Articles

1. “No historian thinks well of human nature.” (Lord Acton, from his famous “Lectures on the History of Liberty,” quoted by John Danford, Anglican Theological Review, Winter, 2002)
2. “The only thing worse than a devil is an educated devil.” (Hambone)
3. “Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.” (G.K. Chesterton, “Orthodoxy,” p. 15) (The London Times once ran an article asking readers to answer this question, “What is wrong with London?” Chesterton wrote the newspaper with this answer, “I am!’)
4. “Somewhere in my diary—-1890-? I wrote, ‘I have staked all on the essential goodness of human nature…’ (Now thirty-five years later I realize) how permanent are the evil impulses and instincts in man—how little you can count on changing some of these—for instance the appeal of wealth and   power—by any change in the (social) machinery…No amount of knowledge or science will be of any avail unless we can curb the bad impulse.”   (Margaret I. Cole, ed. “Beatrice Webb’s Diaries,” Longmans, Green, and Co., 1956, London, p. 65; quoted in Timothy Keller’s “Counterfeit Gods”, p. xv)
5. H. G. Wells held a rosy view of the perfectability of humans until, at the end of WWII in 1945, he wrote in “A Mind at the End of Its Tether: “Homo sapiens, as he has been pleased to call himself, is played out.” (Tim Keller, “Counterfeit Gods,” Dutton, The Penguin Group, U.S.A., 2009, p.1 xx-xxi”)
6. “…(M)an is insecure, and…he seeks to overcome his insecurity by a will-to-power….He pretends he is not limited.” (Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Nature and Destiny of Man,” Volume I, Human Nature; Scribner, NY, 1964, ibid., p. 110)
7. “Most men, I suppose, have a paleolithic savage somewhere in them…I have anyway.” (Written by a “gentle English scholar” about his experience in the trenches in WWI; p. 992, “The Columbia History of the world.”)
8. Sigmund Freud: “A “bit of unconquerable nature…lurks concealed in every man—it is the shape of our own mental constitution.” (“Readings in Western Civilization,” Knoles/Snyder, Lippincott, 1951, p. 846) “Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.” Ibid. p. 853.) Freud spoke of “the ineffaceable feature of human nature,” that of aggression. “Men clearly do not find it easy to do without satisfaction of this tendency to aggression that is in them…” (p. 854)  “…(N)othing is so completely at variance with original human nature as the attempts throughout history to erect barriers against” such aggression….This impulse to aggressive behaviour “has reigned almost supreme” since primitive times: i.e.,  it is not learned but is innate. (p. 853) Freud’s dismal conclusion? “The fateful question of the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent the cultural process developed in it will succeed in mastering the derangements of communal life caused by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction.” (858)
9. “Aggression is remarkably preserved in (human) evolution.” (Biophysicist on the Charlie Rose TV program, Saturday, January 29, 2011, 7:18 PM)
10. Herbert W. Butterfield (“Christianity and History”): “Nobody may pretend that there has been an elimination of the selfishness in human nature, and the self-centeredness of man.” (p. 52) “What history does is…to uncover man’s universal sin.” (p. 63)  “What we are always faced with is the defect of human nature in general.” ( p. 76) “It is essential not to have faith in human nature. Such faith is a recent heresy and a very disastrous one.” (p. 66)
11. Wheaton College professor of English, Alan Jacobs, writes, in his “Original Sin: A Cultural History:”  “Again and again the literature and culture of the West have returned to this doctrine, worrying over it, loathing it, rejecting it—only to call it back in times of great crisis or great misery.”
12. Twenty-four hundred years ago Plato repeated a story about a man named Gyges who found a magic ring which, when adjusted, allowed the wearer to not only become invisible, but to see through objects and know all secrets, and thus exert immense power (including murdering the king). The story deals with the essential question of whether or not any man exists who, so empowered, would not take evil advantage of his power. The answer of most who have studied the story is, “No, probably not.” One version of the story has Gyges looking into a mirror, seeing the perversity of his own heart, and dropping dead of apoplexy.
13. War is “the state of nature.” (Thomas Hobbes, Bartlett’s Quotations, p. 258, 11^th edition)
14. “The horrid tale of perjury and strife, murder and spoil, which men call history.” (Wm Cullen Bryant,  Bartlett’s Quotations, p. 373, 11^th edition)
15. Robert Bork, “Slouching Towards Gomorrah,”Every new generation constitutes a wave of savages who must be civilized by their families, schools, and churches.” (p. 21) “The real ideals, perceptions, and interests of humans differ and conflict, and always will. Attempts to suppress aggression entirely and to substitute love, being unnatural, will finally erupt in greater aggression. When utopians are frustrated in the realization of their vision by the real nature of humans, who are then seen as perversely evil, they can turn nasty and violent.” (Ibid. p. 28) ” “They (political liberals) would have done better had they remembered original sin.” (Ibid, p. 64) “Certainly, mankind without Christianity conjures up a dismal prospect,  The record of mankind with Christianity is daunting enough….The dynamism it has unleashed has brought massacre and torture, intolerance and destructive pride on a huge scale, for there is a cruel and pitiless nature in man which is sometimes impervious to Christian restraints and encouragements. But without those restraints, bereft of those encouragements, how much more horrific the history of these last 2,000 years must have been!” (Ibid., 295, emphasis added.)
16. “The ultimate cause of war is to be found no doubt in the nature of man.” (Carl Becker, eminent historian, “Readings in Western Civilization,” Knoles/Snyder, p. 886)
17. “The errors and illusions of our culture…are all expressions of too great an optimism about the goodness of human nature.” (Ibid., p. 874)
18. “Is man’s civilization only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?” (Thomas Carlyle, Bartlett’s Quotations, 11th edition, p. 381)
19. “Perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart.” (Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black  Cat,” quoted in Bartlett’s Quotations, 11^th edition, 461)
20. David Hume, Scottish enlightenment philosopher, against Locke’s optimism re human nature: “In contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end, in all his actions, than private interest. By this interest we must govern him, and by means of it, make him, notwithstanding his insatiable avarice and ambition, cooperate to public good.” (Quoted in  “Blessed are the Cynical,” Mark Ellingson, Brazos Press, ’03, p. 55)
21. “…whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to do all evil…this corruption of nature, during this life, doth remain in those that are regenerated.” (From the Westminster Confession, Article VI,  Ibid, . 44)
22. “…(I)t is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered for the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit.” (Ibid.)
23. “…(T)he assertion of how we are marred by sin, from birth, is nonnegotiable for the classical Christian doctrine of sin.” (Ibid., p. 41)
24. “These early thinkers of the church clearly laid the groundwork for understanding sin as something that is bigger than us and our misdeeds, as a reality or condition that infects our entire nature, even from birth. Of course, there were biblical precedents for these affirmations.” (Ibid., p. 35)
25. “A 2000 New York Times poll confirmed this (the illusion about  the “goodness” of human nature): 73 percent of the respondents claimed that people are born good, and 85 percent thought that they could be pretty much anything they wanted to be,”
26. Edward Gibbon wrote the famed “The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” “Gibbon’s point of view is best expressed in his observation that history is a record of ‘little more than the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.’” (“The Reader’s Ency.”, Second Edition, ed., Wm Rose Benet, p. 257)
27. Jonathan Edwards, American philosopher and theologian said that “sin was the property of the (human) species.” (Quoted in “The Reader’s Ency.,” Second Edition, ed. Wm Rose Benet, p. 302)
28. Woodrow Wilson wrote an essay entitled “The New Freedom” by which he meant freedom for the American worker from vast and all-powerful business corporations which, he said, had produced a lethal economic situation in America (this was in 1933). Always the kindly man, he said it was “no use in denouncing anybody (which he had specifically done!) or anything except human nature.”  He went on to say that Americans should be ashamed of our country, and our government, which had allowed such a situation to exist. (“Readings in Western Civ.,” Third Edition, Knoles-Snyder,  1960, p. 791)
29. Certain problematic situations will be fiercely debated and “will continue to do so until mankind shall have entered a stage of intellectual advancement which at present (1859!) seems at an incalculable distance.” (John Stuart Mill, “British Poetry and Prose,” Third Edition, Vol II, 1938, p. 422, emphasis added)
30. “It is astonishing that the mystery which is furthest removed from our knowledge—I mean the transmission of original sin—should be that without which we have no true knowledge of ourselves. It is in this abyss that the clue to our condition takes its turnings and windings, insomuch that man is more incomprehensible without the mystery than this mystery is incomprehensible to man.” (Blaise Pascal, quoted in “Systematic Theology,”  A. H. Strong, p. 635)
31. The founding fathers of the American republic well understood humankind’s tendencies toward pride, avarice and power, which was one of the foundational rationales for developing a division of powers in the new government. Alexander Hamilton said, “Take mankind in general, they are vicious—(and) their passions may be operated upon.” (“The Columbia History of the World,” eds., Garraty and Gay, p. 792) Madison, speaking of the same necessity of a division of powers said, “Ambition must be made to counteract  ambition.” ( Ibid., p. 790)
32. Herbert Spencer (1829-1903) was an ardent Darwinian evolutionist, in fact, a personal friend and defender of Darwin. He believed, clearly, in the perfectability of man. “Evil perpetually tends to disappear.” His problem  was that he saw depravity everywhere and, although he dreamed of man’s perfection, saw it nowhere, and expressed hopelessness at times that it would ever occur. “We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.” The republican form of government, he said, was the best, but “requires the highest type of human nature—a type nowhere at present existing.” (All quotes from p. 580-581, Bartlett’s Quotations, 11^th Edition.)
33. A “School of the Law” arose in early Confucianism (which dealt more with pursuing the current moral codes than personal ethics) which “believed that man is basically bad and that he must be curbed through stringent laws.” (“The Columbia History of the World,” p. 116)
34. “Malcolm Muggeridge once said that human depravity is at once the most intellectuals. Reinhold Niebuhr declared, ‘No cumulation of contradictory evidence seems to disturb modern man’s good opinion of himself.’” (Has Christianity Failed You?, Ravi Zacharias, Zondervan, p. 64)
35. “The default position of the heart and inclination of the will is against God…The very condition of humanity worldwide reveals a bent toward that which is destructive….The point of the narrative (of the human story) is the propensity of humanity from the beginning to deny the warning and justify our own autonomy to become the ultimate judge of all reality. This choice to reject God’s authority and replace it with our own is now an inherited characteristic with which we all must struggle.” (Ibid., p. 84-5)
36.  “…selfishness is the human condition.” (Mark Ellingson,” Blessed are the Cynical,” Brazon Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2003, p. 20) “It is true that there are precedents for the neglect of original sin and of an appreciation of the degree to which all human beings are plagued by an insidious egocentricity.” (Ibid., p. 31)
37. “Stephen Hawking, author of the best-seller ‘Brief History of Time,’ warns that evolution will not improve the human race quickly enough to temper our aggression and avoid extinction. Our only hope, then, is to link up with beings elsewhere in the universe—a civilization of extraterrestrials who have themselves successfully evolved to a more advanced stage and can help us.” (Quoted in “How Then Shall We Live,” Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois, 1999, Charles Colson, p.  249)
38.  “Nature had left this tincture in the blood, That all men would be tyrants if they could.” (Daniel Defoe, “The Kentish Petition”
39. Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, exclaimed in disillusionment at the end of his life: “Who can change that intractable thing, human nature? There is a tragedy at the heart of things.”
40.  “The essence of modern history is man’s insurrection against God.”  (Eli Wiesel, quoted in Tournier’s “Escape from Loneliness,” p. 149)
41. “There must be a vein of original sin in human nature everywhere to which Hitlerism makes a strong appeal. The moral is that civilization is nowhere and never secure. It is a thin cake of custom overlying a molten mass of wickedness that is always boiling up for an opprtunity to burst out.”  (Quoted in Vance Havner’s “In Times Like These,” p. 92)
42. “There are two good men; one is dead and the other is not yet born.” A Chinese proverb
43. “We are all wicked. What we blame in another we will find in our own bosom. We live among the wicked, ourselves being wicked.” (Roman philosopher, Seneca)
44. “To understand any crime, we have only to look into our own heart.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
45. “…this assumption—of the essential goodness of man—may now be regarded as scientifically wrong for ‘a certain amount of ornery cussedness is built into each specimen of homo sapiens.’” (Dr. Donald Campbell, American Psychological Ass’n president)
46. “There is a radical evil in human nature.” (Immanuel Kant)
47.  “Man is born on an inclined plane, and is subject to a constant downward gravitational pull.” (Aristotle)
48.  “All of us have violated all the ten commandments.” (Billy Graham)
49. “There is more lostness, more profound and shocking lostness in the world today than ever efore. Men are finding new ways of being lost, and new levels of lostness.” (Ernest Hocking)
50. Against evolution, Herbert Spencer said, “It is quite possible, and I believe highly probable, that retrogression has been as frequent as progression.” (Strong’s Theology, p. 528)
51. “The human race is implicted in some terrible aboriginal calamity.” (Graham Green)
52. “Man is by inerasable nature as aggressive as an animal.” (Quoted in “Re-Entry,” J. Wesley White, p. 67)
53. “You scarcely need to open your Bible to prove that the human race is a race of fallen beings so corrupted by the taint of evil that they know no means of righting what is wrong.” (“Recovering the Christian Mind,” Harry Blamires, p. 19
54. Modern life is characterized by “a many-sided insurrection of the unregenerate natural man…against the regimen of Christendom.” (George Santayana, quoted in “Trousered Apes,” p. 33)
55. “Modern man is a trousered ape..” C. S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man,”, p. 9 (Lewis does not, in this passage, label all men as “trousered apes,” but does hold to the doctrinal of universal original sin.)
56. “…man can only will that which is evil; and…the fall of Adam has infected and corrupted all men with a fatal taint. All are guilty before God.” (Quoted by Stuart Barton Babbage, “Man in Nature and Grace,” p. 50)
57. “Humanity is like an irresponsible child who has been presented with a set of machine tools, a box of matches, and a generous supply of dynamite,” (Quoted in “Ride the Wild Horses,” Hamilton)
58. “All the old primitive sins are not dead but are crouching in the dark corners of our modern hearts…still there, and still ghastly as ever.” (Carl Jung, Quoted in “World Aflame,” Billy Graham)
59. “Man is born and lives in sin. He cannot do anything for himself but can only do harm to himself. (Soren Kierkegaard in “Sickness Unto Death,” quoted in “World Aflame, Billy Graham, p. 138)
60. “From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.” (Immanuel Kant, “Aphorisms,” Auden/Kronenberger, p. 3)
61. “The perversity of human nature is the greatest of the mysteries of human life. “ (Arnold Toynbee)
62. “A ‘meaningless’ universe is not the logical deduction of natural science, but the bold invention of natural man; that is, of man in insurrection against God.” (Sherwood Wirt, “The Social Conscience of the Evangelical,” p. 148)
63. “Bestialism is a phenomenon of the human world, but a world already civilized.” “The Fate of Moder Man in the Modern World,” pp. 26-29)
64. “Once I was asked, ‘What’s the most important thing that you ever learned?’ That was easy for me: Adamic sin, the human tendency for evil. That concept helps explain the daily newspaper, the need for supervision in a plant or parental guidance for children. Without it I’d be mystified. It’s the true watershed of human thinking.” (Fred Smith, “Leadership,” Summer Quarter, p. 54, 1992)
65. A quote from a statement made by the Minnesota Crime Commission: “Every baby starts life as a little savage. He wants what he wants when he wants it—his bottle, his mother’s attention, his playmate’s toy, his uncle’s watch. Deny these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness, which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He is, in fact, dirty. He has no morals, no knowledge, no skills. This means that all children, not just certain children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in the self-centered world of his infancy, given free reign to his impulsive actions, to satisfy his wants, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.”
66. “But the optimism began to seep away like water in sand, and Western man came up short against an ancient truth which he had dodged for a while: there is radical, and ineradicable, evil in the world…in men…in me!” (Lester DeCoster, “All Ye That Labor,” p. 10. Man is “essentially depraved…” (Ibid. p. 99) “One element which must always figure in our social judgments is the ‘human predicament.’ Man sins.” (Ibid.,107)
67. “Evil is not just in our imaginations. We can’t eradicate it with the right amount of social engineering or positive thinking. We sin. Though we can know God exists, we forget. Though we can know the truth, we fail to uphold it. We do the very things we don’t want to do. We are tempted by wealth, power, prestige, lust, gluttony, and greed, and often give in to those temptations. (“Indivisible,” Robison and Richards, Faith Words Publishers, 2012, p. 316)
68. “The doctrine of fallen man is the only Christian belief for which there is overwhelming empirical evidence.”  (C.S. Lewis, quoted in “Psychological Seduction,” W. K. Kilpatrick, p. 40) “There is not the slightest hint in the New Testament that we should have faith in ourselves.” (Ibid., p. 43)
69. “Whatever I am,’ wrote G. K. Chesterton, ‘I know I am not what I ought to be.’ When you read about the religions of primitive people or talk to those have studied them, you find that he was voicing a fairly universal sentiment. Eliade says that primitive man, “wants to be other than he finds himself.” (Ibid. 94) All the initiation ceremonies—which are universal among primitives— have as one of their points, to indicate that they want “to die to the fallen profane self and to be born to a new life, a life where a man might once again have contact with the sacred, and thus fulfill his true nature. One may call this superstition: that is a legitimate reaction. But it is not legitimate to pretend it is not there.”  (Ibid. 94)
70. “The trouble with man is not in his intellect, it is in his nature—the passions and the lusts. That is the dominating factor. And though you try to educate and control man it will avail nothing as long as his nature is sinful and fallen and he is a creature of passion and dishonor…The problem of man is the problem of a fallen, sinful, polluted nature.”  (Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, D. Martyn Lloyd Jones, Volume One, p. 168)
71. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” (Shakespeare,”Julius Caesar,” Act I, Scene 2, Line 134)

THE BIBLE

• “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” (Ecc. 8:11)
• “Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.” (Ecc. 9:3)
• “ For have we not previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin? As it is written, There is none righteous, no not one….There is none that does good, no, not one.” (Romans 3: 9, 10, 12)
• “For we all stumble in many things….” (James 3:2)
• “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (I John 1:8,10)
• “…(D)eath spread to all men, because all sinned…” (Romans 5:12)