An Appeal to the People in Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible

by Catharine Esther Beecher

Meantime, the most vigorous and acute minds in the various opposing sects and theological schools, have been exhibiting, in magazines and newspapers, the difficulties and absurdities each finds in the creed and teaching of all who differ, while it is the laymen who read and pay for these periodicals. In these, and many other ways, the discussions which once were confined to metaphysicians and theologians, have come before the people, and the Augustinian system has [pg 305] been more and more clearly exhibited as contrary to the moral sense and common sense of mankind.

A few years since, Dr. Edward Beecher published the Conflict of Ages, in which, with a calm and Christian spirit and in a popular form, was set forth the difficulties consequent on the Augustinian system, which for ages have agitated all Christendom.

In this work, it is shown that there are “principles of honor and right” which all theologians agree in maintaining that God must and does regard and obey; that these principles are violated by God on the supposition that he has brought mankind into being in this world with a depraved nature; and finally, that all theories as yet invented by theologians to relieve the Creator from such an imputation are failures, except the theory, which is there presented, of a pre-existent state, according to which, mankind were created with perfect natures, which they ruined by sinning, and came into this life to be restored to their former perfect state.

Much that appears in the early portion of this work is from this source. Still more has been gained from that work in the clear manner in which it is there proved, that the Bible does not teach that the sin of Adam had any effect on “the nature” of the human race, and that the interpretation given to the passage in Romans v., which is the chief one claimed as teaching this doctrine, not only has been interpreted wrong, but is contrary to the rendering of the whole Christian world from the apostles to Augustine.

In other words, the Conflict of Ages came before the people with the claim, that the Augustinian theory of a depraved nature consequent on the sin of Adam, as [pg 306] taught by all theologians of the great Catholic and Protestant sects, is contrary to the moral sense of mankind and entirely unsupported by the Bible.

This work was read, not only by theologians and pastors, but by intelligent laymen, to an extent never known before of a strictly theological work.

And what was the ground taken by theologians of all schools? They were bound to show to the people, in opposition to this work, if they could, that this Augustinian dogma was not contrary to the moral sense of mankind, and that it was taught in the Bible.

But not a single attempt of this kind has ever been made. This universal silence is as direct a confession of inability to reply as ever was known in the theological world. All that ever has been attempted has been, to show that the theory of a preëxistent state, offered by that author, affords little or no relief, and is without scriptural authority.

The words of a distinguished theologian and editor of a theological quarterly, addressed to the writer, express the case exactly: “Your brother has succeeded in throwing us all into the ditch, but he has shown us no way to get out.”

That is to say, so long as the doctrine of a depraved nature that insures “sin, and only sin,” in every unregenerate mind, is maintained, there is no satisfactory way yet devised of proving the wisdom and benevolence of God, by the concessions of theologians themselves.