Part I: The Fall Was Down
IT HAS SEEMED superficially at least, that while all men may have a potential for wickedness, some have more than others. Is there any truth in this? All men could be sinners, none being excepted, but is it true that some have more of the disease than others do, so that they are by comparison more wicked than their fellows?
According to Eysenck in his Presidential Address to the Psychology Section of the British Association Meeting in 1964, there is a "constitutional" (i.e., inherited, physiological) element in criminal behaviour. (45) This was a view held by Hooten, (46) and it has been held by others since. However, Eysenck suggested a new "mode" of action. He argued that part of the inherited structure of personality is the extrovert/introvert element, and that strong extroverts do not succeed as successfully as introverts in internalizing the constraints to good behavior which society imposes on the maturing individual. Thus when these restraints are weakened, antisocial or criminal behavior is likely to find expression more readily among extrovert types.
In effect, introverts more easily form socially conditioned reflexes and thus have a carry over of good behavior even when the normal restraints are removed. This led Eysenck to the view that "goodness" (in this sense) is not something that we inherit per se but rather a conditioned reflex resulting in an internalized response to society's demands for good conduct. It is goodness only in the sense that not being bad is a good thing.
According to this theory, "the new-born child's conduct is completely asocial or criminal," and must be restrained by society. Extroverts do not inwardly adopt these restraints as securely, and therefore as effectively, as introverts do, and they are accordingly more likely, whenever the external restraints to behavior are weakened, to yield to the bad side of nature which we all start off with. To this extent every baby born, even today, is, as Zimmern put it, "a Stone Age Baby," (47) and apart from the channeling effect of culture, man has accumulated no store of natural goodness over the millennia since Stone Age times. We are not really more sinful or less sinful, but more restrained or less restrained, i.e., more cultured or less so. In short, the concept of the innocence of childhood requires some careful redefinition, and if by such innocence is meant innate goodness, it is a mistaken view of human nature. The innocence of childhood results rather from lack of time and opportunity to realize the inborn potential for wickedness than from some natural tendency in the opposite direction. The potential for rebellion is evidently there from the start, dormant though it may be for a short while.
The difference between "good people" and "bad people" is not therefore spiritual at all but cultural, and depends in a secondary way upon certain inherited factors in the structure of individual personality. "Goodness" is thus an accident, an accident that is in part circumstantial and in part genetic, part nurture and part nature. Goodness in no way inheres in human nature as though the process of growing up had the sad effect of destroying it; the effect of growing up is to reveal human nature for what it really is, not to destroy some supposed original sinlessness. Any chance appearance of goodness exists only because circumstance has contributed to the sublimation of its opposite. It is not that some men are good and some bad, but rather that some men are not so bad as others and by default of opportunity give the appearance of being what they really are not.
Scripture simply says that there are none righteous, that "there is none that doeth good" (Rom. 3:21). I do not think that we face up to this fundamental truth when we acknowledge its truth only with reservations by making it apply to some people but not to all--least of all to ourselves.
While it is perhaps true that a slum environment "breeds" crime, it does so because it provides more opportunity for inherently sinful human nature to express itself, social restraints being greatly reduced. The slum-born crook is no different essentially from the most cultured individual. In performance he may be very different, but not in his basic nature. David was, by nature, no different from Ahab. Both men coveted and ended up as murderers. Sin found expression in both because, being kings, they had all the power they needed, which is another way of saying that social restraint was almost entirely absent in their cases. Yet David was the "best" king Israel ever had, and Ahab the "worst." There was a difference. David utterly repented, whereas Ahab did not really care. Yet this difference was due entirely to the presence of the Spirit of God in David's heart, not to any inherent goodness in David himself. (48)
Without seeking to overdo this theme, it nevertheless seems essential to establish clearly what the real nature of man is. Only when this is done can we see how inadequate mere reformation would be. Erich Fromm, who at times has seen the hopelessness of the situation so clearly that it has driven him literally to distraction, said: (49)
Freud has broken through the fiction of the rational purposeful character of the human mind, and opened a path that allows a view into the abyss of human passions.
Kenneth Walker put the matter this way: (50)
Freud's investigation of the contents of the submerged parts of the mind showed that these were of a very primitive nature....According to him, we are whited sepulchers and are only outwardly decent and cultured. We all carry about within us, locked in some dark cellar of the mind, not a comparatively respectable skeleton, but a full-bodied and lascivious savage. In spite of our efforts to isolate this unwelcome guest in his cellar, he rules our thoughts and actions.
It appears that in a sense the most cultured among us is only accidentally so. Scrape off the veneer and underneath is the same basic material in all of us. Moreover, it is a common experience to find ourselves acting in shameful ways which we scarcely believed possible. Such experiences mortify us, for they reveal to ourselves what we really are. Those revelations are like the bubbles of marsh gas which ooze up now and then from the murky deeps to disturb the placid surface and remind us of what is hidden. Ernest White draws these thoughts together with brevity and clarity: (51)
Investigation of the unconscious has brought to light evil and destructive forces which are held down by repression, itself an unconscious mechanism. In it lurks a shadow self, very different from the conscious educated ego with which we are familiar.
It is clear that these men are speaking fundamentally of the depravity of man, and if virtually every impulse receives part of its drive from this fearful root, then every action is to some extent infected, and man is in this sense totally depraved. It is not that we cannot do any good, but rather that in every good thing we do there exists this taint of evil.
Napoleon, so it is said, observed that man will believe almost anything--so long as it is not in the Bible. While scholarly dignity nods assent (albeit reluctantly) to these insights into the nature of human nature, it has been customary to overlook biblical statements on the same topic. But the Lord far antedated Freud when He declared (Mark 7:21-23):
Out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within..
This is acknowledged at times where one might least expect it. Thus David Lack, a Fellow of the Royal Society, admitted it: (52)
The nature of the Fall has been variously interpreted in different ages...Whether a more literal or more allegorical view is taken, the doctrine of the Fall is basic to Christian belief. The statement by Darwinists such as G. G. Simpson (The Meaning of Evolution, 1951) that man has risen, not fallen, misses the point.
He then pointed out that even so great an antagonist of Christianity as T. H. Huxley acknowledged: (53)
...it is the secret of the superiority of the best theological teachers to the majority of their opponents that they substantially recognize these realities...
The doctrines of...original sin, of the innate depravity of man...of the primacy of Satan in this world...of a malevolent Demiurgus subordinate to a benevolent Almighty who has only lately revealed Himself, faulty as they are, appear to me to be vastly nearer the truth than the liberal, popular illusions that babies are all born good, and that the example of a corrupt society is responsible for their failure to remain so; that it is given to everybody to reach the ethic ideal if he will only try...and other optimistic figments.
So David Lack concluded, "Darwinism can never give an adequate account of man's nature." (54) Even Bertrand Russell was willing to acknowledge that the problem with human nature is not going to be solved merely by education. Indeed, although he was probably speaking with more emotion than precise logic, he said, "There is no limit to the horrors that can be inflicted by a combination of scientific intelligence with the malevolence of Satan. Human imagination long ago pictured hell, but it is only through recent skill that men have been able to give reality to what they imagined. (55)
The real problem is in the will, not in the mind. It would be a simple matter to account for wickedness if it were merely lack of knowledge. But experience shows that it is very often the clever people who make the worst criminals. In fact, a good case can be made out against educating people who in their teens show evidences of a disposition towards rejecting authority. We are constantly being told by every means of communication--newspaper, radio, and television--that this social evil or that can be corrected by educating the public. But when all is said and done, I think it must really be admitted, if we are to be completely honest and if we are to be guided by fact rather than ideal, that the only way to improve a situation in the long run is by providing adequate and appropriate restraints. By such means the way may be left open for something better to emerge. But the fundamental problem is not how to encourage the good, rather how to restrain the evil. Indeed, virtually all legislation intended to regulate social behavior is stated negatively, Thou shalt not....I believe it is only within the context of Christian experience where the law of God has been written in the heart anew that positive commands have much meaning. The great command that a man should love his neighbor as himself was really directed toward the people of God. Yet there is a sense in which it was also directed to the world, because God had in mind to state clearly what He required of man so that, having set before the world the only standard of behavior which He would accept, He might justifiably bring Judgment upon the world for failing to meet His standard. In this sense the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Gal. 3:24).
Meanwhile, culture is an artificial restraint of natural conduct and it distinguishes the civilized from the uncivilized. It was one of Freud's useful "discoveries" that "man's basic nature is primarily made up of instincts which would, if permitted expression, result in incest, murder, and other crimes." (56) The theological view has been stated with remarkable insight by Karl Barth: "Sin is man as we now know him." Augustine held that until the Fall man was free to be righteous or wicked as he chose; but that after the Fall he had only free will to sin. Some men have opportunity to sin more than others, but wickedness is the natural outcome of human nature as it is, whether people are viciously or only, as an Anglican Bishop said of modern youth, "delightfully, wicked." Dostoevsky said, "Man commits sin simply to remind himself that he is free." (57)
The fundamental point to be grasped is that human nature is naturally bad, not good. There are some who attribute this to the artificiality of our existence and who argue, again like Rousseau, that if man were only free of all these restraints he wouldn't be nearly as wicked as he is. It is the psychiatric argument that repressions are bad for the soul; that it is the constant denials of self that we demand of ourselves or that society imposes upon us that lead to rebellion of spirit. There is no doubt that a tremendous sense of relief is for a while experienced by any man who can throw off these restraints. Alcohol may make men merry who were previously depressed, uninhibited who were previously inhibited, or out-going who were formerly reserved and suspicious. Drugs may have a similar liberating effect. And mass hysteria, in which society lifts its own restraints, can have the same effect. People gain a sense of freedom which, for a time, is wonderful. Unfortunately, the terminal result is virtually always a greater bondage.
The fact is, as Scripture has stated (II Pet. 2:19), that men promise themselves freedom by yielding. There is an element of truth in this, for when man does by choice what God has appointed him to do by divine decree, that act, though it is inevitable and cannot be escaped, nevertheless becomes a free one. When we choose to do what we cannot refuse to do, we give to the compulsion a sense of complete freedom. The only trouble is that with man as he is now constituted the only choice he can make with complete freedom, that is to say, as a full expression of his real self, is to do something that is wicked. Sometimes, perhaps rather frequently, such acts have the appearance of being good because the end result may turn out to benefit others. Nevertheless, if the act itself is motivated out of an evil heart, then from God's point of view it is judged for what it really is. In the great day of reckoning many will say, "Lord, Lord, have we not...in thy name done many wonderful works? Then shall the Lord say, Depart from me, ye that work iniquity" (Matt. 7:22,23).
There is really only one way in which a man may be truly free and that is by being perfectly obedient to perfect law. Thus freedom is possible only to those who are enabled to render absolute obedience to the law of God, summed up in terms of love towards God and man. This kind of love the world pays lip service to, without recognizing that apart from the indwelling presence of God Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ the heart of man--which is desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9) --is quite incapable of fulfilling the conditions. When man relaxes restraint and proposes a "return to nature," he is apt to forget that he is not returning to a pattern of behavior such as characterizes the rest of Nature, but to the unrestrained expression of a fallen self.
There is a beautiful passage in Martin Lings' Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstitions. He was speaking of the modern trend towards a rejection of all the older traditional restraints upon human behavior. He spoke of these restraints as being more often than not honored in the breach. They were recognized and most people felt it necessary to excuse themselves for failing to obey them: (58)
Such until very recently was the orientation of men all over the world: the "boats" were all, as it were, at least pointing upstream, whether the force of the current was in fact carrying them downstream or not.
But a time came, within the last two hundred years or less when for want of the minimum effort required to keep the prows in the right direction, a number of boats that had been drifting downstream backwards were deflected to meet the current broadside on and thus to be as it were with no orientation at all; and from this untenable position of doubt, uncertainty and hopelessness, it was not difficult for the current to turn them right round to face the way they were drifting.
With shouts of triumph that they were "at last making some headway," they called on those who were still struggling upstream to "throw off the fetters of superstition" and "to move with the times."
A new creed was quickly invented, and though its implications have seldom been looked full in the face they are, clearly enough, that all man's past millennial upstream efforts, that is "reactionary" or "retrograde" efforts, were completely wasted, having been utterly pointless and misguided.
This is part of the fruit of Darwinism, that natural philosophy which gave a supposedly scientific validation to the idea that progress, in spite of occasional setbacks, is linear, automatic, and upward. It is this philosophy, unfortunately, which has encouraged so many people to believe that there is a virtue in novelty, and that any change is bound to be for the better in the end. In the life of an individual there may come times of great stress in which resisting evil seems so painful that it appears less painful to yield and take the consequences. But yielding proves only a momentary freedom that is accompanied by a greater: facility to surrender to an even worse bondage in the end.
We come, therefore, in a complete circle to find once more how truly Dostoevsky was speaking when he said that man sins to prove himself free. It is important to realize the profound significance of the fact that man only feels free when he is doing something which in retrospect inevitably turns out to have a sinister aspect to it, even though at the time the true character of his act may not be apparent. Though it is indeed a dismal doctrine, I think that Calvin is fundamentally right when he speaks of the total depravity of man. Not that everything that he does is totally bad, but rather that nothing that he does is wholly good. Perhaps if we are completely honest with ourselves, we shall have to say that in every act the good aspect is not merely tainted by the bad but well-nigh overwhelmed. When we are young it is only proper that we should have ideals, and that among those whose lives we have observed and admired, we should here and there have the feeling that they were noble. But it is sad as one grows up to find how little that appears to be noble is really what it appears. However you personally may feel about this, I myself know one thing and I know it with increasing certainty as the years go by, that in me, the natural part of me which still reflects the old Adam and is not yet possessed by the Lord, there dwelleth no good thing whatever (Rom. 7:18). The heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked indeed.
The fundamental reason why man does not respond to better education by being a basically and permanently better person is because the real problem lies in the will. When we have by the study of history or by some other educational means established for ourselves a goal of better things only to find in due course that we simply cannot achieve them, our critics may say, "You don't succeed in overcoming temptation, because you don't really want to. You have a will: exercise it." We do not have a will. I do not have a will, I am a will. That is what I am. Ninety-nine percent of our failure to achieve some goal which we have been inspired to aim for by some eloquent speaker or writer stems from the fact that we fail to recognize the difference between having and being a will. It is perfectly true that Christian experience complicates the situation for us, because a new will in the Person of the Lord Jesus is introduced within us before the old will has been eradicated. So we have a conflict of wills. But speaking of the world, of natural man, of man not yet having the law of God written within, we can only postulate one will, even when that will may appear to be uncertain of itself. This will cannot will its own decease. The man who wills to be humble is obviously going to be proud of his success, if he has any. This is the "involuntary" humility which Scripture condemns (Col. 2:18).
In commenting on the philosophy of Carl Jung, the British Medical Journal observed: (59)
The hypothesis of mental life outside consciousness, i.e., the "unconscious," was of course well known before Jung's time. Jung examined the hypothesis of the unconscious critically, and he proved by methods which others could repeat that the unconscious was a reality and that it acted autonomously...
When we are in the grip of a complex, the limitations of "willpower" soon become evident. It is exactly as though another person interfered to prevent us from carrying out our intentions.
But does this not imply that it is not only the child of God who has two wills, but that these two wills exist in everyone, the one will striving towards good intentions and the other defeating those intentions? It would certainly look this way, and yet in the final analysis at the very bottom or root of man's soul is this evil something which Freud also explored. This is the real man. Here are the ultimate springs of human nature. All else is learned. Those who have been brought up in an environment where the noble things in life are constantly set forth as the true goal may appear to be different from those who were brought up in the slum where everything is filthy, rotten, and degrading. But if we are to be guided by Scripture, we are forced to the conclusion that the real human nature of both individuals is the same, any differences being entirely the result of historical accident. It is still true that there is none righteous, none that doeth good (Rom. 3:10-12).
This has been borne out in history time and time again, when to the surprise of everyone those who had stood out in their own community with the stature of saints have suddenly been brought face to face with genuine holiness. Their response has not infrequently been far more vicious in opposition than the response of those who seemed in the eyes of the community to be hopelessly wicked. We may suppose that the Lord's worst enemies, the Pharisees, were a wicked bunch. But if we had lived in those days we would probably have thought of them--or at least many of them--as cultured people with high ideals. The Lord called them "whited sepulchers," that is, visibly clean. There was nothing dirty about them. But they were dead inside. Charles Wesley was often most strongly opposed by those who seemed to their own generation to be models of Christian virtue. This is a very hard lesson to learn, yet every so often in ordinary life one may experience the sudden shock of discovering that someone whom one felt was a truly godly person nevertheless has violently anti-Christian feelings. In fact it seems that many of the "best" people are anti-Christian when it comes to basic issues. For example, the English Public School system derived most of its highest ideals from a Christian philosophy so that the products of that system for a period of comparatively recent history were respected and honored as men with very high ideals and a strong sense of honor and integrity. But those who came through this system know that the whole drive behind this code was pride, not love.
There is a contributing reason why man is not really improved by education, because the will itself remains unchanged. It remains unchanged because sin has in important ways crippled man's intellect. The effect is to make it impossible for a man to be completely aware of his own true nature, and as a consequence he can neither properly assess the motives which govern his actions nor be aware of the fact that his assessment is at fault. The mind operates within a mist of which it is itself entirely ignorant. This is called the noetic effect of sin. Although all personal experience and all of history screams a negative to the philosophy of the perfectibility of man, man simply cannot believe the evidence. It is not merely that he will not believe; for some reason he cannot believe the evidence. So these are two separate effects of sin, the one upon the will, the other upon the intellect. It is not only that man is a rebel at heart, he is also blind--blind because he cannot recognize his rebellion for what it is. Before he can do this, he must have a "change of mind"--the Greek word for "repentance." And part of the Christian experience of the new birth is a renewing of the mind (Rom. 12:2). Butterfield observed: (60)
Amongst historians, as in other fields, the blindest of all the blind are those who are unable to examine their own presuppositions, and blithely imagine therefore that they do not possess any. It must be emphasized that we create tragedy after tragedy for ourselves by a lazy unexamined doctrine of man which is current amongst us and which the study of history does not support (my emphasis).
This blindness, sometimes observed to an unbelievable degree even in otherwise most intelligent people, leads to extraordinary inconsistency and lack of wisdom. It also leads to a faith in mankind which is completely without foundation. I remember a debate between a professor of social anthropology and a medical man who was well known in the field of child education. There were quite a number of students present, and the social anthropologist was particularly popular with them. At one point the medical man proposed that education was not perhaps, after all, improving our young people. The professor jumped on this at once and said, "Oh, I wouldn't want to believe that." Then the medical man replied, rather quietly, "Even if it were true?" Surprisingly enough this quiet answer seemed to change the roles of the two men and the social anthropologist never quite recovered from the clapping and laughter which had accompanied his own embarrassment at the question. As Butterfield put it: "It is essential not to have faith in human nature. Such faith is a recent heresy and a very dangerous one." (61) And Daniel Lamont observed: "Sin, as we have seen, is a mist which keeps us from seeing anything as it is; and when we accept the mist as our appropriate atmosphere, we are oblivious to the tragedy of the mist itself." (62)
Kenneth Walker is one of the most thoughtful of recent writers and, though not a Christian, is nevertheless very spiritually perceptive. He is a British medical doctor of some renown. In his book Meaning and Purpose he spoke of the days when he was younger and had little or no use for talk about spiritual matters: (63)
Looking back I have seen clearly that at different periods of my life my mind became incarcerated within the narrow confines of some doctrine such as the scientific materialism of the last century...
What is particularly apparent to me now that I have escaped from these mental prisons is that while confined in them, I was completely satisfied with my surroundings.
It is thus quite clear that man's mind can unwittingly accept as a true premise something which all the evidence stands against, and will then logically construct upon it what will appear to him as a completely valid philosophy. And although it is constantly being challenged by the facts, and although he may constantly be misled by it in his judgment, and although he may in the end come to see its total inadequacy, he will still hold on to it, defend it against all comers, and make it his guide though it leads him astray. Yet in all else he may be a man of intelligence and integrity.
Such people by pen or word of mouth mold public opinion, cheerfully assuring the world that the present evils of society will vanish in time as man grows wiser. They point to such things as progress in slum clearance, the rise in general health, the emergence of the affluent society, the organization of man on a world scale for peace, and ever increasing dominion of man over the forces of Nature, and so forth; and all the while they overlook the fact that man's heart remains unimproved. And while man remains thus unimproved, he uses his increased leisure, improved health, greater resources, and enlarged powers over natural forces to give greater breadth to the range of his own wicked devices. Hopefully, it is always assumed that the world's problems are ultimately external to the heart of man, and if only all men are brought to the same standard of living and to enjoy the same benefits of civilization, all will be peaceful and everyone will be content.
With extraordinary ingenuity, man resolves one external problem after another, having devised for himself a technique, the scientific method, which appears to have unlimited possibilities. But we do not yet know how to prevent one delinquent child from corrupting a neighborhood, or an apparently sincere public servant from accepting a bribe, or the ordinary citizen from slandering his neighbor. The ordinary, everyday commonplace examples of human sinfulness in small things meet us at every turn, and there seems no way in which we can control them and leave man free. There is not the slightest doubt that for an ever increasing number of people things are better than they ever were. But we cannot honestly say that people are.
People point to such great documents as the Atlantic Charter as evidence that the world is a better place, that man has achieved a measure of genuine international stature by recognizing the rights of nations to self-determination and of individuals to personal freedom in certain essential respects. It is quite true that at no period in history was such a universal vision even dimly discerned--except to some extent by the Hebrew prophets. The great powers of previous ages never foresaw the kind of world charter that we now recognize as an obvious ideal. At the lowest level of social responsibility, duties were confined within a family; then within a tribe; finally within the nation. But beyond this it was not recognized by people that they owed anything to one another. Not even within the boundaries of the older empires were such rights recognized as we now feel must ultimately prevail among all nations. Perhaps the nearest approach was Roman citizenship, but slaves among them had virtually no personal rights. So to this extent, man has indeed clarified his ideals.
But the achievement of such ideals seems to be about as far away as it ever was. Recognition has not led to realization. Indeed, one wonders sometimes whether even the ideal may not yet be abandoned entirely as totally unrealistic, as unrealistic as the ideals which gave birth to the League of Nations. And in any case, such ideals are not the result of cultural evolution but are rooted ultimately within the Judeo-Christian religious philosophy: they originated as the result of divinely inspired thinking. Without the sustaining inspiration there seems little hope of their remaining viable. It seems highly unlikely that they would ever have arisen merely by the process of historic development, because they are manifestly so unrealistic and unworkable as human nature is presently constituted.
So long as a substantial number of subscribing nations at least pay lip service to the religious philosophy that underlies these ideals, there is a real possibility that they will remain on the statute books. But unfortunately, this system of ideals is like a plant without a root, bound to die in the nature of things. For one of its main principles is that all men who apply for membership in the "club" must be admitted merely on the basis of the fact that they applied. We are ourselves so far short of living up to the ideal which we proclaim that we dare not interrogate new applicants about their particular philosophy. And so as the "club" grows, we are bound to reach the point where the majority do not at heart accept the Judeo-Christian value system which inspired the ideal, thus outnumbering in voting power those who do. We have almost reached that point already. An "unconverted" world being asked to accept ideals as interpreted by a "converted" minority is not likely to submit to the minority interpretation, and the very idealism which inspired the "club" will bring about its demise. So ultimately all human institutions fail this way in the end. Even though each succeeding generation may have captured for a fleeting moment a clearer vision of the ideal, its realization is as far away as ever. Perhaps, in the light of recent debates over the Israeli-Arab war which revealed such totally different concepts of what truth is, it is further away than ever as the influence of the carry-over of a Christian philosophy recedes.
One of the critical points I have tried to underscore in this paper is that culture, in the sense of learned behavior, is what man needs to restrain his natural bent towards wickedness. Whatever else may be said about the snobbery of the "cultured," the fact remains that civilized man is normally less overtly wicked than the uncultured and that when he acts wickedly it is by distorting, denying, or escaping from the accumulated cultural heritage of the past. The restraint of learned behavior is all that stands between man and sheer savagery. Man is not by nature a well-bred creature, but a barbarian. Culture does not make man acceptable in the sight of God, for in this sense God is no respecter of persons at all, but it does tend to soften and reduce the effect of his fallen nature by restraining him.
There are times when a culture may be disrupted and a whole society goes bad, authority being everywhere undermined to such an extent that lawlessness, destruction, violence, rape, murder, theft, and cruelty know no effective curbs and chaos results. This may happen even in a fragment of some particular social group such as a crowd. When a crowd throws off all recognition of established authority its spirit changes rapidly from bad to worse, no longer constrained towards any good, but self-reinforced and self-reinforcing towards wickedness. Human behavior becomes "liberated" and equated with sin. People are swept away by the compulsive mood of the crowd, and individuals find themselves suddenly free to express the very worst side of their nature--often to their own genuine amazement in retrospect.
The roar of unified voices bent on evil is absolutely terrifying. There is something demonic about it. Crowds become vicious in ways totally foreign to the behavior of the individuals who make up the crowd. Men in groups will become vicious murderers and violent in the extreme, even the gentlest of them. And history shows, sadly, that in times of great violence (as in the French Revolution) women are equally capable of cruelty. Even in watching violent sports, this unexpected side of woman's nature may be suddenly revealed. Afterwards, the individual may sort herself out and ask in amazement, What got into me? Nothing got in. It is not what gets in at all, but what comes out that reveals the truth of human nature, even as Christ said it would (Matt. 15:18,19).
A supreme example of this is to be found in the New Testament as the Lord's ministry of healing, mercy, and goodness drew to a climax, the temper of the crowd, a crowd only a few hours before zealously hailing Him as the Messiah, now found itself united in its determination to destroy Him in the cruelest manner possible. Why? Were these early different people? Probably not, though many of them were acting differently. It was clear that authority--(the ultimate source of restraint)--had now shifted openly to an antagonistic position toward the Lord, and in doing so momentarily changed the balance of restrains for the whole community, setting men free to give expression to the very lowest impulses of their nature. Many of these, perhaps most of them, a few days before had not been "bad" people but people perhaps kindly disposed towards the aged, mindful of common courtesies, caring for the well-being of their families, and even concerned for neighbors, not given to violence unless personally angered, and quite likely opposed to any blatant injustice to individuals whom they thought well of. But now, suddenly, they change. They scream for His blood. Stirred up with frightening ease by the religious authorities, they find release for past repressions in a wave of violent animosity against an apparently defenseless man whom they had previously admired or even defended before His enemies. Here, then, was the ultimate revelation of man. Faced with absolute goodness, purity, and honesty, faced with true humanness, they suddenly hated what they saw.
The Lord's crucifixion was an expression of man's wickedness in hating Him because He was kind, gentle, altogether good, healing where there was sickness, bringing comfort where there was distress. He was condemned because He was innocent--not because He was guilty. He was treated with violence because He was gentle, not because He was violent. He was judged immoral (a friend of harlots) because He was utterly undefiled. He was accused of malefaction simply because He was completely innocent of wrongdoing.
I had occasion to rebuild a house once. A neighbor caught our zeal to work and planned great alterations to his house, too! We completed ours, though it took nearly five years. But in seven years he had scarcely taken up hammer and saw. One day he visited us and as he turned to go, he said good-naturedly, "I think you've done a wonderful job. I am afraid I didn't, and I hate you for it." How true this is to human nature, and what a pity we cannot all be as forthrightly honest as our friend and neighbor was about it...In a way he got rid of his "hate" by expressing it. In a way, mankind found some peace when the Lord was crucified. This, too, was part of His death for us. He came to die, but also to reveal certain things, three things at least: what God was really like and how He felt toward us; what man was actually like when exposed in the white light of His perfection, and finally what the potential of true manhood really was as revealed in His own Person.
Until society regains a correct picture of human nature, no real progress can ever be made toward the building of the Great Society: but by its very nature science will never recognize this fact even from its own findings, for it cannot accept what God has revealed nor discover the truth by its own methods of inquiry.
TO SUMMARIZE THIS paper, on the basis of the evidence available, the following points are important:
1. The Fall of man was both real and down. It was real and absolute, rather than relative, in the sense that all men have been equally affected; and it was down in the sense that it was not merely a relapse into some lower stage of development, supposedly normal to some postulated protoman. It was a totally new and disastrous condition that made every man an enemy to himself, his fellows, the natural order, and God.
2. The testimony of history and the findings of modern research in all those branches of science which are concerned with human behavior demonstrate the fact of the Fall. Unless such a Fall is assumed human behavior is unaccountable.
3. The Fall affected the whole of man including his mind, thus making him intellectually incapable now of discovering the truth about himself, in spite of the evidence--unless he accepts what is revealed.
4. It is culture alone that preserves within secular society some measure of the creative potential in man. It does this by restraining evil, rather than by liberating some supposed innate moral goodness that might have survived the Fall.
5. Some men respond to these cultural restraints more than others and as a consequence they appear in a better light. What governs this response is partly genetic and partly circumstantial. From the social point of view such response appears in the light of goodness, but from the moral point of view both kinds of people stand in the same judgment, as fundamentally sinful in the sight of God. In this sense God is no respecter of persons.
6. Because of these things, rather than defining "cultured behavior," as "learned behavior," it should be defined more basically as "learned restraint." Men do good because their natural bent to do evil has been sufficiently channeled that the creative drive finds expression constructively. In this way, therefore, culture appears not merely as a good thing in itself, but as a very necessary thing for a fallen race, because it converts what would otherwise be a totally chaotic world into one with a sufficiently ordered and stable constitution so that the grace of God can work in the heart of man. We may say that without some measure of order, communication would be greatly hindered, and the Church of God could scarcely operate as the channel of grace. Civilization is thus good in so far as it provides this ordered framework, but it is evil in so far as it also arms man's propensity for wickedness more effectively. So it appears that it is never wholly evil, nor ever wholly good. When the law of God is written within the heart and is an effective control, culture is still required to provide the setting for the expression of man's creative ability.
Such, then, seems to be the picture of man's true nature, a picture far more in accord with the Christian view based on Scripture than the scientific view based on a persuasive theory of evolutionary optimism.
In the light of this depressing picture of man's true nature how shall we look at it? God in Christ has made provision to deal with it, not by any process of mere reformation but by an act of re-creation whereby the spirit of man is reborn (John 3:3), his mind is renewed (Rom. 12:2), and his mortal body revitalized (Rom. 8:11). Herein is the redemption of the whole man--his salvation.
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself...
For he hath made him to be sin on our behalf, he who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
IN VIEW OF the popular presupposition that man has generally improved himself in body and in mind, it is important to know what actual evidence there is relating to this.
Considering man from the physiological point of view, all that can be said with any assurance is that modern medicine in its broadest sense (including public health, etc.) has succeeded in extending the average age of civilized man. But this needs to be carefully stated, for it does not mean that man lives longer than he did before. It means only that more people reach maturity, childhood sicknesses being better controlled; and that more older people live out their years, diseases of old age being better under control. The average age has therefore gone up to around 60, compared with Greek times, in which life expectancy seems to have been around 40 or less. But on the whole three score and ten years remains a kind of norm. Here and there people far exceed this figure, and now and then one finds whole communities of "ancients" whose life expectancy appears to be in the neighborhood of 140 to 160 years. (64)
However, there is an almost universal tradition that in the beginning man counted his years by centuries, not by decades. An analysis of the biblical traditions regarding the patriarchs up to the time of Noah has been undertaken in another Doorway Paper, (65) and this analysis shows unequivocally that these figures have every appearance of being trustworthy, since they can be successfully treated by statistical methods, applicable only with success where the data makes sense as a whole. Taken as a whole, the ages given for the patriarchs may strike us as absurd but there is a remarkable inner consistency to all the figures when they are related to one another in a conventional statistical manner. Man's present viability has evidently declined tremendously.
Moreover, there may even be fossil evidence in support of the biblical thesis, for many fossils of early man show the sutures of the skull to have virtually completely closed, a circumstance indicating extreme age. (66) Vallois has drawn attention to the fact that an extraordinary number of flint weapons have been found from prehistoric levels, considering the amount of evidence of actual human occupation in the form of hearths or actual fossil remains. (67) While it is true that the bones could disappear where weapons might be preserved, it could also be argued that the profusion of weapons and scarcity of human remains could result from extreme longevity of the makers of these weapons. A man who lived a thousand years might make 150 times as many weapons during his lifetime as his modern counterpart. That men could have lived to such great ages is borne out by the findings of another Doorway Paper. (68)
With regard to physical strength, some of the tools of primitive man would appear to us to be quite unmanageable. (69) Presumably the people who made them did not find them so. And no one can look at the monolithic structures of antiquity without marveling at the masses of stone they seemed to be able to set around at will.
In all these things man seems to be a less remarkable creature today than he was in earlier times. And this also applies to the diseases from which he suffered, at least those diseases which could leave evidence of their presence in his bones. Ales Hrdlicka made a special study of this question and commented in connection with the earlier remains as follows: (70)
There is no trace in the adults of any destructive constitutional disease. There are marks of fractures, some traces of arthritis of the vertebrae, and in two cases (Lachappelle and the Rhodesian Skull) much less of teeth and dental caries. The teeth in the remaining specimens are often more or less worn, but as a rule free from disease, and there is, aside from the above mentioned two specimens, but little disease of the alveolar processes.
It appears, therefore, that on the whole, early man was remarkably free from disease that would leave any evidence on his bones and teeth.
Then he turned to later human remains and observed, "Such diseases as syphilis, rachitis, tuberculosis, cancer (of the bone at least), hydrocephalus, etc., were unknown or rare in these...." Subsequently he showed the gradual increase of other diseases of bone and teeth, and speaking of the much later remains of early man he concluded:
As we proceed towards men of today, particularly in the white race pathological conditions of the bone become more common.
In a similar vein George A. Dorsey pointed to the evidence of degeneration in the human body as it now is: (71)
There are more than mere structural variations in our food canal: there are signs of degeneracy--in teeth, in jaws and throat, and in the large intestine. Changed diet does it. To digest raw food our ancestors had to chew it. They had strong jaws, heavy muscles, sound teeth properly aligned, big throats, and colons that could digest husks of grain and skins of fruits and vegetables.
Of course, civilization may account for some of these evidences of degeneracy. But civilization is attributed by evolutionists to man's superiority, the other animals not having evolved sufficiently to have produced it. In this case evolution must be blamed ultimately, at least in part, for the degenerate state of its highest achievement.
With regard to intellect, it is not at all certain that we are making progress either. Though it is contrary to popular belief, early man seems to have enjoyed a greater average cranial capacity than modern man; and at times the enlargement is quite remarkable. (72) It is true that the significance of this is not altogether clear. Weidenreich presented a very convincing argument that it had no significance whatever. (73) The only certain thing that can be said is that man's cranial capacity has not enlarged but, if anything, grown somewhat smaller. A few years ago the Journal of the American Medical Association published a report in which it was shown that extensive tests made over a period of some years indicated a drop in intelligence levels of two or three points per generation. (74) Of course, the editors hastened to point out that there may not be any significance in this; it may be due merely to the fact that the less intelligent parents breed at a greater rate than the more intelligent ones, so that on a statistical average this is what we might expect. But this really gives the position away, because this may always have been true, and therefore the decline may always have existed, and to quote what, I believe, were the words of Archbishop Whately, "An Aristotle is but the rubbish of an Adam." It could be!
But this progressive deterioration of the race has been observed in Great Britain also. (75) In commenting on these findings, Gaylord Simpson observed: (76)
I know of no evidence for any considerable population that selection is favoring the more intelligent.
It is an unpleasant conclusion that mankind as a whole, or at least a considerable segment of it, may be evolving in the direction of less intelligence. Many, including some scientists, have indignantly rejected that conclusion, but the grounds for rejection are usually that there is no real proof or that the situation is very complicated, or that there are other possibilities (explanations?). That is all true, but surely the proper procedure is not to reject what evidence we have but to seek impartially for more and better evidence...
After considering the implications of this evidence, Simpson concluded, "Such, then, is the human dilemma....As far as can now be foreseen, evolutionary degeneration is at least as likely in our future as is further progress." (77)
It is true that the evidence we have regarding man's physical and mental development is in some ways slight, yet it bears testimony always in the same direction, namely, towards deterioration.
References:
45. Eysenck, H. J., "Biological Basis of Criminal Behaviour," Nature, suppl. Aug. 29, 1964, pp. 952-953.
46. Hooten, E. A., Why Men Behave Like Apes, and Vice Versa, Princeton U. Press, 1940.
47. Zimmern, Sir Alfred, The Prospects of Civilization, Oxford Pamphlets on World Affairs, Oxford U. Press, 1940, p. 23.
48. II Sam. 11:2--12:15, and I Kings 21:1--22:37
49. Fromm, Erich, Escape From Freedom, Rinehart, N.Y., 1941, p. 246.
50. Walker, Kenneth, Meaning and Purpose, Pelican, London, 1950, p. 86.
51. White, Ernest, ref. 20, p. 15.
52. Lack, David, ref. 14, p. 107.
53. Huxley, T. H., quoted by Lack, ref. 14, p. 108.
54. Lack, David, ref. 14, p. 109.
55. Russell, Bertrand, "Human Society in Ethics and Politics," quoted in Nature, Dec. 25, 1954, p. 1162.
56. Freud: quoted by M. S. Viteles, "The New Utopia," Science, 122 (1955):1170.
57. Dostoevsky, F. M., "Letters from the Underworld," quoted by D. R. Davies, ref. 31.
58. Lings, Martin, Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstitions, Perennial Books, London, 1964, p. 64.
59. Jung, Carl G., in Brit. Med. Journ., Feb. 9, 1952, p. 315.
60. Butterfield, Herbert, ref. 18, p. 46.
61. Ibid., p. 47.
62. Lamont, Daniel, Anchorage of Life, I.V.F., London, 1946, p. 173.
63. Walker, Kenneth, ref. 50, p. 7.
64. Communities of "ancients": I have in mind the reports coming from the villages and hill towns of the remote Soviet Caucasus reported upon in numerous publications recently; for example in Life magazine in 1966, under the title "161 Years and Going Strong," by Peter Young.
65. Custance, A. C., Longevity in Antiquity and Its Bearing on Chronology. See Index.
66. Dawson, Sir William, Meeting Place of Geology and History, Revell, N.Y., 1904, p. 63.
67. Vailois, Henry and Marcell Boule, Fossil Men, Dryden Press, N.Y., 1957, p. 190.
68. "If Adam Had Not Died" (Doorway Paper)
69. Howells, W., Mankind So Far, Doubleday Doran, N.Y., 1945, p. 118.
70. Hrdlicka, Alex, "Anthropology and Medicine," Am. Jour. of Phys. Anthropology, 10 (1926):6.
71. Dorsey, George A., Why We Behave Like Human Beings, Blue Ribbon Books, N.Y.
72. Neanderthal Man, 1625 cc. cranial capacity; Wadjak Skull, 1650 cc.; Boskop Skull, 1800 cc.: See Howell, ref. 69, pp. 166 and 192.
73. Weidenreich, F. von, "The Human Brain in the Light of Its Phylogenetic Development," Sci. Monthly, Aug. 1948, pp. 103ff.
74. Decline in I. Q., reported in J. of Am. Med. Assoc., Nov. 2, 1946, p. 518.
75. I. Q. Decline in Great Britain: see Brit. J. of Sociology, June 1950, pp. 154-168.
76. Simpson, G. G., This View of Life, Brace and World, N.Y., 1964, p. 272.
77. Ibid., p. 285.
Corrections, August 5, 1997
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