Emotions

Only on the non-Christian concept of man are the emotions inherently unruly. On the Christian concept of man the emotions or affections are not inherently unruly; they have become unruly only because of sin. But when sin has entered into the mind of man, the intellect is as unruly as are the affections. In that case the whole man refuses to subject itself to the rule of God. Again, when a saved sinner learns to control his passions the reason is not primarily that he has understood the meaning of the primacy of the intellect as a psychological truth, but the primary reason is that in the whole of His being he is born of God. The perfect man Jesus, therefore as Dr. Warfield so beautifully shows in his article, “On the Emotional Life of Our Lord,” manifests the strongest emotions of love and of wrath and yet exhibits a perfect symmetry between all the aspects of his being, not because his intellect constantly knows how to keep his passions in check, but because as the sinless one the strongest emotions are naturally such as accord with the holy will of God. So we are commended by Calvin, says Warfield, “not indeed to eradicate our affections, seeking after that inhuman apatheia commended by the Stoics, but to correct and subdue that obstinacy which pervades them, on account of the sin of Adam.”

 

Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Phillipsburg, NJ, 1979), 34–35.