Sunday, April 6, 2008 – 6:46 pm
I wrote a letter to Mat Jones a while ago, here it is:
Mat, you have said before that you do not think that man has any intrinsic value and that humans can only find their value in Christ. I am writing to you to try and persuade you otherwise. You are more than welcome to criticize and critique this letter. This work will not cover all the small details and you are welcome to bring up different points. I want to focus on one small thing, what are the implications if man has no intrinsic value?
I think your basic view is based off of verses such as Jeremiah 17:9 (The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it? RSV), Romans 3:10-11 (None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. ESV), and Romans 7:18 (For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. NASB). It seems clear in just these three verses that the depravity of man is very great. It is not a matter of choosing evil, because of Adam’s sin every human is born evil. So, hypothetically speaking, even if a son of Adam managed to never sin, he would still be responsible for his inherent sin nature. Your view states that when Christ saves someone they then are given value because the dead man is washed away in the blood of Christ. You might even say what value does a dead man have?
However, my view states that humans have value because we were created in God’s image. God imparted some of his essence into us when he made us (this is not to say that we are God, however). But (and this is a huge “but”), when humanity fell through Adam, we became exceedingly wicked. So I will join C. S. Lewis in saying,
[If] you come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve… that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth.
It seems that Lewis is saying (and I agree with him), that we find pride and value in being made in the accordance of the image of God, but we should be shamed and humiliated by our and our father’s sins.
Now on to the implications; what happens if man has no intrinsic value? I have several related questions. If humanity has no value apart from Christ: Why did God decide to save us rather than destroy us? What is the difference between an unsaved person being alive and their being dead? Why are things that are typically considered morally depraved among Christians such as abortion wrong? This is just to start us off.
You would probably respond to the first question by stating that that is the whole nature of God’s grace and mercy. Under your view, it might seem that God is even more gracious and merciful if he extends that grace and mercy to those who have no value whatsoever. As opposed to the thought that God might be obligated to save humanity if they had value.
This seems acceptable to me at first until I look further. It seems that if God is just, he would not have let humanity live for as long as they have without destroying them. I know that this is, to a certain degree, begging the question, but bear with me for a moment. Why would God love humanity enough to try and save them if they are completely corrupted and without any value. In other words, how can God love an evil? How can God show mercy to an unpardoned evil? Why should God give us grace?
The next two questions that I asked are inextricably related. If humanity has no value, what is the difference between the living and the dead. In some ways it seems as if everyone being dead is of more value that everyone being alive because there would be less evil in the world. Another way to address the issues is to ask why is murder wrong? I understand murder to be wrong, not just because God says so, but because I am stealing a valuable life. Murder is wrong because we are killing those who bear the image of God. If humanity does not have any value then things such as abortion, murder, and maybe even rape become just another fact of existence rather than morally reprehensible. In fact, if we and all of our actions a re completely corrupt at all times, then what is the moral difference between my washing my hair and my killing someone. It seems ridiculous to say that there is only a moral difference once we are saved.
I think this is where the line blurs between our topics; I do not know if we are just talking about the worth of man anymore. It might also be that we are talking about our fundamental understanding of the doctrine of total depravity. You seem to think that man can never do any good whatsoever apart from Christ. All of man’s actions are evil and counter to what God wants (which leads for an awkward situations for a hard determinist). It is not that man will not do good, it is that man cannot do good because goodness is counter to his very essence, i.e. his very nature.
However, I disagree with this. I think that man is corrupt by his very nature, but he can do some good. But all of his actions are tainted by his sin nature. That is to say, Man may do a good action but is never a wholly good action.
Take this for example: A little child is riding his bike on the sidewalk and crashes on the street into the path of an oncoming bus. A man who is taking a walk runs out into the street, throws the child to safety of the sidewalk, and is subsequently killed by the bus that hits him. I do not think that you can offer up any rational explanation for why the man’s actions were completely and utterly evil because saving children from horrible deaths is honorable and good. Sacrificing oneself for others is honorable and good (even Jesus did this many times). It seems the best we can do is say that the action is only tainted by his sin nature. The saving of the child may have been motivated by things that are not altogether good (glory, pride, and such), but this does not take away from the fact that this was a good action.
Let me offer up this to you, for God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life. It seems that God saving us is not just him extending his grace and mercy to us, but an act of love as well. Let me ask this one more time, can God love an evil? If there is not good part of us, nothing worth saving, why would God save us? God was in no way obligated to save us, he saved us because we are worth saving. Regardless of Calvinism and Arminianism, I hope to convince you that man does indeed have some value.
Clive Staples Lewis. Prince Caspian. New York: HarperCollins, 1979.
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