Lecture

Dr. Doug Groothuis: The Christian faith’s analysis of human nature, I think, is incredibly compelling, because it takes seriously both our limitations and our moral failings, our failures, in many ways, and also takes very seriously our dignity, and our value, and our significance. It doesn’t emphasize one at the expense of the other. Blaise Pascal said we are like deposed kings. And what he means is that biblically we’re not the process of chance evolution, we’re not just an evolved ape or something like that. Neither are we gods and goddesses. We’re made in the image and likeness of God. We reflect something of God. We’re rational beings. We’re moral beings. We have purpose. We have intentions, but we’ve also gone wrong. We use our capacities for good and evil. Now when you look at human history, you see tremendous achievements, human heroism, beauty in the arts. We see human beings devising incredible technologies that help us to master nature. But then those technologies end up acting back on us in ways such as the Holocaust and atomic bombs and things like that.

Dr. Vernon Grounds: You look at Germany earlier on in the century and it was at the apex of culture without any question. And then along came Adolf Hitler and you get the pogroms. And then you also have Stalin in the Russian scene. And you have Mao Tse-tung in China. These are my contemporaries, or shall I say they were. And they disclose that whatever may be our scientific achievements, culturally, politically, we do what seems to be so utterly insane. We build a great civilization as Germany did, and then we destroy it with insane ambitions as took place under Adolf Hitler.

Dr. Doug Groothuis: So it’s like we’re this combination of the debased and the dignified. And the Christian explanation of that is that we are beings who have been twisted and warped by sin. That is, we have made ourselves the center and the reference point, instead of God. There’s been a deeper love of self than love of God or love of neighbor.

So we are not completely hopeless, we’re not worthless, yet we need external help. We need to be forgiven and empowered from a source beyond ourselves ultimately by God Himself working through Christ.

So as I look at human history, as I look at my own life, as I look at American culture and other cultures, I see this fascinating and rather distressing combination of what is dignified and wonderful and excellent and what is horribly debased and evil. And there’s a little Latin phrase that captures this. It says, “The greater something is—the farther it can fall.” And I think that explains the human condition very well.

And that’s exactly the answer that Christianity gives, that we are deposed royalty really. But we can be redeemed. We can be forgiven. We can be encouraged and empowered through a work beyond ourselves, the work of Christ—if we understand that and we receive that by faith.