Part 41

St. Paul said, "As in Adam all men fell, so in Christ are all made whole." If Adam did not fall St. Paul was mistaken.

Christ is reported to have prayed on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

That looks as if Jesus knew that the men were not responsible for their acts, and did not know any better. But if they knew not what they did, why should God be asked to forgive them?

But let us go over the Determinist theory again, for it is most important.

If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man's acts.

The Christians say Man sinned, and they talk about his freedom of choice. But they say God made Man, as He made all things.

Now, if God is all-knowing, He knew before He made Man what Man would do. He knew that Man could do nothing but what God had enabled him to do. That he could do nothing but what he was foreordained by God to do.

If God is all-powerful, He need not have made Man at all. Or He could have made a man who would be strong enough to resist temptation. Or He could have made a man who was incapable of evil.

If the All-powerful God made a man, knowing that man would succumb to the test to which God meant to subject him, surely God could not justly blame the man for being no better than God had made him.

If God had never made Man, then Man never could have succumbed to temptation. God made Man of His own divine choice, and made him to His own divine desire.

How, then, could God blame Man for anything Man did?

God was responsible for Man's existence, for God made him. If God had not made him, Man could never have been, and could never have acted. Therefore all that Man did was the result of God's creation of Man.

All man's acts were the effects of which his creation was the cause: and God was responsible for the cause, and therefore God was responsible for the effects.

Man did not make himself. Man could not, before he existed, have asked God to make him. Man could not advise nor control God so as to influence his own nature. Man could only be what God caused him to be, and do what God enabled or compelled him to do.

Man might justly say to God: "I did not ask to be created. I did not ask to be sent into this world. I had no power to select or mould my nature. I am what You made me. I am where You put me. You knew when You made me how I should act. If You wished me to act otherwise, why did You not make me differently? If I have displeased You, I was fore-ordained to displease You. I was fore-ordained by You to be and to do what I am and have done. Is it my fault that You fore-ordained me to be and to do thus?"

Christians say a man has a will to choose. So he has. But that is only saying that one human thought will outweigh another. A man thinks with his brain: his brain was made by God.

A tall man can reach higher than a short man. It is not the fault of the short man that he is outreached: he did not fix his own height.

It is the same with the will. A man has a will to jump. He can jump over a five-barred gate; but he cannot jump over a cathedral.

So with his will in moral matters. He has a will to resist temptation, but though he may clear a small temptation, he may fall at a large one.

The actions of a man's will are as mathematically fixed at his birth as are the motions of a planet in its orbit.

God, who made the man and the planet, is responsible for the actions of both.

As the natural forces created by God regulate the influences of Venus and Mars upon the Earth, so must the natural forces created by God have regulated the influences of Eve and the Serpent on Adam.

Adam was no more blameworthy for failing to resist the influence of Eve than the Earth is blameworthy for deviating in its course around the Sun, in obedience to the influences of Venus and Mars.

Without the act of God there could have been no Adam, and therefore no Fall. God, whose act is responsible for Adam's existence, is responsible for the Fall.

If God is responsible for man's existence, God is responsible for all Man's acts.

If a boy brought a dog into the house and teased it until it bit him, would not his parents ask the boy, "Why did you bring the dog in at all?"

But if the boy had trained the dog to bite, and knew that it would bite if it were teased, and if the boy brought the dog in and teased it until it bit him, would the parents blame the dog?

And if a magician, like one of those at the court of Pharaoh, deliberately made an adder out of the dust, knowing the adder would bite, and then played with the adder until it bit some spectator, would the injured man blame the magician or the adder?