If Christ died to save Man from sin, how is it that nineteen centuries after His death the world is full of sin?
If God (the All-powerful God, who loves us better than an earthly father loves his children) wished to forgive us the sin Adam committed ages before we were born, why did He not forgive us without dying, or causing His Son to die, on a cross?
If Christ is essential to a good life on earth, how is it that many who believe in Him lead bad lives, while many of the best men and women of this and former ages either never heard of Christ or did not follow Him?
As to the theory that Christ (or God) died to win back Man to Himself, it does not harmonise with the facts.
Man never did estrange himself from God. All history shows that Man has persistently and anxiously sought for God, and has served Him, according to his light, with a blind devotion even to death and crime.
Finally, Man never did, and never could, sin against God. For Man is what God made him; could only act as God enabled him, or constructed him to act, and therefore was not responsible for his act, and could not sin against God.
If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man's act. Therefore Man cannot sin against God.
But I shall deal more fully with the subject of Free Will, and of the need for Christ as our Saviour, in another part of this book.
Let us now turn to the old idea of the Fall and the Atonement.
First, as to Adam and the Fall and inherited sin. Evolution, historical research, and scientific criticism have disposed of Adam. Adam was a myth. Hardly any educated Christians now regard him as an historic person.