Can a Sinful Man go to Hell on His Own?

HP: First, he is lost without hope of eternal life with God. He has became totally unwilling to obey God and is given to selfishness as the controlling law of their life by yieding themselves willingly to the influences of the flesh, the devil, and the world.

To be dead in a spiritual sense is not necessarily to be unable, but to be unwilling. We as believers are to be dead indeed unto sin. This does not mean that it is 'impossible' for us to sin, but rather that we are to be totally unwilling to sin.


Even though we can indeed walk in the light of the Holy Spirit to the point that it can be rightfully said that we 'cannot sin,' I do not believe that it indicates an impossibility to sin, but again a 'total unwillingness' to sin.

One is only 'dead in sin' in a literal sense of 'impossibility to do right' when and if the Holy Spirit has withdrawn Himself from that individual, seeing that the only motivating influence to good has been completely and entirely eliminated from their life.

 

HP: Can you show me one verse that can be interpreted ‘in context’ to support this Augustinain notion? I have posted several objections to the interpretation of many of the proof texts used to support constitutional moral depravity. I cannot remember if you refuted my posts concerning them or not. It seems to me that I just received silence from you on those verses. If I am wrong, please forgive me and point me to your response if you can. If not, just set forth your proof text again and we can address it afresh.

 

HP: You talk in such vague and sweeping terms, referring to whole chapters at a time, yet do not point to one specific passage where the Augustinian notion of moral constitutional depravity is substantiated.

HP: What?

HP: If you believe that an infant or one that is not a moral agent lives by the dictates of sin, what sin(s) are they guilty of? Sin is a violation of God’s law. What law have they violated? (Where there is no law, sin is not imputed)

HP: You are extrapolating this to include those that are not even moral agents. What specific Scripture allows you to predicate sin where there is no law? Tell us how infants and those not even moral agents are ‘enslaved to sin.’ That is beyond the scope or Scripture, reason, and experience.

HP: You are acting as if the burden of proof is upon silence to prove your presuppositions or admit defeat. You have it backwards. The burden of proof lies upon you to establish clearly that those ‘not moral agents’ are under the law and are held eternally accountable to God for a violation of a law that they are not under. Moral law applies to moral agents and is suited for none other according to Scripture. “Where there is no law, sin is not imputed.” “To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to HIM it is sin.”

 

The burden of proof is upon BR to establish that “sinners are born as sinners in birth.” Take Romans 3, which BR refers to often as proof of inherited moral depravity. What verse in that chapter or any other states anything about being born in sin, born with a sinful moral nature, born morally depraved, born in original sin, or any other such Augustinian notion. It simply does not.

Due to the fact that ‘all have sinned’ or that there is not one righteous prior to salvation, does not in any way equate to being born with original sin or constitutional moral depravity. It simply establishes the fact that “all we like sheep have gone astray, and have turned everyone to his own way” and that in Scriptural terms have ‘become’ unprofitable.

Morality is impossible to conceive of without moral accountability. Moral accountability demands that certain conditions are present. There must be a law, abilities to understand and comprehend and comply with that law, knowledge of that law, and a free will to either obey or disobey the know commands, i.e., the power of contrary choice of intents. Morality takes place in the will of man, antecedent to the doing, and cannot under any circumstances be seen as attached to the physical or the sensibilities or the nature that we are born with. Morality cannot be predicated without contrary choice to choose not just to follow the necessitated impulses of the sensibilities, but the choice to actually determine the intents of the heart, formed in the will of man, that are antecedent to any and all outward acts.

The so-called constitutional moral depravity foisted upon the church by Augustine is at best an oxymoron. By claiming sin can be predicated prior to the formation of intents within the will, that serve as the cause of ones actions and therefore blameworthy or praiseworthy, choices which of necessity must take place for morality to exist, all morality is annihilated. Constitutional depravity destroys accountability and makes God unjust in blaming man for being born into a state in which he did not ask to be birthed into nor have anything whatsoever to do with the outcome of his moral nature and subsequent moral choices. Such a notion is simply not supported by Scripture or reason.

 

Joh 12:32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.


HP: This is as clear of example as can be seen as to the way BR consistently begs the question. How does this verse state in any way that all men will have the opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel, or that the drawing spoken of here

The only way you can get this verse to walk on all four legs in support of BR’s presuppositions, is to accept his presuppositions before you consider the text.