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ORIGINAL SIN AS PRIVATION
An Inquiry into a Theology of Sin and Sanctification
by
Leon O. Hynson
In the theological synopsis of his excellent work on Arminius, 1 Carl Bangs points out the resistance of James Arminius to the classic Augustinian and Reformation formulation of the doctrine of original sin. Arguing that the doctrine of universal sinfulness was best formulated in terms of deprivation rather than depravity, Arminius sought a theological alternative to the standard Augustinian position of sin as the result of concupiscence. Augustine, especially in his conflict with Pelagius in the fifth century, had bought intensively into neo-Platonist and Manichaean distortions of the Judeo-Christian doctrine of creation and its high valuation of the material order. These religious philosophies related the body to evil. For Plato evil is a distortion of being and the body an example of that evil, particularly in its sensuality.
Augustine concluded that the passion which accompanies sexual intercourse is the continuing source of sinful pride and depravity in every life. While it may be argued that use of the genetic motif does not require an ontological view of original sin it is difficult to acquit the Augustinian view of that inference. By interpreting sexual passion as concupiscence-the ascendancy of the senses over reasons2-Augustine made possible the physical and ontological associations which accompany his interpretation of original sin. A resulting suspicion of the flesh and sexuality has fostered guilt and maladjustment for many.
While Augustine proposed other views of original sin such as pride and perverted love, these views are best seen as secondary to his major definition.
James Arminius was informed concerning this classical formula through his Reformed roots. The Calvinists expressed their doctrine through several vehicles-the Gallican Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and Swiss (Helvetic) Confessions. The definitions are consistent. Original sin is defined in Heidelberg as coming from Adam and Eve "whereby our nature became so corrupt that we are all conceived and born in sin." A distinction is made between "inborn" and "actual" sins (Q.10). The Gallican Confession (1559) prepared by Calvin and de Chandieu, his pupil, describes sin as "an hereditary evil." It further states that in Adam's person "we have been deprived of all good things" (Article X). In the Belgic Confession (1561) sin is described as a corruption of the whole nature resulting in the loss of all of "his [man's] excellent gifts which he had received from God, and only retained a few remains thereof...." Original sin is an "hereditary disease, wherewith infants themselves are infected in their mother's womb." It is also likened to a root which grows up into sinful branches. The Belgic Confession suggests that the sense of this corruption should create a sighing for deliverance from the body of death.
The Thirty-nine Articles employ the language of the Augsburg Confession in describing original sin as "a fault and corruption" of the nature of everyone, as an infection remaining in the regenerate. It concludes (Article IX) by stating "that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin."
Dort employed the genetic analogy to argue that "a corrupt stock produced a corrupt offspring," to insist that all have derived corruption "by the propagation of a vicious nature," or to point out that all are "prone to evil." Dort was written after Arminius' death (d. 1609).
A review of these major confessional positions suggests certain key analogies by which original sin is described:
1. Genetic-such words as propagation, corrupt stock, conception and birth, inborn, hereditary, root.
2. Disease-hereditary disease, corrupt infection, vicious, concupiscence.
3. Descent-fall.
4. Flaw-bent to sin, prone to evil.
5. Deprivation-loss.
In view of the consistency of genetic metaphors in these Reformed decrees (which Wesley later buys into), it is desirable to seek out the reasons and sources for the Arminian diversion. Admittedly, the Gallican Confession could be a key with its focus upon deprivation of "all good things" (Article X). The Belgic Confession also stresses loss of all "excellent gifts."
Bangs' discussion sets forth the importance of the idea of privatio in Arminius' doctrine of sin. In the fall man "deserved to be deprived of the primeval righteousness ... of the image of God...." Adam's sin entailed "the withdrawing [privatio] of that primitive righteousness and holiness which, because they are the effects of the Holy Spirit. . ., ought not to have remained in him...."3
According to Arminius actual sins are committed because of the corruption of nature, a result of the privation consequent upon original sin. God's covenant with Adam and Eve, through their obedience, would result in God's gifts being passed on to their posterity. But in disobedience they could not perpetuate those blessings, being unworthy. Therefore, wrote Arminius:
This was the reason why all men, who were to be propagated from them in a natural way, became . . . devoid [vacui] of this gift of the Holy Spirit or original righteousness. This punishment usually receives the appellation of "a privation of the image of God," and "original sin."4
However, he is not content to rest on this point until he asks whether it is enough to define original sin in terms of absence or privation. Is there some contrary quality (some metaphysical substance or positive evil), which more adequately describes original sin? Arminius states that
. . . we think it much more probable, that this absence of original righteousness, only, is original sin itself, as being that which alone is sufficient to commit and produce any actual sins whatsoever."
Arminius employs the same language of the Gallican Confession (Art. IX and X) in his disputation "On the First Sin of the First Man" when he writes that man was "placed in a state of integrity" but in the fall was "deprived of the primeval righteousness."
The Belgic Confession, prepared for the Churches of Flanders and the Netherlands, contains some motifs that are like the Gallican, but lacks specific allusions to integrity and privation. Further, it gives a straightforward statement about sin as hereditary disease, infection, and as a root which produces actual sin. The themes of the Gallican Confession are more apparent in Arminius than those of the Belgic.
SOURCES
We must recognize that privation motifs do not originate with the sixteenth century. Without doubt, Augustine developed a conception of privation of the good. In the Enchiridion, a summary statement of his mature theology (written 421 A.D.), he states his "basic principle:" 5
The cause of evil is the defection of the will of a being who is mutably good from the Good who is immutable.
. . . This was the primal lapse of the rational creature, that is, his first privation of the good. In train of this there crept in, even without his willing it, ignorance for the right things to do and also an appetite for noxious things. 6
In The Nature of the Good (De Natura Boni) (404 A.D.) Augustine teaches that God is the Supreme Good and that all good things derive from Him, all natures, measure, form or order. Evil i8 a corruption of these. Where there is good, there is being. If the good should be totally consumed, there could be no evil. Without the good there is no existence. Sin is not from God. Sin vitiates nature, i.e., what God has made. Sin is an abandonment of the better things. "The deed is the evil thing, not the thing of which the sinner makes an evil use. Evil is making a bad use of a good thing." 7
If Augustine emphasizes privation as the definition of evil, let it not be concluded that he offers a Pelagian alternative of the innocence of human nature. Indeed, consequent upon the fall of Adam, the entire race became corrupt and guilty. Because of original sin, the vitiating and corruption of human nature, everyone will misuse the good. The will is corrupted by original sin so that we freely will to do evil. But this "freedom" is the freedom of self-love, not the true freedom which centers upon God. 8
Anselm, one of the next great Christian theologians, defined original sin as the privation of justice (absentia debitae iustitiae). Because all sin is injustice, and original sin is strictly sin, then the latter is simply injustice. Original sin is "the absence of the justice we ought to have." 9 St. Thomas Aquinas further developed the notion of original sin as the privation of original justice, teaching that original justice effects the submission of reason and the will to God, a submission caused by sanctifying grace. Original justice included sanctifying grace. "In Adam original justice was conferred on human nature and was to be passed on by propagation." 10 In the fall, the inner harmony of man's nature, grounded in his original submission to God, was forfeited. This privation of original justice is total; it is wholly lost.
St. Thomas contends that original sin is "the privation of original justice." But it is more: the disorder of the disposition of the soul, or "second nature." "It is a corrupt habit." By habit, Thomas does not mean an active power which inclines us toward a certain way. It is not a positive inclination toward evil. Original sin results in such an inclination not directly, but indirectly, through depriving us of the original justice which would have prevented disorderly actions. "11
This Thomist conception of the privation of original justice, including sanctifying grace, brings us closer to the Arminian definition. Joseph Rickaby's comment that the privation of sanctifying grace is original sin 12 is equivalent to Arminius' view that the "absence of original righteousness," i.e., the privation of the Holy Spirit, "is original sin itself." 13 Thomas, however, seems to teach that original justice is not renewed by baptism. Baptism restores sanctifying grace which delivers from original sin. 14
Finally, as Vandervelde points out, the Jesuit Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) reaches the conclusion that "since the remedy for original sin is the sacrament of baptism, and since by this sacrament sanctifying grace is infused, original sin must entail the privation of sanctifying grace." 15 Bellarmine has described the corruption of nature as coming not from "the accession of any evil quality, but simply from the loss of a supernatural gift on account of Adam's sin." 16
In analyzing the thought of Augustine, Anselm, Thomas, and Bellarmine, an evident progression from Augustine's view of sin as the privation of the good to Thomas' and Bellarmine's conception of the loss of original justice or sanctifying grace is evident.
No essential difference between the definitions of Bellarmine and Arminius seems apparent. It is inconceivable that Arminius arrived at his position in a vacuum. Bellarmine (1542-1621) and Arminius (1560-1609) were contemporaries. Bellarmine was a powerful anti-Protestant figure whose ideas were largely anathema to the Calvinists. The moderate Calvinist, Junius, was familiar with his theology, especially the Controversies, and sharply criticized them. 17 In 1586 Arminius visited Italy and was viciously, but falsely, attacked by some Dutch Calvinists for consorting with Bellarmine. Although the historical lines from Catholic thought to Arminius remain to be traced, it is not surprising that Arminius was accused of a flirtation with Bellarmine. Less understandable is the accusation of Pelagianism. Arminius considers privation or the absence of the Holy Spirit both as the source of actual sins, and as the expression of man's radical alienation from God. From this state only grace may free mankind. 18
Moving from the important but elusive problem of historical traces, we look toward the Methodist heritage which was joined to Arminian theology. The evidence suggests that Arminius enunciates a more adequate theology of original sin than Wesley and some of his successors. A negative, privative motif dominates Arminius while the 18th and l9th Century Methodists usually denominate original sin in terms of positive corruption, the apparent addition of an ontic degradation. Arminius never doubts the corruption of every human being, but he expresses it in ethical and relational categories. Fallen man is without original righteousness, or the Holy Spirit (or sanctifying grace). To say that man is without the Spirit/sanctifying grace/original righteousness is not identical with the assessment that man is depraved, corrupt, diseased or degraded. The language of Arminius leads us to seek the soteriological answer in relational terms. That of the Reformers and Wesley requires a solution expressed more in ontological language.
Arminius believed, according to Bangs, "that the effect of the depravity language could be gained in terms of a simple deprivation." 19 Is there any indication in Arminius that the privation emphasis is incomplete requiring another theological step, i.e., description of the consequence of actual sin as depravity; a deprivation leading to depravity? Does the deprived person become depraved as the result of his actual sins? (Or are actual sins the result of a depraved nature, the traditional Reformed and Wesleyan view?)
Arminius' definition of sanctification leads to the conclusion that deprivation results in depravity. Expressed in other terms, autonomous man lives upon (or out of) his own resources, without the Spirit. With his entire focus being himself, his words and deeds are selfish, curved in to himself. Living autonomously man must manifest a corrupted life. This more psychological conception is consistent with Arminius' relational definition. Sanctification is:
". . . a gracious act of God by which he purifies man who is a sinner and yet a believer from the darkness of ignorance, from indwelling sin [peccatum inhabitante] and from its lusts or desires and imbues him with the Spirit of knowledge, righteousness and holiness." 20
If for Arminius deprivation eventuates in the commission of actual sins resulting in depravity, his is a notion of depravity much less starkly pictured than Calvin's or Beza's. This is alarming for some Calvinists (and some Evangelicals) who must attribute the worst to man in order to adequately ascribe glory to God. The question is: Is it necessary to employ "worm" or "dung" language to describe sinful man vis-a-vis God? Because man is lost, does that require us to pile up a mountain of negative adjectives to bury him?
WESLEY
When we move to Wesley there is a question about his treatment of original sin. Nothing in Wesley approximates the relational and ethical definition found in Arminius. In his attempt to explain the transmission of sin, Wesley steers around Augustine's concept of CONCUPISCENCE, but arrives at a similar destination by emphasizing "inbred" sin. This use of genetic analogies leads Wesley toward a metaphysic of sin. Sangster has criticized Wesley for interpreting original sin as a "rotten tooth." 21 Mildred Wynkoop, on the other hand, attempts to place Wesley in the Augustinian stream which focused on sin as perverted love, 22 which is a relational category. Robert Chiles accents the diversity of interpretation in scholarly assessments of Wesley's view of sin. 23 Wynkoop's interpretation is particularly attractive because Wesley's most consistent definition of sanctification is love; love for God and neighbor. The appropriate theological corollary is the definition of original sin as self-love. This correlation of problem and solution would suggest the following theological parallels:
Problem Solution
1. If sin is described as DISEASE, then the saving answer is HEALING.
2. If sin is described as INBRED, then the saving answer is REGENERATION
3. If sin is described as SELF-LOVE, then the saving answer is HOLY LOVE.
4. If sin is described as ROOT, then the saving answer is ERADICATION.
5. If sin is described as ALIENATION, then the saving answer is RESTORATION.
6. If sin is described as POLLUTION, then the saving answer is CLEANSING.
The point is that we require a solution which parallels the problem. If sin is described theologically as a disease, then we need to provide a theological parallel to describe the solution, i.e., healing. It makes no theological sense to offer to eradicate an alienation. Wesley's primary definitions of sin and sanctification do not mesh well. Wynkoop's interpretation provides such a correlation, but the question remains whether this is where Wesley's theology moves. Chiles interprets Wesley's view of sin thus: "Sin is not so much ontological degradation or demolition of human reality as it is illness or contagion; not so much biological and sub-personal distortion as it is an inversion of relationships involving motive and intention." 24
In the final analysis it must be said that Scripture employs many metaphors for describing sin. Wesley's immersion in the Bible is manifested in his use of analogies that may be described as relational, substantial, medical, psychological or ethical. No quarrel should be raised over the use of these varied metaphors. They are highly descriptive, graphic, physical and spiritual analogies. When David laments, "Surely I have been a sinner from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me" (Psalm 51:5), the message reaches his readers with clarity. An immediate identification with David's experience is achieved. The metaphor is a powerful illustration of the problem of sin, but it is a linguistic expression which must not be reified. When David's comment is given ontological status, sin is often traced to some positive fault in our genetic inheritance. Following this view of sin, sanctification becomes an uprooting, and eradication. The stumbling block in this view of sin involves the issue of apostasy or falling from grace. If sin is uprooted in the believer (a unitary rather than relational view of sin), how is it rooted again in the experience of apostasy? Once destroyed, how is it resurrected? Is it not more adequate to describe sin as a relational breakdown, to be corrected, as Arminius suggests, by the renewing of the Holy Spirit in regeneration? Relational theology avoids the Augustinian and Reformed associations of original sin with the body and sensuality. Psalm 51:5 is a powerful picture of sin, but we must not build an ontology of sin upon it. Titus 3:5 is suggestive of an adequate relational theology upon which we may build a systematic theology of sin.
THE METHODIST HERITAGE
Beyond Wesley in English and American theologians other nuances of thought concerning original sin are considered. Robert Chiles has traced the shift in several American and English Methodist theologies from Wesley's view of "sinful man" to Albert C. Knudson's emphasis on "moral man." Transitional figures were Richard Watson and John Miley.
Richard Watson (1781-1833) was the major systematic theologian of Methodism in the era following Wesley. In turn Thomas Ralston's Elements of Divinity, Luther Lee's Elements of Theology, Samuel Wakefield's System of Christian Theology, Miner Raymond's Systematic Theology, and to a degree, H. Orton Wiley's Christian Theology, followed Watson's lead in presenting and transmitting the idea of deprivation. All of these except Wiley were Methodists. Their views were supplemented by Thomas O. Summers' Systematic Theology, William Burt Pope's A Compendium of Christian Theology, Henry Clay Sheldon's System of Christian Doctrine, and Solomon J. Gamertsfelder's Systematic Theology . Gamertsfelder was a member of the Evangelical Association, founded by Jacob Albright, and Wiley was a minister of the Church of the Nazarene. All ten of these represented an essential effort to cast a Wesleyan theological structure.
Richard Watson's key work was shaped in the 1820's; Ralston's (1806-1891), in 1847; Raymond's (1811-1897), in 1877; Pope's (1822-1913), in 1875-76; Sheldon's (1845-1928), in 1903; Lee's (1800-1889), in 1853; Wakefield's in 1873; Summers' (1812-1882), in 1888, edited by John Tigeret; Gamertsfelder's (1851-1925), in 1921; and Wiley's (1877-c. 1961), in 1941.
Watson in nearly one hundred pages discusses the scriptural account of the fall and original sin. That the Scriptures detail "the natural and hereditary corruption of the human race, a commonly called original sin," Watson has no doubt. However, he rejects the suggestion that original sin consists in "a positive evil, infection, and taint . . . judicially infused into man's nature by God...." In support of this view he cites Arminius' "Private Disputation" where the heart of the privation theme is found. Watson argues "that positive evil and corruption may flow from a mere privation. . .," illustrating this from physical death wherein the privation of the "principle of life" produces all of the ingredients of death, including decomposition. This illustration is repeated by several of his followers. Watson cautions that deprivation must not be separated from depravation. 25
Following Arminius, Watson develops the concept of the privation of the Holy Spirit in man as the explanation for human sinfulness. Man could have avoided rebellion, but he did not. Then "the Spirit retired, and, the tide of sin once turned in, the mound of resistance being removed, it overflowed his whole nature. In this state of alienation from God men are born, with all these tendencies to evil, because the only controlling and sanctifying power, the presence of the Spirit, is wanting. 26
Chiles criticizes Watson's compromise of his Wesleyan heritage, claiming that Watson offers a "less virulent conception of depravity passively elicited by the withdrawal of the Spirit." Despite this, Chiles himself expressed a not so dissimilar view, lacking the privative motif, but approving a relational argument and a conception of sin as illness. 27
Moderate Realism -The Watson School
Thomas N. Ralston, Samuel Wakefield, and Miner Raymond represent the lineage of Richard Watson in Methodism. They follow Watson in the familiar repetition of sin as a "depravation arising from a deprivation." They are described as "moderate realists" because they stress the more moderate theme of privation while sharpening the depravation emphases.
Ralston, primary theologian of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, spoke of the "privation of moral good." While Watson spoke of depravity "arising" from deprivation, Ralston saw it "resulting" from privation, apparently a synonymous variation. No infusion of moral evil was necessary to account for the sinfulness of mankind, only the withdrawal of the Spirit. Ralston was particularly cautious about the concept of "total" depravity taken to mean human worthlessness, but used in the sense of the "absence of all positive good" it was acceptable.28
Miner Raymond rejects the concept of "total depravity" as ambiguous, and recasts the question in terms of man's "total helplessness" to save his own soul. "Total depravity" too often conveys the concept of man as "a dog run mad" or "a demon incarnate."
Raymond, like Watson and Ralston, emphasizes the idea of a deprivation which leads to depravation. Emphatically denying that original sin is "an entity, an actually existing thing, a created substance implanted in the human mind. . . ," he argues for the language of subtraction and addition. In the fall, man lost his relation with the Creator, and grieved the Spirit who withdrew. This is the deprivation or subtraction. Then the spirit of the Evil One took control. This was the addition, "an incoming of what was previously absent." In summary, he insists on the doctrine of the corruption of man's nature by sin, and the total inability of man to perform good works, unless God helps him.29
Mediate Realism
While the Watson "school" worked very closely with the Arminian definitions, sharpening the depravity language, a second group assumed more realistic leanings. They are identified as "mediate realists" for their preference of "depravity" as the realistic description of sin. Recognizing and using the privative focus of Arminius, they were unwilling to simply state with Arminius that privation is original sin. Therefore, in the depravation/deprivation formulation they chose the more realistic expression to emphasize man's total helplessness. They stayed closer to Wesley than to Arminius. If Watson influenced their theology, Wesley shaped it more.
Pope, Summers, Sheldon, and Wiley are the representatives of this position, with Lee on the borderline. Strictly speaking Lee comes closer to Wesley than any of these scholars. His writing almost entirely lacks the privation motif, like Wesley's, but stresses clearly the notion of inherent corruption, "natural bias" or "inclination" to evil. A strange phrase, "lapsed human nature," enters the discussion, which Lee evidently understands as a synonym for "bias."30 William Burt Pope belongs to the last quarter of the 19th century. He is a consistent follower of Wesley more than Watson. Pope uniquely refers to "the original sin" of the devil suggesting that "the link between the pride which caused his [Satan's] ruin and the transgression of our first parents was this: ye shall be as gods! Our sin is so to speak, a reflection or continuation of his."31
Original sin is set forth as "the absence of original righteousness and the bias to all evil. But these are one in the withdrawal of the Holy Ghost .. . ." Thus Pope sets the discussion in Arminian terms, emphasizing the loss of the Spirit as the loss of original righteousness. This theme is discussed under the rubric "Original Sin in Relation to the Second Adam." Man possessed an original righteousness prior to the fall as a "Free Gift." Upon the tragedy of the fall, God gave His Spirit back to the race as the Spirit of "enlightenment, striving, and conviction."32
While Pope gives some attention to the privative motif, he is more at home speaking of "a transmitted moral depravation or corruption," a "bias of human nature," or "hereditary depravity."33 Reference is made to those who interpret the fall to be "the loss of the Spirit as an essential element of human nature"; but he does not seriously pursue the question historically.34 His historical comment about Arminius and the Remonstrants says nothing about deprivation.
Thomas O. Summers taught theology at Vanderbilt, and followed Ralston as one of the M. E. Church, South's major thinkers. He edited a revised edition of Ralston's Elements. He was obviously aware of the Arminian influence on Ralston and in Methodism. On the question of original sin he quoted a "Reformed" Arminian statement that
"the free will of man toward the true good is not only wounded, maimed, infirm, bent, and [attenuatumJ weakened; but it is also [captivatum] imprisoned, destroyed, and lost, and its powers . . . debilitated and useless unless they be assisted by grace. - . ."35
When Summers quotes Arminius that the "absence alone of original righteousness is original sin itself," he hastens to remind his readers that Arminius also states; "since it alone is sufficient for the commission and production of every actual sin whatever." Thus Summers seeks to hold both negative (privation) and positive (depravity) language in balance in order to avoid weakening the Wesleyan approach. He heartily assents to the privation emphasis, but prefers the depravity metaphor.36
Original righteousness is not specifically defined but Summers does insist that the donum superadditum is inadequate, implying that righteousness or the presence of the Spirit is constitutive of God's creation of man in His own image.
Henry Clay Sheldon was professor of theology at Boston University and wrote his System of Christian Doctrine in 1903. Sheldon believed that original righteousness was a constituent in Adam. The Roman doctrine donum superadditum is rejected because it makes "what belongs to the very idea of a normal man a supplement or attachment."37
Sheldon raises strong objections to the definition of sin as negation or privation.
"So far from suggesting that it springs universally from lassitude of spirit, it is often associated with a powerful selfassertion.. . . Sin does not appear as a mere lack of a holy will, or a relaxing of the hold upon the good; it appears rather as a full-orbed will-power wrongly directed, and so includes a positive aspect."38
Sheldon here is expressing another version of the depravation from deprivation theme.
Although Chiles claims that Sheldon and Olin Curtis reflect a world akin to the evangelical liberalism of persons like Borden Parker Bowne or Albert C. Knudson,39 Sheldon's view of original sin is traditional. He defines it as "hereditary corruption." Affirming the definition of sin as selfishness, he concludes that heroic illustrations of "self-abandon" suggest the need for another term for sin.40 He does not shrink from depravity language.
H. Orton Wiley is the theologian of the Church of the Nazarene, with very broad influence in many Wesleyan-Arminian fellowships. A prominent teacher and college administrator, he made his most signal contribution in his three volume Christian Theology, published 1941. Nothing in the Wesleyan holiness heritage has come forth to replace it.
In his analysis of original righteousness, Wiley rejects the Catholic notion that holiness is something added to man's original constitution. He argues for the "holiness of man's nature by creation" including the immediate presence of the Spirit. Man was created holy; he was created in the image of God.
Original sin is defined in traditional terms as "inherited depravity," "a perverted or twisted nature," "pollution," "hereditary tendency," "morally depraved state." But like Watson, Ralston, or Raymond, Wiley concludes, from his analysis of the term "flesh" (sarx) (Romans 8:5,8, 9, 13; Galatians 5:24), that "the term flesh as used here, is representative of the fallen estate of mankind generally-not the destruction of any of its essential elements, but the deprivation of its original spiritual life, and hence the depravation of its tendency."41
Wiley is very specific in denying that depravity is a "physical entity or any other form of essential existence added to man's nature. It is rather, as its name implies, a deprivation of loss." It is "privatio, or a privation of the image of God." Original righteousness is lost. "Depravity is therefore 'a depravation arising from deprivation.' Connected with this deprivation is a positive evil also, which arises as a consequence of the loss of the image of God."42
The privative emphasis in Wiley, significant though it is, is overshadowed by the depravity motif. Intending to offer a balanced emphasis, Wiley focuses more strongly on consequence (depravity) than on cause (privation), more on the positive evil than on the absence of the Spirit. Lindstrom suggests that Wesley compares original sin to an evil root and specific sins to the fruit proceeding from the root.43 Wiley is more at home with Wesley, but he is not a mimic.
Reformed Realism
If the mediate realists employed the language of depravation more strenuously than Watson's "school," the "reformed realists," represented in S. J. Gamertsfelder,44 move to an extreme only approximated in Reformed theology. Gamertsfelder's position is unsophisticated and expresses a kinship with Augustine's concupiscence. Sharply rejecting the privation emphasis, his description of depravity and its universal presence lacks the careful bounds necessary to avoid confusion and error. Gamertsfelder writes: "Original sin is perpetuated by natural generation."
There is no need of resorting to any arbitrary imputation of Adam's sin or Adamic corruption to the race. Inborn sin is by natural generation.
He insists that this reality is no more mysterious than "the fact that life perpetuates itself."
"We know that in animal as well as in vegetable life some qualities and characteristics perpetuate themselves by natural generation. This truth forms the principle of all stock improvement. There is no reason why the principle should not apply in the moral realm. Anthropology teaches us that physical, mental, and moral qualities are perpetuated by natural generation. Therefore, we call the corruption of the race native depravity, Inborn or Original Sin.45
With this bold repetition of Augustine's ontology of sin, it is not difficult to see why Gamertsfelder rejects the privation emphasis. A brief comment allows that man in the fall was deprived, "a deprivation that in theology is technically called depravity."46 But he takes strong exception to the idea that "the absence of the good is badness." This will not suffice.
"Sin is more than mere want of being, it is not merely an absence of right. Moral evil is not merely a privation of the moral good, it is not merely a loss of Divine righteousness. - . . Sin is a positive force set up against God."47
Gamertsfelder's realism, starkly portrayed as it may be, was but the human picture. He balanced out his pessimism with an optimism of grace, emphasizing the promise of Christian perfection in the life of the believer.
Summary: Watson to Wiley
A review of the ten theologians who have been studied reveals virtual unanimity in the question of original sin.
1. All of them with the exception of Sheldon and Gamertsfelder give rather positive evaluation of the privation language found in Arminius. Watson, Ralston, Raymond, and Wakefield echo the Arminian teaching in strong terms. Watson's "Yea" becomes the "Amen" of the others.
2. All of these scholars qualify Arminius' concept. Thus they move beyond the more gentle description of Arminius to speak of original sin in terms of inherited depravity. The "depravation arising from deprivation" motif cited in Watson is found in Ralston, Raymond, Wakefield, Wiley, Sheldon, and Gamertsfelder. The last two along with Summers, Lee, and Pope portray original sin in more realistic terms, i.e., in the familiar pessimism of the Protestant creeds.
3. Most of these writers focus on the concept of original righteousness. Watson and his disciples, like Arminius, stress the equation of original righteousness and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Some of these-Summers, Lee and Sheldon-lack the pneumatological referent found in Bellarmine and Rahner, and in Watson's company. The doctrine of donum superadditum is acceptable to none. Throughout we recognize the position that the presence of the Holy Spirit or original righteousness is constitutive to the nature of man created in the image of God.
4. Many of these men questioned the language of "total depravity," but there is a general belief that properly defined this language is acceptable. Gamertsfelder stressed that "total" does not mean the de-humanization of mankind. It rather means that original sin influences everything we do: distorting our thoughts, perverting our passions, captivating our will, and preventing us from any good work, i.e., works of merit.
5. In general these men express a Wesleyan conception of sin as inherited or inbred. Their adoption of privation language is through Watson. Wesley therefore is modified by Arminius but the Wesleyan influence seems to remain dominant.
6. Everyone except Gamertsfelder carefully avoids language which may suggest that original sin is an entity or a thing. Gamertsfelder voices the view that has become the lingua franca of popular fundamentalism, i.e., that, as David expressed it, "in sin did my mother conceive me," interpreting sin in virtually physical or material terms.
7. Watson offers a worthy alternative to Roman Catholic attempts to explain why baptized (and thus regenerated) Christians still have depraved (deprived?) children. Watson argues that righteousness is a free gift given by God alone, not through any human generation.
IMPLICATIONS OF PRIVATION LANGUAGE
A. For a Christian Theology of the Fall.
The doctrine of the privation of original righteousness, so evident in the major theologians of the Methodist heritage, seems not to have influenced evangelical thinking to any great degree. The privative motif in hamartiology seems strange and new. To some it appears to be Pelagian. It is not. Others rightly insist that the concept be surrounded by the safeguards of orthodox emphases on depravity in order that theological balance be sustained. Whatever disagreements his views may have evoked, Armiius believed that his definition adequately summed up the problem of human sinfulness. To say that a person is depraved is to say that he is without the Spirit; to teach the privation of the Spirit is to say that man is corrupt.
Some theologians still insist on painting the blackest and most pathetic portrait of man possible. The linguistic heritage described by E. Gordon Rupp as the "pessimism of nature" rests on the Augustinian negation of human sexuality, the Reformed portrayal of the glory of God and a contrasting putdown of man as the dialectical requirement. If God is better praised and giorified by viewing man as a worm, then let man be vilified. In fact, such a demeaning of man, while it is intended to refer only to fallen man (and is not meant to describe human culture, e.g., art, music, literature, etc.), becomes a dominating picture in too much Reformed and Wesleyan theology. Sin is allowed to be so darkly pervasive in human experience that in practice it is accepted as a constitutive element in human nature. In reality, sin perverts human nature.
The doctrine of privation, however, permits no such view of human nature (nature is here the essential nature of man which in the fall is deprived of the divine Spirit as the sanctifying presence). Human nature is deprived of that which is its completeness, its wholeness. Without the Spirit we are unwhole, unhealthy, incomplete. Unlike much pathetic theology which speaks of the death of self, we accent not its death but its life. The crucifixion about which St. Paul speaks is the passing away of the autonomous "I" which is succeeded by the renewed or living "I." "I am crucified. I live." (Galatians 2:20). The essential "I" has never died; it has been deprived of its wholeness or fullness. The privation concept teaches that what I need is a renewed and completed essential self. This deprived self is made whole in the renewing of the Holy Spirit; when the righteousness of God, lost in the fall, is restored. Then my relationships are controlled by the "anchored I" rather than by the autonomous "I." The incompleteness of the autonomous self is now swallowed up in spiritual fullness.
In privation theology sin is not a constitutive aspect of fallen human nature. Sin is not attached to our nature as an alien substitute in the vacuum of lost righteousness. Sin is deprived human nature acting out of itself, rather than out of the Spirit. Without the Spirit, every human expression is bent; bent away from God and toward self.
Some theologies have taken the position that fallen man, even when justified, has two natures. That is a logical inference of a theology which reifies sin, making it an alien entity or presence. The "two natures" view is certainly inconsistent with the theology of privation, but more importantly cannot be squared with the New Testament. While Paul's seventh chapter to the Romans is used to justify this kind of psychological and spiritual schizophrenia, the opening verses of chapter eight show Paul's contrast between life lived under the law of sin and death and life under the law of "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus." Two natures? No! It is human nature, created by God, but in the fall become deprived; the human spirit minus the Holy Spirit; human nature without the fulness that grants or bestows a unity of man and God.
Arminius' privation concept does not detract from the worth of man. While in no sense does the view deny the lostness and inability of man, it offers a superior construct for recognizing the value of this human existence deprived as it is. Having lost the spirit of God, man still mirrors the divine glory. While we must continue to recognize the importance of the salvific question, which proceeds upon the recognition of man's lostness, we must also insist upon the importance of the creational issue. Man after all is the creature made a "little lower than God" (Psalm 8).
B. For the Wesleyan Doctrine of Sanctification
C.
How does the Arminian theme strengthen the Wesleyan approach to sanctification? Does it provide a more relational framework to replace the categories of "substance" which have been derived from the Roman Catholic scholasticism of the Middle Ages?48 Relational categories are more meaningful in our time than the substance emphases of Augustine or Thomas Aquinas. Or, another question: Does the Arminian emphasis indicate a reconstruction in the doctrine of sanctification?
This analysis of ten theologians whose views are essentially Wesleyan lead to the conclusion that a Wesleyan extension of the privation theme occurs at their hands. Arminius' position, in which depravity language is muted, is sharpened from privation to "depravation arising from deprivation." This sharpening is more in harmony with the traditional Wesleyan theology of sanctification which asserts that inbred depravity remains in the believer and that a second work follows the first work, i.e., sanctification follows the new birth. In that second moment, all depravity is cleansed from man's nature. A strong strand of the holiness movement has argued that sin remains as an alien root in the believer and that only an eradication of that core solves the problem of inherited sin.
Privation theology, even that variation enunciated as "depravation arising from deprivation," does not require the root of sin/eradication emphasis. The heart of the sin problem is privation; the consequence is depravity. The saving solution is not uprooting sin, but the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Recognizing that the Spirit is restored in regeneration, it is understood that this is an incipient sanctification, not the full restoration of the wholeness God has in store for the new believer. The outworking of this new life is toward the perfection (wholeness) of love.
Is the Wesleyan focus on the need for a second stage in the sequence of salvation undercut by the use of privation theology? No! The rationale for this negative answer proceeds upon the sequential character of salvation in the scripture. Most Protestant theologies recognize that regeneration is a beginning, a new birth. It is not the goal or the end of the race. In some sectors of the church, a desire for greater precision or datedness has led to strong emphasis on numerical structures; hence the language "second work of grace." Elsewhere there is an accent upon a developmental model, as illustrated by the child, the young man, and the father of I John 2. Some in an another part of the church are so impressed by the staying power of sin that they can only recommend chipping away at the monolith until death. Whatever the expectation, there is unanimity in the judgment that sanctification, while beginning in regeneration, is either a crisis and a process, or perhaps only a process, which follows the new birth. It does not precede the gracious experience of the new birth.
Employing privation theology, it is argued that in regeneration there is a renewing of the Holy Spirit, followed by the insistent claim of Christ upon His followers to be consecrated to a total love. In the movement of the spiritual life, the believer, living, as a result of regeneration, in the consciousness that he is a son of God, realizes a deepening sense of God's call to him to dedicate his ransomed being to God completely. This is not the surrender of the rebel, but the offering of the sacrifice of love. The requirement of total love-loving God with the whole self and the neighbor as oneself-is something the unconverted person could never comprehend. Now he is a new creation, through surrender and faith. To this point in his pilgrimage he has no framework for understanding the call to full consecration which the Lord now begins to press upon him. Now he faces a crisis of love, a crisis which is as significant as the crisis of the new birth. In the experience of the new birth the supplicant repents and believes on Jesus Christ. Now a renewed man, a son of God, he consecrates his whole life to God. This is the ordo salutis: first, dropping the arms of rebellion; then, offering oneself in love.
The crisis of love entails an intentioned full obedience to Christ's cornmandments. "If you love me, keep my commandments," Jesus taught. Obedient love-agape-is a lifelong challenge and response, based on a crucial center. While there are those daily decisions or crises in every life which test our commitment, there will be that one comprehensive epoch which gives all of these separate moments their cohesion. Otherwise the Christian life is an existential flux. There is, I claim, such a singular epoch or moment. Therefore it is right to stress the cruciality of the "second" level or sequence of the Christian life; the crisis of total dedication and fullness. Christian perfection or perfect love is the center of that circumference called Christian faith and life.
Nothing in this discussion should suggest or imply that there needs to be a great gap in time between the crisis of the new birth and the crisis of unreserved love; between the act of surrender and the act of consecration. Usually it is our consciousness of the larger claims of sonship which is deficient. That will result in a delay, but that is our lack of insight, or our spiritual infancy, or the inadequacy of the preaching and teaching to which we are exposed.
That there are many crises in the Christian life is obvious. However, the nature of discipleship suggests the attainment of a concrete determination which shapes every subsequent choice. This is a total commitment which affects every claim made upon the Christian's life. Here is a significant moment in which the will consciously casts the believer's future direction and pattern.
Footnotes
1Carl O. Bangs, Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971).
2See Augustine: Confessions and Enchiridion, Trans. and ed. by Albert C. Outler (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, n.d.), pp. 225-26. For discussion of this see Gerald Bonner, St. Augustine of Hippo (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963), pp. 374-77, and G. Vandervelde, Original Sin (Amsterdam: Rodopi N. V., 1975), pp. 16-17: "In Adam this carnal passion [sexual desire] was wholly absent. Procreation was a rather staid and tranquil affair, devoid of passion or lust and governed solely by reason and will . . . ."
3James Arminius, Writings, I (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1956), pp. 480-85.
4In his "Private Disputations" XXXI, section V, Ibid., II, pp. 77-78, Arminius had taught the departure of the Spirit as the result of man having offended God. In this present quotation he equates the loss of the Spirit with the loss of original righteousness. See Ibid., p. 79, section IX. In Ibid., II, p. 558, Arminius states: "God makes man a vessel; man makes himself an evil vessel, or a sinner. - - ."
6Bonner, p. 370. That "principle" is that evil is a privation of the good; that evil is a corruption of the good.
6Augustine: Confessions and Enchiridion, pp. 353-54. Here also is Augustine's theme of the lapse of reason and the ascendancy of passion which is the basis of the universality of sin. Ibid., p. 365, speaks of Christ "as begotten and conceived in no pleasure of carnal appetite-and therefore bore no trace of original sin-. . . ."
7lbid., pp. 326-338, especially sections 1, 4, 10, 17, 28, 34, and 36, the source of this quotation.
8See Vandervelde, p. 18.
9lbid., p. 27.
10Ibid., p. 29. See also Of God and His Creatures: An Annotated Translation. Summa Contra Gentiles of Saint Thomas Aquinas, by Joseph Rickaby (Westminster, MD: The Carroll Press, 1950), p. 379, fourth note: "God's first arrangement was to give sanctifying grace to every man in the moment when He created the man's rational soul. To speak as we should speak of a human scheme, this arrangement was defeated by Adam's sin. Consequently upon that sin, God arranged to give sanctifying grace, ordinarily, not in creation, but in baptism. Before baptism, the infant is devoid of sanctifying grace. That void is not a mere negation, it is a privation. - . - Whence this privation? Through the sin of Adam, the head and representative of the human race, and therefore of that child. This privation of sanctifying grace, as traceable to the sin of the first parent, is original sin in that child." For an understanding of the threefold submission which comprises original justice: submission of reason to God, the lower powers to reason, and body to soul, see Ibid., p. 381.
11See Aquinas on Nature and Grace, ed. by Eugene Fairweather (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), p. 120. Original sin is the disordered, i.e., inharmonious nature of man. "Its cause," writes Thomas, "is the privation of original justice, which took away from man the subjection of his mind to God." Ibid., p. 121.
12See Rickaby, p. 379, footnote 10, supra.
13Sanctifying grace is defined as an "abiding, interior, efficacious communication of the divine Spirit, with its effects. . . ," in Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, "Sanctifying Grace," Theological Dictionary (New York:
Herder and Herder, 1965), p. 421. Rahner in "Original Sin" Sacramentum Mundi, Vol. 4 (New York: Herder and Herder (1969), p. 329, declares that from the time of Anseim onward: "The essence of original sin was increasingly situated in the lack of sanctifying grace for which Adam's actual sin [and ours, Rahner insists] was responsible." He expresses this as man's lack of the "sanctifying Pneuma."
14In Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas states: "Though by the sacraments of grace one is so cleansed from original sin that it is not imputed to him as a fault,.. . yet he is not altogether healed. . . . "A defect of nature remains so that all children are flawed by original sin. See Rickaby, p. 382.
15See Vandervelde, pp. 41-42, where the importance of this conception-of original sin as the privation of sanctifying grace-in post-Tridentine Roman Catholic theology to the present time is demonstrated. In footnote 287, he traces the notion to William of Auvergne (d. 1249) who rejected it.
16William E. Addis and Thomas Arnold, "Original Sin," A Catholic Dictionary (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Limited, 1960), p. 61.
17See James Broderick, Robert Bellarmine: Saint and Scholar (London: Oates and Burns, 1961), p. 76. Junius and Arminius were in close association. Bangs, pp. 193-205.
18Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1979), pp. 189-91, writes that sin is the misuse of freedom. "It is not a 'something.' It is the act-ual negation of the core around which and the direction for which our existence was created. - . - Refusing the anchoring in God, one may try to find it in the world, or unanchored choose for one's own autonomous I."
19Bangs, p. 340.
20"Private Disputation" 49, cited by Ibid., p. 346. Earlier in his life Arminius had defined indwelling sin -peccatum inhabitante-as reigning sin. In this quotation he is suggesting deliverance from reigning sin, but apparently not from the presence of sin. Ibid., p. 189.
21William Sangster, The Path to Perfection (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1943), pp. 113-15.
22Mildred Wynkoop, A Theology of Love (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1972), pp. 155-56: "Sin is love, but love gone astray." "Sin is love locked into a false center, the self. . . . Sin is the distortion of love."
23See Robert E. Chiles, Theological Transition in American Methodism: 1790-1935 (New York: Abingdon Press, 1965), pp. 121-22.
24Ibid. Chiles cites John Peters, Christian Perfection and American Methodism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1956), p. 58, to refute the presumed Wesleyan understanding of sin as a thing. This according to Peters is not "congruous with the . sense of momentary reliance" which the believer knows, and inconsistent with the doctrine of backsliding and restoration.
25Richard Watson, Theological Institutes, II (New York: Carlton and Porter, n. d.), p. 78, speaks of "a depravation arising from a depravation." The latter word should be "deprivation" as in Thomas N. Ralston, Elements of Divinity (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1924), p. 140; T. 0. Summers, Systematic Theology (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1888), p. 47. See Watson, Works, X, 6th ed. (London: John Mason, 1848), p. 481, where the word "deprivation" is used. Thus in the other edition we have a misprint.
26Watson, II, pp. 78-82. Watson explains that those in whom the Spirit is restored and renewed still conceive children who are deprived of the Spirit. "For when the Spirit was restored to Adam, being pardoned, it was by grace and favor; and he could not impart it by natural descent to his posterity, ... since these influences are the gifts of God, which are imparted not by the first but by the second Adam; not by nature, but by a free gift...."
27Chiles, pp. 129, 122.
28See Ralston, pp. 140-142, 125. Samuel Wakefield, A Complete System of Christian Theology (New York: Nelson and Phillips, 1873), p. 297, for the depravation from deprivation motif.
29Miner Raymond, Systematic Theology, II (Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden, 1877), pp. 80-81, 89, 94. Raymond also uses the terms "proclivity towards the wrong, a vicious propensity," to describe man's sinfulness. Raymond stresses in particular the enslavement of the will. Ibid., p. 76. See Chiles, p. 133, note 41.
30Luther Lee, Elements of Theology (Syracuse: Wesleyan Book Room, 1865), pp. 116, 120-22. Lee was a professor of theology at Adrian College. He left the Methodist Church to become the primary theologian of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Chiles, p. 54, correctly sees Lee as the heir of Watson, but he is not following Watson in his view of original sin.
31William B. Pope, A Compendium of Christian Theology II (Cleveland: Thomas and Mattill, n. d.), p. 6.
32Ibid., pp. 55-60.
33Ibid., pp. 51, 47.
34Ibid., p. 68. The historical commentary by Pope makes reference to the Roman Catholic doctrine of original righteousness added to the purely natural elements which are the essential person. This donum superadditum was lost in the fall throwing man back to the original created (essential) person or condition.
35Summers, p. 33.
36Ibid., pp. 59-60. Summers summarizes his view of original sin: "the doctrine of inherent, natural, universal, total and hereditary depravity." It is "that which we bring with us into the world; a fearful patrimony, a sad inheritance!"
37Henry C. Sheldon, System of Christian Doctrine (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham, 1903), pp. 303-04.
38Ibid., p. 310.
39Chiles, pp. 61, 35.
40Sheldon, pp. 321-22, 310.
41H. Orton Wiley, Christian Theology, II (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press,
1941), pp. 98-100.
42Ibid., pp. 119, 123-24. Wiley cites the familiar reference from Watson on privation. John Miley, Systematic Theology, I (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1892), pp. 444-45, also emphasizes depravation from deprivation.
43Harald Lindstrom, Wesley and Sanctification (London: The Epworth Press, 1950), p. 38.
44Solomon J. Gamertsfelder was professor of theology and president of Evangelical Theological Seminary, Naperville, Illinois, from 1896-19 19. A minister of the Evangelical Association, which traces its heritage from American Methodism through Jacob Albright and others, Gamertsfelder drew upon a broad cross-section of theological sources. He was apparently influenced
by both Reformed and Wesleyan sources. He sustained a fairly traditional doctrine of Christian perfection. He also appreciated the "evangelical liberalism" of Harnack, Seeberg, and Karl Holl, with whom he studied during a summer visit to Europe in 1906. His Systematic Theology cites some of these and other German theologians. At first the Evangelical publishers rejected his manuscript as too liberal, but by changing a "few strategic words here and there" it was accepted and published in 1921. See William Henry Naumann, "Theology and German-American Evangelicalism," (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1966), pp. 210-212.
46S. J. Gamertsfelder, Systematic Theology (Harrisburg: Evangelical Publishing House, 1921), p. 429.
46Ibid., p 428: "Depravity is mainly that moral badness that has been imparted to the stream of human life by the sin of our first parents."
47Ibid., p. 410.
48See Berkhof, pp. 192, 437.
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