Is man good?

                                                                                                                                    Vol. XIX, No. 6, August 2006

Much of liberation theology is built on the concept of Man being basically good, linked with the idea that all people need is to be released from their economic chains. This is utopian, because Man is not basically good (bound only by social, economic, and political chains). Man is fallen. The Perfectibility of Man was the basis of much of the Enlightenment and of the French Revolution. Theoretically it was a basis of the Marxist-Lenin revolution in Russia. Each place this concept of the Perfectibility of Man has been acted on it has led to tragedy, to political chains, and to the loss of humanness. Every attempt to put this utopian concept into practice has led to failure because it is false to what Man as he now is, really is. Man is not intrinsically unselfish, corrupted only by outward circumstances. He is fallen; he is not what he was created to be.

[Francis A. Schaefer, A Christian Manifesto.]