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THE PROBLEM OF THE SINFUL NATURE
by Ray Shelton
What is the doctrine of the sinful nature? According to the doctrine of the sinful nature, sin is misunderstood as intrinsic to human nature as an inherited sinful nature; that is, an intrinsic inability of man to do righteousness and a definite necessity to do sin. To understand this doctrine of the sinful nature and its origin go to The Misunderstanding of the Need for Salvation below.
1. Introduction
2. The Misunderstanding of the Need for Salvation
4. The Misunderstanding of the Origin of Sin
5. The Problem of the Sinful Nature
8. The Misinterpretation of the Christian Life
9. Wesley and Entire Sanctification
10. The Biblical Theology of Romans 6
11. The Biblical Theology of Romans 7
13. The Christian and the Holy Spirit
14. The Baptism with the Spirit
15. Misunderstanding of the Baptism with the Spirit
16. The Conclusion
The doctrine of the sinful nature was introduced into Christian theology by Augustine in the early fifth century A.D. to explain why man can not save himself by his meritorious works. This came about in connection with his controversy with a British monk, Pelagius. Pelagius had come to Rome teaching and zealously exhorting his fellow Christians to good works. Pelagius was especially disturbed about those who endeavored to excuse themselves, when charged with their sins, by the inability of their sinful natures. Pelagius was outraged by these excuses and cried,
“Oh, blind madness! We accuse God of a two-fold igorance, — that He does not know what He has made, nor what He has commanded, —
as if forgetting the human weakness of which He is Himself the Author, He has imposed laws on man which he cannot endure.”
Pelagius “himself tells us that it was his custom, therefore, whenever he had to speak on moral improvement and the conduct of a holy life, to begin by pointing out the power and quality of human nature, and by showing what it was capable of doing. For (he says) he esteemed it of small use to exhort men to do what they deemed impossible: hope must rather be our companion, and all longing and effort die when we despair of attaining.” [1] Upon hearing Augustine’s prayer —
“Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt” — repeated in his hearing, Pelagius became particularly incensed. The powers of man, he held, were gifts of God; and it was, therefore, a reproach against God as if God had made man weak or evil, to believe that they were insufficient for keeping of His law. Pelagius began to teach and write against this Augustinian view, and when Augustine heard and read these Pelagian teachings, he engaged Pelagius in a lengthy controversy by writing many treatises opposing his teachings.
Both Augustine and Pelagius assumed that eternal life was something that had to be earned by meritorious works; it was a reward for righteousness or good works. But Augustine and Pelagius differed on whether man was able or free to do such good works. Augustine denied that man since the fall was able apart from God’s grace not to sin and to do good works. Adam’s descendants, he held, were not able to earn salvation by their good works because they had lost their freedom not to sin. Consequently, apart from God’s grace, they were not able to do good works and hence to merit eternal life as a reward for their good works. Only by God’s grace was man enabled to do good works and thus receive the reward of eternal life. Thus eternal life is both a gift and a reward: a gift because only by the grace of God is man enabled to do good works and a reward because these good works merit eternal life as a reward for these good works. Pelagius, on the other hand, affirmed man’s freedom not to sin and to do good works because the denial of human freedom undermined man’s responsibility for his acts.
According to Pelagius, by the grace of creation God had given man the freedom not to sin and to do good works. By these man could gain eternal life as a reward for his good works. Thus also for Pelagius eternal life is both a gift and a reward. But the gift was by the grace of creation. Nature and grace are the same. For Augustine, nature and grace are separate and distinct from each other because what was given to man in creation, the freedom not to sin, was lost by the fall and could be restored only by the special grace of Jesus Christ. Apart from this difference concerning nature and grace (and the doctrine of original sin), Augustine and Pelagius both assumed that eternal life was basically a meritorious reward, and that freedom to do good works was given by God’s grace in order that man might receive eternal life as a reward for his meritorious good works that grace made possible. The conception of salvation of both of them is basically legalistic: eternal life is something that has to be earned by meritorious good works. But because the grace of God makes good works possible, salvation is also by grace.
Instead of denying that salvation has anything to do with meritorious works, Augustine assumed that salvation is by meritorious works which the grace of God enables a Christian to do. He taught that man since the fall because of his sinful nature cannot do meritorious works apart from the grace of God. But according to the Scriptures ( Rom. 4:3-5; Rom. 11:6) salvation has nothing to do with meritorious works. Thus the doctrine of the sinful nature is unnecessary to explain why man cannot save himself. Man cannot save himself because he cannot make himself alive by the law ( Gal. 3:21; Eph. 2:4-5; Eph. 8-9), not because he cannot do meritorious works. The Bible very clearly teaches that salvation is not by works ( Eph. 2:8-9; Titus 3:5).
“2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, 2:9 not as a result of works, that no one should boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9 NAS)
“3:4But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for man appeared, 3:5He saved us, not on the basis of works which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, 3:6whom He poured out upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior, 3:7that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:4-7 ERS).
Salvation is the gift of God, given by His grace and received through faith. And God puts man into this right personal relationship to Himself by His grace, not by vicarious meritorious works that was earned for them by another. Man cannot be saved by his meritorious good works; he cannot earn salvation by his works. This is the clear and explicit teaching of Scripture ( Eph. 2:8-9; Titus 3:5). Salvation by grace and salvation by meritorious works are mutually exclusive and opposing ways of salvation.
“But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.” (Rom. 11:6)
Now, if we ask why man cannot be saved by his works, that is, what is the reason man cannot earn salvation by his meritorious works, the usual answer given to this question is that man apart from God’s grace is not able to do good works by which he can earn salvation. Man, it is usually said, is not only not able to do good works, but he is able only to sin apart from the grace of God.
Now, the curious implication of this answer is that if a man were able to do good works — able not sin — then he could earn salvation and be saved by his meritorious works. This implication is made explicit in the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church since the time of Augustine in the early fifth century, that by the grace of God, which is infused into a man at his baptism, and renewed by the sacraments, he is able to do good works by which salvation (eternal life) may be earned. Accordingly, salvation is ultimately and fundamentally by works even though the grace of God makes possible the meritorious works.
It was this teaching that the Protestant Reformers opposed. They rejected the idea that grace was something infused into man to make it possible for him to earn salvation. Grace, said the Reformers, is God’s unmerited favor, and salvation (eternal life) was a gift to be received by faith. But, they said, that eternal life was earned by the active obedience of Christ during His life on earth. This “merits of Christ” is imputed to the believer’s account when he first believes in Christ. Thus salvation is still ultimately and fundamentally by meritorious works. It is true that they said that it was not by our works and it was a gift received by faith. But salvation was still by works — not by our works but by the meritorious works of another, Jesus Christ. Christ by his active obedience has earned for us eternal life. It is a vicarious salvation by works. This explanation of salvation like the earlier Roman Catholic explanation mixes grace and works, which Paul says that cannot be done or grace will no longer be grace ( Rom. 11:6). And as it turned out in the history of Protestantism, the strong dynamic concept of God’s grace as God’s love in action is reduced to the weak idea of grace as unmerited favor. The grace of God is not just the unmerited favor of God, but it is the love of God in action to save man from death to life.
“2:4 But God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, 2:5 even when we were dead in our failures, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Eph. 2:4-5 ERS).
Salvation is not by meritorious works, not because a man is not able to do them, but because God does not deal with mankind on the basis of the merit scheme. As Jesus made clear in his parable of the householder (Matt. 20:1-16), God does not act toward us on the basis of our merit but on the basis of His generosity. And because God does not treat mankind according to their desserts, but according to His love, He often puts the least deserving before the more deserving. “The last will be first and the first last.” (Matt. 20:16; 19:30; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30)
The Apostle Paul in opposing salvation by works refers to meritorious works as “the righteousness of the law” (Rom. 10:5; Phil. 3:6, 9) and as “the works of the law” (Rom. 3:20; 4:2-5; Gal. 3:2, 5, 10). The law was legalistically considered to be the standard by which the merits of good works can be determined. This is a distortion of the Mosaic law and is a characteristic of legalism.
ENDNOTES FOR “THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE NEED FOR SALVATION”
What is the origin of sin? The Biblical answer is twofold:
(a) sin had its historical origin in the act of Adam which is called the fall, and
(b) sin has its immediate, contemporary and personal origin in the spiritual death which along with physical death spread upon the whole race because of Adam’s act of sin.
The classical passage of Scripture that sets forth this twofold origin of sin is Romans 5:12.
“Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death passed unto all men, because of which all sinned:–” (Rom 5:12 ERS)
The historical origin of sin is the fall of Adam — the sin of the first man. Adam’s sin brought death, and this death has been spread throughout the whole human race, to all Adam’s descendants (Rom. 5:12). This is why man needs to be saved. He is dead spiritually and dying physically. He needs life — he needs to be made alive — to be raised from the dead. This spiritual death inherited from Adam is the personal, contemporary origin of each man’s sin. This is what the last phrase of Rom. 5:12 says; “because of which [death] all sinned”, not “because all sinned”. By not translating the relative pronoun in the Greek of the last clause of the verse, the English translation “because all men sinned” in RSV and other modern translations is incomplete, if not wrong and misleading. These translations makes Paul appear to contradict what he says in this verse and the next two verse; that is, it makes Paul appear to say death spread unto all men because of their sins instead of Adam’s sin. Paul clearly says in Rom. 5:12 that death spread unto all men because of Adam’s sin. And in the next two verses Paul clearly says that death reigned between Adam and Moses over those who had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression. Between Adam and Moses there was no law that made death the consequence of their personal transgressions.
“5:13 sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 5:14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.” (Rom. 5:13-14 RSV)
But if the relative pronoun is translated, then the inconsistency is removed. In the Greek, the relative pronoun clearly refers back to the word “death” in the previous clause; that is, “because of death all sinned.” The death that spread unto all men as the result of Adam’s sin was the condition or the reason why all men sinned. That is, all men sinned because of death. But how is that possible? How can all men sin because of death? What is death? Death is separation and that there are three kinds of death;
1. physical death which is the separation men’s spirit from their body when they physically dies,
2. spiritual death which is the separation of men’s spirit from God, and
3. eternal death which is the eternal separation of men from God.
The death that spread unto all men from Adam’s sin is physical and spiritual death. All men are born spiritually dead and are going to die physically. It is this spiritual death that is the condition or ground for all men sinning. But how can men sin because of spiritual death? What is sin? The analysis of human freedom shows that every man must have a god. By the very constitution of his freedom, man must have an ultimate criterion of decision. That is, behind every decision as to which thing a man should do or think, there is a reason, a criterion of decision. And the ultimate reason for any decision, practical or theoretical, must be given in terms of some particular criterion, an ultimate reference or orientation point in or beyond the self or person making the decision. This ultimate criterion is that person’s god. Thus every man must then choose something as his god. If he doesn’t choose the true God as his ultimate criterion of decision, he will choose a false god. He will choose some part or aspect of reality as his god, deifying it.
“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” (Rom. 1:25)
The choice of a false god and the consequent personal allegiance and devotion to it is what the Bible calls idolatry. An idol does not have to be an image of wood, stone, or metal. It may be money, wealth, power, pleasure, education, the family, mankind, the state, democracy, experience, reason, science, the moral law, etc. An idol is a false god, and a false god may be anything, which may be good in its proper place, that takes the place of the true God, anything a person chooses as his or her ultimate criterion of decision, exalting it as God. It is any substitute or replacement for the true God in a person’s life.
Since a false god usurps the place of the true God in a person’s life, idolatry is the basic sin. This sin is directly against the true God; it is a direct insult to Him and an affront to His divine majesty. No more serious sin could be imagined than this one. Since it is the most serious sin, it is therefore the most basic. This is the main reason that idolatry is the first sin prohibited by the Ten Commandments.
“Thou shalt have no other gods besides me.” (Exodus 20:3)
Thus idolatry is the basic sin, not pride; pride is not even mentioned in the Ten Commandments. Idolatry is also the basic sin because this sin leads to other sins. It leads to other sins since a person’s god, being his ultimate criterion of decision, will determine the choices he or she will make. The choice of a wrong god will lead to other wrong choices. That is, the idol that a person sets up in his heart (Ezek. 14:35) will affect the character and quality of his whole life. Idolatry is therefore the basic sin. Now we can understand how death leads to sin. If a man is spiritually dead, separated from the true God, and since he must choose a god, he will usually choose a false god. Thus all men sin because of death. This is what another passage of Scripture says — Gal. 4:8,
“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods.” (Gal. 4:8)
Not to “know God” personally as a living reality is to be spiritually dead; spiritual death is the opposite of spiritual or eternal life which is to know the true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent. Compare John 17:3, where Jesus said as He prayed:
“And this is eternal life, that they know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent”. (John 17:3)
Not to know the true God personally is to be spiritually dead. And a person is “in bondage to beings that are no gods”, when he chooses them as his gods. He chooses them because he does not know personally the true God, that is, because he does not have life, because he is spiritually dead. The true God is not a living reality to him. And lacking this personal knowledge of the true God as a living reality, a person does not have the reason for choosing the true God as his ultimate criterion of decision. God Himself is the only adequate reason for choosing Him. He cannot be chosen for any other reason than Himself. For then He would not be God but rather that reason for which He is chosen would be god to that person. Only a living encounter with the true and living God can produce the situation in which God Himself may be chosen. God Himself is the only condition for the choice of Himself by a person. Thus apart from a personal revelation of God Himself, a person will usually choose as his god that which seems like God to him from among the creation around him or from the creations of his own hands or mind. Man does not necessarily have to sin, but he usually will. Spiritual death is not the necessary cause of sin but is the basis or condition of the choice of a false god. (The Greek word translated “because” in the last clause of Rom. 5:12 means “on the basis of” or “on the condition of.”)
The difference between Augustine and Pelagius concerning nature and grace centered in the doctrine of original sin. Pelagius contended that since nature and grace are the same, the freedom not to sin and to do good works was a gift by the grace of creation. Augustine denied this freedom; man since the fall was not able not to sin (non posse non pecarre) apart from the special grace of God. What was given to man in creation was lost by the fall and could only be restored by the special grace of Jesus Christ. Nature and grace are separate and distinct from each other. The natural freedom that was given in creation was lost by the fall, and since the fall, man is not able to do good works apart from the grace of God. Augustine appealed to the doctrine of original sin to support his denial of human freedom not to sin. The whole race, he held, was corrupted in the first or original sin of Adam; from Adam each member of the human race has inherited a sinful nature. By the process of natural generation each individual member of the human race is “tainted with the original sin” of Adam. And because of this inherited sinful nature man is not able not to sin. The nature that man possesses is the same nature that corrupted itself in Adam. This nature expresses itself in actual sins. The will is an expression of one’s nature, he held. And since human nature is sinful, man sins. Man is not a sinner because he sins but he sins because he is a sinner by nature. Thus man needs to be saved because he is a sinner by nature.
According to the Augustinian doctrine of original sin, which is sometimes called the natural headship theory, not only did the whole race corrupt itself in the first or original sin of Adam who is the natural head of the human race, but the whole race is guilty of Adam’s sin and has inherited the penalty of that sin, death. In the same way that the whole tribe of the Levites was in Abraham’s loins when he paid tithes to Melchizedek, and thus each Levite paid tithes with him (See Heb. 7:9-10), each member of the human race was seed in Adam when he sinned, and thus each participated in the first or original sin by “seminal identity.” Because of the organic unity of the race in Adam, his act of sin was the act of every member of the human race, even though they were not conscious of this sin and were not even persons at the time. Following the Latin Vulgate translation of the last clause of Romans 5:12 in quo omnes peccaverunt (“in whom all sinned”), Augustine concluded that because all men literally sinned in Adam, their natural head, they are all guilty and have all inherited the penalty of that sin — physical, spiritual and eternal death. Men are under condemnation not only because of their own personal sins, which each commits as an expression of his sinful nature, but because of the guilt of the original sin in which they participated in Adam before they were born.
After the Reformation many Protestant theologians reinterpreted the doctrine of original sin. God appointed Adam, they said, to be the federal head or legal representative of the whole race. God then entered into a covenant with the whole race through Adam as their legal representative. According to the terms of this Covenant of Works, God promised to bestow eternal life upon Adam and the entire race if he, as federal head, obeyed God. On the other hand, God threatened the punishment of death, that is condemnation and a sinful corrupt nature, upon the whole race if he, as their federal head, disobeyed. Now since Adam sinned, God reckoned his descendants as guilty, under condemnation to eternal death. Adam’s sin is imputed to each member of the race as his own guilt. And because of this imputation of guilt, each member of the race has received by inheritance a sinful or corrupt nature. This sinful nature, which is itself sin, leads invariably to acts of sin. And each man in addition to the racial guilt is also guilty for his own personal sins. Thus men carry a double burden of guilt, of both objective and subjective guilt and condemnation. This theory of the relationship of Adam’s sin to the rest of the human race is known in Christian theology as the federal headship theory to distinguish it from the Natural Headship Theory of Augustine. But in spite of the difference between them, these two theories lead to the same view of man’s need for salvation. Man is a guilty sinner because of Adam’s original sin and also because of his own personal sins which he commits because of an inherited sinful nature. Both theories view man’s relationship to God as a legal relationship and sin as a violation of that relationship as well as intrinsic to human nature. They are both basically and essentially legalistic.
In this doctrine of original sin, Augustine combined the legalistic conception of sin and death with another view of sin as intrinsic to human nature derived from the Greek view of reality. Augustine absorbed this view of sin as intrinsic to human nature from his pre-Christian days when he studied and taught philosophy first as a Manichean and later as a Neoplatonist. Although after his conversion, he opposed this view of sin in the controversy with the Manicheans, he later drew upon these views, unconsiously perhaps, in developing his doctrine of original sin during the heat of the Pelagian controversy. They were ready-made concepts to be used as tools in the heated debate with Pelagius and the Pelagians. He reinterpreted them in a Christian framework and reclothed them in Biblical terminology.
This conception of sin as intrinsic to human nature follows from the Greek conception of God as divine reason and is an essential part of the Greek view of reality. Since a concept of God entails a concept of sin, the Greek concept of reason as the divine involves the concept of sin as intrinsic to human nature. According to the Greek view of reality, the senses are the opposite of reason, and since the objects of reason are good, the objects of the senses, the world of change, are evil or, at least, not good. Although Plato and Aristotle did not explicitly draw this conclusion, that the changing world of sense was evil, it was implied in their assertion that the good and the real is the rational. This conclusion was drawn by later Greek thinkers, the Neoplatonists and the Gnostics in particular. Time, matter in general, the body in particular, and all physical desires whatever are evil. Since the realm of time is the realm of change, time is inferior to eternity, which is the realm of the unchanging and hence the timeless. [1] Temporal existence is itself a stigma. Man is a prisoner of time and change; he yearns to escape the bondage of change for the eternal realm that never changes. Not only is time an evil to escape from, but matter in general, the mere fact of there being physical objects, is an obstacle to the good. It is opaque, inert, intractable stuff, impenetrable to thought and to the clarity of intellectual vision. In addition, matter is the source of multiplicity and diversity. In contrast to the realm of truth which is one and unity, the realm of the senses is many and disunity. Change is possible because there are many different physical things. Eternity is unchanging and timeless because there is no plurality of being but only the one. Being and truth are one. The opposite of the one of being is the many of non-being; between them is the realm of the becoming where the non-being seeks to become being, the many to become one. Matter, non-being, is the “principle of individuation” which splits reality into myriad fragments. Matter is the source of finiteness and evil. Material existence with its distinctions between one thing and another, including the distinction between the subject and object, the self and the non-self, must be overcome, abolished, transcended, so that all the different things of the world become one, become identical with one another. [2]
When applied to man, this view disparages his body. This attitude was given expression in the maxim so popular among the Greeks, “The body is a tomb” (soma sema). The body is the prison-house of the soul. Man’s reason (rational soul) which is a fragment of the divine cosmic reason is held captive contrary to its nature in the fetters of sense. The body’s worst offense is that, by means of the five senses, it attracts the mind to the world of temporal and physical objects, thereby plunging it into ignorance and illusion. Plato’s famous allegory of the cave in the seventh book of the Republic clearly expresses this view. In this allegory our position here in the world of sense is compared by Plato to that of men sitting chained in an underground cave, facing away from the entrance of the cave. They are able only to see the shadows of the outside world on the back wall of the cave. Having never been able to see the outside world, the prisoners believe these shadows to be true reality. So men imprisoned in the body are able only to see through the senses the shadows of true reality of divine reason. This disparagement of the senses in favor of reason leads to a negative view of the body as well as of matter and time. Aristotle only echoes this Greek view of reality when he complains that man’s rational nature is impeded by the exercise of bodily functions.
“There seems to be also another irrational element in the soul — one which in a sense, however, shares in a rational principle. For we praise the rational principle of the continent man and of the incontinent, and the part of their soul that has such a principle, since it urges them aright and towards the best objects; but there is found in them also another element naturally opposed to the rational principle, which fights against and resists that principle. For exactly as paralyzed limbs when we intend to move them to the right turn on contrary to the left, so is it with the soul; the impulses of incontinent people move in contrary directions.” [3]
The disparagement of the body by the Greek world view centers on the desires of the body and in particular the sex impulses. The physical desires of the body are incompatible with love for the divine reason, the longing to participate and become one with it. They prevent the knower from being completely “objective” and “disinterested”; they introduce a “subjective” factor to distort the clarity of the intellectual vision. [4]
Although opposing this view of sin and evil on the grounds of the goodness of creation (Gen. 1:12, 18, 21, 25, 31), Augustine never completely escaped this influence, and in the heat of the Pelagian controversy it emerged reclothed in Biblical terminology in the doctrine of original sin. Combined with the legalistic misunderstanding of sin and death, this Greek view of sin as intrinsic to human nature was introduced into Western Christian theology and has been at the bottom of many doctrinal controversies in the Christian church. [5]
The doctrine of original sin, although containing elements of the Biblical doctrine of sin and death, is a legalistic distortion and misunderstanding of the Biblical doctrine of sin and death. That spiritual death, the separation from God which was spread along with physical death upon the whole human race from Adam (Rom. 5:12), is the condition for sin is not understood. This more primary and basic relationship of sin-because-of-spiritual-death is ignored. Most Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians ignore this relationship, not recognizing its existence. But Augustine could not ignore it because there were contemporary theologians in the 5th century, Mark the Hermit and Theodore of Mopsuestia, for example, who held to this view. Theodore of Mopsuestia in his treatise “Against the Defenders of Original Sin” apparently held to such a view. Jaroslav Pelikan says,
“Theodore often attributed sin to the fact of man’s mortality, although he sometimes reversed the connection.” [6]
Pelikan quotes Theodore as follows:
“Since sin was reigning in our mortality, and conversely death was growing stronger in us on account of sin, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ came … and destroyed death by his death, he also destroyed the sin which was rooted in our nature by reason of mortality.” [7]
Concerning Mark the Hermit, Edward Yarnold says:
“What we have inherited from Adam, he maintained, is not his sin, because in that case we should all be born sinners, which is not true. What is inherited is his death, which consists in separation from God.” [8]
Other early Greek church fathers such as Irenaeus and Athanasius also placed the emphasis on death rather than sin as what we received from Adam and from which Christ saved us. [9] Augustine attempts to refute this view of sin-because-of-death in his “A Treatise Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” bk. IV, chapter 6-8. He writes concerning those who held this view.
“For where the apostle says, ‘By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so passed upon all men,’ they will have it there understood not that ‘sin’ passed over, but’death.’ What, then, is the meaning of what follows, ‘wherein all have sinned’?
For either the apostle says that in that ‘one man’ all have sinned of whom he had said, ‘By one man sin entered into the world,’
or else in that ‘sin’ or certainly in ‘death.’ For it need not disturb us that he said not ‘in which‘ [using the feminine form of the pronoun] but ‘in whom’ [using the masculine] all have sinned; since ‘death’ in the Greek language is of the masculine gender.
Let them, then, choose which they will, — for either in that ‘man’ all have sinned, and it is so said because when he sinned all were in him; or in that ‘sin’ all have sinned, because that was the doing of all in general which all those who were born would have to derive; or it remains for them to say that in that ‘death’ all sinned. But in what way this can be understood, I do not clearly see.
For all die in sin; they do not sin in death; for when sin precedes, death follows — not when death precedes, sin follows….”“But if ‘sin’ cannot be understood by those words of the apostle as being that ‘wherein all have sinned,’ because in Greek from which the Epistle is translated, ‘sin’ is expressed in the feminine gender, it remains that all men are understood to have sinned in that first ‘man,’ because all men were in him when he sinned; and from him sin is derived by birth, and is not remitted save by being born again.” [10]
Note that the Latin translation of Rom. 5:12 which Augustine quotes omits the word “death” from the phrase “and so passed upon all men.” On this basis Augustine incorrectly assumed that it was sin that passed upon all men, and that this sin is a sinful or corrupt nature that was passed. But the original Greek that Paul wrote includes the word thanatos [death] in the phrase, and our English versions correctly translates it, “and so death spread to all men.”
Augustine took the relative pronoun in the last clause of Romans 5:12 as masculine and at the same time he gave the preposition the meaning of “in.” Thus he gave the Greek prepositional phrase eph ho the meaning in lumbis Adami [“in the loins of Adam”], following the Latin Vulgate translation. However, this interpretation must be rejected. For
(a) the Greek preposition epi does not here have the meaning of “in” and
(b) while the Greek relative pronoun ho may be taken as masculine, it is too far removed from anthropou [man] for that to be its antecedent, being separated from it by so many intervening clauses. [11]
The Latin Vulgate translation is obviously not correct. Most theologians today accept this conclusion but many still hold to Augustine’s interpretation while rejecting his grammatical analysis of this phrase as its basis. John Murray says,
“It is unnecessary at this stage in the history of exposition to argue that the Vulgate rendering, in quo omnes peccaverunt, though, as we shall see, it is theologically true, is nevertheless grammatically untenable.” [12]
How can a translation be theologically true and at the same time grammatically untenable? Does not exegesis determine theology and not theology exegesis? Murray’s legalistic theological presuppositions, like Augustine’s, determine for him the meaning of the phrase and not the rules of grammar. According to the legalistic presuppositions, death is always the penalty of sin, the penal consequence of the transgression of the law. Death, therefore, cannot produce sin. So according to them the Apostle Paul cannot be saying that “all sinned because of death.” Their legalistic theological presuppositions has made this interpretation impossible and meaningless for them.
ENDNOTES FOR “THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE ORIGIN OF SIN”
[1] Plotinus, The Six Enneads, Third Ennead, VII, 11 in vol. 17 of
Great Books of the Western World,
ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins
(Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), p. 126.
[2] W. T. Stace, Religion and the Modern Mind
(New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1952), p. 230.
[3] Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics” I,13,1102b in vol. 9 of
Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins
(Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), p. 348.
[4] Cherbonnier, Hardness of Heart, pp. 69-71.
[6] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian tradition: vol. 1,
The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600)
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 285-286.
See also Joanne McWilliam Dewart,
The Theology of Grace of Theodore of Mopsuestia
(Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1971), pp. 33-37.
[7] Theodore Mopsuestia, “Exposition of the Gospel of John 1:29”,
trans. from Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium, 116:29 (115:42) (Paris, 1903- ) quoted by Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, p. 286.
[8] Edward Yarnold, The Theology of Original Sin
(Notre Dame: Fides Publishers, 1971), p. 64.
[9] J. N. D. Kelley, Early Christian Doctrine
(New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1960), pp. 170-174, 346-348.
[10] Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 5
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971), p. 419.
See also Augustine’s “A Treatise on Merits and Forgiveness of Sins,” and on the “Baptism of Infants,” bk. III, chapter 20.
[11] William Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam,
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans in
The International Critical Commentary
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915), p. 133.
[12] John Murray, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin
(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1959), footnote 10, p. 9.
Is the sinful nature taught in Scriptures? This doctrine of the sinful nature is nowhere taught in Scripture. None of the passages of Scripture usually cited in support of this doctrine (Psa. 51:5; Job 14:4; Eph. 2:3) say that man since the fall has a sinful nature, that is, that man sins because he is a sinner by nature. Psa. 51:5, which says,
“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me”,
means either that David’s birth was an act of sin (that is, his birth was illegitimate, which it clearly was not) or that he sins from birth as Psa. 58:3 says:
“The wicked go astray from the womb, they err from their birth, speaking lies.” (See also Isa. 48:8)
Job 14:4, which says,
“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is none.”
means that righteousness can not come from the unrighteous and that a sinner can only bring forth sin; from its context this verse does not seem to be referring to the birth of the sinner. None of these passages say why man sins from birth. Paul explains that in Romans 5:12d: “because of which [death] all sinned”. All men have sinned because of spiritual death. And all men sin because they are spiritually dead and they sin because they choose to sin. According to Rom. 5:12d (“because of which [death] all sinned.” ERS), all men sin because they are spiritually dead.
Death is not the sinful nature. These are two totally different concepts. The sinful nature is the nature of man that is sinful and the nature of man is what man is – that which makes man what he is and what he does. The nature of anything is that essence of the thing that determines what it is and how it acts. The sinful nature is that nature of man, because it is sinful, makes him sin. Death, on the other hand, is a negative relationship of separation. Physical death is the separation of man’s spirit from his body, spiritual death is the separation of man’s spirit from God, and eternal death (“the second death,” Rev. 20:14) is the eternal separation of man’s spirit from God. Spiritual death is the opposite of spiritual life, which is to know personally the true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. Jesus said in His great intercession prayer,
“And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).
Since eternal life is spiritual life, spiritual death is the opposite of eternal life. That is, spiritual death is not to know the true God and His Son whom He has sent. Knowledge is the relationship between the knower and that which is known. Knowledge is not a nature but a relationship. It should be clear now that death as this negative relationship is not the sinful nature. A relationship is not a nature. According to the Doctrine of Original Sin, the sinful nature causes death, but this does not mean that death is the sinful nature. Nowhere in the Scriptures does it teach this doctrine. Man’s nature is neither sinful or good; it is what a man chooses it to be. If he chooses a false god as his ultimate criterion of choice, then his choices will be sinful. On the other hand, if he chooses to follow the true God, then his choices will be righteous and good. And a man makes the choice of his god, upon the basis of whether he knows personally the true God and His Son whom He has sent, or not. If he does not know the true God and His Son whom He has sent, he will choose a false god, that is, he sins because he is spiritually death (Rom. 5:12d: “because of which [death] all sinned.” ERS). And all men are sinners because they sin by choosing a false god as the ultimate criterion of their choices since they are spiritually dead, not because they are sinners by nature.
In Eph. 2:1-3, Paul says:
“2:1And you being dead in trespasses and in your sins, 2:2in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 2:3Among whom we all then conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the wishes of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, as also the rest.” (Eph. 2:1-3 ERS)
The “flesh” here is the body, which Paul contrasts with the mind; “the wishes of the flesh and of the mind”. See the discussion of the problem of the flesh below. The NIV totally mistranslates this phrase as “the craving of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts”. The RSV correctly translates it: “the desires of body and mind”. Also Paul says, “we were by nature children of wrath”, not “by nature sinners”. Paul is here not saying why men sin, but only that men are naturely objects of God’s wrath, since they have sinned.
The flesh is not the sinful nature. The Apostle Paul, like the other New Testament writers, never use the word translated “flesh” (sarx) to mean the sinful nature in the sense of that in man which makes him sin, that is, that man sins because he is a sinner by nature. (Man does not sin because he is a sinner, but he is a sinner because he sins by choice, not by nature.) When the Apostle John wrote, “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14 NAS), he clearly was not saying that the Word of God became a sinner by nature and had a sinful nature. Clearly John means that the Son of God became a human being, a man. Paul uses the word “flesh” (sarx), like the rest of the New Testament writers (the word “sarx” occurs 151 times in the Greek New Testament), with the following different meanings.
1. The soft tissue of the body (Rom. 2:28; I Cor. 15:39; Col. 2:13),
2. The body itself (II Cor. 12:7; Gal. 4:13-14; Eph. 2:15; 5:29; Col. 1:24),
3. The physical union of man and woman (“one flesh” I Cor. 6:16; Eph. 5:31),
4. Body contrasted with the human spirit (I Cor. 5:5; II Cor. 7:1; Col. 2:5),
5. Man (Rom. 3:20 and Gal. 2:16 quoting Psa. 143:2; I Cor. 1:29; Gal. 1:16 and Eph. 6:2 “flesh and blood”; Rom. 7:18; John 1:14),
6. Human life on earth (Gal. 2:20; II Cor. 10:3a; Phil. 1:22,24; Col. 2:10),
7. Human nature (Rom. 6:19; 8:3; II Cor. 4:11; I Tim. 3:16),
8. Human (Eph. 6:5; Col. 3:22 “according to the flesh”; Col. 1:22; 2:11) or human life (II Cor. 1:17; 10:2,3b),
9. Human descent or relationship, kin (Rom. 9:3; 11:14),
10. Human point of view (I Cor. 1:26; II Cor. 5:16),
11. Human contrasted with divine (Rom. 1:3; 9:5; Philem. 16),
12. Unsaved (Rom. 7:5 “in the flesh”; 8:8-9),
13. That which is not God or of God (Gal. 5:13-24),
14. Anything that is an object of trust instead of God (Isa. 31:1-3; Jer. 17:5; Rom. 8:4-7; Phil. 3:3, 4; Compare Phil. 3:19; Col. 3:2) [13].
The Greek word sarx usually translated “flesh” in our English translations (KJV, RSV, NAS) is incorrectly translated in the New International Version (NIV) as “sinful nature” in Rom. 7:17, 25; 8:3, 5, 8; Gal. 5:13, 16, 17; Eph. 2:3. The indwelling sin in Romans 7:17, 20 is not the sinful nature. Paul explains in verse 7:18 indwelling sin to be that “the good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh.” The “flesh” here is that part of man that is not spirit (see 4 above). Neither is “the law of sin” in verses 7:23, 25 and 8:2 the sinful nature; Paul defines “the law of sin” in verse 7:21: “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do the good, evil is present with me.” The law of sin is not the sinful nature; it describes what sin does, not the cause of sin. In Romans 8:3, the word “flesh” (=human nature; see 7 above) is qualified by the word “sin” because human nature is not inherently sinful. The flesh (=human nature) may be designated as sinful when a man chooses to sin and to be a slave of sin (Rom. 6:16-18).
The Greek word sarx in Romans 8:4-13 designates anything that is an object of trust instead of God (see 14 above) and not the sinful nature. This use of sarx in verse 8:5 is just Paul’s way of saying that “those according to the flesh,” put their trust in something other than the true God, that is, “set their minds on the things of the flesh”. The Greek word phroneo translated “set the mind on” indicates a “conscious spiritual orientation of life,” an attitude or disposition of the will. [14] See Paul’s use of this word phroneo in Rom. 12:16; Phil. 2:2,5; 3:15; Col. 3:2; and Matt. 16:23. This orientation toward the flesh, to that which is not God who is spirit, is what we have been calling the basic sin of idolatry. This is not the sinful nature and it is misleading to call it that. Those who are according to the Spirit, on the other hand, put their trust in the true God; they are oriented to the things of the Spirit. Since the god in whom one trusts is one’s ultimate criterion for all his choices, a person will choose those things that are in agreement with his ultimate criterion; his attitude and disposition will be oriented toward the things of his god. If his god is a false god (the flesh), he will be oriented toward the things of that false god; if his God is the true God (the Spirit), he will be oriented toward the thing of the true God.
The phrase “in the flesh” in Romans 8:8-9 is clearly equivalent to “unsaved” as in Rom. 7:5 (see 12 above); it is opposite to being in the Spirit which is to be saved. Paul used this phrase “in the flesh” previously in Rom. 7:5 to refer to their condition before they turned to Christ and were saved. It is equivalent to being “unsaved” and is the opposite to being “in the Spirit” (see verse 8:9). Those who are in the flesh cannot please God, because they do not have faith in the true God. “And without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6).
If the doctrine of the sinful nature is rejected, then how can salvation by works be logically opposed and rejected? If man does not have a sinful nature, then won’t man be able to save himself by his good works? Won’t he be able to earn his salvation by his meritorous works? Thus it would seem that the doctrine of the sinful nature must be accepted if salvation by works is to be rejected. Since the Scriptures clearly teach that salvation is not by works but by grace through faith ( Eph. 2:8-9; Titus 3:5; etc.), then it appears that the doctrine of the sinful nature must be accepted in order to oppose and reject salvation by works.
Now the curious thing about this line of reasoning is that it assumes that if man is to be saved, he will be saved by works. That is, it assumes that if man were able to do good works, then he could save himself. But that is not true. Man can not save himself, even if he could do the good works to earn it. Salvation is not earned; it is a gift ( Eph. 2:8-9; Titus 3:5). Whether man is able to do good works or not has nothing to do with salvation since salvation is not something which can be earned with good works. Salvation is a gift by the grace of God.
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation unto to all men,” (Titus 2:11 NAS)
The controversy between Augustine and Pelagius is beside the point; their disagreement over whether man is free to sin or not, free to do good works or not, has nothing to do with whether salvation is by works or not. It was because they both assumed that salvation was by works that their disagreement over man’s free will had any point to it. And the doctrine of original sin and the sinful nature is also not necessary in order to reject salvation by works. It was only because Augustine made the legalistic assumption that salvation was something to be earned that Augustine brought in the doctrine of the sinful nature to deny that man was able to save himself. Under the skin Augustine was as much a legalist as Pelagius who explicitly taught that man could be saved by his meritorious works.
A legalistic Christian theology requires the doctrine of an inherited sinful nature. It says that if man did not have an inherited sinful nature, he would be able to do good works and then he could save himself by his meritorious good works. Thus it must teach that man must have an inherited sinful nature otherwise he could save himself. But this is not why man cannot not save himself. Man cannot save himself because he is dead and he cannot make himself alive, not because he is not able to do meritorious works. The law cannot make alive.
“Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not; for if a law had been given which could make alive, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.” (Gal. 3:21).
Since the law cannot make alive, righteousness is not by the law. A legalistic Christian theology does not understand this. It believes that the law can make alive, contrary to the statement of the Scriptures (Gal. 3:21), and that righteousness is by the law. This righteousness of the law is the merits earned by keeping the law. But it is a false righteousness, dirty filthy rags, not the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4:4-5). Paul writes in his letter to the Romans,
“4:3 For what does the scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ 4:4Now to one who works, his wages are not reckoned as a gift but as his due. 4:5And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness …. 4:13The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world, did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.” (Rom. 4:3-5, 13)
Faith in God is reckoned as righteousness (Rom. 4:5). That is, to trust in God is to be righteous. This is the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4:13) and the righteousness from God (Phil. 3:9). As long as Christian theology thinks of salvation legalistically as something earned by merits, either earned by us through the grace of the sacraments (as in Roman Catholic theology) or earned by another, by Christ’s active obedience (as in Protestant theology), it will need the doctrine of original sin to explain why man cannot save himself.
ENDNOTES FOR “THE PROBLEM OF THE FLESH
What is the relationship of the Christian to sin? Because the Christian has died with Christ and has been raised with Him into new life to God, he is no longer a slave to sin but a slave to God and to righteousness (Rom. 6:1-10). He is to reckon himself to be dead to sin with Christ and alive to God in Christ (Rom. 6:11). He is therefore to stop letting sin reign as a slave master in his mortal body to obey its desires (Rom. 6:12). Neither is he to present the member of his body as instruments of unrighteousness to sin as a slave master but he is to present himself to God as one who has been brought him from death to life and the members of his body to God as instruments of righteousness (Rom. 6:13).
“6:10 For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. 6:11 So you also must reckoned yourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 6:12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their desires. 6:13 Do not yield your member to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but yield yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness.” (Rom. 6:10-13 ERS)
According to this passage, and others, the Christian does not have to sin and should not sin. Christ has saved him from sin as well as from death. Christ has set him free from the slavery of sin. He can sin but he does not have to sin. He does not have a sinful nature that makes him sin or because of which he will sin. He is free to sin or not to sin. And if a Christian sins, it is because he chooses to sin, not because his sinful nature makes him do it. But why do Christians choose to sin? The scriptural answer to this question is twofold:
(1) because he yields to the temptations of the world (I John 2:15-17), of the desires of the flesh (James 1:13-14) and of the Devil (I Cor. 7:5), or
(2) because he is “under law” (Rom. 6:14); that is, he is trying to live or walk by the law. This is legalism and in Romans 7 Paul explains what happens when a Christian becomes entrapped in this legalism. He is under law and sin has dominion or lordship over him.
That is, if you are under law, sin will have lordship or dominion over you. And legalism puts you under law and sin as a slave master has dominion over you. Therefore, legalism causes sin and when legalism tries to solve this problem of sin in the Christian life, it fails. Then it tries to explain its failure by blaming sin on the sinful nature. The real cause of the problem is not the sinful nature but the legalism, that is, being under law. The Christian will sin when he is placed under law (Rom. 6:14 ERS and Rom. 7:18-19 ERS).
The doctrine of the sinful nature contributes to this problem. Christians, who believe that they have a sinful nature, expects that they will sin; and, of course, they will do what they expect to do. Again, Christians do not have a sinful nature and they do not have to sin. The temptation to sin is not sin and the tendency to sin is not the sinful nature; the desires of the body are not inherently sinful. God created them and placed them in man’s body. But man must not become a slave to them. God in Christ’s death and resurrection has provided deliverance from the slavery to them. God has given us His Spirit to implement this deliverance.
According to the Protestant Reformer’s teaching, the believer has two natures, a sinful nature and a new nature, and the experience recorded in Romans 7 was interpreted as the struggle between these two natures. This legalistic explanation of salvation and of the Christian life leaves the believer under the law, and under the dominion of sin ( Rom. 6:14). And this legalistic explanation of Romans 7 also leaves the believer with no deliverance from this struggle, contrary to the clear teaching of Scirpture that there is deliverance
“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:24-25a KJV).
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