is clearly disobedience to the known will of God. It includes, however, far more than a number of sinful acts or thoughts. The true antithesis to sin is faith — the faith that ‘ worketh through love/ and faith is a positive attitude of enthusiastic adhesion to God. It is the life of sonship. St. Paul in his stress on faith as opposed to works is a true interpreter of the mind of his Master. In St. John we get the nearest approach to a definition of sin. ‘ Everyone that doeth sin, doeth also lawlessness: and sin is lawlessness.’1 Again the rest of the Epistle shows that the term is used in no stiff and legal sense. God is love, but love carries with it obligations. No one can rightly claim to live in fellowship with Him unless he is striving to show his love by righteousness and good-will to his fellow-men. Once again, sin is the unfilial attitude. Lawlessness is an offence against the sovereignty of holy love.

If this is the Christian doctrine of sin it contains

1 i John iii. 4.

ii in itself the answer to the question, What is the punishment of sin ? In the plainest manner Christ rebuked the popular error that exceptional suffering is the proof of exceptional sin, or, again, that the victims of some startling misfortune are the peculiar objects of God’s anger.1 The Cross itself witnesses that in the world as we find it, suffering may be not only the lot but the duty of the innocent. On the other hand, He proclaimed that the Jewish nation by its faithlessness to God and its rejection of Himself had merited punishment, and He fore¬ told the certainty of divine judgment on all un¬ righteousness. There is no contradiction between the two statements. On the Christian view of sin, punishment is inevitable. As St. Augustine in¬ sisted, ‘ peccatum poena peccati ' — sin is the punish¬ ment of sin. Alienation from God must issue in loss and misery. About this penalty there is nothing arbitrary. Man was created in the image of God — that is, able to know and love God — for only like can know like. This capacity for fellow¬ ship with God is an integral part of human nature. Only through exercising it can man become truly and fully man. We to-day more and more view human nature dynamically, not statically. It is not a clear-cut and ready-made entity, as the older theology tended to assume. Rather is it a process. The new-born child possesses not human nature, but the possibility of acquiring it. That pos¬ sibility is never fully realised in this life. There are in all of us many potentialities that remain

1 E.g. Luke xiii. 1-5.

undeveloped in this world. ‘ Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.’ But growth is conditioned throughout by fellowship with God. Throughout nature the life of any organism is determined by response to environment. Its capacities are limited by its power of response. The wider the environ¬ ment which it is able to use, the more advanced is its life. When we reach man we reach a being who is able to respond to an environment wider than visible and material things, a spiritual environ¬ ment that includes God. Human life depends for its maintenance and growth upon its correspondence with God. And this correspondence is no longer anything merely automatic or physical. It tran¬ scends the order of being that is studied by biology. It is moral and spiritual. Here for the first time we get the possibility of sin, of wilful refusal to correspond. And sin must weaken that fellow¬ ship which conditions all sound and healthy human life. Religion has been defined as ‘ walking with God.’ But two cannot walk together ‘ except they be agreed/ The child who knows that he has done something of which his parents disapprove feels that a barrier has sprung up between him and them. Hence the disorder that follows sin is its inevitable result, in accordance with moral laws. Apart from God the heart grows cold and the mind darkened. The balance of human nature is upset so that the lower passions get out of control. Such alienation from God breaks up the unity of human life. Its growth is hampered and its direction perverted, because fellowship with God is a necessary constituent in its nature.

Sin is indeed its own punishment. And as we shall see more clearly in our next lecture, the consequences of sin cannot be limited to the sinner. The disorder that follows on alienation from God must spread to other members of the home until the home life is thrown into confusion. So we see that the proper punish¬ ment of sin lies within itself. So long as the sinner identifies himself with sin, he is exposed to the wrath of God. The lawlessness and want of peace, the darkness of vision and incapacity for good-will, are all the inevitable consequences that flow from the loss of the inspiration and guidance that fellow¬ ship with God bestows. Apart from Him we cannot make right use of this present world, and the world, as misused by the blindness and sinfulness of man, is turned into an instrument of his punishment. It is true indeed that in the individual life we can¬ not find any proportion between sin and suffering. In any particular case the innocent may suffer far more than the guilty. This is the result of the solidarity of the race. But we can see that, viewed broadly, the disorder that produces suffering is the result of sin, and that if we take a wide view of nations and societies, there is a certain proportion between unrighteousness and suffering. The moral law cannot in the long run be broken with impunity. Further, mysterious as the suffering of the innocent is, it does not impair fellowship of will with God, and God is able in wonderful ways to give faith and courage to bear it and to transform suffering into a means of forwarding His glory. Sin causes suffering, but suffering borne rightly may be a very sharing of the suffering of Christ.