Naughty or Nice?

Are people naughty or nice? This is a question that comes up whether we count ourselves religious or not. We cannot avoid seeing people acting both well and badly toward each other, and, as long as people often behave badly, some account of it must be had. If we are hopeful, this account will offer some way out of complacent acceptance of our own wickedness or acceptance of the suffering of some at the hands of others toward a future where love and justice are the arbiters of decision making. It sounds like the "Reign of God" to put it in Christian language.

As I write, I don't want to give the impression that the account given here is the only possible account; it is not. I will not even warrant that I can express it as accurately as I should wish. I present this account of human nature - part of theological anthropology - because this was for me an important element of thinking my way into Christianity, when I encountered it in a systematic theology class. The question of human nature is really the question of Sin and its antidote. Or in other language: What do we need to be saved from? And how?

My thinking over the next few posts comes from Mark Heim's presentation in that class, my reading of Reinhold Niebuhr (in particular, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Volume One), and from the scientific insights of evolutionary psychology. But all this has a biblical basis as well. Christian readings of Genesis 1-3 present the story of a good creation subverted by the Fall, as the prelude to eventual redemption. The apostle Paul wrote:

For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. (1 Cor 15:21-22)

Augustine and Calvin developed this idea, and it is to Calvin's Doctrine of Total Depravity that I now turn. And I would frame the question as not whether people do wicked things, but the extent to which we can prevent ourselves from doing wicked things by our own efforts. Calvin's Doctrine of Total Depravity is not popular in Unitarian Universalist circles; I have heard said on several occasions that the doctrine is incompatible with affirming the first of our principles: the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

What follows is an attempt to look more positively at this doctrine.My aim is less to convert anyone to my particular point of view, but to provide resources that encourage justice, compassion and hope. In summary here is the Doctrine of Total Depravity (hereafter "Total Depravity"). It might better be called the Doctrine of Pervasive Depravity. I break it down into three parts.

   First: Humans have a propensity to sin, inherited from the fall of Adam - Bad News
   Second: This affects in some part all our thoughts and actions - Very Bad News
   Third:  We are saved from this state of affairs by God's grace - Very Good News

To be fair, one might argue from Calvin's doctrine that being so wicked, humans are worthy of little consideration, especially in conjunction with other Calvinist teachings of Double Predestination and Substitutionary Atonement. Some have no doubt experienced such an attitude from Calvinistic churches. And Calvin's own behavior around the trial and execution of Michael Servetus does not suggest that Calvin cared much about the inherent worth and dignity of every person. I will leave this to Calvin's biographers, and return to the three-point summary of total Depravity above.

Even in the absence of negative experiences I can see why many Unitarian Universalists do not like "Total Depravity". In the absence of conviction concerning part three, there are dangers in holding only to parts one and two. We are left with only bad news and no way out. In fact, the third statement opens the way, not only to hope, but also to the inherent worth and dignity of every person. If we have worth in God's eyes (because God desires to save us), then we ought to treat each other accordingly.

Although the "us" to be saved may not have gone far in the eyes of Calvin (he taught Double Predestination), it did to our Universalist forebears. Early American Universalists like John Murray were steeped in Calvinist theology and accepted "Total Depravity" in its entirety. Whereas in traditional Calvinism, God has determined to save only a remnant, Calvinist Universalists declared that God has both the will and the power to save us all. They taught that God loves us all not because of how good we are (in fact, in spite of our wickedness), but merely for being God's creation; what we might call our inherent worth and dignity. Once we are convinced of God's unconditional love for us, goodness is our only possible response. God does not love us because we are good; we are good because God loves us.

In opposition to "Total Depravity", traditional liberal theology affirmed human perfectibility. Unitarians of the 19th century called this "salvation by character". In part, it represents a reaction against the supposed and experienced gloominess of the whole Calvinist package of total Depravity, Substitutionary Atonement and Double Predestination. "Human Perfectibility" does not deny the human capacity for evil, but differs from "Total Depravity" in points two and three. Here is a summary:
   First: Humans have a capacity to sin.
   Second: There is a God-given place in our psyche from which we can judge ourselves.
   Third: We have the will to act on this self-judgment which will save us from the deathly consequences of sin.

This raises us from the status of persistent wrongdoer to being on the path of righteousness. The affirmation is noble if we understand the "us" here to be universal. It opposed the gloominess of traditional Calvinism with optimism in human abilities, which, by Victorian standards, seemed eminently justified. It led to the quip, related by Thomas Starr King, that while the Universalists believed God was too good to damn them, the Unitarians believed they were too good to be damned!

Joking aside, there are dangers in holding to "Human Perfectibility". It fuels self-righteousness and hubris.It closely pegs our worth on our capacity for improvement, and undermines the very possibility of inherent worth. It may ultimately end in disillusion and despair when we have tried to be good and failed, for example, because of compulsion or addiction.

And in my view, while there is much we can do for ourselves, our grounds for adequate hope cannot rest with us alone. One Christian way of telling the story is that we inherit Original Sin from Adam. We do not have to take the Garden of Eden literally, to understand how Sin might be inherited. From an evolutionary perspective, humans have evolved along with everything else, due to selection pressures. This selection is for survival not virtue, and we ought to be aware of the likelihood that evolutionary behavior is deeply embedded in us. Depth psychology suggests that we are often not very aware of why we act in certain ways. Certainly we can have no assurance that we are completely aware of our motivations. More often that not, we rationalize our actions after our brains have determined what to do. The metaphor of us riding the elephant is quite apt: no really, I wanted the elephant to crash through the gate and go into that field!

Well, all this probably raises more questions than it answers - as I think theology probably should. What do we mean by Sin? What is Salvation? Where is the boundary between human action and divine gift? And what do we mean by God anyway? The next post will continue along this line of thought.