Love Revealed (Rewritten)

Love is a mystery. We can’t pin it down with a neat definition. The best we can do is describe the moments when it awakens in the soul. If human love already stretches beyond explanation, divine love goes infinitely further. It is an ocean so deep that neither human reason nor even angelic intellect can sound its depths. Anyone who has never personally known the love of God will find this subject closed to them intellectually. It opens only with the key of experience.

Love is not something the mind manufactures. It does not come from logic or analysis. It arises freely from the soul when it encounters what it loves. God is not merely loving — God is love made visible. And God’s perfect love toward humanity is meant to awaken a corresponding love for God in the human heart. The mirror that reflects this love may be cracked and uneven. Human souls, even at their best on earth and even under grace, are fractured by weakness and enduring flaws. Still, a person’s love for God can surge forward with the full strength of their being.

The Holiness of Adam

QUESTION: What is the difference between Adam's holiness before he fell and after he was entirely sanctified?

ANSWER: The difference between the natural and the moral, or between the negative and the positive. A natural holiness is con-created and without voluntary choice, and because it lacks volition, is natural rather than moral. It is negative, because it simply denotes the absence of impurity. When Adam chose holiness it was positive. What this positive element is, theologians have found difficult to state. I would modestly suggest that it is a chosen conformity to the nature of God, called perfect love, by St. John of Ephesus and St. John of Epworth.

— From Steele's Answers pp. 12, 13.

The Sin of the World

QUESTION: What is the sin of the world in John 1:29, which the Lamb of God taketh away?

ANSWER: The singular, sin, in contrast with the plural, sins, in I John 3 5, is important. The condemnation of the race for "the sin" of Adam, its federal head, is unconditionally removed, though the hereditary leaning towards sin remains. The expiation of the Lamb conditionally removes "sins" in the plural by forgiveness and sanctification.

— Steele's Answers p. 268.

Salvation and Human Responsibility

QUESTION: Is it true that there is nothing in the hour and article of death to cause God to change the spiritual condition of the soul, either in part or whole?

ANSWER: It is not true of the irresponsible, infants and idiots, whom He saves unconditionally. Rom. 5:18, "By the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life." No man will ever be punished for the sin of Adam, which is legally covered  by the expiatory death of the second Adam. All responsible persons must have persevering faith in Christ to avail themselves of the justification of life, eternal life. "If children, then heirs." Adam's sin will keep no man, but himself, out of heaven, who I trust through faith in the promised "seed of the woman" has been saved.

— Steele's Answers pp. 266, 267.

The Forbidden Fruit

QUESTION: What was the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden?

ANSWER: The kind is unknown. It is described as good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise. It afforded an occasion for the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life, the three forms of moral evil.

— Steele's Answers p. 234.

Inheriting the Carnal Mind

QUESTION: If a child's ancestors are all free from carnality for three generations back, how can he inherit the carnal mind?

ANSWER: He is sure to inherit racial rather than personal qualities and tendencies, even after a hundred generations of holy people. The fall of our first parents corrupted the race so that every child, however well born, is more inclined to do wrong than to do right. "Sin is entailed upon me," says Wesley, "not by immediate generation, but by my first parent. 'In Adam all died; by the disobedience of one, all men were made sinners;' all men, without exception, who were in his loins when he ate the forbidden fruit." There are mysteries in heredity which no one can explain. Parents may transmit what they do not possess. By the Salic law a woman destitute of sovereignty can, if her father is a king, transmit sovereignty to her son. It is often the case that two parents whose hair is black have a red-headed child, the color being transmitted from an ancestor a half dozen generations back. "We have," says Wesley, "a remarkable case of this in gardening; grafts on a crab  stalk bear excellent fruit; but sow the kernels of this fruit, and they produce as mere crabs (crab-­apples) as ever were seen." Another view of this subject is the impossibility of transmitting personal moral qualities of an acquired character, such as holiness which is obtained or imparted and inwrought in answer to the person's faith.

— Steele's Answers pp. 216, 217.

The Biblical Chronology of Creation

QUESTION: Harmonize the Biblical chronology of the Creation of Adam 4004 years B. C. with the Babylonian, 6158 years.

ANSWER: The Bible is an infallible directory to eternal life, but not to the age of the world or to an accurate scientific chronology. McClintock & Strong name forty-four authors, all of whom arrive at different results. The Septuagint, the Greek version often quoted in the New Testament, makes the period from Adam to Abraham 1486 years more than the Hebrew text does. Most modern writers adopt the Septuagint numbers in preference to the Hebrew.

— Steele's Answers p. 159.

The Historicity of the Bible Characters

QUESTION: I have recently read a book which denies the historicity of all the Bible characters before Josiah. Several eminent Christian scholars are quoted as endorsing this theory. Must I accept this as truth?

ANSWER: Wait awhile and see what perplexity these wiseacres are in writing history without Genesis, especially the 10th chapter, the great seedbed of ethnology, the science of nations. Not Josiah, but Adam, is the first real human personality in the Bible. The manner of his creation and that of the material universe may be pictorially stated in Genesis in order to impress the fact that God is the Creator upon every mind, the simple as well as the wise, "The writer of this record is obviously aiming at the religious, not the scientific, training of the people for whom he writes." Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua, are as real men as Herodotus, Lycurgus, Socrates, and Plato. Job is not a myth, but a genuine, historical person dramatized. David, the poet king, is as real as Milton, the author of Paradise Lost.

— Steele's Answers p. 158.

John's Conception of Sin

QUESTION: Does the word "sin" in I John I:7, "cleanseth us from all sin," refer to an act or a state?

ANSWER: According to John's definition of sin, "sin is lawlessness," it may refer to either. Here it is quite evident that it refers to a state. In the next verse the phrase, "have sin," is peculiar to John, and it always implies an act entailing guilt. See John 9:41; 15:22, 24; 19:11. Another peculiarity of John is that he does not trace sin along the line of heredity up to Adam, as Paul does, but he ascribes it to the devil. "He that committeth sin is of the devil." In this particular John imitates Christ, who emphasizes not so much the source of sin as its guilt and its cure; not the origin of the conflagration, but how to put it out. John does not contradict Paul; he only traces sin one step further back to the first sinner in the universe.

— Steele's Answers p. 132.have

The Salvation of a Dying Infant

QUESTION: On what grounds is the dying infant freed from Adamic depravity?

ANSWER; On the ground of the atonement made for the fallen race by Jesus Christ. Cut off from development and sanctification, by which he could have been delivered through faith in Christ from the effects of an evil heredity, he is unconditionally cleansed by the second Adam from the defilement of Adam. The plaster is as large as the wound. "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." This is as true of the infant incapable of faith as it is of the believer in Christ.

— Steele's Answers p. 118.

"Sins" and "Sin" — Singular and Plural

QUESTION: Is  it not a fact that all Scriptural texts speaking of sin in the singular number have reference to inbred sin and never refer to actual sins (plural)? Is not this true?

ANSWER: It is not true. In the singular "sin" is found in the Synoptic Gospels (Matt., Mark and Luke) but once, "Every sin and blasphemy," etc. (Matt. 12:81). Stephen prayed, "Lord lay not this sin to their charge" (Acts 7:60), "If any man see his brother sinning a sin not unto death," etc. "There is a sin unto death" (I John 5:16), and "If we say we have no sin" (1:8), in all these texts some act of sin is meant. The phrase "to have sin" is found elsewhere only in John 9:41, "If ye were blind, ye would have no sin;" 15:22, 24, "If I had not * * *  spoken * * * they had not sin." Also, "He that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin" (19:11). This phrase "to have sin" the experts say is the strongest possible expression for an act entailing guilt. The poet Euripides uses it of one who has committed murder. John uses the term "sin" in only one signification, "the transgression of the law." Paul rhetorically personifies sin, i.e., sinning, as an imperial personage ruling sinners who become his slaves, and John personifies sin as a slave holder (8:34). "The slave of sin is bondage to sinning." Sow a thought, and you reap an act, sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny. The consequences of Adam's transgression have damaged me, but the guilt he did not bequeath to me, because it is non-transferable. Yet Wesley in the second of the Articles of Religion speaks of Christ as "a sacrifice not only for original guilt, but also for the actual sins of man." Substitute Adam's for "original," and I will accept it.

— Steele's Answers pp. 117, 116.

Christ: Founder of a New Order

When sin had discrowned Adam and his sons it was determined in the Council of the Trinity that a new and superior order should be constructed out of the ruined race. A second Adam appears on earth the first term of the glorious series, the new founder of the new order. He is the norm or model by which the new creation will proceed.

All those sons of fallen Adam who by faith yield to the transfiguring power assume the essential attributes of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. To adopt the phrase of modern philosophy, a new race is to be evolved. In all evolution there must first be involution. You must put into the first term all that you take out. Jesus Christ is the first term. "And it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell." "For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily."

On Human Infirmities

QUESTION: Do infirmities partake of the nature of sin?

ANSWER: No. They are failures to keep the law of perfect obedience given to Adam in Eden. This law no man on earth can keep, since sin has impaired the powers of universal humanity. Sin is a voluntary offense against the law of Christ, the law of love. Infirmities are an involuntary outflow from a hereditary, imperfect organization. They have their ground in our physical nature, aggravated by intellectual deficiencies. Sin roots itself in a perverse will, the core of the moral nature. Infirmities entail regret and humiliation. Sin always produces guilt. Infirmities in well-instructed souls do not interrupt communion with God, but sin cuts the telegraphic wire. Infirmities hidden from ourselves, as believing souls are unconditionally covered by the blood of Christ.They are without remedy so long as we are in the body. A thousand infirmities are consistent with perfect love, but not one sin. Says Wesley: "I apprehend that involuntary transgressions are naturally consequent on the ignorances (Heb. 9:7, R.V., margin) and mistakes inseparable from mortality. Therefore sinless perfection is a phrase I never use, lest I should seem to contradict myself. I believe a person filled with the love of God is still liable to involuntary transgressions."

"Every moment, Lord, I want

 The merit of thy death."

In view of this truth, it is eminently appropriate for the holiest soul on earth to say daily, "Forgive us our debts as we also havd forgiven (R.V.) our debtors."

— Steele's Answers pp. 70, 71.

In What Sense Was Adam a Son of God?

QUESTION: Luke 3:36 declares "Adam was the son of God." Must not a son be a partaker of the nature of his father?

ANSWER: Yes, if he is a real son. Adam was a figurative, not a real, son of God. He has but one son. All others who are like him in moral character are metaphorical sons of God. If they lose their similarity to him by ceasing to love what he loves and to hate what he hates, they lose their sonship and become figurative children of the devil because they have become like him.

— from Steele's Answers p. 45.

God Has Begun to Save Everyone

God has begun to save every human soul.

He has already saved the entire race from the extinction threatened in the instantaneous execution of the death penalty upon Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden in the moment of their first transgression.

The remedial dispensation began with the promise that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. The children of the pair banished from Eden, and fallen from their high estate, are born in the likeness of their sinful parents, with tremendous proclivities toward sin in the strength of their passions and the bent of their wills. Yet they come into being under the dispensation of mercy. They have a gracious ability to repent. They are saved from that complete moral inability which paralyses the will of the fallen angels in the direction of obedience to the moral law. This ability to resist the downward tendency of their nature, and to turn from sin, is, through the influences of the Holy Spirit, procured by Jesus Christ for all the race. "He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement."