§ 40. SIN is the negative presupposition of reconciliation. Or, to put it more accurately, since in the Christian religion reconciliation is recognised as an attribute of the humanity which Christianity is to unify, it must be presupposed that all men are sinners. Even those who enjoy reconciliation must acknowledge that they are sinners who never cease to need it. These judgments are necessary parts of the Christian view of the world and the Christian estimate of self. Since we have to comprehend the fact of sin from the standpoint of the reconciled community, the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins is actually the ground of our knowledge of our sinfulness (p. 7). And this agrees with the statement of John, that we should make God a liar if we as Christians affirmed that we had no sin. Now, the sin of which one is conscious when one believes in forgiveness or reconciliation as presented in Christianity is conceived as actual. In the New Testament we invariably find that only offences and transgressions are indicated as the object of Divine forgiveness, while the point to which reconciliation refers is the active disposition of enmity to God (vol. ii. pp. 222, 230). We must reserve the question whether there is any indication that the fellowship of sin among men should and can be conceived in another form than that of actual sin. The assumption of sin as common to all, however, is one which, supplementing as it does the personal guilt of the individual, can only be arrived at in the connection just indicated, when we have ascertained our individual sin as such for ourselves.
That we are sinners, as individuals and in conjunction with all others, is a necessary part of the view of the world and of life which we share with the community of Christ. And, following our practice above, we have to derive the proper definition of sin from the New Testament. That does not imply, however, that the fact and the explanation of sin were first made certain by revelation, or that they are articles of faith like other elements of the Christian view as a whole. For men were familiar with the fact of sin even apart from Christianity. But the determination of its nature, and the estimate of its compass and its worthlessness, are expressed in a peculiar form in Christianity; for here there obtain ideas of God, of the supreme good, of the moral destiny of man, and of redemption, different from those which are to be found in any other religion. As a sinner every man has to judge himself rightly and completely in the light of the realities and blessings just named, and thereby also to determine the nature of the interconnection of sin within the human race. But we have not to believe in sin in general, or in a definite general conception of sin such as would fall outside of experience. Luther deviates from this principle when, in his Smalcald Confession (iii. 1), he puts forward the notion of original sin as a complete expression of the matter, with the qualification, ut nullius hominis ratione intelligi possit, sed ex scripturae patefactione agnoscenda et credenda sit. If, therefore, this conception is an article of faith, then we have to believe in original sin in the same way as we believe in God, etc.; but that is absurd, for original sin is not a channel of salvation. But if original sin is an article of doctrine which we believe, then this belief, if it cannot be tested by experience, is a mere opinion both as regards its relation to theological knowledge and in its bearing on the religious view of the world. And so the sense of that dogma veers round into the opposite of what it was intended to convey. In reality, the notion of original sin was adopted by Augustine in no other way than the above discussion has suggested for the notion of sin as such—namely, as an inference from his estimate of the worth of the Christian salvation. Augustine, in fact, framed the conception of original sin in order to uphold the sacramental character of infant baptism, in other words, as an inference from the special worth of this instrument of the Divine revelation of salvation (vol. i. p. 504). This connection, however, was forgotten, when the thought to which Augustine had given his imprimatur became supreme in tradition.
The only way in which an idea of sin can be formed at all is by comparison with an idea of the good. The more or the less complete the latter, the deeper or the shallower will be our conception of the worthlessness of sin. Now for the Christian faith it is certain that, as the compass and the obligatoriness of the good first come out into full cognisability in the task of the Kingdom of God, especially as that task was faultlessly discharged in the life-course of Jesus, so likewise sin can only be understood as the contrary of this, the highest moral good. Hence it is absurd to expect that we can reach the Christian estimate of sin, in general as well as in the individual, in practical self-judgment as well as in theory, before grasping and appreciating that moral ideal. As far as individual experience is concerned, Luther first, and after him Calvin, maintained the opposite and true principle, by the explicit maxim that hatred of sin proceeds from love of the good, a love which entirely coincides with faith in reconciliation through Christ.1 Before we attain to faith in Christ, it is perhaps possible to acquire from the law a theoretical knowledge of the characteristics of sin, but not that estimate of it which should express itself in the decisive estrangement of the will from it. For such a movement is thinkable only as the negative reverse-side of the good will. If, then, Luther’s principle, originally discovered by him in his controversy against the sacrament of penance, proves itself right as against Melanchthon’s alteration of it, then the theological doctrine of sin will also need to adjust itself accordingly. Or if, on the other hand, the practical as well as the theoretical interpretation of sin is held to be both possible and necessary apart from the knowledge and valuation of the Christian good, every Christian will be bound to follow the method which leads to ” the conflict of penitence ” (Busskampf), although past experience shows that it issues in either despair or hypocrisy (p. 164).