Are People Basically Good? (Crucial Questions)

by R.C. Sproul

Man is the only creature in all of creation that has artificial garments, and the Scriptures tell us that this is not to keep us warm but to cover our shame.

One theologian has said that how human beings understand their own existence determines how they think, how they behave, and the type of culture that they produce; thus, the culture that we live in is a product of our understanding of what it means to be human.

But Calvin made the observation that man is a fabricum idolorum—an idol factory—so committed to religion that, even if he removes himself from the living God, he will replace his concept of God with a god made of his own hands. Luther, in similar fashion, commented that “Man, if he has no God, will make an idol,” because he has to have something.

John Calvin said that no one can really understand who God is without first having some kind of understanding of who we are as human beings. Yet, paradoxically, there’s no way that we can really understand what it means to be human until we first understand the character of God. 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.

First, to call man the bearer of the imago Dei differentiates man from God. First and foremost, we are creatures, meaning that we—finite, dependent, derived, accountable—are not God. We may bear the image of God, but the image of God is not God, but subordinate to Him. No mere human being is divine.

But what uniquely stamps us as bearing the image of God has to do with our ability to mirror and to reflect the character of God. The image that God gave to us, the likeness that He has put in us as creatures, is an ability to show what it means to be holy.

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). At other times, however, Paul talks about the heart, the mind, the spirit, and the bowels. These are simply terms for different aspects of the immaterial essence. 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. Theologically, we recognize that the Holy Spirit can distinguish between spirits, souls, minds, and consciences, but to simplify it, the church has said that there is a physical dimension to our lives and a nonphysical one. The term for the nonphysic...

Someone may say, “I sacrifice. I give my money to the poor. I do all the right things.” But for a deed to be good in the sight of God, not only must it conform externally to the law of God, but it also must flow out of a heart that loves God completely. If any deed I do has the slightest admixture of selfishness, pride, arrogance, or anything else that mars that work, it’s not good in the sight of God. Because sin touches everything, Paul was not exaggerating when he said, “None is righteous, no, not one.” There are people who think they have enough goodness to satisfy the demands of God—but they have no goodness that meets the requirements God has set forth.

When we talk about original sin, we don’t mean the sin that Adam and Eve committed, but the result of that first sin. Original sin refers to our sinful condition. In other words, we sin because we are sinners; it is not that we are sinners because we sin. Since the fall of mankind, it is the nature of human beings to be inclined and drawn toward sinfulness. David wrote, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps. 51:5). Not only do we have life in the womb, we have corrupt life in the womb. At the very moment we’re conceived, we have already participated in the fallenness of the human condition. Thus, we are born with a disposition and an inclination to sin. That’s what original sin means.

the Bible says much concerning the responsibility that we have to make choices. But the emphasis in Scripture, in light of original sin, is on human bondage—of man enslaved to his own wicked desires. It’s not that man is a servant to the tyranny of God; man is in bondage to himself and his own sinful predispositions. Augustine would say, yes, you have a free will—but that will, and the choices that you make with it, are deeply influenced by who and what you are. We are creatures who are profoundly fallen, and whom the Bible describes as being in bondage to our own sinful inclinations. Augustine made a distinction in this controversy, saying that man has free will, or liberum arbitrium, but since he is fallen, he does not have libertas, or liberty—moral freedom from addiction to sin. He said that those who are fallen are addicted to sin.

The Bible says that the desires of man’s heart are wicked continuously (Gen. 6:5). Augustine was explaining the biblical concept that freedom means the ability to choose what you want, whereas having free will means having the power to make choices according to what you want rather than according to what is imposed upon you by someone or something else. This introduces a new concept called determinism, which says that all of my choices are predetermined by something outside of me so that I don’t have any real choice in the matter. In opposition to determinism is the concept of self-determination. Self-determination still means that one’s choices are determined by something, that is, my own desires. Freedom does not mean acting without a reason, or having an effect without a cause; every time I choose something, there’s a reason for that choice. No choice is undetermined. Thus, to be free means having the ability to choose what you want, or having your choices determined by your desires. Not only may a free person choose according to his desires, but to be free means he must choose according to the deepest desire he has at the moment. We always choose according to the strongest inclination or the greatest desire that we have. We cannot choose against our strongest desires. If someone had a terrible temptation to do something he desperately wanted to do but which was against God’s law, but at the last minute he had the moral courage to say no, it would be because in the end ...

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. That’s our natural state; the Bible says that we are dead to the things of God in our fallen condition, because our sinful condition dead...

But Augustine would say man is dead in his sins. He has no desire for Christ, and the only way he will ever choose Christ is if God softens his stone-cold, recalcitrant heart and puts in him a desire for Christ.