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.

Does the Carnal Nature Return?

QUESTION: Does the carnal nature, destroyed by entire sanctification, return and become the impulse to the sinful act when a person entirely sanctified commits sin?

ANSWER: No. The sinful act defiles the nature. This raises the question how a perfectly holy being can sin. How did sin get into a holy universe. This is an unanswerable question which has vexed all the philosophy of all generations. There are no causes of sin, and no good reason, only conditions privative, such as defect of knowledge in Adam and in all children; want of acquaintance with law and its penalty, with the added fact that no free agent is ever created or born fully equipped for liberty by experience and good habits. And lastly, the holiest person on the earth is exposed to the irruption of evil spirits. These considerations do not necessitate sin, but they render it highly probable. Father E. T. Taylor, "the old man eloquent" in the Boston Seaman's Bethel, used to speak of Adam as a "big baby toddling forth amid the pitfalls of Satan." This is only a concrete way of saying with Bishop Butler's Analogy, that the Creator could not make a moral agent with good moral habits. The puzzle of the sin of an entirely sanctified person, though of the same kind as that of the sin of the holy angels, may be somewhat greater because of his former experience of the sorrow of sinning.

— Steele's Answers pp. 212, 213.

On Ecclesiastes 7:20

QUESTION: Explain Eccl. 7:20, "For there is not a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not."

ANSWER: This is a defective translation for "may not sin." There is no just man who is impeccable, or infallible. The mistake arises from the fact that in the Hebrew language there is no potential mood, but the future tense of the indicative is used instead. When the Hebrew wished to say, "It may rain to-day," he had to say "It will rain to-day." Thus the hearer or reader was left in doubt whether a certainty or uncertainty is intended; and he must use his wits to determine by studying the context. Thus in Solomon's dedicatory paper in I Kings 8:46, II Chron. 6:36, it is evident that the Hebrew future means "may sin." It is thus translated in the Vulgate, the Syriac and Arabic, in the London and Paris Polyglots, in Castalid's, Osiander's and Francis Junius's versions, and in the Antwerp interlineal translations and in the marginal note in the Miniature Quarto of the Baxters, high Calvinists though they are. If Solomon had been dedicating an insane hospital and had said: "If any man becomes insane, for there is no man who will not become insane, let him come here and be cured," most people would say that the "will not" here means "may not." It is thus translated in Gen. 3:2, 27:25, Job 13:13, 14:6, in our English Bible. This text correctly translated gives no support to the pernicious doctrine of the necessity of sin in the believer, or in any man on the earth, I am suspicious that this error is perpetuated by translators by reason of the general dislike of holiness as possible in human experience this side of the grave. It is natural to the heart of man to desire a Scriptural excuse for sin. It is a nice pillow on which the carnal mind may slumber.

— Steele's Answers pp. 209, 210.

Is Original Sin a Biblical Doctrine?

QUESTION: Are the phrases "original sin," "birth sin," "inbred sin" found in the Bible?

ANSWER: No. But a doctrine may be in the Bible while the term invented by men to express it is not scriptural, such as Trinity, sacrament, eucharist. Atonement is not found in the Revised New Testament. Theologians, feeling the need of a term to express racial bent or inclination towards sin inherited from Adam and Eve, called it original sin, using the term "sin" in an improper sense, because "sin properly so called," says J. Wesley, "is the willful transgression of a known law of God." Hence Arminians, whenever they use any one of these three phrases, are obligated to disclaim the elements of volition and guilt, which constitute the essence of sin. Much perplexity and many theological discussions would have been avoided if a different term had been invented to denote the racial trend towards sin. Paul used the terms "flesh" and "carnal" in 1 Cor. 3:1-3, and Gal. 5:17 in describing Christians in whom there was still lingering the proclivity to sin. But this word has about a half dozen meanings, mostly good, so that its use to denote badness is very confusing. Hence many speakers and writers decline to use the term so equivocal. The phrase "sin which dwelleth in me," occurs in Rom. 7:17 as descriptive, not of a regenerated person, but of a convicted moralist, personated by Paul, a character striving to realize his ideal of righteousness without faith in Jesus Christ. If real sin dwells in a man, he is not born of God, but is a child of the devil, according to 1 John 3:9, 10.

— Steele's Answers pp. 75, 76.

Carnal Christians

QUESTION: Harmonize Romans 7:14, "I am carnal, sold under sin," with 1 Corinthians 3:1, "And I, brethren, could not speak to you as spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ."

ANSWER: Paul uses σάρξ (sarx), flesh, with four meanings, three of them in a good sense (1 Corinthians 15:39, Galatians 4:14, Galatians 2:16), and one in a bad sense, as in Romans 8:8, and generally in his epistles. But derivative adjective σαρκικός (sarkikos) and σάρκινος (sarkinos), carnal, is always used in a bad sense.

But Paul evidently uses it to express different degrees of evil tendency, the highest degree as in Romans 7, excluding spiritual life, "I am carnal, sold under sin," like a slave on the auction block bidden off, and completely controlled by sin. But in 1 Corinthians 3:1 the evil tendency is not controlling but controlled by divine grace, for the context proves that there is in them a low degree of spiritual life, for they are "in Christ," though "babes," and they are addressed as "Brethren." In the preceding chapter Paul describes two contrasted characters — the spiritual man and the natural of physical man. But when he attempts to classify the Corinthian believers he is puzzled. Strictly speaking, they are neither natural or unregenerate, nor spiritual or wholly sanctified; so he calls them carnal, evidently using the word not in its worst sense, excluding spiritual life. They were in the Galatian state in which "the flesh lusteth against the spirit," etc., Galatians 5:17, R.V. In Romans 7 the Holy Spirit is not named and the character delineated is an unregenerated person. The struggle is on the plane of nature. The combatants are the depraved animal nature warring against the moral reason. In the Galatian or Corinthian state they are not dead but on the way to the graveyard. "Having begun in the Spirit they are ending in the flesh."

— Steele's Answers pp. 21-23.