German Lutheran theologian, and skeptic of the supernatural, Karl Gustav Adolf von Harnack, "reduced Christianity to two essential affirmations, the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man..." (according to R. C. Sproul). Using the German term Wesen (essence) to depict the sum total of Christianity and epitome of the gospel message. Catholics also generally believe in the basic, inherent goodness of man, denying total depravity and assuming a so-called semi-Pelagian view of man being only half sick and able to earn merit towards salvation.
The opposite was taught by Augustine of Hippo, who said that man is incapable of anything but sinning (non posse non peccare, or unable not to sin). Man's goodness is as "filthy rags" according to Isaiah in Isaiah 64:6 and Hosea says our fruit comes from God (cf. Hos. 14:8). Indeed, all we have done in the Spirit that can please God is enabled by the Holy Spirit and God gets the credit and glory: Paul wouldn't "venture but to speak of anything except what Christ had accomplished through him]" (cf. Rom. 15:8). Isaiah confesses: "...you have done for us all our works" (Is. 26:12, ESV). Man cannot boast in God's presence--even our faith is a gift and we believe only through grace, the unmerited favor of God (cf. Acts 18:27). God as Father is the covenant name of God for Christians, as their prerogative.
Jesus made it clear to the Pharisees that they were of the devil and not children of God! Only when we believe in Christ do we have the right to become the children of God (cf. John 1:12), implying that we weren't before. John says in 1 John 3:1 what manner of love this is, to be called the children of God. 1 John 5:19, NLT, says: "We know that we are children of God and that the world around us is under the control of the evil one." The highest privilege we have as believers is to be adopted into the royal family of God as heirs of the Father and joint-heirs of Christ. Only as believers in Christ do we earn this privilege and "are family!" as "members one of another."
Even today some generally believe man is basically good and we are all to believe in the goodness of man; Scripture teaches the opposite: man is inherently wicked through and through and there is no vestige or island or righteousness or goodness left in him--he's totally corrupted or radically sick, though not utterly depraved or as depraved as possible, he's totally depraved in the sense that every part of his being is corrupt and incapable of good. And Jesus sees through our veneer and knows the real us, that we all have a dark side like the moon doesn't expose that no one sees. This is God's estimation of man, not man's! God doesn't grade on a curve!
The fact is that we all have feet of clay and "we sin because we are sinners, we are not sinners because we sin," the theological axiom goes. "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Gen. 6:5, ESV). Man doesn't know his own condition and Carl Gustav Jung, a one-time student of Freud who broke away, and a Christian psychologist who worked with AA, said that "man is an enigma to himself," and "the central neurosis of man is emptiness." As Scripture paints him: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jer. 17:9, ESV); "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot" (Rom. 8:7, ESV). The Law shows our crookedness (cf. Rom. 3:20, Phillips). The purpose of the Law is to show we cannot keep it!
We cannot just turn over a new leaf and reform ourselves: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil" (Jer. 13:23, ESV). The point is that we all share solidarity with Adam in his sin, and we cannot clean up our act, but need the grace to change us from the inside out as God grants us repentance and faith by grace working in us. We are very bad, but not too bad to be saved, we are as bad off as we can be, but not as bad as we can be--God restrains evil to a certain degree.
Our radical degradation is in toto and permeates to our core being--our complete heart, which includes our intellect, volition, and emotion. We are more than flawed beings, we are incapable of pleasing God in anything we do and cannot merit or even prepare ourselves for salvation. We all like to say we have our shortcomings and like to compare ourselves with paradigms of evil like Adolf Hitler and say that we are saints if you look at them, but we are all in the same boat--God levels the playing field! We may see ourselves as run-of-the-mill sinners, but in God's eyes, we are totally depraved in our sin state. The adages "to err is human" and "nobody's perfect" take on a new dimension in light of the Bible and man's consensus.
The reason most Christians believe in the basic goodness of man is the philosophy and worldview of Secular Humanism, which promotes the goodness of man, dethroning God and deifying man in the process, trying to make a name for mankind while believing God is irrelevant and that we don't need Him anymore, even if He does exist. Why am I painting such a pessimistic picture of mankind? C. S. Lewis said in a famous catch-22 that we must "see how bad we are to be good, and we don't know how bad we are till we've tried to be good."
We do a man no favor by being optimistic about his fate, nature, and ultimate Judgment Day and reckoning, and we must make him realize like Jonathan Edwards preached in 1741 the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," from Deut. 32:35 (KJV) to inaugurate the Great Awakening: "... [Their] foot shall slip in due time; the day of their calamity is at hand...." Soli Deo Gloria!
The opposite was taught by Augustine of Hippo, who said that man is incapable of anything but sinning (non posse non peccare, or unable not to sin). Man's goodness is as "filthy rags" according to Isaiah in Isaiah 64:6 and Hosea says our fruit comes from God (cf. Hos. 14:8). Indeed, all we have done in the Spirit that can please God is enabled by the Holy Spirit and God gets the credit and glory: Paul wouldn't "venture but to speak of anything except what Christ had accomplished through him]" (cf. Rom. 15:8). Isaiah confesses: "...you have done for us all our works" (Is. 26:12, ESV). Man cannot boast in God's presence--even our faith is a gift and we believe only through grace, the unmerited favor of God (cf. Acts 18:27). God as Father is the covenant name of God for Christians, as their prerogative.
Jesus made it clear to the Pharisees that they were of the devil and not children of God! Only when we believe in Christ do we have the right to become the children of God (cf. John 1:12), implying that we weren't before. John says in 1 John 3:1 what manner of love this is, to be called the children of God. 1 John 5:19, NLT, says: "We know that we are children of God and that the world around us is under the control of the evil one." The highest privilege we have as believers is to be adopted into the royal family of God as heirs of the Father and joint-heirs of Christ. Only as believers in Christ do we earn this privilege and "are family!" as "members one of another."
Even today some generally believe man is basically good and we are all to believe in the goodness of man; Scripture teaches the opposite: man is inherently wicked through and through and there is no vestige or island or righteousness or goodness left in him--he's totally corrupted or radically sick, though not utterly depraved or as depraved as possible, he's totally depraved in the sense that every part of his being is corrupt and incapable of good. And Jesus sees through our veneer and knows the real us, that we all have a dark side like the moon doesn't expose that no one sees. This is God's estimation of man, not man's! God doesn't grade on a curve!
The fact is that we all have feet of clay and "we sin because we are sinners, we are not sinners because we sin," the theological axiom goes. "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Gen. 6:5, ESV). Man doesn't know his own condition and Carl Gustav Jung, a one-time student of Freud who broke away, and a Christian psychologist who worked with AA, said that "man is an enigma to himself," and "the central neurosis of man is emptiness." As Scripture paints him: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jer. 17:9, ESV); "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot" (Rom. 8:7, ESV). The Law shows our crookedness (cf. Rom. 3:20, Phillips). The purpose of the Law is to show we cannot keep it!
We cannot just turn over a new leaf and reform ourselves: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil" (Jer. 13:23, ESV). The point is that we all share solidarity with Adam in his sin, and we cannot clean up our act, but need the grace to change us from the inside out as God grants us repentance and faith by grace working in us. We are very bad, but not too bad to be saved, we are as bad off as we can be, but not as bad as we can be--God restrains evil to a certain degree.
Our radical degradation is in toto and permeates to our core being--our complete heart, which includes our intellect, volition, and emotion. We are more than flawed beings, we are incapable of pleasing God in anything we do and cannot merit or even prepare ourselves for salvation. We all like to say we have our shortcomings and like to compare ourselves with paradigms of evil like Adolf Hitler and say that we are saints if you look at them, but we are all in the same boat--God levels the playing field! We may see ourselves as run-of-the-mill sinners, but in God's eyes, we are totally depraved in our sin state. The adages "to err is human" and "nobody's perfect" take on a new dimension in light of the Bible and man's consensus.
The reason most Christians believe in the basic goodness of man is the philosophy and worldview of Secular Humanism, which promotes the goodness of man, dethroning God and deifying man in the process, trying to make a name for mankind while believing God is irrelevant and that we don't need Him anymore, even if He does exist. Why am I painting such a pessimistic picture of mankind? C. S. Lewis said in a famous catch-22 that we must "see how bad we are to be good, and we don't know how bad we are till we've tried to be good."
We do a man no favor by being optimistic about his fate, nature, and ultimate Judgment Day and reckoning, and we must make him realize like Jonathan Edwards preached in 1741 the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," from Deut. 32:35 (KJV) to inaugurate the Great Awakening: "... [Their] foot shall slip in due time; the day of their calamity is at hand...." Soli Deo Gloria!