Systematic Theology, by Louis Berkhof - New Leaven

transgression of the law of God, and therefore renders man guilty in the sight of God
and worthy of condemnation. Moreover, the idea that sin is ignorance goes contrary to
the voice of Christian experience. The man who is burdened with the sense of sin
certainly does not feel that way about it. He is grateful, too, that not only the sins which
he committed in ignorance are pardonable, but all the others as well, with the single
exception of the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
6. THE THEORY THAT SIN IS SELFISHNESS. This position is taken among others by
Mueller and A. H. Strong. Some who take this position conceive of selfishness merely as
the opposite of altruism or benevolence; others understand by it the choice of self rather
than God as the supreme object of love. Now this theory, especially when it conceives of
selfishness as a putting of self in the place of God, is by far the best of the theories
named. Yet it can hardly be called satisfactory. Though all selfishness is sin, and there is
an element of selfishness in all sin, it cannot be said that selfishness is the essence of sin.
Sin can be properly defined only with reference to the law of God, a reference that is
completely lacking in the definition under consideration. Moreover, there is a great deal
of sin in which selfishness is not at all the governing principle. When a poverty-stricken
father sees his wife and children pine away for lack of food, and in his desperate desire
to help them finally resorts to theft, this can hardly be called pure selfishness. It may
even be that the thought of self was entirely absent. Enmity to God, hardness of heart,
impenitence, and unbelief, are all heinous sins, but cannot simply be qualified as
selfishness. And certainly the view that all virtue is disinterestedness or benevolence,
which seems to be a necessary corollary of the theory under consideration, at least in
one of its forms, does not hold. An act does not cease to be virtuous, when its
performance meets and satisfies some demand of our nature. Moreover, justice, fidelity,
humility, forbearance, patience, and other virtues may be cultivated or practiced, not as
forms of benevolence, but as virtues inherently excellent, not merely as promoting the
happiness of others, but for what they are in themselves.
7. THE THEORY THAT SIN CONSISTS IN THE OPPOSITION OF THE LOWER PROPENSITIES OF
HUMAN NATURE TO A GRADUALLY DEVELOPING MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS. This view was
developed, as we pointed out in the preceding, by Tennant in his Hulsean Lectures. It is
the doctrine of sin constructed according to the theory of evolution. Natural impulses
and inherited qualities, derived from the brute, form the material of sin, but do not
actually become sin until they are indulged in contrary to the gradually awakening
moral sense of mankind. The theories of McDowall and Fiske move along similar lines.
The theory as presented by Tennant halts somewhat between the Scriptural view of man
and that presented by the theory of evolution, inclining now to the one and anon to the
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