08 - Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
DUALITY OF HUMAN NATURE.
Metaphysics is as necessary to a correct theology as any branch of human learning. If ministers knew man better they would be delivered from many crude errors. We come now to one of these metaphysical questions in THE DUALITY OF THE CHRISTIAN.
1. Virgil declares that Mezentius when upon the throne of Azylla was guilty of many a "freak of madness or of guilt." His mode of punishing some of the conquered subjects of his realm is thus stated, almost too horrid for belief:
"He chained the living to the dead, Hand joined to hand and face to face, In noisome pestilent embrace; So trickling down with foul decay They wore their lingering lives away."
It is believed that Paul refers to this terrible mode of punishment when he exclaims, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death" (Romans 7:24)? The whole chapter refers to a conflict, an antagonism, a duality experienced in himself; the mind and spirit on the one side, and the body, the flesh, on the other.
2. This fact falls in with the general tenor of the teaching of Paul and the other Apostles. In our unrenewed state we are represented as dead to God, but alive to the world. This respects the whole man, body, soul and spirit. Dead, dead in trespasses and sins. In Adam all died. But we are alive to the world. At conversion, regeneration, a twofold process takes place. This double process is a necessity, owing to the fact that we are the subjects of two worlds, two realms, two kinds of law--moral and physical. Were we all natural, or all spiritual, a single process only would be required. This twofold process corresponds to the two aspects under which man is viewed. Spiritually he is dead, and so must be made alive; naturally he is alive, and so must die. The person must be made alive; the nature must die. And these processes are subject to different natural laws--that is, laws under which we are as to our nature.
3. The person as made alive is now known as the "new man," in contradistinction to which the nature, as we have called it, is known as the "flesh." By keeping these facts in view we can understand Paul. He boldly identifies himself in his real, responsible person with the new man, and relegates his remaining uncleanness to the flesh, to his members. This is the teaching of the following sublime passage: "For I know that in me [the nature], that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. For that which I do, I allow not. But that which I hate, I do. If, then, I do that which I would not, it is no more I [the person] that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man [the person]; but I see another law in my members [the nature] warring against the law of my mind" [the person]. Herein we find the great solvent of this mystery of double sanctification, whereby all Scripture is reconciled.