Man In a State of Innocence

"God created man upright, but..." (Ecclesiastes 7:29)

It is with this text that Boston opens his discussion of man's original condition, what he calls his 'primitive integrity'.

In its context, Solomon is explaining his search for the reasons why men do what they do. He is trying to get a handle on worldviews, behaviour, rationale and motivation. He can find none that satisfies, except the reason offered in Genesis: 'God made man upright'. The tragedy is that there is a 'but' here. In spite of primitive perfection, man fell into sin. God made us, but we unmade ourselves.

So, as Boston deals with the State of Innocence, there are two things he wants to emphasise:

The first is

Man's Original Righteousness

This is the fundamental truth about mankind: at the point of man's origin, man had been created upright, and sinless. Boston expounds this in terms of man's relationship with God. God alone is righteous, and his law reveals his righteous perfections to us. God made man in his image, in order to have a relationship with him.

This meant, on the one hand, that man's soul longed for righteousness, for 'habitual' righteousness; and, on the other, that man's abilities matched his desires, so that he could have 'actual' righteousness. Boston states that 'God made man habitually righteous; man was to make himself actually righteous" (9-10).

To aid him in this, God ensured:

First, that 'man's understanding was a lamp of light'. In the new covenant, God writes his laws on the hearts of his people. But originally, God wrote the law on man's mind, so that he had an intellectual appreciation of what God required, and was motivated in that direction.

Second, that 'man's will lay straight with the will of God'. Man chose nothing but what would please God. That was his highest motivation.

Third, that 'his affections were orderly, pure and holy'. He loved what God loved: 'man's affections, in his primitive state, were pure from all defilement, free from all disorder and distemper, because, in all their motions, they were duly subjected to his clear reason'.

Further, this righteousness was

- universal. All of man's being was consecrated to all of God's demands and commands. 'There was not one wrong pin in the tabernacle of human nature'.

- natural. It was not something supernaturally endowed. In his integrity, man did not require an outside, alien righteousness. It was natural to him, and was not essential to his humanity, but to his hapiness.

- changeable. It could be lost.

The second, as a consequence of all this, is

Man's Original Happiness

To be continued...