While we regard Newman Smyth's view as an ingenious and valuable explanation of the incidental results of death, we do not regard it as an explanation of death's origin. God has overruled death for good, and we can assent to much of Dr. Smyth's exposition. But that this good could be gained only by death seems to us wholly unproved and unprovable. Biology shows us that other methods of reproduction are possible, and that death is an incident and not a primary requisite to development. We regard Dr. Smyth's theory as incompatible with the Scripture representations of death as the consequence of sin, as the sign of God's displeasure, as a means of discipline for the fallen, as destined to complete abolition when sin itself has been done away. We reserve, however, the full proof that physical death is part of the penalty of sin until we discuss the Consequences of Sin to Adam's Posterity.
But this death was also, and chiefly,
B. Spiritual death, or the separation of the soul from God.—In this are included: (a) Negatively, the loss of man's moral likeness to God, or that underlying tendency of his whole nature toward God which constituted his original righteousness. (b) Positively, the depraving of all those powers which, in their united action with reference to moral and religious truth, we call man's moral and religious nature; or, in other words, the blinding of his intellect, the corruption of his affections, and the enslavement of his will.
Seeking to be a god, man became a slave; seeking independence, he ceased to be master of himself. Once his intellect was pure,—he was supremely conscious of God, and saw all things also in God's light. Now he was supremely conscious of self, and saw all things as they affected self. This self-consciousness—how unlike the objective life of the first apostles, of Christ and of every loving soul! Once man's affections were pure,—he loved God supremely, and other things in subordination to God's will. Now he loved self supremely, and was ruled by inordinate affections toward the creatures which could minister to his selfish gratification. Now man could do nothing pleasing to God, because he lacked the love which is necessary to all true obedience.
G. F. Wilkin, Control in Evolution, shows that the will may initiate a counter-evolution which shall reverse the normal course of man's development. First comes an act, then a habit, of surrender to animalism; then subversion of faith in the true and the good; then active championship of evil; then transmission of evil disposition and tendencies to posterity. This subversion of the rational will by an evil choice took place very early, indeed in the first man. All human history has been a conflict between these two antagonistic evolutions, the upward and the downward. Biological rather than moral phenomena predominate. No human being escapes transgressing [pg 592]the law of his evolutionary nature. There is a moral deadness and torpor resulting. The rational will must be restored before man can go right again. Man must commit himself to a true life; then to the restoration of other men to that same life; then there must be coöperation of society; this work must extend to the limits of the human species. But this will be practicable and rational only as it is shown that the unfolding plan of the universe has destined the righteous to a future incomparably more desirable than that of the wicked; in other words, immortality is necessary to evolution.
“If immortality be necessary to evolution, then immortality becomes scientific. Jesus has the authority and omnipresence of the power behind evolution. He imposes upon his followers the same normal evolutionary mission that sent him into the world. He organizes them into churches. He teaches a moral evolution of society through the united voluntary efforts of his followers. They are ‘the good seed ... the sons of the kingdom’ (Mat. 13:38). Theism makes a definite attempt to counteract the evil of the counter-evolution, and the attempt justifies itself by its results. Christianity is scientific (1) in that it satisfies the conditions of knowledge: the persisting and comprehensive harmony of phenomena, and the interpretation of all the facts; (2) in its aim, the moral regeneration of the world; (3) in its methods, adapting itself to man as an ethical being, capable of endless progress; (4) in its conception of normal society, as of sinners uniting together to help one another to depend on God and conquer self, so recognizing the ethical bond as the most essential. This doctrine harmonizes science and religion, revealing the new species of control which marks the highest stage of evolution; shows that the religion of the N. T. is essentially scientific and its truths capable of practical verification; that Christianity is not any particular church, but the teachings of the Bible; that Christianity is the true system of ethics, and should be taught in public institutions; that cosmic evolution comes at last to depend on the wisdom and will of man, the immanent God working in finite and redeemed humanity.”
In fine, man no longer made God the end of his life, but chose self instead. While he retained the power of self-determination in subordinate things, he lost that freedom which consisted in the power of choosing God as his ultimate aim, and became fettered by a fundamental inclination of his will toward evil. The intuitions of the reason were abnormally obscured, since these intuitions, so far as they are concerned with moral and religious truth, are conditioned upon a right state of the affections; and—as a necessary result of this obscuring of reason—conscience, which, as the normal judiciary of the soul, decides upon the basis of the law given to it by reason, became perverse in its deliverances. Yet this inability to judge or act aright, since it was a moral inability springing ultimately from will, was itself hateful and condemnable.
See Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:61-73; Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 202-230, esp. 205—“Whatsoever springs from will we are responsible for. Man's inability to love God supremely results from his intense self-will and self-love, and therefore his impotence is a part and element of his sin, and not an excuse for it.” And yet the question “Adam, where art thou?” (Gen. 3:9), says C. J. Baldwin, “was, (1) a question, not as to Adam's physical locality, but as to his moral condition; (2) a question, not of justice threatening, but of love inviting to repentance and return; (3) a question, not to Adam as an individual only, but to the whole humanity of which he was the representative.”
Dale, Ephesians, 40—“Christ is the eternal Son of God; and it was the first, the primeval purpose of the divine grace that his life and sonship should be shared by all mankind; that through Christ all men should rise to a loftier rank than that which belonged to them by their creation; should be ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Pet. 1:4), and share the divine righteousness and joy. Or rather, the race was actually created in Christ; and it was created that the whole race might in Christ inherit the life and glory of God. The divine purpose has been thwarted and obstructed and partially defeated by human sin. But it is being fulfilled in all who are ‘in Christ’ (Eph. 1:3).”