Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

Sin is a “mystery of lawlessness” (2 Thess. 2:7), at the beginning, as well as at the end. Neander, Planting and Training, 388—“Whoever explains sin nullifies it.” Man's power at the beginning to choose evil does not prove that, now that he has fallen, he has equal power of himself permanently to choose good. Because man has power to cast himself from the top of a precipice to the bottom, it does not follow that he has equal power to transport himself from the bottom to the top.

Man fell by wilful resistance to the inworking God. Christ is in all men as he was in Adam, and all good impulses are due to him. Since the Holy Spirit is the Christ within, all men are the subjects of his striving. He does not withdraw from them except upon, and in consequence of, their withdrawing from him. John Milton makes the Almighty say of Adam's sin: “Whose fault? Whose but his own? Ingrate, he had of me All he could have; I made him just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. Such I created all the Etherial Powers, And Spirits, both them who stood and them who failed; Freely they stood who stood, and fell who failed.” The word “cussedness”has become an apt word here. The Standard Dictionary defines it as “1. Cursedness, meanness, perverseness; 2. resolute courage, endurance: ‘Jim Bludsoe's voice was heard, And they all had trust in his cussedness And knowed he would keep his word.’ ”(John Hay, Jim Bludsoe, stanza 6). Not the last, but the first, of these definitions best describes the first sin. The most thorough and satisfactory treatment of the fall of man in connection with the doctrine of evolution is found in Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 73-240.

Hodge, Essays and Reviews, 30—“There is a broad difference between the commencement of holiness and the commencement of sin, and more is necessary for the former than for the latter. An act of obedience, if it is performed under the mere impulse of self-love, is virtually no act of obedience. It is not performed with any intention to obey, for that is holy, and cannot, according to the theory, precede the act. But an act of disobedience, performed from the desire of happiness, is rebellion. The cases are surely different. If, to please myself, I do what God commands, it is not holiness; but if, to please myself, I do what he forbids, it is sin. Besides, no creature is immutable. Though created holy, the taste for holy enjoyments may be overcome by a temptation sufficiently insidious and powerful, and a selfish motive or feeling excited in the mind. Neither is a sinful character immutable. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the truth may be clearly presented and so effectually applied as to produce that change which is called regeneration; that is, to call into existence a taste for holiness, so that it is chosen for its own sake, and not as a means of happiness.”

H. B. Smith, System, 262—“The state of the case, as far as we can enter into Adam's experience, is this: Before the command, there was the state of love without the thought of the opposite: a knowledge of good only, a yet unconscious goodness: there was also the knowledge that the eating of the fruit was against the divine command. The temptation aroused pride; the yielding to that was the sin. The change was there. The change was not in the choice as an executive act, nor in the result of that act—the eating; but in the choice of supreme love to the world and self, rather than supreme devotion to God. It was an immanent preference of the world,—not a love of the world following the choice, but a love of the world which is the choice itself.”

263—“We cannot account for Adam's fall, psychologically. In saying this we mean: It is inexplicable by anything outside itself. We must receive the fact as ultimate, and rest there. Of course we do not mean that it was not in accordance with the laws of moral agency—that it was a violation of those laws: but only that we do not see the mode, that we cannot construct it for ourselves in a rational way. It differs from all other similar cases of ultimate preference which we know; viz., the sinner's immanent preference of the world, where we know there is an antecedent ground in the bias to [pg 588]sin, and the Christian's regeneration, or immanent preference of God, where we know there is an influence from without, the working of the Holy Spirit.” 264—“We must leave the whole question with the immanent preference standing forth as the ultimate fact in the case, which is not to be constructed philosophically, as far as the processes of Adam's soul are concerned: we must regard that immanent preference as both a choice and an affection, not an affection the result of a choice, not a choice which is the consequence of an affection, but both together.”

In one particular, however, we must differ with H. B. Smith: Since the power of voluntary internal movement is the power of the will, we must regard the change from good to evil as primarily a choice, and only secondarily a state of affection caused thereby. Only by postulating a free and conscious act of transgression on the part of Adam, an act which bears to evil affection the relation not of effect but of cause, do we reach, at the beginning of human development, a proper basis for the responsibility and guilt of Adam and the race. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:148-167.

2. How could God justly permit Satanic temptation?

We see in this permission not justice but benevolence.

(a) Since Satan fell without external temptation, it is probable that man's trial would have been substantially the same, even though there had been no Satan to tempt him.