SIN AS A STATE OF MAN
§ 66. We have the consciousness of sin whenever the God-consciousness which forms part of an inner state, or is in some way added to it, determines our self-consciousness as pain; and therefore we conceive of sin as a positive antagonism of the flesh against the spirit.
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Without running counter to our method we cannot at the outset give an objective elucidation of sin, but must revert to the personal self-consciousness which attests an inner state as sin—a procedure all the less open to objection because sin cannot emerge in the life of the Christian apart from such a consciousness. To lack this consciousness would simply be an additional sin, of which, as such, we could not fail subsequently to become conscious. If, then, it is our primary object to ascertain the characteristic element in the consciousness of sinfulness, we ought not, within the sphere of Christian piety, to look for it except in relationship to the God-consciousness, and accordingly the only course open to us is to reckon everything as sin that has arrested the free development of the God-consciousness. Now, if in any particular moment under examination God has formed part of our self-consciousness, but this God-consciousness has not been able to permeate the other active elements therein, thus determining the moment, then sin and the consciousness of sin are simultaneous, and the sensuous self-consciousness by reason of its having been gratified is affected with pleasure, but the higher, owing to the impotence of the God-consciousness, with pain. If, on the other hand, God has not formed part of the moment at all, if, that is to say, the occurrence of the moment excludes the God-consciousness, showing that the God-consciousness cannot make the moment its own, which also means that it cannot be supposed to accord and acquiesce in it, then the consciousness of sin follows on the sin itself. Supposing, however, that the God-consciousness has determined the moment, and that pleasure is present in the higher self-consciousness, still every attendant feeling of effort implies a consciousness of sin—in some degree, consequently, annulling that pleasure—since we thereby are made aware that if the sensuous elements which have been overcome had been reinforced from without, the God-consciousness would have been unable to determine the moment. In this sense, therefore—but only because there exists a living seed of sin ever ready to burst forth—there is such a thing as an abiding consciousness of sin, now preceding the sin itself as a warning presentiment, now accompanying it as an inward reproof, or following it as penitence. That no God-consciousness, however, should ever be directed at all upon a moment such as that described could only happen if in the person acting there were no relationship between the moment and the class of actions under discussion (in which case he would be in a state of innocence), or if the God-consciousness were no longer active within him (which would be the state of hardening).
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If we conceive now a state in which the flesh, i.e. the totality of the so-called lower powers of the soul, were susceptible only to impulses proceeding from the quarter of the God-consciousness, and were never an independent motive principle, a conflict between the two would not be possible, but we should again have conceived a sinless state. In every moment in this self-consciousness the two powers would be perfectly at one, every moment beginning in the spirit and ending in the spirit, and the flesh serving only as a living intermediary, a healthy organ, and never exhibiting anything not initiated and directed by the spirit, whether as an act of its own or as an intrusive extraneous element in an act proceeding from the spirit. As long, however, as spirit and flesh have not in this sense become one, they co-exist as two powers at issue with each other,1 and in so far as the spirit presses towards the perfect unity indicated, this state can be characterized only as an incapacity of the spirit. The possibility of this we left aside when treating of the original perfection of man,2 except that there those relationships, and no others, had to be brought out which contain in themselves the principles of progressive development. Since, however, the consciousness of sin never exists in the soul of the Christian without the consciousness of the power of redemption,3 the former is never actually found without its complementary half which we are to describe later, and, if taken by itself alone, represents only that state of a hopeless incapacity in the spirit, which prevails outside the sphere of redemption.