We noted last week that during this season of the Church Calendar that what is emphasized is Doctrine and ministry. The idea was that Doctrine would be taught alongside with how that Doctrine could be implemented via some kind of ministry in a person’s life.

This week we want to briefly consider the Christian doctrine of Anthropology.

What we have in Romans 3 is God’s pronouncement on the nature of man. Fallen man is utterly sinful. Even man as Redeemed by Christ realizes that he contends against a nature that is not yet perfected. He confesses his sins weekly and is taught in his catechism to recite to the question,

Q. 82. Is any man able perfectly to keep the commandments of God?

A. No mere man since the fall is able in this life perfectly to keep the commandments of God, but doth daily break them in thought, word and deed.

The Heidelberg echoes this when it teaches,

“even the holiest men, while in this life, have only a small beginning of this obedience (to God’s Law).

Christianity has always taught that man has a sin nature and that the sin nature is not finally put off completely until we put off this mortal coil. So thoroughly has Christianity taught this that the Gospels make it clear that Jesus did not have this sin nature that He might be a pure sacrifice for our sins.

This is so simple and basic but if we get this wrong in our doctrine there is no help of getting anything else correct. And we live in a culture where the idea that man is sinful is

1.) Man is basically good

“I know in my heart that man is good…” — Ronald Reagan

Man left to himself, apart from evil influence, will choose what is good. This is articulated by Cultural Marxist Psychologist Eric Fromm when he writes,

“As far as I know we just don’t have any intrinsic instincts for evil. If you think in terms of basic needs; instincts, at least at the outset are all good — or perhaps we should be technical about it and call them ‘pre-moral’ neither good or evil.”

Another Psychologist Wendell W. Watters writes,

“The true Christian is running furiously on a treadmill to get away from whole segments of his or her human nature which he or she is taught to fear or about which he or she is taught to feel guilty. The Christian is brainwashed to believe that he or she was born wicked … ”

Of course all this denies the plain words of Scripture. If man were basically good and his nature was good then the whole idea of Christianity, and the Church would be irrelevant. Christianity and the Church might exist but if it did exist it would exist as a place where people would attend in order to meet other nice people, hear some uptempo music, listen to sermons about how good they are, how to influence other people, and how to get on in life with people who do not yet know how good they are. If man were basically good then the demand would be for Christianity and the Church to meet felt needs and perhaps be a place where social justice can be pursued. If it were true that men were basically good then there would be no need to hear about a Christ who takes away sin. If it were true that men were basically good then Christianity and the Church would become just about what it currently already is today — currently is that because “man is basically good” is what most of the Church believes today.

But Biblical Christianity does not believe that so when you come to Church you hear God’s law and because as Christians we break God’s law every day in word, thought, or deed, we confess our sins and then hear God’s forgiveness for the sake of Christ.

As we continue to consider Romans 3 we understand that we sin because of our nature. The problem is not primarily with the environment that lies outside of us, but rather what lies inside of us. James underscores this when he writes,

14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and is enticed.

You see both St. Paul and St. James agrees that the problem is within us.

But our culture does not agree with this assessment. Contrary to Biblical Christianity we are constantly inundated with messages that the environment is the problem.

2.) Man’s environment accounts for evil

Psychologist Abraham Maslow has directly said,

“Sick people are made by a sick culture, healthy people are made possible by a healthy culture.”

This means that if man is to discover his goodness, what needs to happen is a change of environment. This accounts for the belief in social engineering. Because this is true, man’s lack of goodness is explained in terms of his family, culture, or social environment. If man is to be changed, man’s environment must be changed.

Anti-Christian doctrine teaches that if man is to be saved, man’s environment must be changed. Change comes from the outside in. Christian doctrine teaches that if man’s environment is to be changed, man must be changed. Change comes from the inside and radiates outward as we are renewed by the Spirit of the living God because of the finished work of Christ on the Cross for His people.

The idea that sick people are made by a sick culture has been around forever. Writing in 1908 Dutch Theologian Herman Bavinck could complain about this kind of thinking,

“Under the influence of the supposition that at this point human beings have already traveled wonderfully far along the path of evolution, people surrender to the illusion that human being can still do infinitely more, and that we can make human beings into whatever we want. If only full use were made of the results that have been and will be obtained by scientific investigation, then nurture would not only furnish outward formation and intellectual development, but it would also improve the human person morally, eliminating the brutish inclinations still at work internally, renewing his heart, and bringing sin and crime to an end, not all at once but gradually.

Complaining about the same tendency in another area Bavinck could say again, “They all suffer from the illusion that by means of external measures, by means of abolishing old laws and implementing new laws, they can change human nature or convert the wicked heart.”

Before Bavinck in the 1840’s the founders of the common school movement were inspiringly optimistic about the power of education. These common-school reformers, beginning with Horace Mann, saw universal public education as a solution to a host of social problems. In their view, public schools would transform children into moral, literate, and productive citizens; and eliminate poverty and crime.

And this form of thought is still with us today as the coin of the realm. I stumbled across this comment about the recent incident where a NBA team owner was caught talking about black people,

“Many Americans were in love with Nazism, one popular example is the architect Phillip Johnson. So the idea of Nazism permeated American society and in 1933 it was current and relevant, one would not be unreasonable in assuming that the parents of Sterling caressed the idea and whispered to little Sterling. That is my point, we cannot rule out the possibility that Sterling’s most impressionable years were in a time of Nazism.”

You see … Sterling’s problem with his words is not because of a sinful nature but because of his environment.

Of course this is in contrast to Biblical Christianity which teaches that man’s sin nature accounts for man’s evil institutions.

And we know that only the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified for sinners in the context of Union with Christ is the solution for Man’s sin nature.

This is why you hear me constantly say that the cure for what is wrong with us as a people is not more and better programs. The cure for what is wrong with us is the preaching of Christ Crucified followed by the discipling of the nations.

Of course in St. Paul’s statement we find that the agency by which men learn their sin nature is by the trumpeting of that Word in the context of the Gospel in the ark of the Church. Those who oppose this message have their own delivery system in order to evangelize. We talk about the necessity of Word and Sacrament. Word and Sacrament is to repeatedly point us to Christ to remind us of that only Christ can heal us via the forgiveness held out in Word and Sacrament.

However those who hold to the idea that man is basically good have their own agencies whereby they proclaim the inherent goodness of man.

3.) The agency whereby man discovers his goodness is Church & State

Just three quotes in order to support the claim that the agencies that hold to a different anthropology then Christians do — who hold that man is basically good — is mediated by agencies of Church and State

“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being… The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing the classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level – preschool day care or large state universities.”

John Dunphy on the purpose of humanist education.

“Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?”

Charles F. Potter, “Humanism: A New Religion” 1930

So, in Churches that practice Biblical Christianity every week, just by the liturgy we teach people that they have a sin nature that only Christ can heal and every week the State teaches that men are basically good and merely need to be educated and informed of their goodness.

The church in Revolutionary Humanism is the government school as controlled by the State. Of course over time the “Christian” church begins to reflect the Government schools as Government school graduates bring their humanism into the Church. Church and State teach basically good man that it is his role to use any means necessary to change the environment in order to serve the “good.”

4.) The abstraction of mathematical equality is applied to men in their social relations.

Revolutionary Humanism leads to egalitarianism and the egalitarianism here is defined in such a way so that no man is allowed to excel above another. All men being equal results in “all men being the same.” So, whether it is 700 million Chinese wearing the Maoist suit or whether it is men and women sharing public bathrooms, equality is now the order of the day.

5.) Man, being absolutized, is his own God

And man being God there is a movement towards Social Order uniformitarianism. All gods have unity in the godhood and so as collective man is god collective man builds social order where there is very little margin for differentiation among the particular men.

6.) All other mediating Institutions (Family, Church, School, Guild, etc.) are eliminated.

Humanism does not allow for pluralistic jurisdictions (See #5). Everything is for the State and nothing is outside the State. We are seeing this increasingly in our culture. Teachers have long been agents for the State. Soon Doctors will be agents for the State with Obamacare. Ministers, are often Defacto ministers of the State.

7.) The insistence that man, via a reason that is untouched by evil, can ascertain “self-evident” truths so as to construct a world apart from any need of Supernatural Revelation.

Man starting from the autonomous self can answer the question, “How Shall We Then Live,” and so build, a better if not indeed, perfect world. This garnering of “self-evident” truths is commonly pursued by means of legal positivism which reduces to “might makes right.” Oliver Wendell Holmes gives us this in microcosm when he said,

“I used to say when I was young, that truth was the majority vote of that nation that could lick all others…. and I think that the statement was correct insofar as it implied that our test of truth is a reference to either a present or an imagined future majority in favor of our view.

In this view of truth reason has no transcendence reference point to which appeal can be made. It is simply a matter of “licking all others.”

8.) Man’s Teleology (end) is the Kingdom of Man as expressed in some kind of paradise.

All legislation that is pursued it pursued in the name of a Utopian world where man is set free from all constraints.

9.) Man as God, thus can be assured of the inevitability of progress

Since God can not fail, Man as God calls whatever is, “progress.”

Alexander Pope gets at this in his poem, “An Essay On Man.”

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony, not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.