Douglas Wilson's On Human Nature

Emoting Like Pelagians 

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

INTRODUCTION

It may seem odd to put it this way, but the only thing that can save us from the sexual revolution now is total depravity. Of course this is shorthand, but it is shorthand with a point.  

Of course we know that it is Christ who saves us, and total depravity is not the name of our Savior, but rather a phrase that refers to what we are saved from. Hence the shorthand.

And it is not the most ideal phrase either. It makes people think that we are proclaiming something like absolute depravity, which sounds like we are saying the unsaved are orcs out of hell, already as bad as it is possible for a creature to get, with no common grace whatever. Yeah, that’s not accurate either.

But let’s just go with total depravity for a bit. Work with me here.

HORSE DOSES OF CALVINISM

In theology, there are two foundational approaches to human nature out there, and they are the Augustinian and the Pelagian. Calvinism is simply a later nickname given to the Augustinian approach.

According to the Augustinian understanding, moral obligation is created by the Word of God. Morality is defined by the law of God. If Scripture says not to do something, then doing it is sin. Pretty straightforward.

But according to the Pelagian understanding, moral obligation is defined by our abilities. Put another way, there is no moral responsibility that can be assigned to inability. According to Pelagianism, sin is not sin unless it can actually be avoided. Sin is always a function of free choice, and hence cannot be grounded in our nature. There is no such thing as a constitutional or natural depravity.

The Augustinian answer to this, of course, is a raft of Bible verses.

Selective Abortion An Extreme Moral Depravity

Kids with Down Syndrome are Not a Burden

David Marcus
The Federalist

Down Syndrome is disappearing in Europe. In Iceland, it is almost extinct. Very quietly, the most successful eugenics program in human history is advancing and making its way to the United Sates. How is this happening? It’s very simple. Prenatal testing is identifying pregnancies that are likely to result in Down Syndrome kids, and those pregnancies are being aborted, with shocking frequency.

On its own the abortion issue divides us. Whether a baby in the womb may be killed is a debate we struggle to have in constructive ways. But generally the pro-choice movement assures us that abortion is used in cases where any child is unwanted. In the case of selective abortion for sex or disability, a child is wanted, just not the messed-up child his parents weren’t hoping for.

What an age to live in. Get pregnant; see if the baby meets your specifications. If not, just abort and try again. Eventually you are sure to wind up with the bright boy exactly six feet tall who wins all the prizes and marries the prom queen. After all, having a child isn’t really about the child. It’s about you and your hopes and dreams, your demand to live your best life.

Did You Deserve To Be Born?

The choice to have a child, whether the result of grave deliberation or a drunken night of debauchery, is the most harrowing choice a person can make. The hospital hands you this useless bundle of cuteness and says, “Okay, good luck, you’ll figure it out.” Miraculously, for the most part people do figure it out. And there are rewards. The smiles, the snuggling, the little boy or girl climbing into your bed just to be near you because you are everything — it’s profound and beautiful.

No decent parent rejects a child’s love because the child is imperfect. Nobody casts aside an eight-year-old because she has bad grades or an attitude problem.

Sexual Perversity Celebrated

Kororareka In Modern Garb

There is a degraded Sodomist programme currently "entertaining" people on national TV.  It is a propaganda piece for sexual perversion and gender bending.  It cloaks itself in a pseudo-scientific outfit.

The whole premise of Married at First Sight is to help those who have been unlucky in love find a suitable spouse, based on scientific knowledge of relationships.  But what about people who don't want a partner? And those who are attracted to multiple genders? Or those people who are in a relationship with more than one person (consensually, rather than in an affair)?

Most of us tend to have pretty rigid ideas about what is "normal" in romantic relationships and sexual preference.  But contemporary research and theorising indicates humans are able to be much more flexible when it comes to sexuality and relationships. That is, we are quite sexually and rationally fluid.  [Dr Pani Farvid, "Sexuality - So Many Ways To Go", NZ Herald]

The programme creators and broadcasters appear to believe that if it is possible to do something, the very possibility makes it morally acceptable.

The Great Lie

Believing Your Own Press . . . Or Not

What did the Enlightenment gurus really believe about human nature?  Remember that the philosophes of the period had faces set like flint against religion in general and Christianity in particular.  Virtually all that was evil in the world, they argued, could be traced back to religious superstition.  "Enlightenment" meant casting off the darkness inflicted upon to the West by the Church.  

But what would replace the Ten Commandments?  No problems at all.  Get rid of religion and mankind would return to his natural state of moral, spiritual, and intellectual innocence.  J. H. Huizinga summarises the Enlightenment world view:

Of Sin, Ships, and Radar

Worlds Apart

Christians normally have a very high doctrine of human sinfulness.  We mean "high" in the sense of substantial.  Sin for us is not a matter of small peccadilloes.  We believe human sinfulness to be universal (For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. [Romans 6:23]).  We believe that in our natural state, before the application of Christ's saving mercy and grace to us, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

The heart is deceitful above all things,
    and desperately sick;
    who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the heart
    and test the mind,
to give every man according to his ways,
    according to the fruit of his deeds.” [Jeremiah 17:10]

The experience of the Christian is a daily war against one's own sinful nature and tendencies.  The goals, motives, and standards of our actions and thoughts are all too often contrary to God' law.

This "high" doctrine of one's own sinfulness and depravity is part and parcel of the normal, ordinary Christian life.  One is required to see the log in one's own eye, before noticing the speck in our neighbour's.

Fissures in the Ranks

Human Depravity

Last time we checked Kim Jong Un was a human being.  We presume he still is.  He is one of us.  As one of us he is demonstrating the relentless evil that lies in every human heart.  Relentless evil that can become regnant. 

Whilst most human beings will recoil in horror at the recent accounts of public executions in North Korea, we also have to acknowledge that Kim Jong Un is one of us.  He is not an animal.  He is not a demon.  He is blood of our blood and flesh of our flesh.  Either we must own him and his depravities, or we must implore the  King of kings to judge him speedily, in this life and the next. 

Depravity of Another Kind

Gnawing Doubts 

Here is a truly horrific crime, as reported in Stuff:

A "depraved" paedophile has been sent to prison for sexual offending against his infant son. A 27-year-old South Canterbury man was sentenced in the Oamaru District Court this afternoon to eight years 10 months imprisonment by Judge Joanna Maze for offending which will have a profound effect on his child.

The man sat motionless in the dock as he was sentenced on a raft of child exploitation charges, including two of sexual violation and indecent assault, and selling the use of his then 13-month-old son for sexual gratification for $500. . . .

How Nonsense Became Received Wisdom

 The Flat Earth Society Has Nothing on This

When the previous century began, optimism was in the air.  Mankind could finally control its own destiny.  Man could be progressively perfected and Paradise would break forth.  All of his problems could be solved by correcting external influences.  Evil and sin would be progressively removed by enlightened policies of social and human re-tooling. 

The first change agent off the rank was Socialism.  If wealth were redistributed and the poor were given other people's money virtually every social problem would disappear immediately.  The second cab was science.  The more technological advances made, the more disease would be conquered; the more Nature exploited, the more  resources to distribute. 

These hopes proceeded on the belief that the Christian doctrines of Original Sin and human depravity were ignorant superstitions of a dark past.

The Turning of the Tide

 It's Not Pretty

One of the Christian doctrines most offensive to modern Unbelief is the doctrine of sin--and in particular, original sin.  If ever there was a truth which Unbelief rails against, this would be it.  Yet it is a truth which is demonstrated before our eyes and in our experience every single day. 

It is true that Unbelief has had its prophets who have insisted upon the universal depravity of humanity--such as Shakespeare, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dostoevsky and Conrad.  Whilst these have moved our Unbelieving generation it has not been towards the truth.  Rather these prophets serve to galvanise to a greater effort of insisting upon man's perfectibility.  Evil is external.  It is circumstantial.  Rarely is it acknowledged to be intrinsic to the heart of man. 

C. E. M. Joad, writing in the early 1950's reflects on the antipathy of his generation to the doctrine of human depravity and how it was his generation that saw the turning of the tide into Unbelief.

Unfit for Motherhood

A Woman's Right to Choose

The New Zealand government is considering granting the courts power to sentence a serial recidivist child abuser to permanent childlessness.  The proposal is that if such a person were to bear subsequent children they would automatically be removed from the mother at birth.

The Commentariat is affecting outrage over the idea.

Evil and wickedness stalk the heart of every human being.  Human hearts are hearts of darkness.  So believed Dostoevsky, Conrad, and Faulkner.  So declares the Bible itself--the very Word of the Living God.  The heart of man, says the Scripture, is deceitful above all else and desperately wicked.

Easy Tools

 The Consequences of Denying Human Depravity

We watched Hillary Clinton announce the "food for halting nuclear weapons development" deal with North Korea.  We listened to the public celebration of a supposedly enormous breakthrough and triumph by President Obama.  Incredulousness is the only appropriate response.

Here is a regime combining the bestial cunning of Stalin with the ghoulish psychopathy of Pol-Pot.  Its horrors, once revealed, will make future generations blanch.  It takes food from the West supposedly to relieve famine and uses it to feed its huge army.  The rest of the population are left to starve.

Prophetesses of the Age

It's Not My Fault

As chutzpah goes, this was as big as it can ever get.  A despicable woman had systematically tortured and abused her children in the worst way--including ripping off toe nails and pouring salt and boiling water on the wounds--and justified herself by saying it was the fault of the state.  The government had not helped her enough. 

This grand effrontery was taken up publicly by the woman's lawyer, Lorraine Smith:

Our Depraved Poor

Our Depraved Poor

Posted on August 22, 2011 by David French

[Editorial note: This article is has generated some controversy,  most of it positive.  Whilst the author is addressing the situation in the United States, the truths and principles are equally applicable, relevant, and true to New Zealand.] 

It is past time to admit a very hard truth: America’s poverty problem is also a depravity problem.

It is simply a fact that people who work hard, finish their education, get married, and stay married are rarely — very rarely — poor.  There is no other proven formula for lifting Americans out of poverty.  None.  Food stamps don’t do it.  Medicaid doesn’t do it.  Soup kitchens don’t do it.  Good intentions don’t do it.

Prime Mincing

Of "Tinkerbell", Bon Mots, Pederastic Economics, and Ad Hominem

Trevor Mallard, Labour MP appears lazy or somewhat intellectually challenged. As evidence we would offer his habitual mode of ad hominem attacks when "arguing" against opponents and their views. As they say, ad hominem is the first refuge of a lazy mind. Not that Mallard is alone in this. Regrettably, ad hominem is the discourse of choice for most politicians--although our current Prime Minister, John Key has shown repeatedly that he is cut from a different cloth, for which we commend him.

In any event, if you are going to insult an opponent, at least it should be funny. The other day Prime Minister Key was on the catwalk modelling rugby world cup kit. He affected a mincing walk. It was a bit lame, if you would excuse the pun. In any event, Mallard subsequently referred to Key as the "Prime Mincer" in the House. That strikes us as quite clever--and funny. Mallard has subsequently been called out for being homophobic. We would say in retort, lighten up. Let's be rid of the killjoy, black-stocking moroseness of political correctness. The studied witty insult can be a great weapon, when used appropriately rather than gratuitously.

Apparently, however, Mallard has form in this area. He previously referred to a homosexual minister opposite as "tinkerbell". We suspect that this betrays his orientation and predilection for ad hominem. Let's be clear. We believe homosexuality to be sinful, an extreme type of fornication. But that does not mean that the entire life and being of a homosexual can be rejected or impugned because of his or her homosexuality.

John Maynard Keynes was arguably one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. These days he is making a bit of a comeback, with increased interest in his published works since the seizing up of credit markets in 2008. Keynes was a pederast. That does not mean that all his academic and professional work was as deeply flawed as his sexual ethics. One simply cannot dismiss Keynes's work as "pederastic economics". We have learnt much from Keynes. For instance his bon mot: "the market can stay irrational far longer than you can stay solvent." So true. So insightful. So easily forgotten by lesser men in the grip of animal spirits.

We have worked with homosexuals, adulterers, serial lechers, serial monogamists, the lascivious and the lewd. Most did good work; some outstanding. To oppose someone's argument or work or contribution because of their sexual ethics is bizarre, to say the least. At the same time, it is equally wrong to reject someone because they believe the libertinism of our day is evil.

Some would retort that human beings are not bifurcated nor compartmentalised. What one believes and does in one area of life will inevitably influence and couch all of one's being. A thief who shoplifts will have an attitude to the property of others that will likely show up in other ways. Possibly. But few are completely consistent in evil--thankfully. History shows us a few exceptions. Stalin would be one. Certainly not mad, but demonic; by all accounts the acme of evil. The vast majority of us human beings remain persistently inconsistent in our wickedness. This is a divine blessing. It is one very important way the Lord restrains evil in society for the good of us all.

The flip-side of this is that because few human beings are as evil as they could possibly could be, we are able to relate to one another in a multitude of complex ways and levels. One can completely reject the gambling habit of one which leaves a family bereft of sustenance, for example, whilst appreciating and approbating his friendly, easy going nature at work. On the other hand, it is impossible to conceive of becoming a "mate" of Stalin, without acting collegially in his evil.

All human societies, however, end up stipulating certain actions considered so gross and so evil that they put the perpetrator beyond the pale of human society. But not beyond the grace and mercy of God--as witnessed by the remarkable work of divine grace which appears to be taking place in our prison's today. That grace is mediated through people who go beyond society's stipulations and see criminals as people who remain made in God's image, desperately in need of God's forgiveness and cleansing through Jesus Christ, His Son and our Lord.

Mad or Not

Hitler Was a Perfectly Rational Man

There has been a discussion going on in Auckland recently as to whether Hitler, Stalin, and latterly Ahmadinejad were mad--that is, bonkers (a psychiatric techical term, for those unfamiliar) or insane. The overwhelming consensus in the discussion was that these folk clearly were and, in the case of the president of Iran, are.

But what does that mean? Clearly, under our legal system it would mean that none of these tyrants are to be held accountable for their actions. There would be no moral concupiscence in their crimes because they were unable to distinguish between right and wrong. But why the rush to declare them mad? Why the overwhelming consensus that Hitler was insane? Are we to conclude that the Nuremberg trials were a terrible travesty of justice?

The standard answer to this question is that no sane person would ever have committed such unspeakable horrors. This assertion, in turn, rests on an unspoken premise: that sane people do not commit horrors, or, more subtly sane people do not do evil things. Whilst this premise is a complete nonsense, when it comes to those whom our culture identifies as the Black Beasts--Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.--folk tend to take mindless comfort in it.

We suspect that there are some strong drivers which seduce people into such mindlessness. The first is that our culture has stopped seeing things in ethical categories. Concepts such as sin, evil, righteousness, and depravity have dropped out of the popular lexicon as the Christian faith has waned. The doctrines of original sin and of the fallen nature of humanity have been replaced with Enlightenment assumptions about innate human goodness. They have also been eroded by the pervasive cosmology of evolutionism which does not operate with categories of right or wrong, but of fitness for purpose--a very different concept entirely.

If the culture believes that mankind is innately righteous, then the existence of evil must have extrinsic causes. We see this all the time. The common ideology of victimhood is an example. Crime exists because of poverty. Drunkenness is caused by easy access to alcohol. People are not wrong or sinful when they are drunk; they, rather, are the victims of big brewery and supermarket businesses. They are being exploited as victims for money.

When someone commits unspeakable acts of extreme horror, however, these explanations wear a bit thin. OK, so Hitler did not have a strong, stable family background. But neither do millions upon millions of others, and they do not murder six million Jews. So, another causal explanation must exist. The consensus of the age is that Hitler, then, was not evil, but mad. Poor chap couldn't help it.

This nonsense is comforting to people. For if Hitler were evil, and was a human being, then that implictly might say something about all human beings. Modern man does not want to go down that track.

Hitler was clearly not insane. He was eminently rational. So was Stalin. So is Ahmadinejad. They had a clearly defined world-view, with premises, organising principles, meta-narratives, values, ethics, and assumptions which facilitated rational evaluation and decision making. An evil world-view to be sure, but rational nonetheless. All lived pefectly consistently by their lights.

Hitler, to cite just one illustration, took Darwinism and evolutionism seriously--far more seriously than people do today, most of whom merely use evolutionism as a lazy warranting concept to justify their agnosticism or Unbelief. He believed in higher and lower forms of life, including higher and lower forms of humanity. Within this ideology and cosmology he opined once that Maori were sub-human, primitive, ape-like creatures who deserved extinction. This is a perfectly rational position.

And if readers take umbrage at the idea that to hold Maori to be primitive ape-like sub-humans is perfectly rational, then consider an example closer to home. Just a sort time ago, within living cultural memory, it was openly asserted that Aborigines in Australia did not have souls and were not human beings. This, of course, was also perfectly rational within the Darwinian scheme of things. Are we really seriously going to assert that the majority of European settlers in Australia were insane? OK, a lot of them were convicts--but insane? We think not.

One is clearly not mad to hold such views. Evil, yes. Wicked, yes. Depraved, yes--but not mad. Darwinism itself as a religious cosmology is likewise evil, wicked and depraved. When men, in their wickedness embrace evolutionism it is their innate wickedness that makes the evolutionist cosmology attractive and compelling. It is like answering to like.

When our modern world cheerfully and self-righteously crusades for abortion and murders twenty-thousand innocent and defenceless children in this country every year, sacrificing them upon the grisly bloody altar of human rights, paying for the sacrifices with our tax exacted money, it is perfectly rational in doing so--by its own lights. Yet, evil, monstrously evil to be sure. And the rationale is very, very close to Hitler's evolutionism--that is, the unborn child is sub-human; therefore, it is reasonable to kill it.

Ahmedinejad is a Shi'ite Muslim--reportedly an ardent "Twelver Shīa" Muslim. This means that he believes that the twelfth Imam, born in 869 is still alive, yet hidden by Allah. He is about to reappear (a second coming) to smash Israel and the entire world into submission to Allah. Ahmedinejad believes that nuclear conflagration will be part of the appearing and the submission of the world. That is why Iran must develop nuclear weapons--to prepare for the Imam's appearance. That is also why he has been busy widening public streets in Teheran to accommodate the triumphal processions the twelfth Imam will lead.

Ahmedinejad is a perfectly rational man. He is also a workhorse for the powers of Satanic darkness. But, then, so are all who are involved in the abortion industry--both its cheerleaders and its practitioners who perform the human sacrifices on the altar of human rights.

Christians hold these views about Hitler, Ahmedinejad, social darwinists, and abortionists without self-righteousness. They can speak plainly about evil and depravity, because they also profess the total depravity of the entire human race descended from Adam by ordinary generation. All Christians know that there is no evil of which they are not capable. Lurking within them, apart from being baptised into the death and resurrection of our Lord, lies the evil rationality of Hitler and Stalin and the abortionist. Every Christian knows that given certain circumstances and opportunities there is no evil of which they are not capable. Every Christian looks at Hitler or Pol Pot and professes, "There, but for the grace of God, am I".

And they are both rational and righteous to make such a profession.