Original Sin and Evangelism

July 22, 2009 – 10:15 am

In reading for a “Theology in America” seminary class, I have been struck over and over again by the subtleties of the human heart, the slippery path of independent human reasoning, and the power of academic and populist persuasion.

All of these elements are present in a Nathaniel Taylor sermon entitled “Concio ad Clerum: A Sermon on Human Nature, Sin, and Freedom“¹ taken (or at least referenced) from Ephesians 2:3: “and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”

Many evangelical scholars label this sermon, preached at Yale College Chapel on September 10, 1828, a watershed event for conservative Protestant theology. In it, Taylor aims to define moral depravity and display that this depravity is by nature.

He begins by stating what moral depravity is not, developing a complete rejection of original sin. He also distances himself from the idea that man’s moral depravity consists “in any constitutional propensities of their nature.”²

In an attempt to forge a middle ground between Calvinism and Arminianism, Taylor espouses “that sin consists in acting freely, in yielding to evil propensities as a matter of choice and preference.”³ To back up his point, he pieces in agreeable statements from classical sources, such as Jonathan Edwards, the Westminster Confession, and John Calvin, doing injustice to their views of depravity.

To prove his second point, that this moral depravity is by nature, Taylor states that

When therefore I say that mankind are entirely depraved by nature, I do not mean that their nature is itself sinful, nor that their nature is the physical or efficient cause of their sinning;

but I mean that their nature is the occasion, or reason of their sinning-that such is their nature, that in all the appropriate circumstances of their being, they will sin and only sin.⁴

 The very reality that we are by nature sinners (not by any “constitutional propensity”, but by free choice) provides the need for a Redeemer, according to Taylor. This transitions cleanly into his call that sinners, i.e. all humanity, must be born again.

It follows that to be born once, involves the certainty of sin-to become a human being is to become a sinner, unless there be a second birth of the Spirit.⁵

Hughes Oliphant Old in his The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian provides a concise summary of Taylor’s provocative sermon. He concludes that

the whole American culture was by this time moving in a thoroughly volantirist direction. Taylor provided the theological key for the road ahead. By the 1840s the preaching of revival and moral reforms it entailed would dominate the American pulpit.⁶

How did Taylor’s view of depravity affect his motivation for presenting the gospel to morally depraved sinners? If one believes that humans are sinners because they sin, in contrast to the traditional view that we sin because we are sinners, will this shape the gospel you present to unbelievers? Absolutely.

Here I quote Taylor’s 5th point under the “Remarks” section of his sermon. Notice how he builds upon his proposition that “that sin consists in acting freely, in yielding to evil propensities as a matter of choice and preference” [italics mine] in applying it to evangelism:

 We see the importance of this view of man’s depravity, compared with any other, in its bearing on the preaching of the Gospel.

To what purpose do we preach the Gospel to men, if we cannot reach the conscience with its charge of guilt and obligations to duty? And how I ask can this be done, unless sin and duty be shown to consist simply and wholly in acts and doings which are their own?

Can this be done if we tell them and they believe us, that their sin is something which God creates in them; or something done by Adam thousands of years before they existed?

I care not what you call it, taste, disposition, volition, exercise, if it be that which cannot be unless God creates it, and cannot but be if he exerts his power to produce it, can we fasten the arrows of conviction in the conscience, and settle on the spirit the forebodings of a merited damnation?

Can men be induced to make an effort to avoid sin which is thus produced in them, or to perform duties which must with the same passivity on their part, be produced in them?

Does God charge on men, as that which deserves his endless indignation, what [He] Himself does? Does God summon men to repentance with commands and entreaties, and at the same time tell them, that all efforts at compliance are as useless, as the muscular motions of a corpse to get life again?

Does this book of God’s inspiration, shock and appall the world, with the revelation of such things, respecting God and respecting man? Will the charge of such sin on man, touch the secret place of tears? Will the exhibition of such a God, allure the guilty to confide in his mercy.

If so, preach it out-preach it consistently-preach nothing to contradict it-dwell on your message, that God creates men sinners and damns them for being so.

Tell them such is their nature and such the mode of his interposition, that there is no more hope from acting on the part of the sinner than from not acting; tell them they may as well sleep on, and sleep away these hours of mercy, as attempt anything in the work of their salvation; that all is as hopeless with effort as without it.

Spread over this world such a curtain of sackcloth, such a midnight of terror, and how as the appropriate effect, would each accountable immortal, either sit down in the sullenness of inaction, or take his solitary way to bell in the frenzy of despair!

But such is not the message of wrath and of mercy, by which a revolted world is to be awed and allured back to its Maker.

The message we are to deliver to men is a message of wrath, because they are the perpetrators of the deed that deserves wrath. It is a message of mercy to men who by acting, are to comply with the terms of it, and who can never hope to comply even through God’s agency, without putting themselves to the doing of the very thing commanded of God.

And it is only by delivering such a message, that we, Brethren, can be “workers together with God.” Let us then go forth with it; and clearing God, throw all the guilt of sin with its desert of wrath, upon the sinner’s single self.

Let us make him see and feel that he can go to hell only as a self-destroyer-that it is this, fact, that will give those chains their strength to hold him, and those fires the anguish of their burning. Let us if we can, make this conviction take hold of his spirit, and ring in his conscience like the note of the second death.

If he trembles at the sound in his ears, then let us point him to that mercy which a dying Jesus feels for him, and tell him with the sympathies of men who have been in the same condemnation, that he need but to love and trust Him, and heaven is his inheritance.

Without derogating from the work of God’s Spirit let us urge him to his duty-to his duty-to his duty, as a point-blank direction to business now on hand and now to be done. With the authorized assurance that ‘peradventure God may give him repentance,’ let us make known to him the high command of God, “strive to enter in at the strait gate,” and make him hear every voice of truth and mercy in heaven and on earth, echoing the mandate.

Taylor’s theology severely alters the gospel one has to offer to unbelievers, the grounds by which they are in need of the gospel, and the motivation believers have to share the gospel with them. Some say that focusing on precise theology just gets in the way with “winning souls” for Jesus. To that I say “Rubbish!”

If we do not arm ourselves to defend foundational orthodox doctrines, such as original sin, we will not have a true gospel left to offer. We must guard ourselves, our families, and our congregations from the power of academic and populist persuasion, the slippery path of independent human reasoning, and the dangerous subtleties of the human heart.

Read Nathaniel Taylor’s entire sermon.

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¹ Nathaniel Taylor, Concio ad Clerum: A Sermon Delivered in the chapel of Yale College, September 10, 1828. (New Haven: A. M. Maltby and Homan Hallock, 1842).

² Taylor,  Concio ad Clerum, 6.

³ Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian, Volume 6: The Modern Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 197.

⁴ Taylor,  Concio ad Clerum, 14,15.

⁵ Taylor,  Concio ad Clerum, 19.

⁶ Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures, 198.