Читать книгу An Appeal to the People in Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible - Catharine Esther Beecher - Страница 8

Table of Contents

In seeking a definite and clear answer to the question, what is the depraved nature transmitted from Adam, we find so much vagueness and mistiness, that it will be needful to state first what it is not, and then it will be more easy to approximate to the affirmative reply.

We find, then, that theologians teach that this depraved nature does not consist in any of those constitutional powers and faculties of mind, of which God is the author. For they maintain that all that God has made is perfect and right, and that he is not the creator of that which is the cause or origin of sin, inasmuch as this would make him “the author of sin,” which they expressly deny. This depraved nature, then, is something which God did not create. This is what is affirmed when theologians say that they do not teach a “physical depravity” which demands “physical regeneration” on the part of God.

Then on the positive side, we find that this depraved nature is something that mind can be created without, for God made the angels and Adam without it.

It is something which does not prevent sinful action, for Adam sinned before it existed.

It is something which God can at any time remedy, at least to some extent, by regeneration.

It is something which makes every moral act of [pg 007] every human being sin and only sin until regeneration takes place.

It is something which man created himself, either in Adam, or by Adam, or before Adam.

It is something which man never can or never will rectify, so that he is entirely dependent on God for the remedy.

It is something which most theologians describe as “a bias,” or “a tendency,” or “a propensity,” or “an inclination,” or “a proclivity” to sin, while its opposite is called a holy nature which was created by God, and which consists in a bias, tendency, propensity, inclination or proclivity to holiness.

According to this, God created the holy nature of angels and our first parents, and man caused the depraved nature of all of Adam's posterity.

Some theologians attempt to define it as an unbalanced state of the faculties, while holiness consists in the perfect balance of the faculties. This balanced state of the faculties conferred at his creation on Adam has been withheld from all his descendants by a constitution formed by God in consequence of Adam's sin. Some theologians define this depravity as like a habit. Others hold that it is a state of the will, sometimes called a disposition or ruling purpose.

Some theologians teach that the presence of God's Spirit, in the soul of man is indispensable to its right action, and that his depraved nature is the result of the “deprivation” of God's Spirit, which was bestowed on Adam, and is withheld from his descendants on account of his first sin. According to this view, a holy mind is one which enjoys the presence of God's Spirit, and a depraved mind is one that is deprived of it.

[pg 008]