Among the many theological ideas that can be read out of the Bible, there is one that declares that human beings individually are intrinsically evil. I do not here propose to agree or disagree with the notion that we as humans have ‘no power of ourselves to help ourselves’. I mention it at this point merely to note that such teaching exists. In some churches it is not only believed to be the starting place for a theology of salvation, but it seems to provide the single most important area of discourse for sermons. Such sermons will spend time in contemplating the terrible fate of unrepentant sinners who never turn to God.
One of the reasons that I, for one, want to sit lightly on some of the classic statements about human evil and sin is because these doctrines do not really engage with the reality of human evil as we experience it in our modern age. Evil is found in individuals, but it is seen far more often in groups, corporate institutions and mass movements. Let me explain. The individual person is limited in the amount of evil that he/she can accomplish unaided. To become really effective in the evil stakes, you need to cooperate with others. The most evil people in the world are the ones that can somehow manipulate others to do their evil bidding. Alternatively, there will be the ones that, with varying degrees of culpability, get caught up in a thoroughly corrupt or toxic movement. On my own I can spread a lot of unpleasantness around. But when I get together with others, I can be a super-champion in the tyrant stakes or inciting violence and hatred in all directions.
This observation about human evil, that it is more effective when mixed up with other people’s malevolence, is accompanied by another observation. Just as certain forms of group activity seem to bring out most effectively the hidden Beelzebub, so time spent alone can help the individual find a personal morality less affected by the ‘passions of sinful men.’ I would hazard the thought that not only do individuals have limited capacity to do a lot of evil on their own, they also are quite good at discovering the good things about themselves when allowed time to be properly alone. In their alone time, people like you and me will be quite good at having a longing for noble or even heroic actions. These will allow us to want to leave behind something good on the earth. Few people want to mess up the activity that most ensures us a lasting legacy, that of parenting. Parenting is an activity that the majority of us get to experience. It brings out any number of desirable qualities, patience, the capacity to forgive and all the feelings and actions we associate with the single word – love. Parenting is not something we do at odd moments. For it to be effective, it has to be practised continuously over years, even decades. Those who are not, for whatever reason, human parents still experience the same nurturing instinct which draws something out of ourselves to make most of us decent, even if often flawed individuals.
There is a reason that, although many Christians are prepared to recognise that the greatest evils occur when we get together with others, much Christian teaching remains obsessed with the failings/sin of individual people. I believe that one reason for this is because many Christians have in modern times become totally obsessed with sex and sexual activity. The wider public beyond the Church has got used to thinking that the only sin Christians really care about or want to discuss is to do with sex. Sin is seen to be straying from certain narrow rules and decisions about the way we express our sexuality and such decisions are made by each of us individually. We all recognise that our sexual lives have the potential to provide enormous fulfilment but also massive harm to self and others. But however terrible the effect of an individual’s sexual sin can be, such as in abuse and rape, the obsession of many Christians is not about this rare possibility, but to object to anything that does not fit a narrow definition of ‘normal’. In this respect the choices of some Christians to defy the norm is trivial compared with the evils we have hinted at above. This blog piece cannot set out a complete charter of sexual morality but merely make one simple statement. The task of Christian sexual ethics is to find a way that links sexual love to love and the values of mutuality, care and respect for others. Such a morality of sexual behaviour is attainable, but many seem to fail.
Let us stay for a moment with the hypothesis that on our own, we, and most other people are mostly decent and caring and want the good of those around them. What causes some people to be sucked into groups or mobs that seem to cause most of the damage and toxicity in society and the world? I am thinking of any group from a small committee to extremist political groups with fierce tribal or nationalistic aims. These so easily, in some parts of the world, can cause bloodshed. St Paul speaks about the principalities and powers. I wonder if he is describing the attractive and seductive option to become merged into a group, large or small. In this way a person moves away from being a conscience-listening individual to the faux freedom and exhilaration of being part of a ‘mass-mind’. Making this transition to thinking and acting with the power of the group is still our choice. Further, the responsibility for deciding to remain there is ours. My short theory about these powers, those that create the gang, the group or the mob, is that they provide very quickly to each member an experience of feeling instantly powerful. Power of this kind is not always or even necessarily toxic, but it can quickly become such. An otherwise well-meaning individual can even be corrupted by being on a committee. Perhaps such a committee has reached a point where the group they represent can destroy a rival organisation by some underhand method. Are you as a loyal member of the committee prepared to forget simple ethics for the sake of the organisation? Do you go along with the use of possible ‘dirty tricks’ which, while not benefiting you personally, will be able to profit your group financially or in terms of power and prestige?
In our political life and even in our Church we know about group power games that are evil. Personal and corporate morality can often be seen to be going off in two directions. The morality of each individual member of a group may be of the highest in terms of personal ethics and behaviour. But, somehow, the situation of membership of some groups, allowing ourselves to be sucked into some less than honest networks, has the effect of creating something evil in our lives. Within the group context we may find ourselves tolerating dishonesty, lying, cruelty and insensitivity towards other people. My reader may well be filling in the blank spaces for recent examples of behaviour of this kind. The fact that individual members, such as ourselves, would not behave like this when working alone, does not excuse any of us from the corporate guilt if we are in this situation. It still belongs to us personally even though the conscience and the guilt has been dulled because the evil is spread over each participant.
Membership of a gang, mob or powerful committee will normally give to the individual the reward of an intoxicating experience of power. Whenever we are with others who believe they have the power to change things for good or evil, we will also feel a kind of excitement. Our psyche is being roused at a deep level; at the same time it feeds the part of us that longs to be important. Power, the feeling that raises us above a sense of inadequacy, has an addictive intoxicating quality. People will often sell their integrity and their very soul to possess it. For this reason, the groups that offer this power, will always have their loyal servants. The possession of power, even when we dilute it by sharing it with others, is perhaps the greatest motivator for action. That is perhaps why people will be drawn to the groups that offer it.
The Christian teaching about sin has tended, in modern times, to focus on the individual struggling with sexual temptation. That picture of the nature of sin has taken our eyes off the more realistic picture of human evil which is found when an individual allows themselves to be drawn into a group for the sole purpose of exercising power – the power to dominate, to bully, to feel important. When we focus only on individual failings, we miss the terrible principalities and powers, the group allegiances through which people bring much evil, unhappiness and malevolence into the world.
Thanks Stephen. I have to say, I think most people seem to be obsessed with other people’s sex lives. Newspapers sell if they have juicy bits of sex gossip in. Some people in the Church are indeed similarly obsessed, but I fear they are even more concerned if other people know about it! But the other thing that will get you sacked, other than running off with a choir boy, or the organist’s wife, is making off with the contents of the collecting plate. As to “superspreaders”, indifference is even more effective than outright malevolence. Surely, indifference is the opposite of love. But yes, collective and institutional sin, we don’t take enough notice of them.
Thanks for this. Really good stuff. Seems to me that corporate sin arises principally or maybe entirely from the third demon identified by Evagrios the Solitary: “Of the demons opposing us … there are three groups who fight in the front line: those entrusted with the appetites of gluttony, those who suggest avaricious thoughts, and *** those who incite us to seek the esteem of men.***” (Philokalia I). The need to be part of the club, the in crowd, to gain the approval of the mafia boss, the leader of the pack. Omertà. Institutions are full of it.
Thank you Stanley for this quote. Very helpful and I shall use it at some point. It is always a good idea to consult the Fathers (or the medieval mystics) to get an insight uncontaminated by the Reformation obsessions!
In a rush – sorry. Only time to read the opening sentence. Does the Bible say “intrinsically” evil? Doesn’t it say we have freedom to choose the good or the bad? Will read the rest tomorrow.
I have thought much about institutional sin lately, in particular about misconduct in regard to safeguarding. Sadly, from my personal experience, it appears that too many people holding positions which authorise them to act in line with House of Bishops guidelines, are content, for one reason or another, to allow them to be ignored. It makes me wonder what the chances are of someone becoming Archdeacon or Bishop etc are if they are known to act with integrity and are willing to stand against the climate of covering up to enable reputations to remain unsullied and villyfying persons who can prove otherwise? Whilst I know many clergy of integrity, I know personally of a situation in which the persons holding authority are not of this class. I suspect this did not happen accidentally. If a senior person is willing to cover up, they can easily promote those willing to do their bidding. I believe this to be the explanation for why some victims have complained of repeating their allegations to several people in authority all of whom ignore their pleas for help or worse still victimize them. Given that not all people suffering abuse report and that out of those who do, not all will perservere, it is striking how many dioceses are dealing with complaints against their Bishops. What the real number of possible allegations are we do not know. What we do know is that there are too many credible allegations for this to be accidental. I believe that if clergy with integrity were promoted there would be far fewer allegations at the highest level. Whilst I agree it can sometimes be easier to be sucked into wrongdoing when it is institutionalised, it is also true that people who lack integrity are more likely to join and remain in such systems. It cannot be accidental that so many of the church hierarchy have had credible cases made against them. It cannot be accidental that where such cases are proven these people retain their position, even when the proof is made public. One can only imagine how many credible cases are not public. Church processes, whilst rightly protecting innocent priests wrongly accused, also cover up those who can be proved guilty, by not allowing them to proceed through cdm, or by misusing confidentiality to allow those guilty in regard to safeguarding to retain their reputation.
Hi Mary. I think you’ve been on before, but it’s been a bit! And I think you’re right.
David The word ‘intrinsically’ may not be the best word but it represents a way of describing what comes over from reading the first chapter of Romans. Both Augustine and Calvin seemed to understand the problem in this way and this negative appraisal of human nature among many Christians continues to this day. It has been the bread and butter of numerous sermons that I have listened to.
The word “intrinsic” means belonging to the essential nature of a thing. I know the Bible doesn’t say this of man.
“The heart of man is deceitful and wicked above all things”. Close! But I think Stephen’s thesis is that it ain’t necessarily so.
Good verse E.A. but have you caught me out? I don’t think so.
… and the following verse?
“I the Lord search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
according to what their deeds deserve.”
No, the essential nature of man created by God is not evil. The Bible’s teaching is surely of a fall of Man from the goodness and grace of God. If his nature was constitutionally, intrinsically evil where would the hope of redemption be?
As with so many issues, you can find Bible verses that suggest we are all unrighteous or evil, and verses asserting that there are righteous people.
Incidentally, I was fascinated to learn recently that the word which is translated ‘righteous’ in most English versions, and usually assumed to denote personal holiness (often reduced to sexual morality, and a narrow concept of that) would be more accurately translated ‘justice’. I have read that many other languages render it in this way. This takes us back to a corporate concept of evil and good: ‘a heaven and earth wherein justice reigns.’
It is not a question of what the bible does or does not teach; it is a question of what people think the bible teaches. Augustine was very strong on the massa damnata which has affected anxious Christians ever since. Note what I said is that the idea of depravity is ‘read out of the Bible’. That is a quite different statement from the Bible teaches or says. That for me is a fairly futile exercise because Christians will never agree exactly what that is. That is why we have different denominations. I am grateful to the Orthodox for never embracing Augustine, Aquinas or Calvin. They have a quite different far more hopeful view of human nature. ‘God became man that man might become God’. You do not read that in the pessimistic Western tradition. We have to live with all these traditions. It is never a binary choice. It is a both and situation.
You can read it in Charles Wesley’s utterly wonderful hymn Let earth and heaven combine. But then Wesley was soaked in the Fathers. And read Nicolas Lossky’s Lancelot Andrewes, the Preacher. .
Yet the Catechism of the Catholic Church says precisely that – “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.”
But I don’t want to argue about which strains of Christianity are right just to say that the bible does not say that man is intrinsically evil. If any disagree then we will have to leave it at that.
I think we do agree, Leslie. But I can understand why some people teach that humanity is basically unpleasant. I think it’s hugely more complex than that. There was an advert that showed people being alternately good and bad. That’s it, really.
I haven’t heard any teach that humanity is basically unpleasant. I do know that humanity is not as it should be but that is not because it is intrinsically evil which would imply that the creator did it!
I grew up with Calvinist theology which taught, and still teaches, exactly that. Calvinist, often known now as Reformed or conservative evangelical theology, is summed up with the acronym TULIP: Total Depravity of man (and it always is man); Unconditional Election; Limited Atonement (the Elect); Irresistible Grace; and the Perseverance of the Saints.
No wonder Calvinists tend to be a rather cheerless bunch.
No, having swum in those waters as you have, perhaps more, I have never heard the idea that – and it must be this way if we use the word “intrinsic” – that God is the author of evil in the hearts of people.
On the contrary, I have heard, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1).
And I have heard a few chapters on the message of Genesis, “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time”.
I have never heard that God put intrinsic evil in the heart of any man.
I think we have a different understanding of what is meant by the phrase ‘intrinsically evil.’ I wouldn’t blame the Creator for it.
Janet, I am glad of that. I was beginning to get worried because “belonging to the essential nature or constitution of a thing.” (Merriam Webster) is a pretty standard definition and I was objecting to that being used about any human being.
Neither Stephen nor I was saying that’s what we believe – simply that some people do believe it. I was reading the phrase as meaning ‘inborn’ (inherited from the first humans) rather than ‘the first humans were created with’.
And I was saying that I had never heard that belief in the widest of Christian ideas. Where it can be picked up is in Gnosticism.
I just feel that using the words evangelical, conservative and the like and declaring terrible things that come from them is just bad-mouthing of fellow believers. It isn’t helpful.
Thanks Stephen and others.
It’s pleasing to read the neighbouring Psalms 14 and 15 one after the other. Paul quotes Psalm fourteen in Romans 3, to make his point, but not fifteen.
I know I have messed up in my life, but I like to think it would have been possible for me not to. Is that pride?
The theologian Walter Wink wrote extensively on the principalities and powers. He considered that they have two components, as it were: the material component, which is a structure of rule or authority, such as a government, or simply a group of people such as you have described, and the immaterial or spiritual quality which characterises the group. This can be relatively benevolent, or it can be, or become, deeply corrupted and evil. It can form the character of the group, so that the toxicity of the group takes on a life of its own. He wrote three books; Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers, Engaging the Powers. I’ve always found his work the best way to understand corporate evil.
Yes, he changed my thinking. He makes sense. And he offers hope – the Powers can be redeemed. I really must re-read the trilogy – though there is now a simplified one- volume version.
I always personally find this helpful; not to succumb to what may in secular terms be deemed groupthink. It also helps me to remember that light will in the end conquer darkness. It gives me strength to oppose the corruption within my diocese, which in its own small way will help others in their struggle in regard to safeguarding, just as the valiant struggles of others have brought about the conditions which enabled my opposition.
We need more people like you. Keep up the good work!
My thinking is indeed influenced by Wink but it is some time since I read him. I no longer have his book to hand as books are hard to hang on to in retirement!
Really? My books reproduce! I read that the “principalities and powers” were part of a complex supernatural structure that people did believe in Biblical times, growing to a large degree out of Persian mysticism. I must admit, I didn’t think we took it literally these days. But I haven’t read the stuff you guys are referencing.
If I remember rightly, Wink argues that St. Paul may have understood the Powers in the way he suggests. I’m afraid that a lot of people do still take the demonic principalities stuff literally. You should try reading Frank Peretti or Tim LaHaye.
Incidentally, years ago I read a commentary which suggested that when Paul used the phrase ‘the wrath of God’, it was a common saying which meant something like, ‘What goes around comes around.’ Not that God is actually full of anger, but that certain laws are built into the way the universe is structured. Like karma, or ‘cast your bread onto the waters, and after many days it will return to you’, or even the phrase, ‘he had it coming’.
Mind you following on from that idea, Lesslie Nebigin said that love would have to be explained along the same lines.