There is a line of lazily written greeting cards that begin with the Socratic “What is . . .” And fill in with the holiday being celebrated. What is a mother? What is Christmas?
One greeting card I have yet to see: What is sin?
Sadly, I know by experience what it is to sin: to fall short of God’s will. A person can do a thing without being able to define it as anyone who breathes knows! That a thing or person exists can be known without defining what it is. What good is a definition? A decent understanding that comes with a definition can help us understand what we are talking about and so minimize error.
This is generally a good thing. When it comes to “sin,” Christians in the West of the world have generally viewed sin as broken good. There is no opposite to the Good, just misapplied goodness that causes it to be “bent” (CS Lewis Out of the Silent Planet). This is opposed to any Star Wars idea that good and evil are opposite forces that are balanced in the universe. This view is heresy. Ideas so bad Christians cannot consistently hold them are rare, so “heresy” is a term to use sparingly, but postulating an actual opposite to Omnipotence is so intellectually incoherent that it deserves any opprobrium we can throw at it.
You cannot have an “opposite” to an all powerful being as then there would be two all powerful beings. Which then is more powerful? We can exclude this idea for Christians or any monotheists (pagan, Jewish, Islamic). This reminds us that monotheists are not just people who dispense with “gods” and yet still believe in one god. The monotheistic God is a different sort of being than the gods. The gods could exist and God exist or they could fail to exist and God exist. There just cannot be two Gods: omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent.
So we cannot view “sin” as the opposite of the good. Like any idea in a world where two billion are Christians, some have taken a different view of sin than that of Augustine and CS Lewis that also tries to avoid the Star Wars (Manichaeans?) error. Call them the magical Christians who reacted to materialism in the late nineteen and early twentieth century by looking in all the weird intellectual closets of the Faithful for something awesome. Since the Faith starts with an historically attested rising from the dead, a harrowing of hades, and an ascension to Heaven, one would think this unnecessary. One would be right, but that did not stop Arthur Machen and (later) Charles Williams.
Machen (The Great God Pan) has had an enormous influence on horror literature. He is a HP Lovecraft without the overt white supremacy and Stephen King with interesting ideas: both tip the hat to the Machen (as they should). Not surprisingly for someone who has poked around in the scary attics and basements of the Christian past, Machen ends up with a more elevated view of sin then one finds in someone like CS Lewis, who experimented with the occult briefly, but had too much philosophy to stay there for long.
Is there an alternative? If there is one, Arthur Machen poked around in the right places to find it.
Machen introduces his ideas about sin in the short story “The White People.”
‘You’re quite wrong,’ said Ambrose. ‘I never make paradoxes; I wish I could. I merely said that a man may have an exquisite taste in Romanée Conti, and yet never have even smelt four ale. That’s all, and it’s more like a truism than a paradox, isn’t it? Your surprise at my remark is due to the fact that you haven’t realized what sin is. Oh, yes, there is a sort of connexion between Sin with the capital letter, and actions which are commonly called sinful: with murder, theft, adultery, and so forth. Much the same connexion that there is between the A, B, C and fine literature. But I believe that the misconception—it is all but universal—arises in great measure from our looking at the matter through social spectacles. We think that a man who does evil to us and to his neighbours must be very evil. So he is, from a social standpoint; but can’t you realize that Evil in its essence is a lonely thing, a passion of the solitary, individual soul?
Machen rightly points out that the only sins are not sins against our neighbor. These are often twisted goods, misunderstood actions that corrupt, and they are very evil. Yet Machen is looking for essential Evil (if such a thing exists) and this must be solitary. Why? Even a touch of community is apt to bring honor amongst the thieves: evil is still evil, but repentance and escape from this evil (just might) be easier.
Why?
Machen’s hero continues to dialog with a friend on the nature of evil:
Really, the average murderer, qua murderer, is not by any means a sinner in the true sense of the word. He is simply a wild beast that we have to get rid of to save our own necks from his knife. I should class him rather with tigers than with sinners.’
‘It seems a little strange.’
‘I think not. The murderer murders not from positive qualities, but from negative ones; he lacks something which non-murderers possess.
This seems wrong. Is it really the case that all murders are done by “wild beasts?” Surely some are, but the state murders are not. They are calmly calculated: pogroms were designed to release revolutionary impulses in Russian masses to cite one of many examples. These murders were not those of “tigers,” but all too much of men.
Already then we have a reason to doubt Machen’s analysis. He continues:
Evil, of course, is wholly positive—only it is on the wrong side. You may believe me that sin in its proper sense is very rare; it is probable that there have been far fewer sinners than saints. Yes, your standpoint is all very well for practical, social purposes; we are naturally inclined to think that a person who is very disagreeable to us must be a very great sinner! It is very disagreeable to have one’s pocket picked, and we pronounce the thief to be a very great sinner. In truth, he is merely an undeveloped man. He cannot be a saint, of course; but he may be, and often is, an infinitely better creature than thousands who have never broken a single commandment. He is a great nuisance to us, I admit, and we very properly lock him up if we catch him; but between his troublesome and unsocial action and evil—Oh, the connexion is of the weakest.’
Is this mere Star Wars?
No.
Machen is saying something more interesting and (perhaps) truer (and more Christian!). Many people who do evil are hapless . . . Not even considering what they are doing. Some are badly educated, unaware that they are misbehaving. Others support society’s standards, but are weak when it comes to self: they bend the rules when that would help the idol of self. These are bad actions, but not from people who intend to be bad. That does not justify their behavior, but it does mean that the evil done is piddling.
When we behave this way, we accept the standards (even of the good God), but cheat. We are sinners and do harm, often great harm, but we are not dedicated to evil. There is a mass of us who do not even do enough, choose for ourselves, and so are worse.
Jesus attacks those neither “hot nor cold” and Machen picks up on this image. Most social sinners at least act, so have a chance to repent. Many of us simply drift along doing neither good nor evil, because we do not choose. We drift along with society, changing our behavior to fit the pattern of the times. We do not have the courage to walk on the grass or the bravery to choose to stay on the sidewalk for the good of the community. Instead, we merely lumber along heading to where we should go, queuing up for the broad road that leads to destruction.
There is, however, even a worse state: that of the anti-Christs. Imagine a man who confuses the Evil One for the Good God. Satan is not for this sinner the opposite of the good God, but is mistaken for the good God.
If a man were to call evil good, and the evil one the One, then he would be “on the wrong side” but for (oddly) good reasons. This man does not wish to cheat on his taxes or lift the towels from his hotel: he wishes to serve the Truth, but finds a great Lie (clever enough to fool such a decent man). He plunges into the spiritual realm with the same wisdom as a man who pokes a fork into an electric outlet hoping for something good from the power. Such an experiment will get results, just not good ones.
There are many powers in heaven and earth and the one’s most eager to bowl us over are not going to be good for us. Machen explains further:
It was getting very late. The man who had brought Cotgrave had probably heard all this before, since he assisted with a bland and judicious smile, but Cotgrave began to think that his ‘lunatic’ was turning into a sage. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘you interest me immensely? You think, then, that we do not understand the real nature of evil?’
‘No, I don’t think we do. We over-estimate it and we under-estimate it. We take the very numerous infractions of our social “bye-laws”—the very necessary and very proper regulations which keep the human company together—and we get frightened at the prevalence of “sin” and “evil.” But this is really nonsense. Take theft, for example. Have you any horror at the thought of Robin Hood, of the Highland caterans of the seventeenth century, of the moss-troopers, of the company promoters of our day? ‘Then, on the other hand, we underrate evil. We attach such an enormous importance to the “sin” of meddling with our pockets (and our wives) that we have quite forgotten the awfulness of real sin.’
‘And what is sin?’ said Cotgrave.
‘I think I must reply to your question by another. What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning? ‘Well, these examples may give you some notion of what sin really is.’
‘Look here,’ said the third man, hitherto placid, ‘you two seem pretty well wound up. But I’m going home. I’ve missed my tram, and I shall have to walk.’
Ambrose and Cotgrave seemed to settle down more profoundly when the other had gone out into the early misty morning and the pale light of the lamps. ‘You astonish me,’ said Cotgrave. ‘I had never thought of that. If that is really so, one must turn everything upside down. Then the essence of sin really is——’
‘In the taking of heaven by storm, it seems to me,’ said Ambrose. ‘It appears to me that it is simply an attempt to penetrate into another and a higher sphere in a forbidden manner. You can understand why it is so rare. They are few, indeed, who wish to penetrate into other spheres, higher or lower, in ways allowed or forbidden. Men, in the mass, are amply content with life as they find it. Therefore there are few saints, and sinners (in the proper sense) are fewer still, and men of genius, who partake sometimes of each character, are rare also. Yes; on the whole, it is, perhaps, harder to be a great sinner than a great saint.’
In a materialist age, there is a temptation to the sensitive soul to look for just any supernatural event. The good God does not do party tricks, He is interested in a relational, rational, consensual relationship. Not all bodiless powers are so constrained. The road to sainthood is mapped out by the Church, but it is hard and not full of tricks and treats. Instead, one must love God and neighbor, study and pray. This is not exciting.
There exists other beings willing to meet our felt needs at the cost of our real needs. If we storm Heaven with seeming success, then it is Hell we have found. Yet by the time we turn from our angel of light, we might have been changed. This is what Machen, with his own sad explorations, has found: outside the Church one mostly finds devils.
‘There is something profoundly unnatural about sin? Is that what you mean?’
‘Exactly. Holiness requires as great, or almost as great, an effort; but holiness works on lines that were natural once; it is an effort to recover the ecstasy that was before the Fall. But sin is an effort to gain the ecstasy and the knowledge that pertain alone to angels, and in making this effort, man becomes a demon. I told you that the mere murderer is not therefore a sinner; that is true, but the sinner is sometimes a murderer. Gilles de Raiz is an instance. So you see that while the good and the evil are unnatural to man as he now is—to man the social, civilized being—evil is unnatural in a much deeper sense than good. The saint endeavours to recover a gift which he has lost; the sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he repeats the Fall.’
The natural is not what we desire, but the created order. Walk into that order and the deeper rules of nature and of Nature’s God will help. That is the path of the saint and it is well trod, too well trod for the magician. The personality type of the one who seeks hidden knowledge too often looks in the corners to find something “new.”
We look for a new Christ, but that is, as it always was, Antichrist. There is only one Jesus and He is not transmuting to fit our desires: He is. So we look elsewhere . . . And so grab something that was never ours. Evil for Machen is like that of Augustine or CS Lewis, but Machen emphasizes that some make the great error of calling evil good and so fallen fall. This is a second death.
We live in an age of antichrists .
Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
————————————————
The White People in The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories (Oxford World Classics) Arthur Machen (Pages 261-66).
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In