Recap: We have been constructing a biblical foundation for sound Christian doctrine. Last week we saw Jesus as the human embodiment of God's goodness, grace and mercy - the exact imprint of his nature" (Heb 1:3 ESV) - always righteous and always just. We need only look to Jesus to really know God because Jesus is God.
There is another critical foundational component to plug into our formation of sound doctrine - us.
Jekyll or Hyde?
I admit that we humans are a bit of an enigma. The Bible seems to present two natures of man. We find in Scripture evidence of a divine nature in which we were made "a little lower than the heavenly beings" and "crowned with glory and honor" (Psalm 8:4-5 ESV), the pinnacle of all creation and the "apple of God's eye" (Psalm 17:8). Yet, we find scriptural evidence of a "fallen" nature, in which we are slaves to sin (Rom 6:17), disobedient creatures in rebellion against our Maker, unable and/or unwilling to do the slightest thing pleasing to God (Isaiah 64:6, Rom 3:12). The Bible seems to paint us as a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - two natures in one body.
Godless?
Reformers/Calvinists have built their understanding of man's nature on the doctrine of total depravity/total inability. Reformers maintain that the Fall (original sin) caused a radical corruption of every aspect of man's nature - mind, will, emotions and flesh. Man became tainted with sin and completely disconnected from God, rendering him unable to receive/understand anything spiritual.
But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14 NKJV)
The "natural man" they would say, describes a person's default nature - a kind of Mr. Hyde - a godless creature whose heart is only evil continually (Gen 6:6), deceitful and desperately sick (Jer 17:9).
Yet, when we read the account of the Fall in Genesis 3, there is no mention of a spiritual disconnection from God, no mention of man’s sudden inability to love/obey/know God, no mention of spiritual deadness, nor any other significant change in the relationship between man and God. In reference to the Reformed doctrine of total depravity, George W. Burnap observes, "If this doctrine is true, God did not tell man the true penalty, neither the truth, nor the whole truth, nor a hundredth part of the truth. . . “ ("Lectures on the Doctrines of Christianity: in Controversy Between Unitarians and Other Denominations of Christians”, 1835.)
In the verses that follow the biblical account of the Fall, instead of complete relational separation, we see God's continued goodness, grace and mercy toward us. We witness God's benevolence as he provides clothing for Adam and Eve (Gen 3:21). We see his compassionate counsel to an angry and crestfallen Cain (Gen 4:3-7). And we see the continued blessing of fruitful procreation, a symbol of God's grace throughout the Scriptures.
And this post-Fall connection between God and his creatures is not one-sided. We see the first family giving God credit for their children (Gen 4:1). We see Cain and Abel bringing offerings to God (Gen 4:3-4), and we're told that all people can know God by observing nature (Psalm 19:1, Job 12:7-9, Rom 1:20). In other words, contrary to popular teaching, while the Bible affirms that "sin dwells in (us)" (Rom 7:17), that is, we have a sin nature - a bent toward sin (Romans 7:7ff), the Bible does not affirm that we are (or ever were) godless creatures - completely disconnected from our Maker. Even John Calvin could not deny that there exists no such a thing as a completely godless person:
“Men of sound judgement will always be sure that a sense of divinity which can never be effaced, is engraved upon men’s minds … there is some God … naturally inborn in all, and is fixed deep within, as if it were the very marrow …” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1559, i.33)
The biblical evidence of an on-going, intimate relationship between us and God is in direct conflict with the Reformed understanding that, while some men have been irresistibly enabled by God to love/obey/believe/know him, many have been "passed over" - not enabled with the grace required to respond to God in any positive way, and to understand spiritual things, including the gospel.
The apostle Paul denies the notion that anyone is unable to receive the gospel when he encourages a group of pagan scholars in the Areopagus in Athens with the truth that the God who gives "all men life, breath and everything else," the God in whom "we live, move and have our being," is nearby, accessible and available to everyone (Acts 17:25-28). Paul is able to give hope to these pagan skeptics because he knows that God desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4 ESV). The Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity/total inability is a man-made doctrine that is not rooted in Scripture.
So who are these people in 1 Corinthians 2:14 who are unable and unwilling to receive/understand spiritual things? It is unfortunate that some of the translations use the phrase "natural man" for the Greek word psychikos, a unique word which is really a term for a very unnatural condition. The term psychikos might be better translated as a "soulless person", a person without the breath of God that gives him "human-ness". The NLT explains that these are "people who have only physical life" - human shells. Paul is making reference, not to those without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but (perhaps hypothetically) to a person without a God-given human spirit. James even associates such a person with demonic beings (James 3:15).
Although it is not the focus of this discussion to exhaustively analyze 1 Cor 2:14, what's clear is that, contrary to popular teaching, Paul was not describing our default condition, nor the inability of an unbeliever to receive the gospel and so be saved. By contrast, Paul was extoling to the saints in Corinth the great blessing of simply being human.
Next Post: "The Glory of Being Human". Here's a link:
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