We are all aware of the things that make for misery in this world: pain and sickness, vice and wickedness. The urgent and insistent question is this: how can evil be abolished and done away?
To the solution of this problem the great religions of the world address themselves. All the great religions profess to be religions of redemption: they promise deliverance and salvation. They differ, however, in their concept of evil. Is man’s basic problem death, or ignorance, or pain, or sin? It is worth examining the traditional answers.
THE PROBLEM OF DEATH
There is, first of all, the problem of death. In the ancient world there was an oppressive fear of death. Was there life beyond the grave? Was there any guarantee of immortality? Euripides wrote:
If any far-off state there be
Nearer to life than mortality,
The hand of death hath hold thereof
And mists are under and mists above.
(Hippolytus)
The popularity of the mystery religions was due, in large measure, to the fact that they professed to have the secret of immortality. By elaborate initiation ceremonies and baptism in a bath of bull’s blood, their followers were assured of forgiveness and immortality. They promised, however, more than they were able to perform.
The Egyptians were also anxiously concerned about death. The pyramids are a standing reminder of their valiant and unavailing efforts to save the bodies of their dead from decay and dissolution. By skillful process of mummification they sought to defeat death’s dread power. They believed that life in the world to come was dependent upon the preservation of the bodies of the dead. And to this end they dedicated all the resources at their disposal.
Of course, many today are still preoccupied, in like manner, with the problem of death. Christian Scientists, with supreme confidence, declare that death is not real, and Spiritualists, with naive gullibility, claim messages from “the other side.” They deceive no one but themselves.
THE PROBLEM OF IGNORANCE
Secondly, there is the problem of ignorance. Many Greeks believed that ignorance was the cause of all man’s ills. To Socrates and Plato death was not the basic problem: death was the means by which the soul was liberated from its prison in the body. Ignorance was the problem: it was from ignorance that we needed deliverance. He who knows what is right, they held, will do it. Socrates said that no one is willingly evil; a man sins because of his inability to discern truly that which is good. Of course, this is an oversimplification; as Ovid frankly confessed, we know and approve the better and do the worse. That is the depressing testimony of experience.
Nevertheless, there are still those today who regard education as the panacea of all our ills. They believe that education is sufficient, in itself, to cure the bias toward evil that exists within us all.
THE PROBLEM OF PAIN
Thirdly, there is the perplexing problem of human pain. Buddhism is the religion which, above all others, promises deliverance from suffering through the experience of Nirvana. Buddha was morbidly aware that life is a series of tragedies and frustrations, that life itself is suffering. He believed that life is transitory and sorrowful, and that peace is only possible through the eradication and extinction of desire. Only so can a man escape into Nirvana and the experience of oblivion. This philosophy was set out in the Four Noble Truths:
The First Truth is of Sorrow. Be not mocked!
Life which ye prize is long-drawn agony:
Only its pains abide; its pleasures are
As birds which light and fly.
The Second Truth is Sorrow’s Cause. What grief
Springs of itself and springs not of desire?
Senses and things perceived mingle and light
Passion’s quick spark of fire.
The Third is Sorrow’s Ceasing. This is peace,
To conquer love of self and lust of life,
To tear deep-rooted passion from the breast,
To still the inward strife.
The Fourth Truth is the Way. It openeth wide
Plain for all feet to tread, easy and near,
The noble eight-fold path: it goeth straight
To Peace and Refuge. Hear!
(Paraphrase by Sir Edwin Arnold)
The goal, then, was one of escape. There was no wrestling with the intractable problem of moral depravity and the grievous fact of human guilt; the main object of concern was the elimination of desire and the end of suffering.
Of course, there are many who share this view, who give themselves to the alleviation of suffering without troubling themselves about more ultimate questions of right and wrong. So long as men are happy, why trouble them about their sins?
THE FOUNT OF ALL EVIL
With all these views Christianity joins issue: against the view that death is the greatest evil. Christianity points out that what gives to death its terror and its sting is the fact of sin and the reality of coming judgment; against the view that ignorance is the greatest evil, Christianity points out that our basic problems are problems of the will rather than problems of the intellect (our problem is not knowing what is right—our problem is doing it); against the view that pain is the greatest evil, Christianity points out that moral evil is an even more pressing and persistent problem than that of physical pain (Oliver Quick, Doctrines of the Creed, pp. 192 ff.).
Christianity thus asserts that sin is the true fount of all evil, in deliverance from which salvation is achieved even though it sometimes involves the willing acceptance of pain or death. As J. S. Whale once said: “Public Enemy Number One is neither ignorance, nor stupidity, nor the defective social environment, but sin, which is the deep mysterious root of all these evils” (Christian Doctrine, p. 37).
THE FRUITS OF SIN
The Christian faith does not minimize nor deny the fact that death, ignorance, and pain are all evil things; it only affirms that these things cannot be understood wholly apart from, and independently of, the overwhelming fact of sin.
Take the universal and inevitable fact of death. Christianity recognizes at once that there is such a thing as “the fear of death,” and that this fear arises from the certainty of inescapable death and the uncertainty of what is to follow. This, says Dostoevski, is the most dreadful anguish in the world. For the Christian man the fact of death remains: he still must die; but the fear of death is removed, for Jesus, by his resurrection, has stripped death of its terrors. So the Christian man, in the strength of Christ, can shout: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:55–57).
Or take the fact of human ignorance. Christianity recognizes at once the finitude and darkness of our minds, but it affirms that the corruption of our minds is due to sin. It believes that in Christ there is a progressive renewal, and that the mind of regenerate man is enlightened and illuminated by the Spirit of God in understanding and true judgment.
Or finally, take the fact of human suffering. Christianity recognizes at once the reality of pain, and the appalling fact of physical suffering. It is important to remember in this connection that the ministry of Jesus was directed against sickness as well as sin. But Jesus knew that the moral problem is more intractable than the physical, and that often a man needs to be cleansed of his sin before he can be healed of his sickness. To the man sick of the palsy Jesus said: “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” This was his deepest, his most desperate need. Then Jesus said, “Take up thy bed and walk” (Mark 2:1–10).
THE COST OF REDEMPTION
Christianity takes sin seriously. It insists that it is from sin that we need to be delivered. How can we find deliverance? We cannot deliver one another, for we are all involved in a community of sin. In this matter we are all one; here, if nowhere else, we share in a true democracy. We are conscious at this point of our human solidarity. The Apostle Paul wrote: “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). How very true!
If Christianity is right in its diagnosis, what is its prescription? How are we to be saved from sin? We cannot save ourselves, for we are held fast by a chain forged by repeated acts of sin, but we can be saved by the virtue and victory of Another. Here is the answer to our need.
Christ “his own self,” said the Apostle Peter, “bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Pet. 2:24). On the Cross a battle was fought and a victory won. This was a battle with the forces of sin and death and hell, and of the fruits of that victory we share by faith. So, here and now, we experience deliverance from sin, because an atonement has been made for sin. And the Cross is the measure of its cost.
Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.
