Are People Basically Good? (Crucial Questions)

by R.C. Sproul

Plato was challenged in trying to pinpoint the distinctive features that would separate or distinguish a human being from all other forms of life. Finally, he figured it out: he called man a “featherless biped.” One of his students got a plucked chicken, wrote a sign across its chest saying, “Plato’s man,” and put it on the wall at the Academy—and Plato had to start all over again.

So the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man work together; they are interdependent. The Scriptures tell us that man is made in the image of God. In some way, we are like God, so the more we understand who God is, the easier it is for us to understand who we are. And the more we understand what it means to be human, the more insight we can gain about the character of God.

To say it another way, it’s a difference in understanding what it means to be human from a theological perspective or a phenomenological perspective. The phenomenological perspective says that if you want to know what it means to be human, you need to study human beings now in their normal patterns of activity. Examine behavioral patterns, and on the basis of sufficient research of behavioral patterns, you can arrive at a description of statistically normal humanity and then build an ethic upon that description. This is a kind of “statistical morality,” where, for instance, it’s decided that if two-thirds of people are involved in premarital sexual activity, it’s normal, and if it’s normal, then it’s human and therefore good.

The biblical, theological view of man is that mankind in its creation is normative, but what we observe in man is dreadfully corrupted and under judgment. Thus, a descriptive analysis of normal behavioral patterns only provides a profile of a normal sinner. Which brings us back to the question at hand: Does that normal sinner still bear the image of God, or has the image of God been lost in him?

A very old error has made a comeback in recent generations, even among evangelical Christians, called the trichotomy view. It teaches that our humanity is composed of three distinct aspects: body, soul, and spirit. One of the vehicles through which this view has reemerged is Watchman Nee, a Chinese church leader who integrated Eastern thinking into Christian thought. Trichotomy was condemned in the fourth century. Its fundamental basis is that, because the body and the soul are in irreconcilable conflict, the only way they can be brought together is through a third party—a mediator, the spirit.

Biblical justification for this view was claimed to be in Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians, where he wrote, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23).

In misinterpreting such passages, trichotomy leads to a distortion of redemption, suggesting that God has to redeem a person one step at a time: first the soul, then the spirit, then the body.

Two things that every human being absolutely must come to understand are the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. These topics are difficult for people to face. And they go together: if we understand who God is, and catch a glimpse of His majesty, purity, and holiness, then we are instantly aware of the extent of our own corruption.

We can tolerate what is wrong. In fact, if we don’t tolerate what is wrong, we can’t tolerate each other or even ourselves. In order to live with myself as a sinner, I have to learn to tolerate something that is evil.

When we sin, we want to describe our sinful activity in terms of a mistake, as if that softens or mitigates the guilt involved.

But as I said to that pastor, if one of us is wrong, it would be because he came to the Scriptures while wanting it to agree with him, rather than wanting to agree with the Scriptures. We tend to come biased, and we distort the very Word of God to escape the judgment that comes from it.

But to err is human—which is to say, “It’s OK.” We are so accustomed to our fallenness and corruption that, while our moral sensibilities may be offended when we see someone involved in gross and heinous criminal activity such as mass murder, normal, everyday disobedience to God doesn’t bother us. We don’t think it’s that important, because “to err is human, and to forgive is divine.” This aphorism suggests that it’s natural, and therefore acceptable, for human beings to sin. It’s implied also that it is God’s nature to forgive.

it is the nature of God to forgive. But this is as false as the first assumption; it is not necessary to the essence of deity to forgive. Forgiveness is gra...

essential properties are those that are part of the essence of a thing. Remove that property, and it ceases to be that thing. Sin is not essential to humanity, unless someone believes that God made humanity sinful at the beginning. If sin is essential to humanity, then that would mean Jesus was either sinful or not human. So, sin is not essential.

The philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz produced a very intriguing theodicy,

He said that there are three kinds of evil in the world: moral evil, physical evil, and metaphysical evil. Moral evil is what we call sin. Physical evil includes disease or calamities caused by natural events—what we call “acts of God.” Metaphysical evil, Leibniz said, meant that to be finite is to be metaphysically imperfect, because only that which is infinite can be metaphysically perfect. Anything that is created is, by nature, finite.

He also maintained that moral evil flows out of physical evil and/or metaphysical evil—so what’s wrong with the world is simply that the world is finite.

The biggest problem with finitude as an explanation for man’s fallenness and sinfulness is that it places the blame for man’s sin ultimately on God and absolves humanity from any kind of responsibility.

God will never judge us for being finite, but He will justly judge us for being disobedient.

we sin because we are sinners; it is not that we are sinners because we sin.

This is why Augustine could say man has a free will but he doesn’t have liberty. How can both be true? He said man in his fallenness still has the ability to choose what he wants, but in his heart there is no desire for God or the things of God. If he is left to himself, the desires of man’s heart are only wicked continuously. His heart and soul are dead to the things of God.