Letters regarding RESPONSIBILITY, J. N. Darby
Elberfeld, 1869
Dear Brethren,
I am surprised at the clearness in my own mind of the question of responsibility, which lies at the root of Calvinism and Arminianism. Responsibility there must and ought always to be; but in respect of acceptance, the first man [Adam] was the responsible man, and his story ended at the Cross, though each has to learn it personally. Our standing is in the Second [Man], who charged Himself indeed with our failures in responsibility (Himself perfect in every trial in it), but laid the ground of perfect acceptance before God: lost on the ground of the first [Adam], we are before God on the ground of the finished work of the last Adam--not a child of [the first] Adam, as to our place, but a child of God, "the righteousness of God in him." Before the Cross, and up to it, responsibility developed; after it, righteousness revealed, and the original purpose of God, which was in the last Adam, could then be brought out. This opens out what was purely of God, which we have mainly in Ephesians, though elsewhere; and conduct is the display of the divine nature as in Christ. This last is a blessed part of it. The study of what He is is surely the food of the soul. His Person, His work, may carry us deeper in the apprehension of what God is, for it was met and glorified there, and we worship and praise; but with Him we can walk, and know, and learn that none is so gracious as He. What will it not be to see Him as He is! I find imperfection in a language a help to seeing how far all is real and realised in the heart. It cannot flow through in accustomed words. I must close... [Bold emphasis mine.]
My Dear Brother,
The principle that responsibility depends on the power of the responsible person is false, save so far as the alleged responsible person is in his nature such as to negate the claim. A stone cannot be responsible nor even a beast, for moral conduct, because they are not in the relationship to which responsibility can attach. But obligation flows from relationship, and where the relationship exists (which constitutes it), the obligation subsists: the power to fulfill it has nothing to do with it. For example: A man owes me a thousands pounds (Sterling); you are a spendthrift (a person who spends wastefully), and have not a penny; you have no power to pay really--therefore I have no claim nor you responsibility. That will not do. Example two: Romans cut off their thumbs, and could not hold a spear, to avoid military service: were they held irresponsible?
I know that man takes another ground of reasoning against God, that God put him into this place, or he was born in it, and therefore his is not responsible. This raises another point, that moral responsibility attaches to [the] will, not to power. We do what our own consciences condemn because we like it. My child refuses to come when I call him to go with me; I am going to punish him because he would not: he pleads that he was tied or could not open the door. But I punish him because he refused as to his will to yield to the obligation: I had a knife ready to cut what bound him, a key to open the door: he by his will refused the claim. In a word, responsibility flows from the claim on us arising from the relationship in which we stand. These is not a man in Glasgow that would hold that he had no claim on a man who owed him a thousand pounds because be had no ability to pay it. It has nothing to do with responsibility. We may lightly treat God so, alas! and say, "The woman that thou gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat;" but he pleads his sin as his excuse. God says, "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of they wife, and hast eaten of the tree, " etc., therefore.
Yours affectionately in the Lord,
J.N.D.
