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Page 437
437 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Baptism removes the " formal guilt " or original sin, but not the desire to evil or cancupiscentia. This disposition is not lost until the departure of the soul from the body. In degree it is total moral inability, at least in the spiritual sense.
The insuperable difficulties of this view consist in the speculative elements which are to be complemented by the empirical conception. The doctrine of the original estate makes the origin 6. Post-Ref- of sin inconceivable and is an inade-
ormation quate support for its determination; Views. for according to it the fall appears as a transformation prepared by nothing, which threatens the continuity of person and the possibility of imputation. The relation of Adam to his descendants is now of an individual to others, and again of a genus to its members. Sin, guilt, and punishment are inextricably confused. Most defiant is the inconsistency of individual responsi bility with the summary fate of the race, including those who know nothing of Adam. Safer ground is offered by psychological and religious-ethical deter minations, except for a closer distinction of the ethical and religious. A special defect is the over sight of sin as a social power. In considering the relation of Adam and the individual that of man and his fellow beings is overlooked. Only a powerful ecclesiastical authority could keep relig ious reflection in those grooves. The doctrine of original sin became one of the first objects of prey for the Enlightenment (q.v.), after the example of the Arminians. Kant astonished the rationalists by discussing a " radical evil " in human nature, a fundamental inclination to evil, rooted in will, pre ceding all empirical acts, involving guilt, and in eradicable by human power. True, this was not original sin, as Kant rejected historical origin and physical inheritance and insisted that evil was in explicable. With Schleiermacher sin is the afflicting sense of impotence in the consciousness of God. It transcends the personal life, being in each the work of all and in all the work of each. It consists in the total incapability of good. Judged by the highest type of humanity realized in Christ, it is a dis turbance of nature; in view of salvation to come and the consciousness of God involved it may be taken as ordered by God himself. The defect of this theory is the neglect of the ethical standard, and of sin as a transgression of will, in behalf of a meta physical bias, threatening to make of sin only a cer tain necessary moment of development. This idea is distinctly represented by Hegel. Sin is the in evitable transition-point of the finite spirit that emerges from the conditioned state of nature to freedom. Richard Rothe designates the object of human life as an integral part of a speculative plot of a world drama. Matter is the basis of the earthly sphere; it is created by God, yet his opposite. Man continues God's creation, by overcoming with pro gressive spiritualization the material inanity present in himself as sensuousness. Sin is that motive of life which antagonizes the normal development by reverting to matter or nonentity. Yet not the de termination of man by selfish and sensuous impulses constitutes actual sin but positive assent contrary to the moral law; not the natural egoism but ego- Sinism assumed as a principle. As contradiction of the divine cosmic order sin obtains religious significance also in the degrees of alienation from God and inimical opposition to him. The almost antipodal results are reached by Julius Maller. Sin originates not from natural conditions but from the self-determination of the creature. Its principle is selfishness, a primary life tendency based on freedom using sense as a medium of expression. It takes its departure from a primitive extra-temporal decision involving the character of freedom, of which the fall is the first revelation. The theory aims to preserve the universality of sin without abridgment of its guilty character, but only succeeds in basing personal responsibility on an artificially conceived presumption and in diverting the attention from the racial unity and its importance for the life of sin. A. Ritschl lays stress upon the social effect of sin, bringing into evidence a long-neglected Biblical element. The kingdom of God has its antithesis in a kingdom of sin, in which every sinful individual is actively and passively involved, receiving and imparting influences of evil. He properly refers for support to the New-Testament doctrine of the stumbling-block (akandalon).
The assumption of a primitive state of perfection as well as of a fall permanently affecting the destiny of mankind has been irremediably shattered for dogmatics by historical and ethical criticism. The account of Genesis is to be understood as didactic narrative to be employed as illu-
q. Criticism minated by other Biblical statements. of the The original state is the condition of Doctrine. untested innocence, and Adam is the type of the race according to its created disposition and its empirical demeanor. His act is the type of the human racial sin, which in the successive generations and social intercourse continues progressively so far as it is not counteracted by moral forces. Universality of sin is the presupposition for the need of universal redemption and the universal validity of the work of Christ. A truth is thus stated accessible to every maturer experience and attested at all times by witnesses unbiased by dogma. It may be termed original sin; for, although an ethical quality of will, and as obstinacy to God to be conceived of only in personal life, yet in the testimony of experience it becomes organic disorder. As such it can be propagated. With the doctrine of the heredity of acquired characteristics modern thought is more apt to overestimate than depreciate heredity and thus neglect the guilty character of sin. The idea of guilt attaches to the conduct of the individual person and its presupposed freedom. The history of the doctrine shows that the Christian judgment always adhered to two points: the recognition of the comprehensive racial reality of sin, and the personal contingency of guilt. As to the latter, the Augustinian doctrine could never satisfy the ethical consideration. Hence a sharper distinction between sin and personal guilt is to be followed. Sin is all action against the norm of the divine will, irrespective whether this contradiction to God's will is known or willed by the individual or not. Guilt is only the conscious resistance to this norm within the limits and powers of per-