Orthodoxy: Its Truths And ErrorsClarke, James Freeman
Religion
Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors
Clarke, James Freeman
Unitarianism
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.
§ 5. Doctrine of the Fall in Adam, and Natural Depravity. Their Truth and
Error.
The first point of the doctrine of evil regards the Fall, including the
doctrine of depravity.
Modern French philosophers have dwelt much on what they call the
solidarity of the human race. By this they mean that two individuals are
not independent of each other, like two trees standing side by side, but
like two buds on the same tree or bough. There is a common life-sap
flowing through them all. Let the life of the tree be attacked
anywhere,—in its roots, its trunk, its limbs,—and all these individual
buds feel it. Yet each bud has also a life of its own, and develops its
own stalk, leaves, blossom, fruit. It can be taken from its own tree, and
put into another tree, and grow. So it is with separate men grafted into
the great tree of mankind. No one lives to himself, nor dies to himself.
If one suffers, all suffer. The life of mankind, becoming diseased, pours
disease into all individual men.
Now, is there not something in this doctrine to which our instincts
assent? Do not we feel it true that we inherit not our own life merely,
but that of our race? and is not this the essential truth in the doctrine
of the fall?
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