The evil inclination

This is an interesting inheritance that Christians have from Jewish theology: the יֵצֶר הַרַע‎. The evil inclination. It is given by S. Paul in our reading at Mass this morning, from his letter to the Romans:

“My own actions bewilder me; what I do is not what I wish to do, but something which I hate. Why then, if what I do is something I have no wish to do, I thereby admit that the Law is worthy of all honour; meanwhile, my action does not come from me, but from the sinful principle that dwells in me. Of this I am certain, that no principle of good dwells in me, that is, in my natural self; praiseworthy intentions are always ready to hand, but I cannot find my way to the performance of them; it is not the good my will prefers, but the evil my will disapproves, that I find myself doing. And if what I do is something I have not the will to do, it cannot be I that bring it about, it must be the sinful principle that dwells in me. This, then, is what I find about the Law, that evil is close at my side, when my will is to do what is praiseworthy. Inwardly, I applaud God’s disposition, but I observe another disposition in my lower self, which raises war against the disposition of my conscience, and so I am handed over as a captive to that disposition towards sin which my lower self contains. Pitiable creature that I am, who is to set me free from a nature thus doomed to death? Nothing else than the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.“

Letter of S. Paul to the Romans, 7: 15-25 [link]

Here’s a Wikipedia article on the evil inclination. At the very beginning of the Bible, in Genesis, when God makes the first covenant with men, with Noah specifically, He acknowledges this, when He says that mankind ‘…has all the thoughts and imaginations of his heart, even in youth, so bent towards evil,’ but nevertheless determines that ‘never again will I send affliction such as this upon all living creatures.’ [link] The affliction referred to is, of course, the flood. It is, I suppose, when evil continues to flourish after the flood that the Holy One (in the words of the liturgy) determines to fashion a remedy for mortality out of mortality itself, to bring life to the children of men from within mankind itself – by arriving Himself in the form of a man.

It may seem that S. Paul is being negative, even dismal, in the appraisal of himself here in Romans. I believe that he is showing the great virtue of humility, and himself countering the pride of our race. The perfect Law of God draws us to virtue in spite of ourselves, but does not make us virtuous of itself. That is in small part our own effort, and in greater part the action of the Holy One within us. But the Lives of the Saints demonstrate to us a constant effort on their part to overcome the ‘other disposition in my lower self,’ as Paul calls it. It takes humility to recognise that lower nature of ours that wars against our higher calling, and because it puts throws us into the hands of our Redeemer it is that humility that will be our first rescue.