Nixon’s Watergate—Man’s Depravity

The line of sleek, black limousines drew slowly to a halt, and the doors of the leading car were opened. Out stepped His Excellency José Figueres, president of Costa Rica, and the Honorable Richard M. Nixon, vice-president of the United States. The year was 1955, the place, Santo Domingo de Heredia, a small town about seven miles from San José, the capital city. The vice-president of the United States was paying an official visit to Costa Rica, and the hosts wanted him to see a small rural town.

My wife and I, the only Americans living in the town, proudly joined the villagers at the town plaza to greet the dignitaries. School children waved small American flags. The local band struck up the Costa Rican national anthem followed by “The Star-Spangled Banner.” President Figueres had a remarkable ability to remember names and faces. I had met him two or three times, and to my amazement he noticed me in the crowd, extended his hand, and spoke a friendly greeting. Mr. Nixon, seeing the president greeting the only apparent Americans in the crowd, also extended his hand to me. For days afterwards I did the predictable joking about not washing my hand. Years later, when Mr. Nixon had fallen into disgrace, I engaged in some further predictable joking about wishing that I had washed my hand.

Richard Nixon has appeared on the cover of Time magazine more than any other person. I have not compared those cover stories, but it is a fair guess that as many of them refer to Watergate and his fall as to all other aspects of his career. Given both our national fascination with failure and our own victimization, Richard Nixon may in time be the most written about president in our history.

One recent book, David Abrahamsen’s Nixon vs. Nixon: An Emotional Tragedy, is a “psychobiography” in which the author attempts to analyze the causes of the actions that led Nixon to his downfall. He is depicted as insecure, indecisive, inflexible, withdrawn, niggardly, officious, rigid, arrogant, devious, narcissistic, power-hungry, bitter, vindictive, self-pitying, tense, frustrated, isolated, orally fixated, anally fixated, sexually repressed, compulsively competitive, anxiety-ridden, antisocial, morbidly oversensitive, cold, hyper-controlled, sarcastic, accident-prone. Abrahamsen also suggests that Nixon suffered from an impaired masculine identification, passivity with overcompensatory hostile aggression and viciousness, paranoia, clumsiness, sadomasochism, hysterical exhibitionism, psychopathia, a deformed super-ego, a double personality, and an unresolved Oedipal complex. Can any one person have all these negative traits?

In our analyzing of the failure of Richard Nixon as a leader and of the elements in our society that allowed Watergate to happen, we need to remember what former Nixon aide Charles Colson has called to our attention:

“Were Mr. Nixon and his men more evil than any of their predecessors? That they brought the nation Watergate is a truth. But is it not only part of a larger truth—that all men have the capacity for both good and evil, and the darker side of man’s nature can always prevail in any human being? If people believe that just because one bunch of rascals are run out of office all the ills which have beset a nation are over, then the real lesson of this ugly time will have been missed—and that delusion could be the greatest tragedy of all” (Born Again, Revell, 1977, P. 11).

UPI correspondent Wesley G. Pippert has commented with equal insight: “Watergate was sort of a refresher course in basic theology. It reminded a generation of humanists and relativists about the reality of evil in the world. It reminded us that there are absolutes” (“Journalism and the Forgotten Virtues,” Spectrum [Wheaton College], Winter, 1977, p. 9).

Now we have in the White House a man who understands the Bible and human nature well enough to speak openly of the sinfulness of the human heart, including his own. When he chose to speak frankly of such frailties of the flesh to the editors of Playboy, it nearly cost him the presidency. We are a fickle people. Some of the same moralists who expressed shock at attempts to cover up corruption during the Nixon administration now expressed shock that a presidential candidate would admit to fleshly weakness.

What is the biblical way of looking at man? Or, as the Psalmist put the question, “What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him?” (Ps. 8:4, RSV). Alan Richardson says:

“The Bible consistently teaches the paradoxical character of human nature. On the one hand, man is ‘but a little lower than God’; he is crowned with glory and honour and (under God) holds the dominion over the beasts and the whole world of nature (Psalm 8:4–8). On the other hand, man is ‘like unto the beasts that perish’ (Psalm 49:12, 20; cf. Psalm 144:3f.); his mortality is the outward and visible sign of the inner corruption of his nature. The great philosophers and poets of all ages have generally agreed with this fundamental biblical perception of man’s paradoxical character: man is at once ‘the glory and scum of the universe’ (Pascal)” (A Theological Wordbook of the Bible, SCM Press, 1957, p. 14).

How did this paradox come about? An understanding of man must begin with the doctrine of creation.

In three places in the early chapters of Genesis we are told that God created man in His image. “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (1:26, 27; also 5:1; 9:6). This truth is repeated in the New Testament (1 Cor. 11:7; Col. 3:9, 10; James 3:9).

Theologians through the ages have debated three basic questions in this area: What is the nature of that image? What happened to that image in the Fall? What is restored of that image in redemption? We cannot enter into the intricacies of these debates here, but a brief summary will be helpful.

The nature of the image. Most theologians would agree with Calvin when he says: “For though the divine glory is displayed in man’s outward appearance, it cannot be doubted that the proper seat of the image is in the soul.… The image of God which is beheld or made conspicuous by these external marks, is spiritual.… The image of God extends to everything in which the nature of man surpasses that of all other species of animals. Accordingly, by this term is denoted the integrity with which Adam was endued when his intellect was clear, his affections subordinated to reason, all his senses duly regulated, and when he truly ascribed all his excellence to the admirable gifts of his Maker” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Eerdmans, 1957, pp. 162–64).

Man is a rational being with intellect, will, and moral responsibility. He holds dominion over all the rest of creation by virtue of being made in the image of God and being given that dominion in the divine mandate at creation.

The Fall. Few theologians today would argue that “every day in every way we are getting better and better.” The teachings of Romans 1–3 (e.g., “All men, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin.… None is righteous, no, not one.… All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”; 3:9, 10, 23) have been all too vividly demonstrated in our own catastrophic twentieth century. Two world wars, the pogroms designed to eliminate an entire race of people, Stalin’s purges of 1936–37, the fearful atrocities perpetrated by both sides in the Viet Nam war, recent cruelties in Uganda, our incredible insensitivity to poverty and injustice, to mention only a few items, have served to clear away any vestiges of starry-eyed optimism about the inherent goodness of man.

To quote Calvin again: “Although we grant that the image of God was not utterly effaced and destroyed in him, it was, however, so corrupted, that anything which remains is fearful deformity.… The image of God … was afterwards vitiated and almost destroyed, nothing remaining but a ruin, confused, mutilated, and tainted with impurity” (ibid.).

Restoration of the image. The New Testament also speaks of “image,” but it is with a new emphasis. Whereas in the Old Testament the emphasis was on man as being the imago dei, in the New Testament it is Christ who reflects the image of the invisible God. Man, who lost the glory of the imago dei in the Fall, may be restored through Christ, who “reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature” (Heb. 1:3). Writing on the image of God, Addison Leitch says:

“To whatever extent ‘image’ in the Old Testament had as its root meaning ‘shadow,’ there is no question that reality has now come to take the place of shadow. In Christ there is the true man, and there is no longer the question of man in essence, or man fallen.… What the New Testament emphasizes is that man, whatever his condition may have become after the Fall, may now be a ‘new creation in Christ,’ a new man” (Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, 1975, p. 257).

The image of God is dynamic, not static. It can be marred, defaced, deformed by sin in man, who bears that image. But it can also be renewed through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, who in his humanity, in which he took on the form of man in the image of God, reflects the glory of God.

Common grace. Where does all this leave us in evaluating people of the past or present? Or how do I evaluate my own heart? The renowned Roman philosopher Seneca is reported to have said, “Every man knows that of his own heart that he dare not tell his closest friend.” Alexander Whyte, that great Scottish preacher, cried: “If you have any real knowledge of your own heart at all, this cannot possibly have escaped you, that there are things in your own heart that are most shocking and prostrating for you to find there.… The more true spirituality of mind any man has, the more exquisite will be that man’s sensibility to sin and to the exceeding sinfulness of sin” (Bible Characters, Oliphants, II, 248).

Were Adolf Hitler and Attila the Hun and Lucretia Borgia made in the image of God? Certainly. Just as much as you and I were. And just as much as the great artist, the great composer, the big-hearted philanthropist, the empathetic social worker who do not recognize Jesus Christ as Lord in their lives. And where do these admirable people receive their artistic ability or their concern for others?

Theologians have often spoken of “common grace,” a concept first propounded in detail in the theology of Calvin. Cornelius Van Til describes it this way:

“The doctrine of common grace … enables one to recognize and appreciate all that is good and beautiful in the world while at the same time holding unreservedly to the absolute character of the Christian religion. Whereas special grace regenerates the hearts of men, common grace: (1) restrains the destructive process of sin within mankind in general and (2) enables men, though not born again, to develop the latent forces of the universe and thus make a positive contribution to the fulfillment of the cultural mandate given to men through the first man, Adam, in paradise.… Common grace does not tone down but supports even as it supplements the view of the total depravity of man” (Baker’s Dictionary of Theology, 1960, p. 131).

Even though the image of God has been fearfully marred in mankind, the grace of God is still at work not only in redeeming the individual but also in restraining sin and in developing the creativity of mankind. Beauty as seen in art, music, poetry, and anything else that is produced by the creative initiative of human beings has its origin in God, who made that person in the first place and endowed him or her with the gifts to produce that beauty. Many have done this to a remarkable degree without ever recognizing the source of their genius. Others have allowed those creative powers to become so warped by the sin that is part of our nature that what they produce seems to be totally evil.

Must I as a Christian see in every person one made in the image of God? Certainly I must. But am I obligated to trust everyone to act in the image of God? Certainly not. The Fall is a fact of history. So national and international policy must always take into account the depravity into which the race has fallen. If the Soviet Union fails to keep the Helsinki agreements, should we be very surprised? No. And we should keep this failure in mind in other areas of negotiation with the Soviets.

The common grace of God has been at work in the world from the beginning of time, providing a leavening in society, producing beauty and love, inspiring creativity, restraining sin. But the overwhelming sinfulness of human nature has so marred God’s image in man and so obscured God’s presence in society that at times it indeed has seemed that God has abdicated.

A biblical view of man should make us neither total pessimists who live in hopeless despair nor utopian optimists who see the millennium being brought in by man. Rather, we will be realists who know that the grace of God, both common and special, is still at work in the world. Man is lost, but he is gloriously redeemable. And in the meantime, as God works his redemptive processes, he will also keep his hand upon his creation until that day when “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever.”

heat broken by a light shower

tremendous atmospheric tension

dark clouds

moving swiftly

the pressure of storm

heavy on skin

the light

as though carved

parts

to let the raindrops

drop

swift and separate

cool and heavy

songs in the dark

hymns

the notes falling

in clean lines

swift and separate

as the silence, parts

to let them

through

Paul D. Steeves is assistant professor of history and director of Russian studies at Stetson University in Deland, Florida. He has the Ph.D. from the University of Kansas and specializes in modern Russian history.

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