14 experience and environment.”8 No one would deny that experience and environment play a role, but sin also must be accounted for in order to diagnose problems accurately. The foundational assumption must be that humans are created in the image of God, but that the Fall produced a sin nature that has profoundly affected the internal and external lives of all humans. Adding these various intellectual traditions together, a largely optimistic view of human nature dominates today’s intellectual culture, and it even has infiltrated the Christian church to an extent. According to the new order, man is not fallen; he may not be perfect, but he is perfectible. The term “sin” has been banished, as has “sin nature,” even of the Arminian kind. One doesn’t have to look very far to find any or all of these various shades of the “new man” being taught; they permeate our intellectual, legal, and cultural institutions. And yet, sin is the major aspect of human nature involved in the questions surrounding most areas of thought and practice; it is the elephant in the room. On the other hand, we should be cautious not to elevate sin such that it destroys the image of God in us. It is in His image, and by and with the work of God’s grace, that any human is able to make the best use of his divine image by laboring to make the world a better place consistent with the known (revealed) will of God. We do not yet live in the final eschatological Kingdom and so utopia is a foreclosed option. But we can glorify God to the greatest extent in this life by taking into full account the reality of both the divine image and our sin nature as we consider how to engage our culture for God. We can think about all aspects of life and thought with these considerations in mind, and we can then engage in purposive action that is realistically just and promotes flourishing. And we can design institutions that also account for our sin nature and that will constrain potential or real bad actions while enabling the conditions for productive and free activity. Applications of the Christian View of Human Nature When we study human nature from a Christian perspective, it is not for the purpose of mere curiosity. The results of scriptural foundations have very crucial applications to virtually every area of life and thought, from personal ethics and the family to politics, economics, and beyond. The way we think about human nature influences how we consider all these 8 Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, “Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature,” Psychology Today, July 1, 2007.
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