Walking Through Westminster, WCF 6.1-2

Westminster Confession of Faith 6.1-2

I. Our first parents, being seduced by the subtilty and temptations of Satan, sinned, in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin, God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory.

II. By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion, with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body.

Summary

Mankind, in Adam and Eve, was originally created with the ability to truly obey or disobey God, being left by God to the freedom of their own will. However, being seduced and tempted by Satan in the garden of Eden, our first parents ate the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and thereby fell from this state of original righteousness and communion with God. God had warned them in the beginning "in the day you eat of [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you shall surely die." (Gen 2:17). While Adam and Eve's physical life did not end the moment they ate the forbidden fruit, they did die spiritually. The spiritual death which they endured would bring physical death with it, as well. Part of being dead in sin also meant that mankind became wholly, or completely, defiled in every part of our soul and body. There was no part of the human person that was left unstained by sin's corruption. 

Discussed in a previous entry was the mistaken belief of dualism, common in many false religions, whereby the soul of a person is said to be pure, but the body defiled. This has been dealt with before and is obviously false, as it contradicts the Bible. Something more insidious, however, is a teaching that arose out of the "Enlightenment" of the 18th century. The main tenet of this philosophical movement, which is still embraced as inerrant truth by many today, is the idea that human reason is the supreme authority in all matters. While there were some aspects of the Enlightenment which were admirable and helpful, this teaching in particular has caused much trouble. The main problem with this belief (that human reason is the supreme authority in all things) is that it flies in the face of what God says and who God is. The Bible clearly teaches that all aspects of the human (mind, will, body, soul, etc.) have become corrupted by sin. (Rom 1:18-21) The Bible does not teach that human reason is worthless or unimportant (contra what many foolish people claim), but it does teach that human reason cannot be the supreme authority on any matter, because our ability to reason has been clouded by sin. The Enlightenment wanted to believe that, while sin may have had an effect on certain aspects of the world, the human ability to reason was left untainted and was still capable of objective assessment of reality. But the Bible clearly teaches that even our thinking has become corrupted by sin, so that we do not accurately perceive reality in ourselves. If human reason were a pair of glasses, then sin has smudged them to the point that we can no longer trust them to accurately reflect reality. We must have Someone outside of ourselves come and clean our glasses for us, before we can clearly see the world as it actually is. The Bible calls this "regeneration" or being "born again" and it is an act of God the Holy Spirit alone. (c.f. John 3:1-21)

+ Blessings in Christ +