The Book of Mormon Site

Natural Man

The phrase “natural man” is used once in the King James Bible, 1 Cor 2:14:

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

In Mosiah 3:19, King Benjamin preaches, using non-Biblical language (“enemy to God”):

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

Thomas Boston, 1720, (reprinted for a century, see 1788, and 1799, 1807, 1820), p.75 (1788 ed.), Human Nature in Its Fourfold State, writes:

Every natural man is an enemy to God, as he is revealed in his word.

By 1820, this phrase had had a century to seep into Protestantism. As proof, we see it resurface nearly verbatim in in the Book of Mormon in 1830. Was Thomas Boston a true prophet, back in 1720? Or was he merely an influence on Protestantism, which was influential in the production of the Book of Mormon?

< Back to Index