It is said that a man knows his own sin best. There is a great deal of truth to that statement, and yet we must all concede that often men are blind to their own sins. How was it that Jonathan Edwards could give himself over so easily to sins of arrogance and pride? And how could he miss such a horrendous and obvious sin as slavery? There are no excuses for these sins, not with men and certainly not with God. Yet, Edwards readily believed in the blinding power of sin. Edwards’ own convictions about the noetic effects of sin help us understand how he could be so blind to his failures.
Our reason, he says, has been dramatically impaired by the Fall. To such a degree even that it may be deceived into believing that evil is best for us. He sees this even in Adam prior to the Fall. In the Garden, even in their state of perfection, Adam and Eve had their rational judgment deceived by the serpent. In several of his Miscellanies Edwards develops this thought, claiming that though Adam had the natural ability to obey God he did not have the inclination. He needed more grace from God to keep him from succumbing to temptation. John Gerstner rightly asks in response, “But how could man have been deceived if he had a natural understanding sufficient to comprehend the difference between a command of the Creator and a temptation of a creature” (The Biblical Rational Theology of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, 307)? This is a very important question. After all, how could righteous Adam do the wrong thing? Gerstner continues:
Edwards explains that the deception came about through the devil working by human appetites; but, be that as it may, Adam and Eve still made a choice in accord with their rational judgment. Fallen men seem to do no differently. Sinners may violate their mere rational judgment but not without first corrupting or deceiving it. Our first parents appear to have done no differently. (307-8).
Edwards believed that Adam’s fall into sin happened because built into him was an imperfect nature necessarily leading to sin. From the very moment of his creation he was made with the “fixed prevailing principle of sin in his heart”. This is part of man’s very nature.
According to the theologian, man was made with two different principles. The inferior principle was a spiritually neutral principle guiding man’s “self-love” with its “natural appetites and passions.” The other, a superior principle was a spiritual, holy, and divine principle in man. In the Fall the inferior principle overpowered the superior. What Adam needed in that moment was more grace from God, Edwards called it “efficacious grace”, to help him resist temptation. But this grace, he taught, was withheld from Adam. The result? Man’s inferior principle has been ruling him ever since. He writes:
The inferior principles of self-love and natural appetite, which were given only to serve, being alone, and left to themselves, of course became reigning principles; having no superior principles to regulate or control them, they became absolute masters of the heart. The immediate consequence of which was a fatal catastrophe, a turning of all things upside down, and the succession of a state of the most odious and dreadful confusion. Man did immediately set up himself, and the objects of his private affections and appetites, as supreme; and so they took the place of God.
What began with our parents, that their rational judgment was deceived and overpowered by their “inferior appetites,” has continued on with the whole human race.
Edwards taught that sin had greatly effected our reason. Sinful man is blind, living in darkness, and unable to see clearly the depth of his depravity. He stated rather plainly that “Man is naturally a miserably darkened and blind creature and his blindness chiefly consists in two things viz., his ignorance of God and his ignorance of himself.” He continues, saying:
The heart of man is exceeding deceitful…There are many that appear saints before men that are far away from it in the dark…Because of their exceeding ignorance they are not sensible of their own ignorance.
Man is naturally blind to what is in his own heart. That is the power of sin, that is the impact of sin on the mind. John Gerstner explains it this way:
Men live in a darkness which blinds them. Their inclinations blind their understanding. The sum of their corruption which is self-love blinds them especially to their own faults and stupefies them to the point that they will not even examine themselves. (348)
What was true of our parents, according to Edwards, is true too of us: our minds are deceived.
I don’t agree with Edwards explanation of the origin of in, I find it to move away from the Scriptures – though I do not claim to have figured out this difficult subject any better. But while I don’t agree with his assessment of Adam and Eve’s first sin, I find his discussion of the noetic effects of sin to be in accord with Scripture. Paul teaches us that the natural man cannot comprehend the things of God. And why can’t he? Because he “cannot understand them” (1 Cor. 2:14). He teaches too that Satan has “blinded the minds” of sinful men (2 Cor. 4:4). The Fall has dramatically impaired our reasoning abilities. We are blinded to our own sin, impaired in our understanding of God, of our world, and of ourselves.
Even as believers our sensibleness of sin is a process. We must acknowledge our sinful state before God in order to find redemption necessary in Christ Jesus. And yet our new self must be “renewed in knowledge” (Col. 3:10), it is not yet complete. Our sanctification is a process and so our awareness of sin is a process. Edwards preached against immorality and nominal Christianity precisely because Christians need the encouragement to continue growing, they are not done. Edwards too needed to continue to grow, and as we shall see, he needed to see certain sins in his life more clearly.
A man knows his own sin best, except what sin he doesn’t know at all. The Fall has blinded the eyes of our mind and we often have difficulty seeing our sinfulness in all its manifestations. Even as believers we must strive to see our sin more clearly than we do now. We struggle to see all our sins as God sees them, and so did Jonathan Edwards. That is the power of sin on the mind!
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