Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

(a) Men universally attribute vice as well as virtue not only to conscious and deliberate acts, but also to dispositions and states. Belief in something more permanently evil than acts of transgression is indicated in the common phrases, “hateful temper,” “wicked pride,” “bad character.”

As the beatitudes (Mat. 5:1-12) are pronounced, not upon acts, but upon dispositions of the soul, so the curses of the law are uttered not so much against single acts of transgression as against the evil affections from which they spring. Compare the “works of the flesh” (Gal. 5:19) with the “fruit of the Spirit” (5:22). In both, dispositions and states predominate.

(b) Outward acts, indeed, are condemned only when they are regarded as originating in, and as symptomatic of, evil dispositions. Civil law proceeds upon this principle in holding crime to consist, not alone in the external act, but also in the evil motive or intent with which it is performed.

The mens rea is essential to the idea of crime. The “idle-word” (Mat 12:36) shall be brought into the judgment, not because it is so important in itself, but because it is a floating straw that indicates the direction of the whole current of the heart and life. Murder differs from homicide, not in any outward respect, but simply because of the motive that prompts it,—and that motive is always, in the last analysis, an evil disposition or state.

(c) The stronger an evil disposition, or in other words, the more it connects itself with, or resolves itself into, a settled state or condition of the soul, the more blameworthy is it felt to be. This is shown by the distinction drawn between crimes of passion and crimes of deliberation.

Edwards: “Guilt consists in having one's heart wrong, and in doing wrong from the heart.” There is guilt in evil desires, even when the will combats them. But there is greater guilt when the will consents. The outward act may be in each case the same, but the guilt of it is proportioned to the extent to which the evil disposition is settled and strong.

(d) This condemning sentence remains the same, even although the origin of the evil disposition or state cannot be traced back to any conscious act of the individual. Neither the general sense of mankind, nor the civil law in which this general sense is expressed, goes behind the fact of an [pg 555] existing evil will. Whether this evil will is the result of personal transgression or is a hereditary bias derived from generations passed, this evil will is the man himself, and upon him terminates the blame. We do not excuse arrogance or sensuality upon the ground that they are family traits.

The young murderer in Boston was not excused upon the ground of a congenitally cruel disposition. We repent in later years of sins of boyhood, which we only now see to be sins; and converted cannibals repent, after becoming Christians, of the sins of heathendom which they once committed without a thought of their wickedness. The peacock cannot escape from his feet by flying, nor can we absolve ourselves from blame for an evil state of will by tracing its origin to a remote ancestry. We are responsible for what we are. How this can be, when we have not personally and consciously originated it, is the problem of original sin, which we have yet to discuss.

(e) When any evil disposition has such strength in itself, or is so combined with others, as to indicate a settled moral corruption in which no power to do good remains, this state is regarded with the deepest disapprobation of all. Sin weakens man's power of obedience, but the can-not is a will-not, and is therefore condemnable. The opposite principle would lead to the conclusion that, the more a man weakened his powers by transgression, the less guilty he would be, until absolute depravity became absolute innocence.

The boy who hates his father cannot change his hatred into love by a single act of will; but he is not therefore innocent. Spontaneous and uncontrollable profanity is the worst profanity of all. It is a sign that the whole will, like a subterranean Kentucky river, is moving away from God, and that no recuperative power is left in the soul which can reach into the depths to reverse its course. See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:110-114; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 2:79-92, 152-157; Richards, Lectures on Theology, 256-301; Edwards, Works, 2:134; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 243-262; Princeton Essays, 2:224-239; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 394.