Correspondence
Our contributor sends us further correspondence. Earlier letters appeared in The Testimony for October and November.
Will correspondents who wish to discuss points raised in The Testimony please note that their letters should be addressed to the Editorial Secretary, and not to the writers of the articles.
I am in receipt of your kind reply (see page 352, November issue). There is scarcely a subject so elusive in its fundamentals as psychology. And after all, the great question of “what we are” reduces itself to a psychological one. The fine technical distinctions that psychologists make may not be found in the scriptures, but its true practical manifestations pervade its volumes. There is no truer source for practical psychology than the Divine word. Here we stand on true ground, and one feels confident that so long as one’s psychological sense is developed in harmony with the declarations and evidences of the inspired record there is a general feeling of satisfaction in being on the right track in attaining the elusive quest wherein Socrates failed : “Know thyself.”
What is thought? At best, we seem only to be able to define its processes. Possibly some answer may one day be found in the subtle, incomprehensible thing we call “Spirit of God.” That I sometimes think is no mere blind, mechanical thing as “power” in a mechanical contrivance, but as energy instinct with the personality of the Divine fiat. “In Him we live and move and have our being.”
James, the celebrated psychologist, said that an infant at birth was “a big, budding mass of confusion.” I don’t like his word “confusion.” A newborn infant to my mind is but a throbbing, sensitive organised body of flesh and blood and, as such, responsive to stimuli from within and without. It is organised, not confused, though at first its responses are automatic, imperceptibly becoming consciously controlled as the days pass and experience moulds. The automatic reactions of a child bring me to the conclusion that the human body is from its inception of individual existence a body controlled and organised “curiously wrought (embroidered).”
Its nervous strands the spirit’s embroidery receive their first pulsation from contact with the cold air into which it is born, and its reaction is heard in a lusty cry. It has felt ; the brain has interpreted the “feeling” in its cries. Can it be said that the “feeling” was a “thought”? Perhaps not in terms of psychology of the textbooks ; but nevertheless the “feeling” was registered in the brain of the infant and gave it consciousness of being. Thought may be viewed as conscious reaction to nervous stimuli, and by conscious reaction I mean brain-response whether in infant cries, or controlled ideas however felt or expressed.
Now, since we have “felt” or conscious existence through the nervous system, I am disposed to conclude that the whole body vibrates as a unity, a harmonious whole to nervous stimuli. The brain is the interpretative organ. When we say “the brain thinks” do we not mean that the brain has made conscious the “inner” or “outer” feelings to which the body is capable or potentially endowed? In other words, the whole body is the sensitized organ. The brain is but the sense organ, the organ interpreting the sensations or nervous vibrations.
The stomach is supplied with nerves. It gets empty. The peculiar function of the stomach nerves is to register that emptiness” in the brain and we crave for food. The stomach craves for the food, not the brain. The brain interprets the wants of the stomach, and the nervous force, the peculiar function of the brain, gives “will” to do something to satisfy the cravings of the stomach.
Here we have an “urge” ; but can such an urge be said to be a “sin-urge”? What is it when not a “sin-urge”?
And here, I come to my fundamental concept of the “human urge” (I like this term better than “sin-urge” as it is more comprehensive), namely, at birth our “urges,” “desires,” “reactions,” “flesh-impulses,” or whatever you call them, are “innocent,” without experience, untried. Automatically functioning for the natural needs of the body, they are but fulfilling a law of being. “There is no tendency of the flesh that may not be made to subserve some good purpose.” Coming into social contact, our natural desires are prescribed by the consideration of others. Our functions become limited by environment. We are caused to recognise law, the law peculiar to our environment. Apart from law we have no knowledge of wrong. Breach of law is wrong from the point of view of the law-maker. There is no wrong in driving our car up and down our own back yard at night without a light ; but open the gate and take a run on the highway and the law is broken and the penalty exacted. Hence Naturally “flesh impulses” are innocent or untried.
Law-making prescribes the limitations.
Directing the “flesh impulses” in harmony with law, there is no infraction. The “urge” is lawful.
Infraction of law is initiated in “urges” contrary to it.This “urge” against law is the “sin-urge.”
Therefore, “sinurges” are not instinctively inherent but willed-inherent instincts driven along a path contrary to law. One may be breaking law unwittingly. Light, or knowledge of law, makes conscious the responsibility.
Radically, inherent or instinctive urges are but nerve-responses of the body due to the peculiar functioning of its organs and made conscious through the brain. One may overexcite the nerve responses, or certain stimuli may cause their over excitement until the responses are expressed in willed reaction. It is solely a question of “law” as to whether the mental reaction is wrong or right, whether it is within bounds or beyond.
Instinctively “urges or “inherent urges” become “sin-urges” when the instincts seek not merely self-gratification but unlawful self-gratification, and what is unlawful is determined by what is law.
Divine laws are supreme and the sole arbiter of what is right and wrong eternally. God draws the line. He makes His laws for human beings to observe for their good here and hereafter. Step over that line, instinctively or in defiance, and transgression results. The motive that impels the transgression be it unwitting or resolved is the “sin-urge” and “the law of sin in the members,” a law because this bias will inevitably lead to the same result in flesh so urged or impelled, namely, the fact of sin.
The fact of sin has a source. That source leads one to a motive. That motive examined will be found to be an impulsion to be driven along a path contrary to law. The mental process from the motive to the act of sin is the “sin-urge” in its urging.
On the other hand, acts of righteousness have a source. That source is to be found also in a motive. That motive examined will be seen to be a flesh-desire impelled along a path of righteousness. The mental process from the motive to the act of righteousness is the “spirit-urge,” “the spirit of Christ” in its urging.
Ergo, the fact of sin and the act of righteousness both have a common groundwork, namely the flesh impulses. The crucial question is whither bent? Bent upon lawlessness, they are sin. Bent upon righteousness, they are right.
And here you see my fundamental concept. If our beginnings are not sound and correct the farther we get from them the greater the divergence. These simple matters as to what is sin-urge and what is not have lead to a world of chaos. That is why I was prompted to oppose your expression “sin-urge” in your psychological disquisitions in The Testimony. I wanted to know how far you carried it back? I am not quite certain yet. Do you apply the term from the “jump” so to speak? Or do you go back only to a certain starting point and say, “This is where my notion of the sin-urge begins?”
The general conviction seems to be that the human-urge is the “sinurge” or “sintendency” without qualification.It is styled “sin-in-the-flesh.” Christ is said to have had it as a fact in his members. I demur. Not as a fact, but potentially. “He that looketh on a woman” commits adultery in his heart. It was possible for Christ to “look.”Examine His sex-urge, and what do you find. It was pure, virtuous, undefiled, holy, “a eunuch for the Kingdom of heaven’s sake.” Examine all His urges, one by one : the same result, “without sin.” And not only so, examine them further, penetrate if you will into their intrinsic quality, what do you find? Each and all of them “the effulgence of the Father’s glory, the impress of His hypostasis,” “the word made flesh.” That is to say, the Christ-flesh was holy, SEPARATE; in the “likeness of sinful flesh,” but not “sinful flesh.”
Here are two pieces of woollen cloth ; number 1, best quality ; number 2, inferior quality. But the pieces are of the same substance. They are both “wool.” Would you say that number 1 was the “same” as number 2? I would not. I would say “Number one is like number two, being wool,” and there I would stop. So Christ was in “the likeness of sinful flesh,” but look at the moral quality of that flesh and you are bound to admit it was “separate from sinners,” “a holy (separate) thing,” “the word manifest in flesh” and the word not merely as a fulfilment of prophecy or as a vehicle of thought, but the word as a moral quality of the flesh.
Hence, Christ was “clean,” “clean flesh” in this sense defined, and therefore an acceptable sacrifice by which “unclean” or “sinful flesh” may be “made the righteousness of God in him” by being “baptized into his death” and in him dying “daily,” and so become cleansed “from the flesh” in all its uncleannesses and sins, first morally and in the end with the Divine clothing of immortality.
It is said that there can be no temptation without a “sin-urge” or a “sin-tendency,” and if Christ did not have “sin-tendencies,” He could not have been tempted in all points like as we are.This is begging the question. What is potential is confused with its manifestation. Temptation or trial is to prove the direction or moral bent of the tendency or urges of the flesh to prove whether they are operating in a good or evil direction whether they are “righteous” tendencies or “sinful” tendencies. Temptation is to test the moral quality of the flesh desires, whether they be good or whether they be evilly inclined. Christ’s flesh-desires were so tried or tempted with what result?”Without sin” is the Divine verdict.
Herein is the sum :
- Desires of the flesh at birth are untried or inexperienced.
- Experiences develop, environment determines their bent.
- Flesh urges may be “good” or “evil.” If evil, then sinurge.
- Christ was tried in all points as we are. He was human, mortal.
- He was an acceptable clean sacrifice.
- His sacrifice ritually exhibited death as the wages of sin.
- It is necessary to become incorporated into the sufferings of Christ as a basis of acceptable approach unto God for the forgiveness of sins, and, in the end, redemption, immortality.
By Wagga, N.S.W. 1st August, 1931.
W. RIDING TO A. R. D. MOYE
In reply to your second letter, I want first of all to make this assertion The sin-urge is the Divinely-fixed characteristic urge of sin-nature human nature.
Though we may consider it as being;
(a) Composite of all human modifiable tendencies and dispositions together with their hereditary and developmental significances (diag. 1) and
(b) As an urge whose intensity of impulsion is measured by individual disposition, fashioned in the moulds of heredity and environment (diag. 2), the basic constitution and direction of the original impulsion remains essentially constant.
Under (a) above, it impels;
- Bodily activities for the preservation of the human self, or functions as you write for “natural needs.”
- Personal, intelligent infraction of Divine law, man being thus impelled along a path contrary to the divine rule or standard of a perfect life.
In other words, whatever the degree of goodness on the human plane be attached to any disposition or human tendency, the group or composite urge from a Divine standpoint operates in a direction opposite to that with perfection absolute as an eternal resultant.
Under (b), whatever the disposition of the individual, whether a disposition to godlessness impelling the lusts of the flesh, or a disposition to godliness impelling the fruits of the spirit, human nature as such remains unchanged, and the impulsion of that nature is the SIN-URGE, whose directivity remains constant.
The urge runs out with the cessation of life, the wages of sin or is expelled by a change of nature to perfection absolute.
Your concept of sin-urge amounts to a compelled or willed inherent instinct driven along a path contrary to law, and so you indicate reasoned preference for the term “human urge” to be used for those urges that fulfil the law of our being.
The law of our being is the law of the human flesh, “in which dwelleth no good thing” (Rom. 7, 18), the law of a “vile body” (Phil. 3, 21), a body of sin. Bodily urges simply fulfil the law of the HUMAN being. They cannot do otherwise. Man is so fearfully and wonderfully made that his innate physical reflexes uniformly function for the preservation of a sinful being.
That is the very nature that God does not wish to persist. And that is why one is inclined to bring the physical impulses within the concept of sinurge.
No urge whatever from flesh that is weak through sin can operate to produce the cleanness, or whiteness or righteousness comprehended in the perfection of the Divine nature, which marks a life fulfilling eternal laws of its being.
You say there is no tendency of the flesh that may not be made to subserve some good purpose. There is no human tendency, either innate or acquired that is capable of conditioning goodness as a Divine conception. The best of men fall very far short of the Divine standard of what is right.
Goodness of the Divine plane can only be defined in terms of infinity and eternity.
Natural responses may be termed good under sanctions of human law, but be very deficient under Divine law.
And if we admit that an urge “bent on” righteousness is a good one, the radical significance and implications of the sin-urge of our being are retained.
The former is unstable and subject to human limitations ; the latter remains fixed as the mark of human nature in spite of willed endeavour along worthy channels towards noble ideals. Divine power alone is capable of changing our vile bodies, so that they may possess an urge impelling goodness on the Divine plane, and a mind capable of responding without lapse to the demands of the impulsion.
Human behaviour is subject to environment. Human dispositions may change under changed circumstances, but not so the nature and fixed implications or impulsion of human flesh, of which we are all more or less conscious in our study to show ourselves approved unto God (not man).
The former are variable and modifiable; the latter is basically and essentially constant (i.e., directively) as constant and unwavering in its impulsion in the direction of a God dishonouring self-assertion as the basic urge in the spirit-body to exhibit and perpetuate for ever the qualities of the perfect man.
Any directive change rests with a change of nature and that is beyond human achievement altogether.
Character, it seems to me, measures one’s degree of control of the intensity of impulsion of the sin urge.The spirit of man offers minimum resistance. The spirit of Christ indicates by willed observance of Divine law a lowered intensity of the urge.But in neither case is the original direction of the urge altered in the slightest.
Complete elimination of the urge is synonymous with perfection of character in the absolute sense the Spirit of Christ in the ultimate.
The following diagram may help to make the point clear (diag. 3).
Let us consider the mind of the flesh and the mind of the spirit a little more closely.
The human mind depends for its functioning upon the brain. The brain is flesh and hence the thinking of the flesh (i.e., the mind of the flesh) is not naturally in the direction of words and works that are eternnally good.
Paul details a dreadful list of fleshly works (Gal. 5, 19). Under human moral standards some of them are condoned. Under Divine laws they are all sin, and are indicative of the carnal mind that is enmity against God.
Paul gives us the reason why in Romans 8, 7. “The carnal mind is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”
When subject to the Law of God, however (Rom. 7, 25), we have the mind of the Spirit the Spirit of Christ that in its ideality points back to a perfect urge in the direction of infinite goodness. In man, however, the Spirit of Christ is limited in its operation by the law of sin in our members (read Rom. ch. 7).
Psychologically considered, the Spirit of Christ is a disposition to Godliness, whose directivity is towards righteousness a disposition that marks, as we have suggested, positive human effort to control the intensity of impulsion of the sinurge.
The limits imposed by this innate urge are sufficiently effective to warrant the inspired statement, “There is not a just man upon earth who doeth good and sinneth not” (Eccl. 7, 20).
In man, a disposition to godliness is something acquired, the human mind functioning in response to stimuli from spiritual associations.
It is not a fixed disposition (no human disposition as such can be). Its instability is all the more marked as our limited capacity for unwavering concentration upon the requirements of Divine Law become apparent.
Human incapacity to do good and sin not takes one for a reason beyond the motives and effects of pure mental functioning.
Something more deep rooted suggests itself a something in human life that persists in spite of all our efforts in the direction of moral uplift.
Although such factors as ancestry, sex, maturity and environment account for “individual differences” in man, they do not represent differences in nature. The nature remains the same all through sinful nature, that which without cessation since the Eden incident has impelled man to turn his back upon Divine Law.
That he has not been compelled is where Divine forbearance comes in, and man in the end is going to be judged upon the extent of his voluntary submissiveness to Divine Law as shown by his control of, but not eradication of, that sin-impulsion as the characteristic urge of human nature.
The series of changes in nature and the relevant implications we suggest to be as follow :
(a) The original Adamic nature was probationary. Adam had an inherent urge or impulsion (not compulsion) to goodness by which impulsion a willed perfection of character might have been achieved.
(b) Man was “made upright” (Eccl. 7, 29), but he chose to transgress Divine Law. Hence Human nature mortal as a mark of estrangement from God, a nature with an impulsion whose directivity is away from the path of righteousness. Man, nevertheless, still retains a free will to obey God’s Law as comprehended in Divine appointments and atoning significance.
(c) This natural sin-urge, whether controlled by the Spirit of Christ the mind of the Spirit or held under restraints of a humanly compiled code of morality, still persists as a fundamental constituent of human nature.
(d) An unrestrained and unrestrained eternal impulsion to goodness absolute is the fundamental urge of Spirit nature immortal.
This impulsion to righteousness, perfection absolute as a fixed element of Spirit nature will take effect immediately our vile bodies are changed (“in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye”).
You state that an acquired tendency in the direction of righteousness may be termed a “spirit-urge.”That is quite true, but although the intensity of the original urge of nature may vary inversely with worthiness of disposition, the directivity remains unchanged and humanly unchangeable.
Christ’s control in himself of the inherent urge of all flesh was such that he did no sin He did only those things that pleased the Father. He was, however, tempted, but the temptations proved him to be without sin, thus showing how effectively his righteous disposition suppressed the basic urge of his flesh.
Christ’s character was holy but his nature with its fundamental impulsion was unholy. It was Adamic and therefore unclean. Christ could still have the sin-urge and yet be without sin.
There is a danger lest in considering character to be neurally conditioned, we make the inference that because Christ’s character was perfect, then the flesh was perfect to produce it (the clean-flesh inference).If so, where was the real point of his temptation?
Christ’s character being perfect showed that he was able to withstand, or suppress, the root-impulse of his nature. His flesh was defiled by the death-power which all flesh inherits. Christ came to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (Heb. 9, 26). He destroyed through his death the power of death in himself. He condemned sin in the flesh.
And there we have the reason why God sent forth his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.You say that Christ was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, but was not himself sinful flesh. This view of the term “likeness” is hardly justified in view of other relevant passages of Scripture. Paul informs us (Phil. 2, 7) that Jesus was made in the likeness of men. We read of the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2, 5).
The writer to the Hebrews (Heb. 2, 14) surely removes all doubt upon the matter. He writes, “Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, it became Him likewise to take part in the same.”
Christ certainly did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. His holiness of character was an indication that by willed conformity to his Father’s purpose, He controlled perfectly the basic sin-urge of his being.
His nature has been changed. He has now the Divine nature with all its eternal implications.
We shall be made like Him (1 John 3, 2), i.e., of the same nature the Divine nature of Jesus Christ if by our devotion to Divine law and our control of the sin-urge, we achieve a character fitness pleasing to God.
The Solution