A. Quantitative lack.—The phrase “natural ability” is misleading, since it seems to imply that the existence of the mere powers of intellect, affection, and will is a sufficient quantitative qualification for obedience to God's law, whereas these powers have been weakened by sin, and are naturally unable, instead of naturally able, to render back to God with interest the talent first bestowed. Even if the moral direction of man's faculties were a normal one, the effect of hereditary and of personal sin would render naturally impossible that large likeness to God which the law of absolute perfection demands. Man has not therefore the natural ability perfectly to obey God. He had it once, but he lost it with the first sin.
When Jean Paul Richter says of himself: “I have made of myself all that could be made out of the stuff,” he evinces a self-complacency which is due to self-ignorance and lack of moral insight. When a man realizes the extent of the law's demands, he sees that without divine help obedience is impossible. John B. Gough represented the confirmed drunkard's efforts at reformation as a man's walking up Mount Etna knee-deep in burning lava, or as one's rowing against the rapids of Niagara.
B. Qualitative lack.—Since the law of God requires of men not so much right single volitions as conformity to God in the whole inward state of the affections and will, the power of contrary choice in single volitions does not constitute a natural ability to obey God, unless man can by those single volitions change the underlying state of the affections and will. But this power man does not possess. Since God judges all moral action in connection with the general state of the heart and life, natural ability to good involves not only a full complement of faculties but also a bias of the affections and will toward God. Without this bias there is no possibility of right moral action, and where there is no such possibility, there can be no ability either natural or moral.
Wilkinson, Epic of Paul, 21—“Hatred is like love Herein, that it, by only being, grows. Until at last usurping quite the man, It overgrows him like a polypus.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas, 1:53—“The ideal is the revelation in me of a power that is mightier than my own. The supreme command ‘Thou oughtest’ is the utterance, only different in form, of the same voice in my spirit which says ‘Thou canst’; and my highest spiritual attainments are achieved, not by self-assertion, but by self-renunciation and self-surrender to the infinite life of truth and righteousness that is living and reigning within me.” This conscious inability in one's self, together with reception of “the strength which God supplieth” (1 Pet. 4:11), is the secret of Paul's courage; 2 Cor. 12:10—“when I am weak, then am I strong”; Phil. 2:12, 13—“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure.”
C. No such ability known.—In addition to the psychological argument just mentioned, we may urge another from experience and observation. [pg 642] These testify that man is cognizant of no such ability. Since no man has ever yet, by the exercise of his natural powers, turned himself to God or done an act truly good in God's sight, the existence of a natural ability to do good is a pure assumption. There is no scientific warrant for inferring the existence of an ability which has never manifested itself in a single instance since history began.
“Solomon could not keep the Proverbs,—so he wrote them.” The book of Proverbs needs for its complement the New Testament explanation of helplessness and offer of help: John 15:5—“apart from me ye can do nothing”; 6:37—“him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” The palsied man's inability to walk is very different from his indisposition to accept a remedy. The paralytic cannot climb the cliff, but by a rope let down to him he may be lifted up, provided he will permit himself to be tied to it. Darling, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., July, 1901:505—“If bidden, we can stretch out a withered arm; but God does not require this of one born armless. We may ‘hear the voice of the Son of God’ and ‘live’ (John 5:25), but we shall not bring out of the tomb faculties not possessed before death.”
D. Practical evil of the belief.—The practical evil attending the preaching of natural ability furnishes a strong argument against it. The Scriptures, in their declarations of the sinner's inability and helplessness, aim to shut him up to sole dependence upon God for salvation. The doctrine of natural ability, assuring him that he is able at once to repent and turn to God, encourages delay by putting salvation at all times within his reach. If a single volition will secure it, he may be saved as easily to-morrow as to-day. The doctrine of inability presses men to immediate acceptance of God's offers, lest the day of grace for them pass by.
Those who care most for self are those in whom self becomes thoroughly subjected and enslaved to external influences. Mat. 16:25—“whosoever would save his life shall lose it.” The selfish man is a straw on the surface of a rushing stream. He becomes more and more a victim of circumstance, until at last he has no more freedom than the brute. Ps. 49:20—“Man that is in honor, and understandeth not, Is like the beasts that perish;” see R. T. Smith, Man's Knowledge of Man and of God, 121. Robert Browning, unpublished poem: “ ‘Would a man 'scape the rod?’ Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, ‘See that he turn to God The day before his death.’ ‘Aye, could a man inquire When it shall come?’ I say. The Rabbi's eye shoots fire—‘Then let him turn to-day.’ ”
Let us repeat, however, that the denial to man of all ability, whether natural or moral, to turn himself to God or to do that which is truly good in God's sight, does not imply a denial of man's power to order his external life in many particulars conformably to moral rules, or even to attain the praise of men for virtue. Man has still a range of freedom in acting out his nature, and he may to a certain limited extent act down upon that nature, and modify it, by isolated volitions externally conformed to God's law. He may choose higher or lower forms of selfish action, and may pursue these chosen courses with various degrees of selfish energy. Freedom of choice, within this limit, is by no means incompatible with complete bondage of the will in spiritual things.
John 1:13—“born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”; 3:5—“Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God”; 6:44—“No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him”; 8:34—“Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin”; 15:4, 5—“the branch cannot bear fruit of itself ... apart from me ye can do nothing”; Rom. 7:18—“in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing; for to will is present with me, but to do that which it good is not”; 24—“Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” 8:7, 8—“the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be: and they that are is the flesh cannot please God”; 1 Cor. 2:14—“the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; [pg 643]and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged”; 2 Cor. 3:5—“not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves”; Eph. 2:1—“dead through your trespasses and sins”; 8-10—“by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works”; Heb. 11:6—“without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing unto him.”