Chapter VIII (continued, part 6)
3. It is a further objection to this mode of stating the doctrine that it tends to embarrass or to deceive. It must embarrass the people to be told that they can and cannot repent and believe. One or the other of
the two propositions, in the ordinary and proper sense of the terms, must be false. And any esoteric or metaphysical sense in which the theologian may attempt to reconcile them, the people will neither appreciate nor respect. It is a much more serious objection that it tends to deceive men to tell them that they can change their own hearts, can repent, and can believe. This is not true, and every man's consciousness tells him that it is untrue. It is of no avail for the preacher to say that all he means by ability is that men have all the faculties of rational beings, and that those are the only faculties to be exercised in turning to God or in doing his will. We might as reasonably tell an uneducated man that he can understand and appreciate the Iliad, because he has all the faculties which the scholar possesses. Still less does it avail to say that the only difficulty is in the will. And therefore when we say that men can love God, we mean that they can love Him if they will. If the word will, be here taken in its ordinary sense for the power of self-determination, the proposition that a man can love God if he will, is not true; for it is notorious that the affections are not under the power of the will. If the word be taken in a wide sense as including the affections, the proposition is a truism. It amounts to saying, that we can love God if we do love Him.
4. The distinction between natural and moral ability, as commonly made, is unscriptural. It has already been admitted that there is an obvious and very important distinction between an inability arising out of the limitations of our being as creatures, and an inability arising out of the apostate state of our nature since the fall of Adam. But this is not what is commonly meant by those who assert the natural ability of men to do all that God requires of them. They mean and expressly assert that man, as his nature now is, is perfectly able to change his own heart, to repent and lead a holy life; that the only difficulty in the way of his so doing is the want of inclination, controllable by his own power. It is this representation which is unscriptural. The Scriptures never thus address fallen men and assure them of their ability to deliver themselves from the power of sin.
5. The whole tendency and effect of this mode of statement are injurious and dangerous. If a sinner must be convinced of his guilt before he can trust in the righteousness of Christ for his justification, he must be convinced of his helplessness before he can look to God for deliverance. Those who are made to believe that they can save themselves, are, in the divine administration, commonly left to their own resources.
In opposition therefore to the Pelagian doctrine of the sinner's plenary ability, to the Semi-Pelagian or Arminian doctrine of what is called "a gracious ability," that is, an ability granted to all who hear the gospel by the common and sufficient grace of the Holy Spirit, and to the doctrine that the only inability of the sinner is his disinclination to good, Augustinians have ever taught that this inability is absolute and entire. It is natural as well as moral. It is as complete, although different in kind, as the inability of the blind to see, of the deaf to hear, or of the dead to restore themselves to life.
Proof of the Doctrine
1. The first and most obvious argument in support of the Augustinian or Orthodox argument on this subject is the negative one. That is, the fact that the Scriptures nowhere attribute to fallen men ability to change their own hearts or to turn themselves unto God. As their salvation depends on their regeneration, if that work was within the compass of their own powers, it is incredible that the Bible should never rest the obligation of effecting it upon the sinner's ability. If he had the power to regenerate himself, we should expect to find the Scriptures affirming his possession of this ability, and calling upon him to exercise it. It may indeed be said that the very command to repent and believe implies the possession of everything that is requisite to obedience to the command. It does imply that those to whom it is addressed are rational creatures, capable of moral obligation, and that they are free moral agents. It implies nothing more. The command is nothing more than the authoritative declaration of what is obligatory upon those to whom it is addressed.
We are required to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. The obligation is imperative and constant. Yet no sane man can assert his own ability to make himself thus perfect. Notwithstanding therefore the repeated commands given in the Bible to sinners to love God with all the heart, to repent and believe the gospel, and live without sin, it remains true that the Scriptures nowhere assert or recognize the ability of fallen man to fulfil these requisitions of duty.
Express Declarations of the Scriptures
2. Besides this negative testimony of the Scriptures, we have the repeated and explicit declarations of the Word of God on this subject. Our Lord compares the relation between himself and his people to that which exists between the vine and its branches. The point of analogy is the absolute dependence common to both relations. "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.… Without me ye can do nothing." (John 15:4, 5.) We are here taught that Christ is the only source of spiritual life; that those out of Him are destitute of that life and of all ability to produce its appropriate fruits; and even with regard to those who are in Him, this ability is not of themselves, it is derived entirely from Him. In like manner the Apostle asserts his insufficiency (or inability) to do anything of himself. Our "sufficiency," he says, "is of God." (2 Cor. 3:5.) Christ tells the Jews (John 6:44), "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." This is not weakened or explained away by his saying in another place, "Ye will not come to me that ye might have life." The penitent and believing soul comes to Christ willingly. He wills to come. But this does not imply that he can of himself produce that willingness. The sinner wills not to come; but that does not prove that coming is in the power of his will. He cannot have the will to come to the saving of his soul unless he has a true sense of sin, and a proper apprehension of the person, the character and the work of Christ, and right affections towards Him. How is he to get these? Are all these complex states of mind, this knowledge, these apprehensions, and these affections subject to the imperative power
of the will? In Rom. 8:7, the Apostle says, "The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Those who are "in the flesh," are distinguished from those who are "in the Spirit." The former are the unrenewed, men who are in a state of nature, and of them it is affirmed that they cannot please God. Faith is declared to be the gift of God, and yet without faith, we are told it is impossible that we should please God. (Heb. 11:6.) In 1 Cor. 2:14, it is said, "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." The natural man is distinguished from the spiritual man. The latter is one in whom the Holy Spirit is the principle of life and activity, or, who is under the control of the Spirit; the former is one who is under the control of his own fallen nature, in whom there is no principle of life and action but what belongs to him as a fallen creature. Of such a man the Apostle asserts, first, that he does not receive the things of the Spirit, that is, the truths which the Spirit has revealed; secondly, that they are foolishness to him; thirdly, that he cannot know them; and fourthly, that the reason of this inability is the want of spiritual discernment, that is, of that apprehension of the nature and truth of divine things which is due to the inward teaching or illumination of the Holy Ghost. This passage therefore not only asserts the fact of the sinner's inability, but teaches the ground or source of it. It is no mere aversion or disinclination, but the want of true knowledge. No man can see the beauty of a work of art without æsthetic discernment; and no man, according to the Apostle, can see the truth and beauty of spiritual things without spiritual discernment. Such is the constant representation of Scripture. Men are everywhere spoken of and regarded not only as guilty and polluted, but also as helpless.
Involved in the Doctrine of Original Sin
3. The doctrine of the sinner's inability is involved in the Scriptural doctrine of original sin. By the apostasy of man from God he not only lost the divine image and favour, but sunk into a state of spiritual
death. The Bible and reason alike teach that God is the life of the soul; his favour, and communion with Him, are essential not only to happiness but also to holiness. Those who are under his wrath and curse and are banished from his presence, are in outer darkness. They have no true knowledge, no desire after fellowship with a Being who to them is a consuming fire. To the Apostle it appears as the greatest absurdity and impossibility that a soul out of favour with God should be holy. This is the fundamental idea of his doctrine of sanctification. Those who are under the law are under the curse, and those who are under the curse are absolutely ruined. It is essential, therefore, to holiness that we should be delivered from the law and restored to the favour of God before any exercise of love or any act of true obedience can be performed or experienced on our part. We are free from sin only because we are not under the law, but under grace. The whole of the sixth and seventh chapters of the Epistle to the Romans is devoted to the development of this principle. To the Apostle the doctrine that the sinner has ability of himself to return to God, to restore to his soul the image of God, and live a holy life, must have appeared as thorough a rejection of his theory of salvation as the doctrine that we are justified by works. His whole system is founded on the two principles that, being guilty, we are condemned, and can be justified only on the ground of the righteousness of Christ; and, being spiritually dead, no objective presentation of the truth, no authoritative declarations of the law, no effort of our own can originate spiritual life, or call forth any spiritual exercise. Being justified freely and restored to the divine favour, we are then, and only then, able to bring forth fruit unto God. "Ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." (Rom. 7:4–6.) This view of the matter necessarily implies that the natural state of fallen men is one of entire helplessness and inability. They are "utterly indisposed,
disabled, and made opposite to all good." The Bible, therefore, as we have already seen, uniformly represents men in their natural state since the fall as blind, deaf, and spiritually dead; from which state they can no more deliver themselves than one born blind can open his own eyes, or one corrupting in the grave can restore himself to life.
The Necessity of the Spirit's Influence
4. The next argument on this subject is derived from what the Scriptures teach of the necessity and nature of the Spirit's influence in regeneration and sanctification. If any man will take a Greek Concordance of the New Testament, and see how often the words Πνεῦμα and Τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον are used by the sacred writers, he will learn how prominent a part the Holy Spirit takes in saving men, and how hopeless is the case of those who are left to themselves. What the Scriptures clearly teach as to this point is, (1.) That the Holy Spirit is the source of spiritual life and all its exercises; that without his supernatural influence we can no more perform holy acts than a dead branch, or a branch separated from the vine can produce fruit. (2.) That in the first instance (that is, in regeneration) the soul is the subject and not the agent of the change produced. The Spirit gives life, and then excites and guides all its operations; just as in the natural world God gives sight to the blind, and then light by which to see, and objects to be seen, and guides and sustains all the exercises of the power of vision which He has bestowed. (3.) That the nature of the influence by which regeneration, which must precede all holy exercises, is produced, precludes the possibility of preparation or coöperation on the part of the sinner. Some effects are produced by natural causes, others by the simple volition or immediate efficiency of God. To this latter class belong creation, miracles, and regeneration. (4.) Hence the effect produced is called a new creature, a resurrection, a new birth. These representations are designed to teach the utter impotence and entire dependence of the sinner. Salvation is not of him that wills nor of him who runs, but of God who showeth mercy, and who works in us to will and to do according
to his own good pleasure. These are all points to be more fully discussed hereafter. It is enough in this argument to say that the doctrines of the Bible concerning the absolute necessity of grace, or the supernatural influence of the Spirit, and of the nature and effects of that influence, are entirely inconsistent with the doctrine that the sinner is able of himself to perform any holy act.
The Argument from Experience
5. This is a practical question. What a man is able to do is best determined not by à priori reasoning, or by logical deductions from the nature of his faculties, but by putting his ability to the test. The thing to be done is to turn from sin to holiness; to love God perfectly and our neighbour as ourselves; to perform every duty without defect or omission, and keep ourselves from all sin of thought, word, or deed, of heart or life. Can any man do this? Does any man need argument to convince him that he cannot do it? He knows two things as clearly and as surely as he knows his own existence: first, that he is bound to be morally perfect, to keep all God's commands, to have all right feelings in constant exercise as the occasion calls for them, and to avoid all sin in feeling as well as in act; and, secondly, that he can no more do this than he can raise the dead. The metaphysician may endeavour to prove to the people that there is no external world, that matter is thought; and the metaphysician may believe it, but the people, whose faith is determined by the instincts and divinely constituted laws of their nature, will retain their own intuitive convictions. In like manner the metaphysical theologian may tell sinners that they can regenerate themselves, can repent and believe, and love God perfectly, and the theologian may, by a figure of speech, be said to believe it; but the poor sinners know that it is not true. They have tried a thousand times, and would give a thousand worlds could they accomplish the work, and make themselves saints and heirs of glory by a volition, or by the exercise of their own powers, whether transient or protracted.
It is universally admitted, because a universal fact of consciousness, that the feelings and affections are not under the control of the will. No man can love what is hateful to him, or hate what he delights in, by any exercise of his self-determining power. Hence the philosophers, with Kant, pronounce the command to love, an absurdity, as sceptics declare the command to believe, absurd. But the foolishness of men is the wisdom of God. It is right that we should be required to love God and believe his Word, whether the exercise of love and faith be under the control of our will or not. The only way by which this argument from the common consciousness of men can be evaded, is by denying that feeling has any moral character; or by assuming that the demands of the law are accommodated to the ability of the agent. If he cannot love holiness, he is not bound to love it. If he cannot believe all the gospel, he is required to believe only what he can believe, what he can see to be true in the light of his own reason. Both these assumptions, however, are contrary to the intuitive convictions of all men, and to the express declarations of the Word of God. All men know that moral character attaches to feelings as well as to purposes or volitions; that benevolence as a feeling is right and malice as a feeling is wrong. They know with equal certainty that the demands of right are immutable, that the law of God cannot lower itself to the measure of the power of fallen creatures. It demands of them nothing that exceeds the limitations of their nature as creatures; but it does require the full and constant, and therefore perfect, exercise of those powers in the service of God and in accordance with his will. And this is precisely what every fallen rational human being is fully persuaded he cannot do. The conviction of inability, therefore, is as universal and as indestructible as the belief of existence, and all the sophisms of metaphysical theologians are as impotent as the subtleties of the idealist or pantheist. Any man or set of men, any system of philosophy or of theology which attempts to stem the great stream of human consciousness is certain to be swept down into the abyss of oblivion or destruction.
Conviction of Sin
There is another aspect of this argument which deserves to be considered. What is conviction of sin? What are the experiences of those whom the Spirit of God brings under that conviction? The answer to these questions may be drawn from the Bible, as for example the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, from the records of the inward life of the people of God in all ages, and from every believer's own religious experience. From all these sources it may be proved that every soul truly convinced of sin is brought to feel and acknowledge, (1.) That he is guilty in the sight of God, and justly exposed to the sentence of his violated law. (2.) That he is utterly polluted and defiled by sin; that his thoughts, feelings, and acts are not what conscience or the divine law can approve; and that it is not separate, transient acts only by which he is thus polluted, but also that his heart is not right, that sin exists in him as a power or a law working in him all manner of evil. And, (3.) That he can make no atonement for his guilt, and that he cannot free himself from the power of sin; so that he is forced to cry out, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death! This sense of utter helplessness, of absolute inability, is as much and as universally an element of genuine conviction as a sense of guilt or the consciousness of defilement. It is a great mercy that the theology of the heart is often better than the theology of the head.
6. The testimony of every man's consciousness is confirmed by the common consciousness of the Church and by the whole history of our race. Appeal may be made with all confidence to the prayers, hymns, and other devotional writings of the people of God for proof that no conviction is more deeply impressed on the hearts of all true Christians than that of their utter helplessness and entire dependence upon the grace of God. They deplore their inability to love their Redeemer, to keep themselves from sin, to live a holy life in any degree adequate to their own convictions of their obligations. Under this inability they humble themselves. They never plead it as an excuse or palliation; they recognize it as the fruit and evidence of the corruption of their nature derived as a sad inheritance from their first parents. They refer with one voice, whatever there is of good in
them, not to their own ability, but to the Holy Spirit. Every one adopts as expressing the inmost conviction of his heart, the language of the Apostle, "Not I, but the grace of God which was with me." As this is the testimony of the Church so also it is the testimony of all history. The world furnishes no example of a self-regenerated man. No such man exists or ever has existed; and no man ever believed himself to be regenerated by his own power. If what men can do is to be determined by what men have done, it may safely be assumed that no man can change his own heart, or bring himself to repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. An ability which has never in the thousands of millions of our race accomplished the desired end, even if it existed, would not be worth contending for. There is scarcely a single doctrine of the Scriptures either more clearly taught or more abundantly confirmed by the common consciousness of men, whether saints or sinners, than the doctrine that fallen man is destitute of all ability to convert himself or to perform any holy act until renewed by the almighty power of the Spirit of God.
Objections
1. The most obvious and plausible objection to this doctrine is the old one so often considered already, namely, that it is inconsistent with moral obligation. A man, it is said, cannot be justly required to do any thing for which he has not the requisite ability. The fallacy of this objection lies in the application of this principle. It is self-evidently true in one sphere, but utterly untrue in another. It is true that the blind cannot justly be required to see, or the deaf to hear. A child cannot be required to understand the calculus, or an uneducated man to read the classics. These things belong to the sphere of nature. The inability which thus limits obligation arises out of the limitations which God has imposed on our nature. The principle in question does not apply in the sphere of morals and religion, when the inability arises not out of the limitation, but out of the moral corruption of our nature. Even in the sphere of religion there is a bound set to obligation by the capacity of the agent. An infant cannot
be expected or required to have the measure of holy affections which fills the souls of the just made perfect. It is only when inability arises from sin and is removed by the removal of sin, that it is consistent with continued obligation. And as it has been shown from Scripture that the inability of the sinner to repent and believe, to love God and to lead a holy life, does not arise from the limitation of his nature as a creature (as is the case with idiots or brutes); nor from the want of the requisite faculties or capacity, but simply from the corruption of our nature, it follows that it does not exonerate him from the obligation to be and to do all that God requires. This, as shown above, is the doctrine of the Bible and is confirmed by the universal consciousness of men, and especially by the experience of all the people of God. They with one voice deplore their helplessness and their perfect inability to live without sin, and yet acknowledge their obligation to be perfectly holy.
We are responsible for external acts, because they depend on our volitions. We are responsible for our volitions because they depend on our principles and feelings; and we are responsible for our feelings and for those states of mind which constitute character, because (within the sphere of morals and religion) they are right or wrong in their own nature. The fact that the affections and permanent and even immanent states of the mind are beyond the power of the will does not (as has been repeatedly shown in these pages), remove them out of the sphere of moral obligation. As this is attested by Scripture and by the general judgment of men, the assumed axiom that ability limits obligation in the sphere of morals cannot be admitted.
Moral obligation being founded upon the possession of the attributes of a moral agent, reason, conscience, and will, it remains unimpaired so long as these attributes remain. If reason be lost all responsibility for character or conduct ceases. If the consciousness of the difference between right and wrong, the capacity to perceive moral distinctions does not exist in a creature or does not belong to its nature, that creature is not the subject of moral obligation; and in like manner if
he is not an agent, is not invested with the faculty of spontaneous activity as a personal being, he ceases, so far as his conscious states are concerned, to be responsible for what he is or does. Since the Scriptural and Augustinian doctrine admits that man since the fall retains his reason, conscience, and will, it leaves the grounds of responsibility for character and conduct unimpaired.
It does not weaken the Motives to Exertion
2. Another popular objection to the Scriptural doctrine on this subject is, that it destroys all rational grounds on which rests the use of the means of grace. If we cannot accomplish a given end, why should we use the means for its accomplishment? So the farmer might say, If I cannot secure a harvest, why should I cultivate my fields? In every department of human activity the result depends on the coöperation of causes over which man has no control. He is expected to use the means adapted to the desired end, and trust for the coöperation of other agencies without which his own efforts are of no avail. The Scriptural grounds on which we are bound to use the means of grace are, (1.) The command of God. This of itself is enough. If there were no apparent adaptation of the means to the end, and no connection which we could discover between them, the command of God would be a sufficient reason and motive for their diligent use. There was no natural adaptation in the waters of the Jordan to heal the leprosy, or in those of the pool of Siloam to restore sight to the blind. It had, however, been fatal folly on the part of Naaman to refuse on that account to obey the command to bathe himself seven times; and in the blind man to refuse to wash in the pool as Jesus directed. (2.) If the command of God is enough even when there is no apparent connection between the means and the end, much more is it enough when the means have a natural adaptation to the end. We can see such adaptation in the department of nature, and it is no less apparent in that of grace. There is an intimate connection between truth and holiness, as between sowing the grain and reaping the harvest. Man sows but God gives the increase in the one case as well as in the other. (3.) There is not only
this natural adaptation of the means of grace to the end to be accomplished, but in all ordinary cases, the end is not attained otherwise than through the use of those means. Men are not saved without the truth. Those who do not seek fail to find. Those who refuse to ask do not receive. This is as much the ordinary course of the divine administration in the kingdom of grace, as in the kingdom of nature. (4.) There is not only this visible connection between the means of grace and the salvation of the soul, as a fact of experience, but the express promise of God that those who seek shall find, that those who ask shall receive, and that to those who knock it shall be opened. More than this cannot be rationally demanded. It is more than is given to the men of the world to stimulate them in their exertions to secure wealth or knowledge. The doctrine of inability, therefore, does not impair the force of any of the motives which should determine sinners to use all diligence in seeking their own salvation in the way which God has appointed.
The Doctrine does not encourage Delay
3. Still another objection is everywhere urged against this doctrine. It is said that it encourages delay. If a man believes that he cannot change his heart, cannot repent and believe the gospel, he will say, "I must wait God's time. As He gives men a new heart, as faith and repentance are his gifts, I must wait until He is pleased to bestow those gifts on me." No doubt Satan does tempt men thus to argue and thus to act, as he tempts them in other ways to egregious folly. The natural tendency of the doctrine in question, however, is directly the reverse. When a man is convinced that the attainment of a desirable end is beyond the compass of his own powers, he instinctively seeks help out of himself. If ill, if he knows he cannot cure himself, he sends for a physician. If persuaded that the disease is entirely under his own control, and especially if any metaphysician could persuade him that all illness is an idea, which can be banished by a volition, then it would be folly in him to seek aid from abroad. The blind, the deaf, the leprous, and the maimed who were on earth when Christ was present in the flesh, knew that they could not heal
themselves, and therefore they went to Him for help. No more souldestroying doctrine could well be devised than the doctrine that sinners can regenerate themselves, and repent and believe just when they please. Those who really embrace such a doctrine would never apply to the only source whence these blessings can in fact be obtained. They would be led to defer to the last moment of life a work which was entirely in their own hands and which could be accomplished in a moment. A miser on his death-bed may by a volition give away all his wealth. If a sinner could as easily change his own heart, he would be apt to cleave to the world as the miser to his wealth, till the last moment. All truth tends to godliness; all error to sin and death. As it is a truth both of Scripture and of experience that the unrenewed man can do nothing of himself to secure his salvation, it is essential that he should be brought to a practical conviction of that truth. When thus convinced, and not before, he seeks help from the only source whence it can be obtained.