2. § 36. The Origin of Sin.

2. § 36. The Origin of Sin.

§ 36. The Origin of Sin.

. The providence of God, as government of sin, goes the farthest beyond all our thinking and understanding and at the same time, as such, celebrates its highest triumph. Hardly had God created the world good and perfect, when sin pressed into it. The mystery of being becomes still more incomprehensible through the mystery of evil. Almost at the same moment when the creatures come forth pure and glorious from the hand of their Maker, they are robbed of all their splendor and stand corrupted and unclean before his holy countenance. Sin has destroyed the whole creation, turned its righteousness into guilt, its holiness into uncleanness, its glory into shame, its blessedness into misery, its harmony into disorder, its life into death, its light into darkness. Whence then that evil, and what is the origin of sin? Scripture justifies God, and gives a continuous theodicy, when it pronounces and maintains that in no case is God the cause of sin.

For He is righteous and holy and far from ungodliness, Deut. 32:4, Job 34:10, Ps. 92:16, Isa. 6:3, Hab. 1:13, a light without darkness, 1 John 1:5, tempting no one, Jas. 1:13, abundant fountain of all that is good and clean

and pure, Ps. 36:10, Jas. 1:17; He forbids sin in his law, Ex. 20, and in the conscience of every human being, Rom. 2:14, 15, has no pleasure in ungodliness, Ps. 5:5, but hates it and is wrathful against it, Ps. 45:8, [35]

Rom. 1:18; He judges and reconciles it in Christ, Rom. 3 vs. 24-26, cleanses his people from it through forgiveness and sanctification, 1 Cor.

1:30, and wills to punish it both temporally and eternally, Rom. 1:18, 2:8.

For the origin of sin Scripture always points us to the creature. But therefore God's governance of sin, also in its origin, is not excluded. It is

God himself who created the possibility of sin. Not only did He form the human being so that he could fall. But He also planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, set the human being by the probationary commandment before the choice between good and evil, and allowed the temptation by the serpent. It was his will to walk with the human being the dangerous way of freedom, rather than at once to raise him above the possibility of sin. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is undoubtedly so called, because the human being, eating of it, would obtain a knowledge of good and evil which he did not possess up to that point, which was forbidden to him and which he was not permitted to obtain. The question is, what is to be understood under that knowledge of good and evil.

The usual explanation is that the human being, by eating of the tree, would obtain an experiential knowledge of the good and the evil; but rightly the objection has been raised against this, that this knowledge of good and evil would make the human being like God, Gen. 3:5 and yet God has no empirical knowledge of evil or can have it; further, that the human being by eating of the tree precisely lost the experiential knowledge of the good; and finally, that Gen. 3:22a must then be taken as irony, which in itself is already unacceptable and is definitely in conflict with vs. 22b. Others have

therefore thought that Gen. 3 related the development of the human being from the animal state to self-consciousness and reason, and have therefore seen in the fall the first venture of reason, the beginning of moral life, the origin of culture, the happiest event in the history of humankind; thus already in earlier time some Ophites, who held the serpent to be an incarnation of the Logos, and later Kant, Mutmassl. Anfang der

Menschengesch. 1786. Schiller, Ueber die erste Menschengesellschaft 1790. Hegel, Werke VII 1 S. 14 f. IX 390 f. XI 194. Strauss, Gl. II 29, cf.

Bretschneider, Syst. Entw. § 89. This view, however, is so much in conflict with the intention of the narrative that it is nowadays almost generally abandoned. For it would presuppose that God created the human being in a state of childish, even animal, innocence and had always wanted to keep him in it; but knowledge, also moral knowledge, had already been bestowed on the human being at his creation, as the creation in God's image, the naming of the animals, the receiving and understanding of the probationary commandment proves; and that knowledge which the human being acquired through his fall was a wholly different one, which was forbidden by God and made him worthy of all manner of punishment. Gen. 3 does not relate a Riesenfortschritt but a fall of the human being, Wellhausen, Gesch. Israels

1878 S. 344 f. Rütschi, Gesch. u. Krit. der k. Leben v. d. urspr.

Vollkommenheit, Leiden 1881 S. 8. Smend, Altt. Relig. 120. Marti, Gesch. d. israel. Relig. 1897 S. 179. Clemen, Die chr. Lehre v. d. Sünde I 151 f.

These then also advocate the opinion that under the knowledge of good and evil not the very first intellectual or moral knowledge is to be understood, but rather, with appeal to 2 Sam. 19:35, 36 die intellectuelle

Welterkenntniss, die metaphysische Erkenntniss der Dinge in ihrem Zusammenhange, ihrem Werth oder Unwerth, ihrem Nutzen oder Schaden

für den Menschen, m. a. w. wisdom, the art of world-mastery, which in fact would make the human being independent and like God and would take dominion away from Him. This opinion, however, is burdened by the same objections as the previous one; only the manner in which Marti develops it contains a hint toward the correct interpretation. For in Gen. 3 it is not in the first place a matter of the content of the knowledge which the human being would acquire through disobedience, but of the manner in which he would obtain it, cf. Kuyper, Heraut 950, 951. Clearly the nature of the knowledge of good and evil meant here is described by the fact that the human being would thereby become like God, Gen. 3:5, 22. By eating of the tree, he would detach himself from God, himself judge and determine what was good and what was evil, set his insight and his wisdom over against the wisdom of God, and thus make himself like God. Instead of living and acting in dependence on God, in submission to his law, the human being, eating of the tree and transgressing the commandment, would stand on his own feet, himself choose the way which he wanted to go, and himself seek his own happiness. When the human being fell, he then also got what he desired, he made himself like God, independent, by his own insight and judgment knowing the good and the evil; Gen. 3:22 is dreadful seriousness. But this emancipation from God did not lead and cannot lead to true happiness. Therefore God forbids in the probationary commandment this urge for freedom, this lust for independence. But the human being succumbed to the test and voluntarily and willfully struck out on his own way.

Only a short time had he probably remained in the state of innocence, when he was tempted from without by a serpent, which was more crafty

(‎‏‏ָערּום‎, LXX φρονιμος, prudens, cf. Mt. 10:16, 2 Cor. 11:3) than all the

beasts of the field, and was brought to a fall. The serpent addresses itself not to the man but to the woman, who had received the prohibition of eating of the tree not herself directly from God but by means of her husband, and therefore was more susceptible to reasoning and doubt. First of all, then, the serpent also tries to awaken in the heart of the woman doubt concerning the commandment of God, and to that end also represents it as given by God out of harshness and selfishness. The woman shows, in the manner in which she repeats and extends the commandment, clearly, that that commandment of God has come to her consciousness as a sharp boundary and as a restrictive provision. After doubt has been awakened and the burdensomeness of the commandment has been brought to consciousness, the serpent proceeds to sow both unbelief and pride in the prepared mind of the woman; it now decidedly denies that the transgression of that commandment will have death as its consequence, and it gives to understand that God has given that commandment only out of selfishness; if man eats of the tree he will, instead of dying, become like God and receive a perfect, divine knowledge. The assurance of the serpent and the high expectation which it aroused made the woman look at the tree; and in proportion as she looked longer, she was enticed by its fruit. Lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, pride of life made the temptation irresistible; finally she took of the fruit and she ate, and she also gave to her husband with her and he ate. The speaking of the serpent has brought many to the thought that this narrative was an allegory, or that at least the serpent was no real animal, but a name and image for lust, Philo, Clemens [38] Alex., Strom. III 14, 17; or for sexual lust, Schopenhauer, Die Welt als W. u. V.6 II 654, 666; or for erring reason, Bunsen in his Bibelwerk; or also for Satan, Cajetanus,

Eugubinus, Junius, Rivetus, Amyraldus, Vitringa father and son, Venema e.

a., cf. Marck, Hist. Parad. III 5, 5. M. Vitringa, II 256, and also J. P. Val d'Eremas, The serpent of Eden, a philol. and crit. essay on the text of Gen.

3 and its various interpretations, London 1888. But this explanation is not plausible; the serpent is in Gen. 3:1 reckoned among the animals; the punishment vs. 14, 15 presupposes a real serpent, and in 2 Cor. 3:11 Paul is of the same opinion. Also the mythical conception, which arose later and found acceptance with many, is in conflict with the intention of the narrative, with the whole setting in which it occurs, and with the continuous doctrine of Scripture; moreover the mythical explanations also diverge very widely among themselves, Hengstenberg, Christol. I2 5. Köhler, Bibl.

Gesch. I 6. Delitzsch on Gen. 3:1. The speaking of the serpent is therefore to be explained in another way; yet not with Josephus, Ant. I 1, 4, from the opinion of the narrator, that the animals before the fall had the gift of speech, for he has just related that man is essentially distinguished from the animals, gave them names and found among them no help; but undoubtedly from the influence of a spiritual, superterrestrial power. Of what nature that power has been, is not said with a single word in the narrative itself; Gen. 3 keeps to the visible facts, describes but does not explain. Many have indeed been of the opinion, that Gen. 3 narrates nothing else than the origin of the enmity between man and animal. But apart from the fact that this explanation does not satisfy because of its flatness, it is in conflict with what in Gen. 2 has been related concerning the relation of man and animal, and it does not tell us how and why the serpent appeared as a seducing power over against man. Hence many now again return to the old exegesis, even if only because this is upheld in the apocryphal literature of the O. T.,

Clemen, Chr. Lehre v. d. Sünde I 158 f. Further, it is intelligible that Gen. 3 makes no mention of the spiritual background of the events. Only gradually,

with the advancing light of revelation, is the depth of the darkness unveiled.

Seemingly innocently begun, sin in its essence and power becomes known only [39] in the course of history. The deviation from the right way is at the beginning slight and scarcely noticeable, but, continued, proceeds in a wholly wrong direction and leads to an entirely opposite outcome. From that it is also to be explained, that Scripture, both in Old and New

Testament, relatively so seldom looks back to the narrative of the fall; the principal passages which come into consideration for this are Job 31:33,

Spr. 3:18, Jes. 43:27, Hos. 6:7, Ezech. 28 vs. 13-15, Rom. 5:12v., 8:20, 1 Cor. 15:21v., 42v., 2 Cor. 11:3, 1 Tim. 2:14, Op. 2:7, 22:2, cf. Krabbe, Die

Lehre v. d. Sünde und vom Tode, Hamburg 1836 S. 83-100. Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, I 364 f. Kurtz, Gesch. d. A. Bundes I2 1853 S. 69 and for the quotations in the apocryphal literature, Clemen t. a. p. 169 f. 173. Only Paul sets over against the person of Christ the significance of Adam in the light.

Thus also only gradually in the history of revelation does the spiritual power become known, which hides itself behind the appearance and temptation of the serpent. Then it is gradually unveiled, that in the struggle of evil here on earth also a conflict of the spirits is mingled, and that humanity and the world are the booty, for which between God and Satan, between heaven and hell, there is combat.

The whole power of sin here on earth is connected with a kingdom of darkness in the world of spirits. There, too, a fall has taken place. Jesus himself says in Joh. 8:44, that the devil is a murderer of men ἀπ' ἀρχης, i.e. from the beginning of the existence of mankind, that he in the truth οὐχ ἑστηκεν, has not placed himself and thus does not stand, because there is no truth in him, and he, speaking a lie, ἐκ των ἰδιων speaks. Likewise 1 Joh.

3:8 teaches that he sins from the beginning; in 1 Tim. 3:6 Paul warns the

neophyte against conceit, lest he fall εἰς κριμα του διαβολου, into the same judgment as has struck the devil; and Jude speaks in vs. 6 of ἀγγελους τους μη τηρησαντας την ἑαυτων ἀρχην ἀλλα ἀπολιποντας το ἰδιον οἰκητηριον, i.e. of angels who have not kept their beginning, origin, or also dominion, and have left the dwelling-place assigned to them. It is clearly implied here that many angels were not satisfied with the state in which they had been placed by God. [40] Pride took possession of them, to strive after another, higher rank. Sin first broke out in the world of spirits; it arose in the heart of beings of whom we possess only slight knowledge; under relations which are to us as good as wholly unknown. But this is, on the basis of Holy

Scripture, certain, that sin did not first begin on earth but in heaven, at the foot of God's throne, in his immediate presence, and that the fall of the angels took place before that of man. Scripture is silent about whether there is a connection between that fall of the angels and the creation of man; it also does not say what drove the fallen angels to seduce man. But for whatever reason, Satan is ὁ σατανας, ὁ πειραζων, ὁ διαβολος of the human race, ἀνθρωποκτονος, Mt. 4:3, Joh. 8:44, Ef. 6:11, 1 Thess. 3:5, 2 Tim.

2:26, ὁ δρακων ὁ μεγας, ὁ ὀφις ὁ ἀρχαιος, Op. 12:9, 14, 15, 20:2. Thus he came to Christ, the second Adam; and thus he also came to the first man.

That he did not himself come to him directly and personally, but made use of a serpent, is indeed to be explained from this, that he hoped better to succeed when the temptation took place through a being that was well known to man as good. Without doubt the speaking of the serpent must have seemed strange to the woman, but precisely this strangeness strengthened the temptation; even an animal, rejecting God's command, came to higher perfection. Moreover, Scripture teaches us that the unclean spirits also can do superhuman things and can temporarily take possession

of bodies and organs of speech, Mt. 8:28v., Mk. 5:7v., Luk. 8:28v., Hd.

19:15. The temptation by Satan had, in man, the fall as its consequence.

Scripture seeks the origin of sin only in the will of the rational creature.

2. The tradition of such a fall also occurs among other peoples. The Avesta relates that the first evil deed of Ahriman consisted in bringing forth a great serpent, Dahaka, with three heads, three mouths, six eyes and a thousand powers, in order through it to ruin the world. Ahriman, who is also himself called the serpent, the liar, the deceiver of mortals, has through it disturbed the peace, destroyed paradise, sown doubt and [41] unbelief in the hearts of men, brought sickness and suffering upon the earth, for Jima, the noble ruler in the golden age, has been disobedient to God; he fell through pride and self-exaltation into sin, Ahuramazda left him and he was killed.

The Babylonian-Assyrian tradition also stands in unmistakable connection with the biblical narrative; the serpent is there called Tiamat, brings man to a fall through its seduction, but is for that also cursed and fought by Merodach_toggle, cf. Fischer, Heidenthum u. Offenbarung 1878 S. 137 f.

208 f. Delitzsch op Gen. 3:1. Moreover, just as the essence, so also the origin of sin is unknown to the heathen. Even the Jews, who acknowledged the fall and the temptation by Satan, Wijsh. 2:24, and therefore often called him the old serpent, sometimes taught that Satan on the sixth day was created at the same time with Eve, that he, stimulated by sensual lust, tried to tempt man, and that man also already before the fall alongside the ‎‏יצר

‏הטוב‎ received a ‎‏‏יצר הרע‎, an inclination to evil, in order to overcome this and thus to make his works truly meritorious, Weber, System 210 f. 242 f. And thus elsewhere in the heathen world the origin of sin was sought not in the will of rational creatures but in the essence of things. The fall is unknown.

Confucianism is a shallow rationalism and moralism, which held man to be

by nature good and sought the way of salvation in a virtuous life, in agreement with the world order, Saussaye, Religionsgesch. I 249.

According to Buddhism the Atman or Brahman, the divine substance, is the only real; the world of appearances is but a dream, has illusion, Maya, as principle, and is in continual becoming and change. Therefore suffering and pain are universal, for everything is subject to transience, to birth, old age, death; and the cause of that suffering is to be sought in the desires, in the desire for being, in the willing to be; deliverance therefore consists in extinction of consciousness or also in destruction of being, nirvana, ib. 411 f. Parseeism traced evil back to an originally evil spirit, Ahriman, who stands over against the highest God, Ahuramazda, has a kingdom of darkness of his own, corrupts God's creation, but is subordinate to Ahuramazda and will one day succumb to him, ib. II 34 f. The Greeks and Romans indeed have in [42] the legends of an aurea aetas, of Prometheus and Pandora something that can recall the biblical narratives; but they originally knew no evil spirits that stood over against the good, and ascribed to the gods all manner of evil desires and misdeeds. The human race also did not fall all at once but degenerated more gradually, and man's will still possessed the power to live virtuously, to keep within bounds, and thus to overcome sin, which essentially was ὑβρις, ib. 191, cf. G. Baur, Stud. u.

Krit. 1848. S. 320. Philosophy usually adopted the same standpoint.

According to Socrates the cause and the essence of sin lie only in ignorance; no one is voluntarily evil, i.e. unhappy; whoever therefore knows well, is good and acts well; there is nothing other than development needed, in order to bring man, who is by nature good, to the practice of virtue, Xen. Mem. III 9, 4 sq. IV 6, 6. Plato and Aristotle did see the inadequacy of this view; reason was after all far from always capable of

mastering the passions; sin was rooted deeper in human nature than that it could be overcome by knowledge alone; Plato even came to a wholly different doctrine about the origin of sin and sought this in a fall of the praeëxistent souls. But both nevertheless maintained free will and remained of the opinion that virtue stands in our power; external fate may be determined, virtue is ἀδεσποτος and depends only on the will of man, ἐφ' ἡμιν δε και ἡ ἀρετη, ὁμοιως δε και ἡ κακια, Zeller, Philos. d. Gr. II4 852

III3 588. The Stoa, on its pantheistic and deterministic standpoint, could not seek the cause of sin in the will of man and therefore tried to insert physical and moral evil into the order and beauty of the whole. It was not even possible for the Deity to keep human nature free from every defect; sin is just as necessary as diseases and disasters, and is in so far something good, as it serves the good and brings this to manifestation, Zeiler, ib. IV3 175 f.

Yet the Stoa also knew no other way to overcome sin and to practice virtue than man's will, ib. 167 f. And finally with Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus, etc., the thought always returned again, that sin was an act of the will and also could be undone again by the will, ib. 667. 717. 722. V3 585. Outside the sphere [43] of special revelation, sin was therefore always either explained deistically from man's will and conceived as a pure act of will, or also derived pantheistically from the essence of things and understood as something necessary in the order of the whole.

3. Both of these conceptions repeatedly returned in the Christian centuries. The first was renewed by Pelagius, cf. Augustine, c. duas ep. Pel. and c. Jul. Pelag., and then found, in the weakened form of semipelagianism, more and more acceptance. After the Reformation it was again taken up by Socinianism, Fock, Der Socin. 484 f. 653 f., gained, through Remonstrantism, Episcopius, Inst. Theol. IV 3 c. 6. 7 IV 5 c. 1. 2.

Limborch, Theol. Christ. II 24 III 2 sq., important in influence and then became, in the deism of Locke, Tindal, Rousseau etc. and in the rationalism of Wegscheider, Inst. § 99. 112, Bretschneider, Dogm. II 17 f., the dominant view of that time. At present it has again attained significance in the theology of Ritschl and his school, Ritschl, Rechtf. u. Vers. 2 II 241-246 III 304-357. Kaftan, Wesen der christl. Relig. 1881 S. 246 f. Dogmatik 1897 §

34. 40. Nitzsch, Ev. Dogm. 319 f. Siebeck, Lehrb. der Religionsphilos. 436 f. However much presented in all kinds of modifications, the fundamental thought is nevertheless always this, that sin does not root in a nature, is no habit and no state but always an act of the will. The image of God in man then consisted chiefly or exclusively in dominion; insofar as a status integritatis is assumed, this consisted especially in childlike innocence, in the freedom of indifference, in the possibility to choose the good or the evil.

The fall itself, if still acknowledged as a historical fact, loses its dreadful significance and becomes an event, freely similar to that which takes place at every moment in human life, when evil is chosen instead of good. And the consequences of the fall are therefore also slight. The children are born in the same condition as that in which Adam lived before his disobedience; the freedom of will, i.e. the image of God, has remained; at most there is transplanted from man to man a certain inclination to sin, but such an inclination is actually not the consequence of Adam's first sin but of all the sins of all [44] our forefathers; it is also no sin in itself but becomes this only when the free will gives heed to that inclination; there is thus a distinction between sin (stain, sinful inclination) and guilt (evil deed, intentional, voluntary transgression); only the latter has need of atonement and forgiveness, the former, the inclination to sin, and the unconscious, involuntary yielding is actually no sin, it is more ignorance, which brings

no guilt with it. And likewise as sin and guilt, so also sin and suffering must be distinguished; there is manifold suffering that exists independently of sin and would also exist if there were no sin; death is essentially no consequence of sin but by nature proper to man; spiritual and eternal death has not at all been a punishment for the first sin; at most that punishment consists in the moriendi necessitas, which in Adam, if he had remained standing, would have been prevented by a miracle, or in the manner of dying, which without sin would have been less painful and less premature.

It is understandable that this conception of sin, in the long run, can satisfy neither intellect nor heart. It provokes too many and too serious objections.

It does not reckon with the seriousness and the power of sin, as everyone comes to know it in his daily experience; it proceeds from an atomistic view of the human race and does not explain how all without distinction are subject to sin; it fails to recognize the priestly and kingly office of Christ and is content with the teacher and prophet of Nazareth; it restricts the operation of sin and thus the dominion of redemption to the religiousethical sphere and places the whole of culture detached alongside

Christianity. Among the proponents themselves, the need for another, deeper conception repeatedly awakens; thus in semipelagianism over against Pelagius, in Volkelius, de vera religione II c. 6 over against Socinianism, in Wegscheider § 116 over against rationalism, and in Kaftan,

Nitzsch, Schultz e. a. over against Ritschl, cf. James Orr, The Ritschlian Theology and the evang. faith London 1897 p. 213. G. Ecke, Die Theol.

Schule Albr. Ritschl's und die evang. Kirche der Gegenwart, Berlin 1897 I.

The more deeply sin is conceived, the less it becomes something accidental and arbitrary, the more it increases in power and significance, not only for the religious and ethical, [45] but also for the intellectual and aesthetic, for

the physical and the whole cosmic life. If, however, with this insight the origin of sin is asked after, different answers again present themselves. Not all go equally far. Some explain it from human nature, others from the cosmos, still others from God.

4. To the former belong those who seek the origin of sin in the domination of man by matter. Greek philosophy was in general of the opinion that reason had the task of restraining the sensuous impulses and passions. The Jews assumed in man by nature a ‎‏‏יצר הרע‎, which with bodily development continually increased in strength, reached its climax in sexual desire, and lay at the basis of all disobedience to God's commandments, Weber § 49.

50. In the ascetic tendencies this thought recurs again and again; Roman theology even acknowledged its relative right, when it spoke, with respect to man without the bridle of the donum superadditum, of a natural conflict between flesh and spirit, of a morbus and languor naturae humanae,

Bellarminus, de gratia primi hom. c. 5. In more recent philosophy and theology sin is repeatedly derived in the same way from an original antithesis between nature and reason, sensuousness and understanding, lower and higher self, flesh and spirit, egoistic and social inclinations.

Sensuousness is, from this standpoint, indeed not itself held to be sin, but is nevertheless regarded as the occasion and the stimulus to sinning. All sin thus essentially consists in this, that the spirit serves sensuousness and allows itself to be ruled by it; and all virtue lies in this, that man by his reason rule over nature and thus become a free, independent personality.

This view even gladly appeals to the Pauline doctrine of the σαρξ, and rejoices in this Scriptural support. Cf. Cartesius, Wolff, Fichte, Hegel,

Werke XI 190 f. XII 209 f. bij Jodl, Gesch. der Ethik in der neuern Philos. I 1882 II 1889 en v. Hartmann, Das sittliche Bewustsein2 1836 S. 265 f., and

further Schleiermacher, Chr. Gl. § 66. Rothe, Theol. Ethik § 459 f.

Biedermann, Chr. Dogm. § 763 f. Pfleiderer, Grundriss § 100 f. Lipsius, Dogm. § 468 f. 477 f. Schultz, Grundriss d. ev. Dogm.2 [46] 1892 S. 61.

Scholten, The free will 177. L H K. II 422v. 574v. etc.

But this explanation of sin suffers from half-heartedness. One of the two, indeed: the sensuous nature of man is in itself no sin, but sin arises only when the reason and the will of man comply with its demands, then this theory falls back into that of Pelagianism; or the sensuous nature is in itself sinful and then sin is proper to matter as such and the anthropological explanation must proceed to the cosmic. This has also been done by many.

Plato assumed an eternal ὑλη alongside and over against God. The world was indeed a work of reason, but from the beginning there also worked in it another, blind power, which the δημιουργος could not wholly control. God therefore could not make the world as good as He willed; He was bound to finitude, to the ὑλη. The cause of sin, suffering and death thus lies in the σωματοειδες; the ὑλη hinders the inworking and permeation of the idea; the body is a prison for the soul, source of fear and unrest, of desire and passion, Zeiler, Philos. d. Gr. II 765 f. 855 f. The ὑλη has a similar significance in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism and in manifold ascetic and theosophical directions, cf. Zeller, ib. V 125. 171. 236. 297. 386. 547. And akin to this doctrine of Plato are all theories which derive sin from a matter indeed created by God but nevertheless standing over against Him, Weisse,

Philos. Dogm. § 541 f. 561 f. Rothe, Theol. Ethik § 55, or from finitude and limitation, l'imperfection originale des créatures, Leibniz, Theodicée § 156, or in general from the realization of the world-idea.

This explanation of sin from the nature of creaturely being, however, cannot escape the consequence of, in one way or another, going back to

God and seeking the origin of sin in his nature or work. With Plato the ὑλη itself had an eternal and independent existence alongside God. In Parzism and Manichaeism two personal Divine beings as creators of light and darkness stood eternally over against one another and gave to the existing world its two-sided character, Schwane, D. G. II 503 f. Neoplatonism and Gnosticism made creation, fall, redemption, etc. into moments in an emanation, which proceeds from God as the βυθος ἀγνωστος, the [47] absolute pleroma, in ever descending formations, finally gives to the material world with its ignorance, darkness, sin, suffering, death its aspect, but then in the process of redemption leads that outflowed and from God fallen world back again to God, Stöckl, Die spekulative Lehre v. Menschen

II 52 f. With these ideas the theosophy in Böhme and Schelling has nourished itself, when it sought to explain the personality of God, trinity, creation, fall, redemption out of the essence of God, cf. part II 304, 393.

The three Potencies, which are assumed in God, in order that He might become person, spirit, are at the same time the principia of another being, namely the world. As person God has the freedom and the power, to set the Potencies, which are in Him but which He eternally controls, also outside himself in tension, Schelling, Werke II 3 S. 272 f. 310. 338 f. In that tension lies the possibility of sin. In the original creation, whether only ideal or also real the first, these Potencies were at rest. Sin, misery, darkness, death, etc. were indeed there but only potentially; they slumbered in the Urgrund of creation. But man, in whom those Potencies were also present, broke that unity and unleashed the evil powers, which were potentially present in creation. A world like the present one with so much wildness and misery, is only to be explained from a fall; this is the Urthatsache of history, cf. Joh.

Claassen, Jakob Böhme II 185 f. Schelling, Werke I 7 S. 336-416. I 8 S. 331

f. II 3 S. 344 f. 358 f. Still more strongly Hegel regarded it as an apostasy, that the idea of the absolute realized itself in the world as its other-being.

However much nature in Hegel was a product of reason, he nevertheless could not deny that it was powerless to realize the idea fully and therefore he declared that the idea, giving existence to such a world, had become unfaithful to itself and had fallen away from itself, Werke VI 413. VII 1 S.

23 f. VII 2 S. 15 f. Thus the way was paved for pessimism, which in the manner of Buddhism holds being itself to be the greatest sin, committed by the blind, alogical will, which is the Urschuldige, Schopenhauer, Die Welt als W. u Vorst.6 I 193 f. II 398 f. v. Hartmann, Philos. d. Unbew. II9 198 f.

273 f. 295 f. [48] 5. The origin of evil is, after that of being, the greatest riddle of life and the heaviest cross of the intellect. The question: ποθεν το κακον, has occupied the thoughts of men in all ages and still awaits in vain an answer that satisfies better than that of Holy Scripture. Insofar as philosophy in this matter taught anything of significance, it is, taken as a whole, a powerful proof for the truth of Holy Scripture, that this world cannot be explained without a fall. All great thinkers have, even if they did not know Gen. 3 or if they reject it as a myth, in spite of themselves paid silent or explicit homage to this simple narrative. And insofar as philosophy sought a solution to the problem in another way, it has strayed miserably and lamentably from the track. This applies first of all to the Pelagian explanation of sin, against which the many objections above on p. 44 were already mentioned with a single word and later, with the essence and the spread of sin, will come up for discussion more broadly. But it applies further also to all those systems which trace evil back, not to an act of will of the creature, but to the being or the nature of man, world, or God.

In the first place, sin cannot be derived from the sensuous nature of man.

For then sin would always and everywhere bear a sensuous, fleshly character; but this is by no means always the case; there are also spiritual sins, sins with a demonic character, such as pride, envy, hatred, enmity against God, which are more hidden but absolutely not less in degree than the fleshly sins; and these are not explained by sensuality, just as, on this standpoint, the existence of fallen angels is not possible. If sins sprang from man's sensuous nature, one would also expect that they would be strongest and most frequent in the first years of life; that the spirit, in proportion as it develops more, would also rule over it the more powerfully and finally would overcome it entirely. But experience teaches quite otherwise. In proportion as man grows up, sin, even the sensuous, becomes more powerful over him; it is often not the child but the youth and the man who is a slave of his lusts and passions; and the development of the spirit is many times so little able to restrain sin that it rather provides the means to seek satisfaction of desires in [49] still stronger measure and in a more refined way. And even when the sensuous sins in later age have lost their dominion, they still remain secretly in the heart as desires or make room for others which, though more spiritual in nature, are nevertheless no less dreadful. If this explanation of sin from sensuality is then meant in earnest, it must lead to seeking redemption in suppression of the flesh; but precisely the history of asceticism is best able to cure once and for all of the error that sin can be overcome in that way. Also in the monastery the heart of men goes along, and out of that heart all kinds of sins and unrighteousness proceed. Finally, this theory wrongly tries to maintain itself with an appeal to the notion ‎‏‏ָּבׂשר‎ and σαρξ in Holy Scripture, specifically in Paul. This word denotes first of all the material, the substance of the human body, 1

Cor. 15:39, then the body itself organized out of that material in contrast with πνευμα, νους, καρδια, Rom. 2:25, 2 Cor. 7:5, Col. 2:5, further, more in the Old-Testament sense, man as an earthly, weak, frail, perishable being,

Gen. 6:3, 18:27, Job 4:17-19, 15:14, 15, 25:4-6, Ps. 78:39, 103:14, Isa.

40:6, Jer. 17:5, Rom. 3:20, 1 Cor. 1:29, Gal. 2:16, and finally then in Paul the sinful direction of life of man. Thus he speaks of σαρκικος, ἐν σαρκι, κατα σαρκα εἰναι, ζην, περιπατειν, of σαρξ ἁμαρτιας, φρονημα της σαρκος,

Rom. 3:7, 7:14, 8:3v., 1 Cor. 3:3, 2 Cor. 10:2, 3 etc. In this sense σαρξ forms an antithesis with πνευμα, yet not with the human πνευμα, which indeed is also sinful and needs sanctification, Rom. 12:1, 2, 1 Cor. 7:34, 2

Cor. 7:1, Eph. 4:23, 1 Thess. 5:23, but with the πνευμα ἁγιον or θεου, Rom.

8:2, 9, 11, which renews the human πνευμα, Rom. 7:6, 8:14, Gal. 5:18, also sanctifies the body and places it in the service of righteousness, Rom. 6:13,

19, 12:1, 1 Cor. 6:13, 15, 19, 20, and thus places in man a καινος ἀνθρωπος over against the old, sinful direction of life, the σαρξ, of the παλαιος ἀνθρωπος, Rom. 7:5v., 8:1v., Gal. 5:13-25, Eph. 2:3, 11, Col. 2:4. Some have now thought that the flesh according to this view is not only seat and organ but also source and origin of sin, Baur, Holsten, Lüdemann, Zeller,

Pfleiderer, Der Paulinismus2 1890 S. 60 f. [50] Holtzmann, Neut. Theol.

1897 II 13 f., Clemen, Die chr. Lehre v. d. Sünde I 188 f., Matthes, Theol.

Tijdsch. 1890 blz. 225-239. But this cannot be maintained against nor reconciled with these undeniable data, that Paul clearly derives sin from the temptation of the serpent and the transgression of Adam, Rom. 5:12, 2 Cor.

11:3; that he speaks of a defilement of flesh and spirit and with respect to both demands cleansing, 2 Cor. 7:1; that he also names among the works of the flesh all kinds of spiritual sins, such as idolatry, strife, wrath and even heresy, Gal. 5:19v.; that he designates enmity against God as φρονημα της

σαρκος, Rom. 3:7; that he assumes the existence of evil spirits, who nevertheless have no σαρξ at all, Eph. 6:12; that he nevertheless acknowledges Christ, though γενομενος ἐκ γυναικος, Gal. 4:4 and from Israel το κατα σαρκα, Rom. 9:5, as without any sin, 2 Cor. 5:21; that he calls the body a temple of God and claims all members for the service of righteousness, Rom. 6:13, 19, 12:1, 1 Cor. 6:13-20; that he teaches a resurrection of the dead bodies, 1 Cor. 15, and in principle combats asceticism, Col. 2:16, 1 Thess. 4:4. The proponents of the opinion that Paul holds the flesh to be the principle of sin therefore often turn back halfway and say that the flesh is not itself sin and does not of itself bring sin with it, but does provoke and tempt to sin, Clemen 204. Holtzmann II 38. Others have therefore judged that Paul, when he uses the word σαρξ in an ethical sense, entirely loses sight of its original meaning, Neander, Gesch. der

Pflanzung u. Leitung der christl. Kirche5 1862 S. 508 f. Tholuck, Stud. u.

Krit. 1855 S. 477 f. Weiss, Bibl. Theol.3 1880 § 68. Wendt, Die Begriffe Fleisch u. Geist 1878 cl. Theol. Stud. van de la Saussaye c. s. 1878 blz.

361v. Nitzsch, Ev. Dogm. 315 f. This, however, is in itself already not probable and does not do justice to the connection that Scripture repeatedly lays between the earthly, weak, perishable nature of man and his sin. There is undoubtedly an intimate connection between both; the sensuous nature of man is not sin itself nor also source or principle of sin, but is nevertheless its dwelling, Rom. 7:17, 18 and organ of its dominion over us, Rom. 6:12.

Man is not purely spirit, but he is earthly out of the earth, has become a living [51] soul, 1 Cor. 15:45v., thereby stands in connection with the cosmos and always has the body as his instrument and as the organ of his acting, Rom. 6:13, 8:13. This sensuous nature gives to sin, as it is proper to men, a particular character, distinct from that in the angels, both in its origin

and in its essence. The temptations come to him from without through the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. And it is the sensuous nature of man that gives to his sin this character, that he makes the belly his God, that he minds the things that are below, that he seeks himself and lives for himself, and that he honors the creature above the Creator,

Rom. 1:21v., Phil. 2:4, 21, 3:19, Col. 3:2, etc. Σαρξ denotes the sinful direction of life of man, who according to soul and body turns away from God and toward the creature. Cf. Hofmann, Schriftbew. I2 559. Müller,

Sünde I5 447 f. Ernesti, Die Ethik des Ap. Paulus3 1880 S. 32 f. Cremer in Herzog2 4, 573. Gloël, Der H. Geist 1888 S. 14-61, 246.

6. The explanation of sin from the sensuous nature of man, however, as was remarked above, cannot stop here, but must come to this, to seek its cause in matter or in the finitude and limitation of the creature, and thus further in an eternal, independent power alongside God or in a dark nature or blind will in the Divine being itself. This opinion concerning the origin of sin recommends itself above the previous one by its deeper insight into the power and dominion of sin; it has an open eye not only for its ethical and anthropological but also for its cosmic and theological significance; it takes seriously the undeniable truth, that a power as tremendous as sin cannot have arisen accidentally, outside God's will and counsel. It finds support in the whole present condition of the world, both the physical and the ethical. Everywhere, in nature and history, there are sharp, deep oppositions, which seem to be necessary for life and development. Heaven and earth, light and darkness, day and night, summer and winter, storm and calm, war and peace, labour and rest, prosperity and adversity, love and hate, joy and sorrow, health and sickness, life and [52] death, truth and lie, sin and virtue, they are the contradictory factors of which all that exists is

composed and without which there can apparently be no question of progress and advance. What storms are in nature, wars and revolutions in society, the peasants and slaves in a drama, the solecisms and barbarisms in language, the antitheses in an oration, the discords in music, the shadow on a painting, that is sin in the world; see these and similar images already in Plato, the Stoa, Plotinus, cf. Zeller, Philos. d. Gr. II 765. 929. IV 173. V 548-562 and then later also in Augustine, Erigena, Leibniz etc. All activity also presupposes hindrance; a dove might indeed think that it could fly better in a vacuum, but the resistance of the air is precisely necessary for its flight (Kant); and so a man too may think that he could live better without sin, but sin is precisely necessary for his moral perfection. The law of contradiction is the fundamental law of all that is, der Quellbronn des ewigen Lebens. Was zum Handeln treibt, ja zwingt, ist allein der

Widerspruch. Ohne Widerspruch also wäre keine Bewegung, kein Leben, kein Fortschritt, sondern ewiger Stillstand, ein Todesschlummer aller

Kräfte, Schelling, Werke I 8 S. 219. 321. What would a life without sin be?

It would be an existence without content, a vain abstraction, without opportunity for struggle and victory, for conflict and reconciliation; without material for drama and song, for science and art. Therefore Dante could paint his hell with colours borrowed from this world; but for the depiction of a heaven this earth offers no data (Schopenhauer). Indeed, the proponents of this opinion concerning the origin of sin gladly appeal to many passages of Holy Scripture, which speak of a necessity of sins and calamities, Mt.

18:7, Luk. 24:26, Joh. 9:3, 1 Cor. 11:19, 2 Tim. 2:20; to the doctrine of Augustine and Calvin, who also let God's counsel and providence extend over sin; to the well-known words in the Easter vigil of the missale

romanum: o certe necessarium Adae peccatum, quod Christi morte deletum est! o felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!

There is in this representation so much that is true, that it need not surprise that it has at all times held minds spellbound. [53] Sin is not accidental or arbitrary, it is included in the counsel of God. It is so interwoven with our whole existence, that we can form no conception of a holy life, of a sinless history. Against its will it is made serviceable by God

Almighty to the revelation of his virtues and to the honour of his name. And yet, despite all the truth that is hidden in this representation and will later come to light still more clearly, yet it cannot and may not be accepted. In the first place it deprives sin of its ethical character. Sin is certainly not only and not always an act of the will, as Pelagianism says, but indeed also a condition, a nature of the will; yet it never goes wholly outside the will.

Omne peccatum est voluntarium, understood in the sense of Augustine, is undoubtedly correct. Here, however, sin is in gnostic and theosophical fashion paralleled and identified with the physical phenomena of darkness, sickness, death etc.; derived from the flesh, matter, the essence of creatures, the nature of God, and thus made into a substance or into a necessary quality of the existence of things. Thereby sin is deprived of its ethical character and reduced to a physical phenomenon. Secondly, sin according to this representation becomes eternal and unconquerable. For since it is not ethical but physical in nature, it is necessarily proper to all that exists, both

God and the world, and is indispensable for the existence of everything. The good is not only necessary for the evil, but conversely the evil also for the good. The evil is here not attached to the good and to being, but it is itself a being, itself a good, without which the good also cannot exist. The human being who strives after deliverance from sin would cherish a godless wish

and work at his own downfall. A world without sin would be impossible; a status gloriae nothing but a dream. Thirdly, sin hereby ceases to be an antithesis, it becomes a lower, lesser degree of the good, in its place just as good as the good itself. It becomes a moment in life and history always destined to disappear and yet never disappearing; a not-yet-being of what the creature ought to be and yet never becomes or can become; a pure negation, which actually has no reality but exists only in our [54] thought.

Bonum et malum quod attinet, nihil etiam positivum in rebus, in se consideratis, indicant, nec aliud sunt praeter cogitandi modos seu notiones, quas formamus ex eo, quod res ad invicem comparamus, Spinoza, Eth. praef. cf. Ep. 32 en 34. Cog. metaph. I 6, 7, en voorts Hegel, Werke VIII 180 f. Strauss, Gl. II 365-384. Schleiermacher, Chr. Gl. § 81. Paulsen, Syst. d. Ethik I 251 f. Scholten, L. H. K. II 34v. 422. 580. Fourthly, on this standpoint God must become the author of sin. Parseeism and Manichaeism still shrank back from this, set the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness directly opposite each other and placed at the head of both an eternal, Divine being. The God of nature is a wholly different one than the God of the good, the moral power that asserts itself in conscience. But gnostic philosophy and theosophy took up the oppositions into the one

Absolute. God himself must, in order to become person, spirit, carry a dark nature in himself and eternally overcome it. He himself comes through a struggle, a process, whether then before and outside or in and through the world, to his Divine existence. An sich is Hij βυθος ἀγνωστος, dark nature, blind will and as such the Creator of matter. Damit des Böse nicht wäre, müsste Gott selbst nicht seyn, Schelling, Werke I 7 S. 403. Against this now not only does Holy Scripture testify, but the moral consciousness in all people also rises up in resistance. Sin may be what it will, but this one thing

stands firm, that God is the Righteous and the Holy, who in his law forbids it, in conscience testifies against it, in punishments and judgements visits it.

Sin is not rational and not lawful, it is ἀνομια; it is not necessary for the existence of creatures, it is much less necessary for the existence of God.

The good is necessary, so that even the evil could be; but the good does not have need of the evil, holiness does not have need of sin, truth does not have need of the lie, God does not have need of Satan. If nevertheless sin still often serves to bring the good to greater manifestation and to glorify

God's virtues, then this does not happen with and through but against its will, through the wisdom and the omnipotence of God. Against its nature sin is then compelled to be serviceable to the honour of God and to the coming of his kingdom. Thus the evil often pays homage to the good, thus the lie is overtaken by the truth, thus Satan must, in order to tempt, often appear as an angel of light. But all that is not to be credited to sin but to the omnipotence of God, who can cause the good to proceed from the evil, the light from the darkness and life from death. Finally, this whole false representation avenges itself in a dreadful way in the practice of life. If philosophy proclaims it in so many words: God bears the blame for everything, the human being goes free, then in practice libertinism and pessimism do not wait long. Libertinism, which holds sin to be a delusion and this delusion to be the only sin, which wipes out all boundaries between good and evil, falsifies all moral concepts or with Nietzsche melts them down and mints them anew, which under the slogan of the emancipation of the flesh glorifies bestiality as geniality. Pessimism, which, blind to sin, thinks only of suffering, casts the blame for all that suffering upon the alogical act of an absolute will, and seeks in the destruction of what exists the deliverance from suffering. Judged by the outcome, the so-called

independent philosophy also is guided by the striving proper to every human being, to justify oneself and to accuse God of injustice. Cf. Müller,

Sünde I5 374 f. Weiszäcker, Zu der Lehre v. Wesen der Sünde, Jahrb. f. d.

Theol. 1856 S. 131-195. Kahnis, Dogm. I 478 f. Vilmar, Theol. Moral I 143 f. Dorner, Chr. Gl. II 114 f. Orr, Chr. view of God and the world p. 193.

7. Yet with that, that God is no cause of sin, not everything has been said.

Scripture, which keeps God far from all ungodliness, on the other hand speaks as decisively as possible that his counsel and government also extend over sin; see the passages already mentioned earlier, part II 315, 369 and above p. 30v. God is not the author of sin, but it nevertheless does not proceed apart from his knowledge, his will, and his power; how then is that relation of God to sin to be conceived? Some, in order to keep Him free from all sin, even deprived God of omniscience, part II 161. Others judged that sin indeed did not proceed apart from God's knowledge but did proceed apart from his will and were satisfied with the concept of the permissio.

God did indeed know sin beforehand but did not will it; He only permitted it and has [56] not prevented it. Thus spoke the church fathers, Clemens

Alex., Strom IV c. 12. Orig., de princ. III 2, 7. Damasc., de fide orthod. II 29 etc., cf. Suicerus, s. v. προνοια and συγχωρησις. With this manner of speaking and with this solution the Pelagians were content, cf. Augustinus, c. Julianum Pelag. V c. 3; many Roman Catholic theologians, Trid. VI c. 6,

Bellarminus, de amiss. gr. et stat. pecc. II 16. Petavius, de Deo VI c. 6, 5; the Remonstrants, Arminius, Op. 644 sq. 694 sq. Episcopius, Inst. theol. IV sect. 4 c. 10. Limborch, Theol. Christ. II 29; the Lutherans, Gerhard, Loc.

VI c. 9. Quenstedt, Theol. I 533 Hollaz, Ex. theol. 449. Buddeus, Inst. theol.

560, Bretschneider, Dogm. I 506, and many more recent theologians, Ebrard, Dogm. § 265. Shedd, Dogm. Theol. I 419. 444 etc. Now from this

side it was often indeed acknowledged that the permissio was no lack of knowledge and power in God, that it also did not make Him into an idle spectator of sin, but still the permissio was always defined as an actus negativus, as a suspensio impedimenti, as neither a positive willing nor a positive not-willing of sin but as a non velle impedire. It is clear that this representation not only gives no solution but is also ambiguous and evades the actual question. The question, on which it depends, is this: suppose that such a more or less negative act of divine permissio precedes in a particular case, does sin then follow or not, does it then still stand in the choice of the free will of man or not, can he then still just as well omit it as do it? If the decision then still rests with the free will of man, then Pelagius is right and the government of sin is in fact wholly taken away from God and He is at most an otiosus peccatorum spectator. If, on the other hand, God's permissio is of such a nature that man, placed in those circumstances, not by compulsion but by virtue of the ordinances that apply specifically to the moral life, must commit sin, then the right is on the side of Augustine, one may judge about the word permissio as one will. Thus posing this problem,

Augustine had already seen that the permission could not be purely negative but must be an act of God's will. Non fit aliquid nisi omnipotens fieri velit, vel sinendo ut fiat vel ipse faciendo. God does all that pleases Him; He does not will something without doing it, but what He wills, that He does; and what [57] happens, never happens apart from his will. Miro et ineffabili modo non fit praeter ejus voluntatem, quod etiam contra ejus fit voluntatem, quia non fieret, si non sineret (nec utique nolens sinit sed volens) nec sinere bonus fieri male nisi omnipotens et de malo facere posset bene, Ench. 95100. de trin. III 4 sq. de civ. XIV 11, de gr. et lib. arb. 20. 21. Many scholastic and Augustinian theologians still spoke in a similar spirit; even

though they also made use of the word permit, it was nevertheless understood as velle sinere or velle permittere mala fieri, Lombardus, Sent. I 46. Thomas, S. Theol. I 19 art. 9. c. Gent. I 95. II 25. Comment. op Sent. I 46. Hugo Vict. S. Sent. I c. 13. de Sacr. I. 4 c. 4-15.

In the essence of the matter the Reformed had no other conviction; hence a certain Livinus de Meyer rightly said: ovum ovo non esse similius quam doctrinam Calvinianam Thomisticae, bij Daelman, Summa S. Thomae II 308. Only, they had gained the experience that the word permissio was used in a very ambiguous meaning and was misused to conceal Pelagianism.

Therefore they were not inclined toward the word. They had in itself so little against it, that they nevertheless in fact all used it again, cf. bij Ebrard,

Dogm. § 265. But the permissio was then, according to their conviction, no pure negation, no mera cessatio voluntatis, proceeding from ignorantia or impotentia or negligentia, but a positive act of God, a volitio efficax, yet not efficiens or producens but deficiens, upon which, according to the nature of the moral life, sin must follow, Zwingli, Op. III 170 IV de provid. c. 5.

Calvin, Inst. I 17, 11. 18, 1. 2 II 4, 2-4 III 23, 4. 8. 9. Beza, Tract. Theol. I 315. 387. 399. II 347. III 426. Zanchius, Op. II 269. Martyr, Loci C. p. 58.

Gomarus, de provid. Dei c. 11. Twissus, de permissione Op. I 544-668.

Maccovius, Loci C. p. 206. Alting, Theol. El. nova p. 316. Ex. v. h. Ontw. v.

Tol. VI 277. M. Vitringa II 196 etc. It is true that in the heat of the struggle dicta duriora have sometimes been used by the Reformed, cf. e.g. Calvin,

Inst. III 23, 7. Beza, Tract. Theol. I 319. 360. 401 Zanchius Op. V 2. And Roman Catholics, Bellarminus, de amiss. gr. et statu pecc. II c. 3 sq.

Petavius, de Deo VI c. 5 X c. 8. Möhler, Symb. § 2-4, Socinians, Cat.

Racov. X 16, Remonstrants, Apol. Conf. c. 2 and 6, Episc. Op. I 375 sq., and Lutherans, [58] Gerhard, Loc. VI c. 10. Quenstedt, Theol. II 97 have

not failed to make use of it and time and again to accuse the Reformed that they made God the author of sin. But in the first place those dicta duriora are all still milder than those which sometimes occur in Holy Scripture, e.g.

Ex. 7:3, 2 Sam. 16:10, 24:1, Mal. 1:3, Luk. 2:34, Rom. 9:17, 18, 2 Thess.

2:11 etc.; further, all such harsh expressions have at all times been imputed by the Judaizers to Paul, by the Pelagians to Augustine, by Hincmar to Gottschalk, by the Jesuits to the Jansenists; next, they have always been avoided by the Reformed in their confessions, Maccovius was questioned about it at the Synod of Dordt, Archief v. Kerk. Gesch. III 1831 bl. 632; moreover, they have been omitted by most Reformed theologians or also elucidated and explained, Voetius, Disp. I 1119-1137, Maresius, Syst.

Theol. IV 18. Turretinus, Theol. El. VI qu. 7. 8. Trigland, Kerk. Gesch. IV 673v. V 694. Id. Antapologia c. 8-10, Chamier Panstr. Cath. II lib. 3 Moor II 487 etc.; and finally their meaning and intention is for everyone who wishes to understand them completely transparent from the connection with the whole of the Reformed doctrine. The matter is simply this, that the permissio, taken in a negative sense, in the question of God's relation to sin offers not the least solution; does not in the least remove the objection that God is its author, and in fact withdraws the whole of sin from God's providential government. For he who can prevent an evil and yet, looking on silently, lets it happen, stands just as guilty as he who commits the evil itself, Beza, Tract. Theol. I 315. Moreover, even if God has only and solely permitted sin, there must nevertheless be a reason why He has not wished to prevent it. That reason cannot in God lie in a lack of knowledge or power; thus it must lie in his will. Therefore the permissio is then nevertheless again an act of his will; He has willed to permit it; and this willing to permit

cannot be conceived otherwise than that sin now in fact also, not by God, but by the creature, takes place.

Moreover, Christian theology, when it discussed God's government over sin, has nevertheless never remained standing with this permissio. If, namely, both Scripture and Christian thought forbade placing sin wholly or in part outside the will and providence, then only such a solution could still be attempted [59] that a distinction was made in the manner of God's government over the good and over the evil. And indeed, although in a certain sense it can also be said that God has willed sin, i.e. that He has willed that sin should exist, He has nevertheless willed evil in a wholly different manner than the good; in the good He has good pleasure, but evil

He hates with divine hatred. In order that this difference in God's government over the good and over the evil may come to light, it must in the first place be pointed out that God and man are never separated but yet are always distinguished, cf. above p. 28. Faith is a gift, God causes to believe, but yet it is formaliter not God but man who believes. Much more does this apply to the sinful act. Materialiter this is most certainly to be ascribed to God, but formaliter this remains at the charge of man. When a murderer beats someone to death, all the deliberation and the strength that he needs for that are derived from God, but the act is, formally considered, his and not God's. Yes, the fact of killing is, purely taken in itself, not yet a sin, for the same has often taken place in war and on the scaffold. What makes the killing into sin is not the materia, the substratum, but the forma, i.e. the vitiositas, the ανομια; not the substantia but the accidens in the act.

Against this it has been objected that this distinction, even if it is correct, nevertheless in fact gives nothing, because it places the formal element of the act, i.e. precisely the sinful in sin, outside God's government,

Episcopius, Op. I 180. Quenstedt, Theol. II 101. This remark is only partly correct; it contains truth, not in general but only in this special case, concerning sin. For with faith no one will from the fact that man is formaliter its subject conclude that it lies outside God's providence. But it is true that with faith the situation is wholly different than with sin. Faith, indeed, is an absolute gift and excludes all merit; sin, on the other hand, is man's act and brings guilt with it. Therefore sin must here not be set over against faith, which is now bestowed by God out of grace, but over against the good that man would have done if he had remained standing. That good would have been materialiter wholly God's work; formaliter, however, it had man [60] as subject and brought for him, not indeed from itself but according to the foedus operum, a claim to reward. Just as now that good would not thereby have been withdrawn from God's government, so sin is not placed outside his providence because in the formal sense it has not God but man as subject. But there is more. With the good, God's providence is to be conceived in such a way that He himself by his Spirit works in the subject and positively makes it capable for the good. With sin it cannot and may not be represented thus. Sin is ἀνομια, deformitas and thus has God not as causa efficiens but at most as causa deficiens. Light cannot of itself bring forth darkness; darkness arises only when the light is taken away. God is therefore at most the negative cause, the causa per accidens of sin; in man its real, positive cause is to be sought. Because, however, sin is only forma and no substantia, it is in no respect placed outside God's providence by the fact that it is formaliter an act of man. He works in it, yet in a manner wholly corresponding to the nature of sin. Just as in his government He governs all things in accordance with their own nature, so also in the moral domain He maintains the ordinances that He has established for it in

particular. Sin too arises and develops according to fixed law, not according to the laws of nature or of logic, but according to those which are implanted in ethical life and continue to operate even in the devastation. Sickness, dissolution, death are the antipodes of health, development, life, but are no less than these governed from the beginning to the end by fixed laws. And so there is also a law of sin, which determines its whole history in man and mankind. And precisely that law-governed element in sin proves that God reigns kingly also in and over it. A man who sins does not make himself loose and independent of God; on the contrary, while he was a son, he becomes a slave. He who does sin is a servant of sin. Cf. on God's relation to sin: the church fathers Orig., Athan., Basil., etc. in Münscher-v. Coelln,

D. G. I 157, and further Thomas, S. Theol. I qu. 49 art. 2. II 1 qu. 79 art. 2.

S. c. Gent. III 3. 71. Comm. op Sent. I dist. 46-48 II dist. 37. Bellarm., de amiss. gr. et statu pecc. II 18. Petavius, de Deo VI c. 6. Quenstedt, Theol. I 535. Hollaz, 448. Calvin, [61] Inst. I 18. II 4. de provid. C. R. 36, 347-366 and 37, 269-318. Beza, Tract. Theol. I 312 sq. 337 sq. Zanchius, Op. II 259.

Chamier, Panstr. Cath. II lib. 3. Twissus, Vindic. gratiae I 317 sq. 544 sq.

Trigland, Antapol. c. 9. 10. Gomarus, de provid. Op. p. 136. Mastricht, Theol. III 10, 19, sq. Turretinus, Theol. El. VI qu. 8. Moor II 492. Vitringa

II 196.

8. With the distinction between the material and the formal in sin, however, the question has not yet been answered why God has included sin in his decree and in the execution thereof. The answer lies enclosed in the providence of God, as it also extends over sin. Scripture repeatedly expresses it, that God uses sin as a means, for punishment of the ungodly,

Deut. 2:30, Jos. 11:20, Judg. 9:23, 24, John 12:40, Rom. 1:21-28, 2 Thess.

2:11, 12, for the salvation of his people, Gen. 45:5, 50:20, for the testing

and chastisement of believers, Job 1:11, 12, 2 Sam. 24:1, 1 Cor. 10:13, 11:19, 2 Cor. 12:7, for the glorification of his name, Ex. 7:3, Prov. 16:4,

Rom. 9:17, 11:33, etc. Precisely because God is the absolutely Holy and Almighty, he can use sin as a means in his hand. Creatures cannot do that and are themselves defiled and unclean at the slightest contact. But God is so infinitely far from ungodliness, that he can make sin serviceable as nothing but a will-less instrument to his glorification. There are examples in abundance, to prove that in this too the proverb holds: duo cum faciunt idem, non est idem. God wills that Shimei curses David, that Satan visits

Job, that Jews and Gentiles deliver up his holy child Jesus to death—and yet in all these unrighteousnesses the creatures stand guilty and God goes free. For even when he wills that evil be, he never wills this otherwise than in a holy manner; he uses it but does not commit it. And therefore he has also permitted sin in his creation. He would not have tolerated it, if he had not been able to govern it in an absolutely holy and sovereign manner. He would not have endured it, if he were not God, the Holy and the Almighty.

But because he is God, he has not feared its existence and its power; he has willed it, in order that in and over against it he might bring his Divine virtues to [62] light. If he had not granted it existence, there would always have been room for the thought, that he was not in all his virtues exalted above a power whose possibility was given with creation itself. For every rational creature, as creature, as finite, limited, changeable being, includes the possibility of apostasy. But God has, because he is God, not feared the way of freedom, the reality of sin, the outbreak of unrighteousness, the power of Satan. And thus he always rules over sin, at its origin and at its development. He does not compel it; he does not check it with violence; he does not crush it by his might; but he lets it come to its full development of

power. He remains king and yet lets it have free play in his kingdom; he grants it everything, his world, his creatures, his Christ even, for mala sine bonis esse non possunt; he permits it to make use of all that is his; he grants it opportunity to show what it can do, in order then nevertheless at the end to step forth from the field of battle as King of kings. For sin is of such a nature, that it perishes through the freedom granted to it, that it dies of its own sickness, that it eats death to itself. At the summit of its power it is, solely by the cross, publicly displayed in its powerlessness, Col. 2:15.

Therefore God has willed that sin should exist. Quamvis ergo ea, quae mala sunt, in quantum mala sunt, non sint bona, tamen ut non solum bona sed etiam sint et mala, bonum est. Nam nisi hoc esset bonum, ut essent et mala, nullo modo esse sinerentur ab omnipotente bono, cui procul dubio quam facile est quod vult facere, tam facile est, quod non vult esse, non sinere.

Hoc nisi credamus, periclitatur ipsum nostrae confessionis initium, qua nos in Deum omnipotentem credere confitemur, Aug., Enchir. 96. Because he knew that he could absolutely control sin, melius judicavit de malis bene facere quam mala nulla esse permittere, ib. 11. 27. de civ. XXII 1, de Gen. ad litt. II 9. de Gen. ad Manich. II 28. He thinks and leads evil to good and places it in the service of his glory. Augustine even makes use of all kinds of images, to assign sin a place in the order of the whole. It has there the same significance as the shadow in a painting, de civ. XI 23, the solecisms and barbarisms in language, [63] de ord. II 11, the contrasts in a song, de civ. XI 18. God has composed the ordo seculorum as a pulcherrimum carmen out of some antitheses, in order to increase the beauty and the harmony of the whole, de civ. XI 18, XIV 11, de Gen. ad Manich. I 16, cf.

Erigena, de div. nat. V 35. Thomas, S. Theol. I qu. 48 art. 2 c. Gesch. III 71.

Leibniz, in Pichler, Theol. des Leibniz I 264 f. and also above p. 51. These

images do contain some truth, but they readily give occasion to misunderstanding, they make sin appear far too much as necessary and in the whole of things precisely in its place, they sacrifice the particular to the general and thereby also offer to those who struggle with sin or are bowed down under suffering, neither reconciliation nor comfort. But this is true, that also and precisely in the government of sin the virtues of God come to glorious revelation. The riches of God's grace, the depth of his mercy, the unchangeableness of his faithfulness, the incorruptibility of his righteousness, the glory of his wisdom and power have, through sin, come forth all the more clearly into the light. When man had broken the covenant of works, he has put in its place the so much better covenant of grace. When

Adam had fallen, he has given Christ as the Lord from heaven. That now is Divine greatness, thus to govern sin, that it even contrary to its nature and striving becomes serviceable to the honour of his name. And therefore sin, which is in the world, can so little take from us faith in God, in his love and power, that it, rightly considered, rather confirms and strengthens us in that faith. Si malum est, Deus est. Non enim esset malum, sublato ordine boni, cujus privatio sit malum; hic autem ordo non esset, si Deus non esset,

Thomas, c. Gent. III 71.

9. Although sin from its beginning stands under God's government, it nevertheless does not have its origin in God but in the will of the rational creature. But here at once a new problem arises. How is sin ever to be explained from the will of a being that was created after God's image in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness? The Pelagian representation, that the first man was in a state of childish innocence, of moral indifference, already appeared to us earlier to be unacceptable, part II 517; it does not explain the fall of man [64] but changes it into an insignificant accident,

and makes it incomprehensible that from it such dreadful consequences and such terrible miseries have proceeded for the whole human race. If a source can bring forth such a stream of unclean water, it must itself be inwardly corrupted. It is therefore impermissible to reduce the distance between the status integritatis and the status corruptionis so much that the transition becomes easy and gradual. Man was created by God not morally indifferent but positively holy. Yet in doing so the following must be considered. In the first place God has very certainly willed the possibility of sin. The possibilitas peccandi is from God. The thought of sin was first of all conceived in his consciousness. God has eternally thought sin as his absolute opposite, and thus, with that nature, included it in his decree; otherwise it could never have arisen and existed in reality. Neither Satan nor Adam and Eve were the first to arrive at the thought of sin; God himself, as it were, set this visibly before their eyes. By the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and by the probationary command God clearly pointed out to man two ways, which he could take. And before his fall God even permitted that an evil power from without penetrated into paradise, used the serpent as its instrument and began to negotiate with Eve about the meaning of the probationary command. The possibility of sin is thus without doubt willed by God. In the second place: in agreement with that objective possibility

God created angels and men in such a way that they could sin and fall. They did not yet have the highest; they were placed not at the end but at the beginning of the way; the gift of perseverantia, which is a gift and always remains so, which can never in the proper sense be merited and can never belong to the nature of a creature, was still withheld from them. Otherwise it would also have had the appearance as if God wanted to prevent sin by force and feared its power. Angels and men therefore had the gratia, qua

potuerunt stare, not that qua vellent perpetuo stare, Heppe, Dogm. d. ev. ref.

K. 178, 179. They did not yet have the highest, inalienable freedom, i.e. the freedom of no longer being able to will to sin. The image of God was thus in man still limited; it was not unfolded in all [65] its fullness; it still had a boundary in the possibility of sin. Man indeed stood in the good, but the possibility of evil still lay alongside it; he indeed walked on the good way but could stray aside; he was good, but changeably good, mutabiliter bonus.

God alone is the being in all his virtues and therefore unchangeable. Every creature, however, becomes and can therefore also become degenerate. If materia and forma are distinct, as is always the case with creatures, then the possibility always remains open that the materia changes from forma. What is formed can be deformed and thus also reformed again; what is created can be misshapen and thus also recreated again. Moral freedom, however strong, is in itself essentially distinguished from logical necessity and physical compulsion. A creatura naturaliter impeccabilis is therefore a contradiction, Thomas, S. Theol. I qu. 63 art. 1. c. Gent. III 109. In the third place, in the question concerning the origin of sin the capacity and activity of the imagination come into consideration. Formerly little account was taken of this in dogmatics, although one was also aware that temptation in man first and most directs itself to the imagination and thereby works upon desire and will, Voetius, Disp. I 943. Burmannus, Synopsis I 46, 54.

Edwards, Works III 122. In mysticism, however, the imagination took a great place in; according to Böhme Lucifer has, through the Phantasey, hinein imaginiert himself into the abyss of sin; er neigte sich in die

Phantasey, also ergriff sie ihn auch und ergab sich ihm in sein Leben, bij Joh. Claassen, J. Böhme II 95. And in fact it always proceeds in the arising of the sinful act as Thomas a Kempis describes it: primo occurrit menti

simplex cogitatio, deinde fortis imaginatio, postea delectatio et motus pravus et assensio, de imit. Chr. I 13, 5. Consciousness takes the thought of sin into itself, the imagination adorns it and transforms it into an alluring ideal, desire stretches itself out toward it and the will accomplishes it. Thus also in angel and man the imagination has been the capacity that made the transgression of the command appear as the way to Godlikeness, cf. Weisse,

Philos. Dogm. II 422 f. Frank, Syst. d. chr. Wahrh. I 433 f. Kuyper, Heraut 906. And finally attention must be paid to the fact that Paul in 1 Cor.

15:45v. speaks of the first [66] man as earthly out of the earth, as by creation having become a living soul and thus sets him over against Christ, the Lord out of heaven, who has become a life-giving spirit. This comparison and contrast between Adam and Christ also has a deep significance for the fall of the first man. Adam was earthly out of the earth, also before the transgression of God's command; by his creation he became a living soul; the natural is first, afterward the spiritual. In this now is expressed that the origin and the nature of sin in angels and men differ very much. To be sure we know little of the fall of the angels; but with a view to 1 Tim. 3:6 and 2 Petr. 2:4 it may nevertheless be called highly probable that pride, wanting to be like God in power and dominion, has been the beginning and the principle of their fall. The angels were not tempted as men were; the temptation did not come to them from without; they fell through themselves. Jesus says that the devil speaks ἐκ των ἰδιων when he speaks a lie. He has from himself, through his own thinking, become dissatisfied with his position and his power; he has brought forth the lie out of himself and set it as a kingdom, as a system over against the truth of God. But with man it is not so. He was not a pure spirit; he was not placed so high, although as created after God's image he still stood nearer to God

than the angels; he could not think so high and so boldly exalt himself; he was earthly out of the earth, a living soul, indeed more refined and more delicate but therefore at the same time also weaker and more fragilely organized. As such a being indeed created after God's image but nevertheless earthly, sensuous, he offered Satan a suitable opportunity for temptation. This came to him from without, accommodated itself as it were to his nature, awakened in him the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life, and thus brought him to a fall. Origin and essence of sin in man bear an entirely different character than in the angels; in both it comes out that man sins, not as a devil, but as a man, as a being that is earthly out of the earth and that by creation has become a living soul. For this reason

Scripture and especially Paul lays such a close connection between the sensuous nature of man and sin. [67] There absolutely does not lie at the basis of that the contrast of sensuousness and reason, and the thought that matter is of a lower order and the principle of sin. This contrast and this thought are not Israelite but Greek in origin. Scripture knows nothing of such a dualism, but it does know of something else, namely of this, that man from the outset is a sensuous, a psychic being. He is immediately created as a living soul, earthly out of the earth. That therefore he was also already in the status integritatis; and therefore he was, in spite of the knowledge and the righteousness that he possessed, susceptible to seduction and temptation. Already with the first sin it came out that man was σαρξ; and all following sins have only always brought his temptability, weakness, unreliability ever more clearly to light. All sin of man, also the spiritual, bears a character that corresponds with his psychic nature and differs from that of sin in the angels. The image of God was man before the fall not in

spite of, but in his peculiar, psychic nature; and from that his sin also receives its stamp.

With all this nothing else and nothing more than the possibility of sin has been demonstrated. How that possibility has become reality is a mystery and will probably remain so. We can indicate that the thought of sin has existed eternally in God's mind, that it has been set before man's eyes in the probationary commandment, that he thus, besides the good, also had knowledge of a forbidden evil, that the imagination is the faculty which transforms thoughts into ideals. But thereby the transition from possibility to reality, from mere representation to the sinful deed, has not yet been explained. This explanation escapes us, not only in the origin of the first sin, but repeatedly in all kinds of deeds and actions of man. In psychology and biography we do indeed content ourselves with a few data; if we know something of someone's ancestry, parents, upbringing, etc., we think that we have explained his personality, his life and deeds. But this is in fact rather superficial; every human being is a mystery, and every action has yet another and deeper root than that of the milieu. In a much stronger measure this holds true with sin. Here we enter the mysterious domain of moral freedom and we are confronted with a [68] phenomenon which by its very nature escapes an explanation in its origin. For a moral action is never like a conclusion from premises, nor like a physical or chemical result. It is essentially distinct from both and has a nature of its own; moral learning is entirely sui generis, it is always a life of freedom, and this is by its very nature a riddle. But much more is this the case with a sinful, and then specifically with the first sinful deed. Sin cannot be deduced logically or physically from preceding circumstances, reasonings, deliberations; it can especially not be derived from a holy nature created in God's image.

Whoever understood and explained sin, i.e. could demonstrate that it necessarily had to follow from what preceded, would do its nature injustice, erase the boundaries between good and evil, and reduce evil to something good. The sinful deed has as its cause the sinful will, but who points out the cause of this sinful will? Causas defectionum istarum, cum efficientes non sint sed deficientes, velle invenire, tale est, ac si quisquam velit videre tenebras vel andire silentium, Aug. de civ. XII 7. Sin began with a lie, Joh.

8:44, it rests on a false imagination, on an untrue representation, on an imagination of a good that was no good; it is thus in its origin a folly and an absurdity; it has no origin in the proper sense, but only a beginning. Not without reason has Satan therefore been called an Ironie aller Logik, cf.

Tholuck, Die Lehre v. d. Sünde, 8te Aufl. 1862 S. 15. Philippi, Kirchl. Gl.

III 256. H. Schmidt, Herz.2 15, 22. Vilmar, Theol. Moral I 37. Shedd, Dogm. Theol. II 156. This impossibility of explaining the origin of sin is therefore also not to be conceived as an evasion, as an asylum ignorantiae.

Rather it is to be stated openly and clearly; we stand here at the boundaries of our knowledge. Sin is there, but it will never be able to justify its existence; it is unlawful and unreasonable.

10. Concerning the time of the fall no precise determination is possible.

For Manichaeism and pantheism the question about it also has no significance. Sin is then eternal; it is rooted in an evil being or in God himself and coincides with [69] the existence of the finite. Between creation and fall there is no distinction; creation itself is an apostasy of God from himself as pure being. According to the theosophists the fall of the angels took place in the time that lies between Gen. 1:1 and 2. The desolation, emptiness, and darkness of the earth cannot have been created by God, who is the God of life and of light; they already presuppose a fall and a curse

that followed upon it. The angels first dwelt on this earth; this was their οἰκητηριον, Jud. 6; that is also evident from the fact that Satan is still now called the prince of the world, that he wants to wrest it from man, who later received it from God as an inheritance, that he wanted to hand it over to Christ in the temptation in exchange for an act of worship, that he still now dwells in the air, and that the world lies in the Evil One. Heaven and earth, however, which were created in Gen. 1:1 and assigned to the angels, were of an entirely different nature than those that were later prepared in the six days, Gen. 1:3v. They were a spiritual, immaterial realm of light. The physical, material earth, which arose in the six days, already presupposes the fall of the angels, just as the desolation, emptiness, and darkness of Gen.

1:2. Matter is in itself unclean, selfish, and therefore cannot have been produced directly by God. Nur ein ungeheures Verbrechen, weniger ein

Abfall als eine Empörung, konnte diese materielle Offenbarung als Krisis, Hemmungsund Wiederherstellungsanstalt veranlassen, und nur die

Fortdauer dieses Verbrechens macht den Fortbestand oder die Forterzeugung dieser Materie begreiflich (Baader); cf. Joh. Claassen, Jakob

Böhme, Sein Leben u. seine theos. Werke II 1885 S. 127 f. Id. Franz von Baader, Leben u. theos. Werke II 1887 S. 157 f. Keerl, Der Mensch das

Ebenbild Gottes I 166 f., and many others, Hamberger, Schubert, K. v.

Raumer, R. Wagner, Kurtz, Delitzsch etc., cf. Reusch, Bibel u. Natur4, 1876 S. 88. But this theory, however attractive, nevertheless has no sufficient ground in Holy Scripture. In Gen. 1:2 it does not say that the earth became desolate and empty, but that it was so; with not a single word is it said that this desolation and emptiness was a devastation that followed upon an ordered condition; and much less is there yet any mention that the fall of the angels took place before that time and was the cause of that desolation.

Furthermore, it is not to be seen what connection there can be between the fall of the [70] angels—suppose that this already took place before Gen. 1:2

—and the desolation of the earth. In order to establish such a connection, one must take refuge in all manner of gnostic ideas; one must then teach that the angels in a certain sense are bodily beings and received the original earth as a dwelling-place, just as they now, according to some, still dwell on the fixed stars; that the first earth, which was created in Gen. 1:1, was an essentially different one than that which was prepared in the six days and consisted of a finer substance; that coarse matter, out of which it now consists, although created by God, nevertheless presupposes the fall, is something ungodly and by nature unclean and selfish—all together opinions that are not derived from Scripture but from Gnosticism.

Little ground exists for the opinion that the fall of man already took place before Gen. 3, whether in the pre-existent state of souls, or in Gen. 2 at and before the creation of the woman. This was the doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato: the souls first existed in the τοπος ὑπερουρανιος, whence they were driven out by a fall and, as punishment, were shut up in earthly bodies as in prisons, Zeller, Philos. d. Gr. II 819 f. Origen adopted this view, in order to explain by it the inequality among creatures, part II 442. Theosophy often connected with it still the opinion that man was first created androgynous and that the creation of the woman was already proof of a fall that had previously occurred, part II 548, and further also M. Vitringa II 265.

Related to this is the doctrine of Kant, who speaks of an intelligible act as cause of the radical Hang zum Bösen and of the angeborne Schuld, Religion ed. Rosenkranz 34. 42. 44 f., and likewise also Schelling, Werke I 7 S. 385.

Müller, Sünde II5 99 f. Steffens, Renouvier, Sécrétan, Dr. Edw. Beecher e. a. But these assertions all lack every theological and also every

philosophical ground. In the first place they include the pre-existent existence of souls, which for various reasons is not plausible, part II 565.

Further, the fall that is related in Gen. 3 is deprived of its character and significance; it ceases to be a fall and becomes only the appearance of something that already long ago has taken place; in connection therewith the temporal, empirical freedom of man loses all its value; the soul alone has fallen and has been placed as punishment in the [71] body. Further, this doctrine is also in conflict with the organic coherence of the human race.

Every man determines his own lot, das Wesen des Menschen ist wesentlich seine eigene That (Schelling). Besides, it gives rise to astonishment that all men individually, without any exception, determine themselves to evil, and that only the first man, though fallen, nevertheless still received a trial, whether he perhaps still wished to remain standing and to restore his fall.

And finally it is clear that humanity, thus dissolved into an aggregate of individuals, can have neither a common head in Adam nor also in Christ.

There is no common fall, there is therefore also no common restoration; each falls for himself, each must therefore also raise himself up; in spite of the radical Böse Kant therefore also concluded from the du sollst to the du kannst.

We must therefore remain with the data of Scripture, however few these may be. The time of the fall of the angels is not mentioned at all. With a view to the ἀπ' ἀρχης, Joh. 8:44, many theologians were of the opinion that the angels, indeed not in the moment of their creation itself, in primo instanti, but then nevertheless immediately thereafter, in secundo instanti, by their first act of will were either confirmed in the good or fell into sin,

Aug. de civ. XI 13. Thomas. S. Th. I qu. 62 art. 5. qu. 63 art. 5 en 6. Others assumed that a short time elapsed after their creation, and that their fall then

either still before the creation of heaven and earth in Gen. 1:1, Episcopius, Inst. Theol. IV 3, 1; or within the six days of creation, Coccejus on Joh.

8:44; or with a view to Gen. 1:31 first after the completion of the whole work of creation took place, Voetius, Disp. I 919. 920. Turretinus, Theol. El.

IX 5. M. Vitringa II 261. Just as little can be said with certainty about the time of man's fall. Some speak of years after his creation; others think, because Genesis after the account of the creation immediately passes over to that of the fall and also on the ground of Gen. 4:1, that the fall of man took place only a few days after or even on the same day as his creation,

Marck, Hist. Parad. III 7. Moor, Comm. IV 166 M. Vitringa II 261. Zöckler, Urstand des Menschen 35 f. These determinations of time are also of less weight. What is of importance is this, that according to Scripture the fall is essentially distinct from the creation itself [72]. Sin is a phenomenon, for which the possibility was indeed given in the creation of finite, changeable beings, but the actuality of which could be called into existence only by the will of the creature. It is a power that does not belong to the essence of creation, that originally was not there, that has come there through disobedience and transgression, that has unlawfully penetrated into the creation and that ought not to be there. It is there, and its being is no accident; indeed, with a view to the counsel of God, which took it up and assigned it a place, it may to a certain extent and in a certain sense be said that it had to be there. But then it nevertheless always had to be there as something that ought not to be and that has no right to exist.

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