Part one of this topic discusses the effect of the sinful nature as it applies to humans in general and to children in particular. As if that wasn't controversial enough already, here is part 2 where we shall ask whether God created a fallen world or a morally perfect world.
Without wishing to get too heavily involved in the analysis of the sources of knowledge it is appropriate that I first state what I believe to be valid means of acquiring knowledge:
In part one of this discussion paper we saw that all people, including newly born and unborn babies, are sinners and under God's just condemnation. We were able to arrive at this conclusion because
Now we can follow this process back from ourselves to our parents to our grandparents to our great-grandparents and so on all the way back to Noah and thence back to Adam — the only person created directly by God and the ancestor of us all. But then the same reasoning applies to Adam also: If Adam sinned (and we are told that he did) then his nature must have been that of a sinner since a pure person could not possibly have desired to do what was wrong. But Adam was created by God so Adam's nature was exactly the nature that God created him with — which leads to the conclusion that God created a race of sinners; that God created a species whose very nature was to rebel. This is a rather uncomfortable conclusion because it is not what most of us were taught and not, perhaps, what we would like to believe. After all, if God created men to be sinners and then condemns sinners, where does that leave all our cosy and simple ideas about God? Suddenly, we are forced to confront a universe that is bigger, harder, less familiar, less cosy, than the one we we thought we knew.
The discomfort, however, must be faced — we are called to love God with all of our mind as well as with all of our body, strength and spirit. We can hardly claim to have loved with all our minds if we turned and ran at the first sniff of intellectual difficulty. Moreover, if we refuse to face this discomfort then we shall have to confront an altogether bigger one — namely that of admitting that reason is not a valid source of knowledge — and if reason is tumbled from its position of validity? Well, every other belief that we have ever held will come crashing down behind it, including the belief that reason is not valid, and that would leave everyone in an intellectual vacuum and darkness.
The first objection that has been raised against the above conclusion was proposed from the first chapter of the book of Genesis where God declares that his creation is “good”. Let us look at those verses:
During the process of creation God pronounced on several occasions that his creation was “good”. Let us see exactly what he said and then decide what it means:
So, from first to last God pronounces everything “good”. Nonetheless we are commanded to think (to love God with all our minds) and even a very short and elementary session of thinking will show us that we cannot conclude there was no evil in the universe just because God pronounced the creation “good”.
First, we need to ask what exactly did God mean when he pronounced the creation “good”. In the English language the word “good” has three distinct uses:
When we use the word good in the sense of aesthetically pleasing we are in fact making a statement about our own thoughts about the object in question. When I use the word in this sense, I am only saying that I like the object; that it pleases or satisfies me. What I like is not necessarily what anybody else likes — my satisfaction could be your dissatisfaction. This sort of “good” is subjective and a matter of personal preference only.
When we use the word “good” in the sense of "fit-for-purpose" we are saying that the object is suitable or appropriate for the use of it that we have in mind. In other words it will do the job we want it to do. This does not mean that we like the object (though we might) and it has no moral connotations whatsoever. An object can be “good” for one task and “bad” for another task.
Only when we use the word “good” to declare something morally untainted does the it carry an implication of purity or sinlessness.
So in which sense was God using the word? In the first creation passage, God describes six things as good, namely: the light, the land, the vegetation, the two lights (the sun and moon), the creatures of the sea and air and the wild animals. Finally, God looks at everything and pronounces it, as a whole, to be “very good”. Unless we are going to ascribe moral virtues to light and land, God must have been describing the light and land as either aesthetically pleasing or as being fit for his intended purposes (or both); likewise the moon and sun and vegetation. We have no reason to then change the implied meaning of the word when God refers to animals or to creation as a whole and to claim that God was making a moral statement; it would be a very unnatural way to read the text. It is also worth noting, even if only in passing, that God does not declare man specifically to be “good” — man is only included in the general pronouncement of “very good” that God makes of his work as a whole. From the creation passages, therefore, we have no basis for claiming a sinless nature for Adam. There might however be other reasons for such a claim:
In his letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul wrote “... sin entered the world through one man, ...” (Romans 5:12). This is normally understood to mean that Adam's trespass was the means by which entered the world. However, there are two points that need to be examined: First, in the Genesis account it is Eve, not Adam, who first disobeys the command to refrain from eating a certain fruit. Second, Paul's statement does not exclude the possibility of sin entering the world through the creation of the man — in other words, the possibility that when God created a moral being he also created a being with a sinful nature and thus, at that point, released sin into the world. The second of these two points cannot be refuted and must be left, therefore, as a viable explanation of how sin entered the world, namely by the act of creating a man with a sinful nature. The first point, regarding the act of Eve, has often been explained by reference to Adam's headship (see 1 Timothy 2:13-14). In other words, Eve sinned and Adam was held accountable. This is a view with which I have much sympathy but I don't think it to be the whole explanation. Moreover, even if we adopt that view for the present discussion, the basic problem is unchanged: How could Eve have sinned if she did not already have a sinful nature? If she had a sinful nature, from where did she get it if it was not from Adam from whom she was created? Personally, I contend that the nature of sin entered the world through the creation of Adam and that Eve's specific sin was reckoned to Adam because of his headship.
In Paul's letter to the Christians in Rome he writes, “For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.” The important points to notice here are (1) that God is the one binding men to disobedience, (2) that he has a reason for doing it — namely in order to have mercy on them, and (3) that God's action was effective against all men, so including Adam.