  We regard Orthodoxy as substantially right in its views of sin as being a deep and radical disease. Our Saviour says, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” “The Son of man came to seek and to save that which is lost.” [pg 135]But the question recurs, Is there only one kind of sin,—namely, voluntary and conscious transgression of God's law, originating with the individual himself, and in the moment of committing it, by means of his free will, which is its only seat? or is there sin which is a tendency in man's nature, something permanent, involuntary, of which he is not conscious, and which has its seat not merely in the will, but in the desires and affections. To this question Liberal Christianity has commonly said, “No,” and Orthodoxy has said, “Yes.” And on this point I concur with Orthodoxy. Besides the sin which consists in free choice, and which is essentially transient, there is also the sin which consists in wrong desire, and which is essentially permanent, because it is a habit of the mind. If it were not so, there could be no such thing as a bad character, and no such thing as a vicious habit. If we attempt to analyze evil, we shall find that it may be conveniently distributed into these divisions:— 1. Physical Evil. (a.) Pain. 2. Intellectual or Mental Evil. (a.) Ignorance. 3. Moral Evil. Disobedience to the Moral Law. (a.) Ignorant and accidental, or transgression. 4. Spiritual Evil. (a.) Wilful alienation from God, or perverse choice. Now, we see that in all these divisions of evil,—physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual,—it is found in the two forms of active and passive evil. In the latter form it is disease, and independent of the will. Returning, then, to the Orthodox view of evil, which it is our business to examine, we find already that it has the advantage of the Liberal theology in recognizing this passive side of evil, which we may call disease. It is true that Orthodoxy has not yet succeeded in coming to any clearness on this question, and has not yet any firm, intellectual hold of the main points of its argument. Examples of this confusion are quite common. Not to go back to the Calvinistic and Arminian controversies, which were but a revival of the Augustinian and Pelagian dispute; not to recur even to the Hopkinsian and Edwardian discussions,—we have only to refer to the differences between new and old school theology in the Presbyterian Church; to the trial of Dr. Beecher; to the book of his son Edward; to the divergence of Andover from New Haven, and Princeton from Andover. Unsettled, because superficial, views of evil are at the roots of all these controversies. |
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