What Constitutes a Depraved Nature?

HP: That is mere conjecture without the slightest hint that such is the case. God speaks in general terms to Cain, not sin specific. Cain is told that he should be able to rule over sinful desires, not fall prey to them.

HP: What sin, with the help of the Lord subsequent to salvation, is His proffered help unable to keep us from? If sin is necessitated, i.e., man cannot help but sin, sin cannot be blameworthy. A first principle of morals is the absolute necessity of choice, being able to do something other than what one does under the very same set of circumstances. You cannot repent apart from remorse, and remorse can only be incurred as one sees that there was something else one could have did if only they would have. Remorse is impossible to conceive of under the system of necessity you seem to be advocating.

HP: Not according to what you have indicated so far. You said that man could not ‘not sin.’ If it is impossible not to sin, choice is not involved. You said that we could not refrain from all sin, and if that is true, some sin would be imposed by necessity, and choice is impossible to conceive of in any moral sense if ones intents and actions are under necessity. You again eliminate choice. You seem to try to have it both ways. You indicate we are bound by necessity to sin and then you speak of choice. You cannot have it both ways. Choice involves the possibility of two or more possible consequents for any given antecedent. You need to decide what you believe. You cannot have it both ways.

HP: If the sin nature is so strong that there is only one consequent (sin) for any given antecedent (temptation) accountability is a chimera, for one would be under necessity and not freedom. Accountability can only exist if there is more than one possible consequent for a given antecedent and that one is fully able to do something other than what one does under the same set of circumstances. Any talk of accountability under the system of necessity I see you as holding to, is shear nonsense. Even a child understands that if the will was not able to do any other than what it does, it is an accident or the results of fate and as such cannot be justly held accountable. Have we not heard, “I did not mean to!” and see that IF in fact that is in reality true, the child cannot be blamed for their action?

HP: Sorry I cannot follow you here. If we have no choice, we cannot be held morally accountable or be morally blameworthy or praiseworthy. Choice is a prerequisite for any denotation of moral intent and or subsequent action.

HP: There is not even the hint that infants or those prior to the age of accountability are in need or must experience salvation by grace. That is unsupported conjecture.

HP: Again, that is pure unsupported conjecture. No where does Scripture state men are born in sin or separated from God at birth. Nowhere is man ever condemned for the state he is born in but rather everywhere is condemned for the sins he commits subsequent to moral agency. If sin was unavoidable, there would not be the least morality to it and as such impossible to conceive of it as blameworthy or heinous or rebellion against God. Due to the fact that sin is avoidable, and that it is willful rebellion against God as opposed to the necessity you paint it as, sin is blameworthy, it is rebellion, it is heinous and it will rightfully incur God’s wrath and penalty, i.e., eternal separation from God.

HP: Man is born with a proclivity to sin, and influence to sin via the depraved sensibilities, but is not born a sinner. Only as one reaches the age of accountability, and willingly violates a known commandment of God is sin conceived. The apostle James instructs us to pay close attention to when sin is conceived and warns us not to err in this matter. Sin is not conceived until the will knows and understands the intrinsic nature of the command and then willingly chooses to form intents of selfishness as opposed to benevolence. Sin is not nor can it be a state one finds themselves in at birth. To believe such is to fall prey to the false notion that indeed sin does lie in the flesh and not in the will, just as the father of the doctrine of original sin, Augustine, taught.


Sin is the results of moral intents that are only found subsequent to the age of accountability. Our ‘sin nature,’ the nature that actually involves sinful choices, is developed subsequent to the age of accountability, although greatly influenced by selfish, but not morally selfish, acts and formed habits that indeed most likely existed prior to the age of accountability, including but not limited to one proclivity to sin from birth via the depraved sensibilities.

HP: Man is indeed accountable for his sins. Only when one makes sin the product of necessity, and that from birth as you have indicated, is the justness of accountability for sin brought into question. The wages of sin is death, eternal separation from God, a penalty no infant has nor justly could incur.

 

HP: Happens to us all. I have started either making a copy of the post before I hit send, or if I forget and see it is starting to take too long I mark the text quickly and then again, save it. That way if it does not go through, I still have it to resend. I am certain you have though of this and I am preaching to the choir.

HP: If I was a betting man, the only thing you know about Pelagius or what he believed comes by way of the mouth of the man responsible for destroying his actual words, and in their place gives his own ‘Augustinian tilt’ to what he believed. Let me burn all your writings and let me and only me tell the world what you believe and see if you think I am completely fair, honest and unbiased. Now that is a thought. Maybe I could do that to DHK or he to me. Would the world get a real fair opinion of our thoughts and feelings? I am certain they would from me, but I am uncertain if it would at the hand of DHK.:smilewinkgrin:

Enough of that guilt by the association of what Pelagius’s detractor Augustine had to say about his beliefs.

HP: Again, I agree in principle but what does that have to do with the discussion? The question is, does the word ‘nature’ necessitate one as a sinner from birth? Every time the word ‘nature’ is used must we read in ‘and that from birth?’ No. Besides, Scripture does not even use the words ‘sinful nature’ or ‘sin nature.’

HP: They might choose not to act in a selfish sinful manner, that is true, but once they have sinned they cannot please God until the stain of sin via salvation is removed. Nothing they do an be considered as righteous in the sense of pleasing to God and as such be expectant of receiving a reward for it. The sinner has but one hope, i.e., to be separated for eternity from God.

HP: I believe men are not born sinners, and are not born righteous or holy. The are created with the potential of morality, but are not moral agents at birth. I believe that they are born with a natural proclivity to sin via depraved physical sensibilities, but that is not sin in and of itself. It serves as a formidable influence but does not constitute sin. IF I was to say that men are born with a ‘nature to sin’ (which I as a general rule refrain from due to misunderstandings) I would be referring again NOT to actual sin, but rather a proclivity to sin via ones nature, the natural physical propensities we all are born with that are from birth depraved.

 

HP: Can you offer the list evidence of your ideas as to infants being saved by grace? Where is the scriptural evidence? Where is there evidence from any area of knowledge granted to us by God?

HP: You 'think' it is 'pretty biblical?' Where is your biblical evidence that men are sinners from birth? Where is your biblical evidence that a baby needs redemption? Adding an exclamation mark after your conjecture does not constitute evidence, any more than beating on the pulpit does.

 

HP: No one that I know refutes for a minute that lives can be lost or that sin can indeed affect whole nations or even the world for that matter. Adam’s sin indeed has affected the whole world. Just the same, physical consequences and influencing effects from sin are NOT the issue at stake at all. You are derailing the real issue at stake by such suggestions. The real issue at stake is whether or not one is to be JUDGED ETERNALLY by God, morally BLAMED by God, or found GUILTY by God, for the sins of another? That is the issue at stake, NOT merely the issue of the effects of sin on others.

Scripture is clear. God holds no man morally accountable for the sins of another, and one is not held accountable for the sins of ones father. You cannot inherit the sins of another according to Scripture.

Eze 18:19 Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live.
20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

 

HP: Physical death does not show that babies carry spiritual death, no more than the death of His Saints prove that they are spiritually dead, nor that those caught up together with Him in the clouds one day that will not see physical death, were not in reality physical before they arose. Why is it that you seem to reel at the notion of sin lying in the physical but at every turn you clearly associate physical death with spiritual death? You seem to mirror Augustian original sin to a tee. The fact is that we are physical descendants of Adam and bear a physical likeness to him. God placed in the physical body principles of physical degeneration and we inherit those physical traits via natural physical generation.

HP: But you can if you will. :wavey:

Jesus had a physical body like we have. Having a physical body does not necessitate spiritual corruption, neither in Jesus, us, or in infants. The physical realm is physical, the spiritual realm is spiritual.

 

HP: Agreed. :thumbs:

HP: Pure conjecture at best without the slightest evidence from Scripture. Scripture represents Jesus as a man born into this world that took upon himself the seed of Abraham. Heb 2:16 For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.” Whatever that seed consisted of, so was Christ in the flesh. He was tempted in all points as we are. James states that we are tempted when we are drawn away of our own lusts and enticed…. BUT that is not sin in and of itself, as James tells us clearly.
There is not one Scripture that states that any man is born spiritually depraved or born a sinner from birth. That is pure Augustinian fallacy, a fallacy the Church would do well to abandon. Sin is the results of yielding to temptation, whether of the flesh via the sensibilities, the world, or the enemy of our souls, not the mere fact of being born with depraved sensibilities.

There is not a shred of evidence that the birth of Jesus had to be via a Virgin as a necessity to keep Him free from human nature. There is overwhelming evidence that He did in fact take on the same flesh and blood that every human being has taken on, yet He never formed a solitary sinful intent. To be human did not necessitate being a sinner, as Jesus overwhelmingly proved. He was not half human He was 100% human. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh, yet was without sin. Ro 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: