This explanation of sin as an arrestment of the determinative power of the spirit, due to the independence of the sensuous functions, is certainly reconcilable with those explanations which describe sin as a turning away from the Creator,⁴ though less so with those which interpret sin as a violation of the divine law.⁵ But it cannot be of any great consequence to insist on a reconciliation with the latter, for in the sense in which God and the eternal law might be distinguished—as if one could turn away from the latter as from a single and perhaps arbitrary act of God without turning away from Himself—law is not an originally Christian term and must therefore be merged in a higher. We should certainly require to widen it in a very indefinite and arbitrary way if we had to bring under it all that may count as sin not only in deeds, but in thoughts and words. Our explanation, however, unifies this division in the most natural way. For if a thought or word viewed otherwise than as an act did form the content of a moment, it could only incorrectly be called a sin. An interpretation more Christian in its origin, and at the same time directly in keeping with our own, is that which says that sin consists in our desiring what Christ contemns and vice versa.⁶

§ 67. We are conscious of sin as the power and work of a time when the disposition to the God-consciousness had not yet actively emerged in us. 1. It is in reality already implied, in the relation of this proposition to all that has been said above, that in the period to which the consciousness of sin points back, sin was not present in us in the same way as we are now conscious of it. For in this latter form it can be present only simultaneously with and as related to the God-consciousness. If our God-consciousness is not yet developed, there can be in us no resistance to it, but merely an independent activity of the flesh which, though in time it will quite naturally come to act as a resistance to the spirit, cannot at that stage be regarded as sin in the proper sense, but rather as the germ of sin. This interpretation we apply generally to individual persons in their earliest stages of development, and in exactly the same way to whole peoples and eras. Nevertheless, the proposition is not to be understood as implying that all sin, whatever its content, is to be relegated to that prior time; it refers only to the state of sin in general. The functions of the lower life which may come into conflict with the spirit are not all developed prior to the God-consciousness, but as they do develop without having the God-consciousness directed upon them in their initial stages, the same result follows.

2. Resistance, as an activity by which an opposed activity is to be neutralized, has naturally its degrees of more and less, and is thus an intensive phenomenon conditioned by time, and when present in anything that has life advances by repetition in time to proficiency. Now our proposition goes back to the universal experience that in each individual the flesh manifests itself as a reality before the spirit comes to be such, the result being, that, as soon as the spirit enters the sphere of consciousness (and it is involved in the original perfection of man that the independent activity of the flesh cannot of itself prevent the ingress of the spirit), resistance takes place, i.e. we become conscious also of sin as the God-consciousness awakes within us. The activity of the spirit, however, not merely in general, as present in the distinctive form of human life, but also in particular, in its effort to win dominion over the flesh, is likewise an intensive phenomenon, and, as a living force, attains by repetition in time to proficiency. Thus the strength which the spirit gradually acquires is the work and power of the period subsequent to the awaking of the God-consciousness, though of course in association with the previously given spiritual forces to the promptings of which that awaking was due; while the strength of the resistance made by the flesh and manifested in the consciousness of sin, is due to the advantage gained by the flesh during the prior time,⁷ though again, of course, in association with the corporate life upon which the amount of that advantage depends. Now if the whole situation subsequent to the awaking of the God-consciousness could be conceived as a progressive ascendancy of the spirit over the flesh, self-consciousness could hardly have such a phase as the consciousness of sin; and accordingly this phase will be more and more attenuated as that conception becomes dominant, and vice versa. We actually find, however, that our development is always an irregular one, and also that the spirit is obstructed in its action by the flesh—the circumstance, indeed, to which our consciousness of sin is due. This irregularity is twofold. In the first place, the development of the spirit proceeds intermittently through widely separated moments of exceptional illumination and stimulation; and thus if, after such a moment, the activity of the spirit should seem less than it was during the moment, or if the stimulation did not from the outset correspond with the illumination, we become conscious of our state as one of sin, since in the actual experience of the moment the flesh overrides the effort of the spirit.⁸ Secondly, we are conscious of the spirit as one, while the flesh is a manifold, and a manifold composed of diverse elements, so that the spirit cannot stand in a uniform relation to it. Since, however, the spirit’s demand is always the same, the spirit itself, wherever it is less able to work effectively, appears as a baffled and defeated force, and the subject therefore as in a state of sin. The more thoroughly we trace back the state of our spiritual life to a conscious beginning, to a general ‘taking command of one’s self’—so to call it⁹—which is represented in every decision of the will, then, whenever the act does not correspond with that decision, the more conscious we are of a domination of the flesh, and we cannot do otherwise than trace this back to a time prior to that beginning.

§ 68. Although sin, as a result of the unequal development of insight and will-power, can be conceived in such a way that its existence does not invalidate the idea of the original perfection of man, still we are bound to regard it as a derangement of our nature.

1. This proposition would seem to bring the entire life of the spirit under the two contrasted categories of intellect and will, but it is far from being intended here to make light of the third element in our experience, namely, our immediate self-consciousness, which in fact forms the starting-point in every part of our exposition. Indeed, it is precisely the relationship of that self-consciousness to the other two factors that serves as the measure of the disparity in their development. Let us figure to ourselves the above-mentioned ‘taking command of one’s self’ in its most general form; it is simply the discernment of the absolute superiority of those states of mind which combine with the God-consciousness without obstructing it. That discernment cannot emerge without the individual’s appropriating it, and this takes place only through an act of self-consciousness in which the said discernment, as giving approval and recognition, becomes a command. Now the fact that this excitation of the self-consciousness follows upon the discernment more rapidly than it is able to determine our volitions, constitutes just that inequality along with which sin and the consciousness of sin are given. It is true that there are two ways in which at the very start we might conceive of this disparity as being removed, and in either case there would be no consciousness of sin. Thus if a man were to attain gradually to a discernment of the relationship of his various inner states to the God-consciousness, but only in the same measure as his recognition thereof could set the will in operation, then for him no consciousness of sin could arise, as indeed he could never imagine a more divine life than that which he actually exhibits at every moment. Similarly, if the antithesis were actually present in its full extent and clearly realized, but the will were uniformly powerful enough to resist every impulse of the flesh, then again a person having this experience could never come to be conscious of sin as his own condition. Neither of these cases, however, occurs in our experience; in fact we can see quite well why they cannot. Thus—to begin with the second case—the antithesis presents itself to our understanding in the manner of a general pattern or formula which in any particular instance is, so to speak, recognized from afar; and it is in this way too that the immature begin to receive the said discernment from their elders soon after their own earliest experiences of excitation. But the impulse that the commanding recognition is to give to the will must—just because the flesh has to do with the particular only, and knows nothing of the general—in every given instance be a special one; and here the flesh has habit on its side as the real law in its members,¹⁰ whereas it is only gradually that the earlier happier moments come to the succour of the spirit. If, however, we turn to the first case, then, while we might perhaps regard this (though, as a matter of fact, we never do find perfect equipoise, but always advance and retreat) as a possibility in a single individual, it could not be so in a communal life. For all would not take the same path, and consequently each would necessarily see in the case of others, and then recognize in his own, something for which at the moment he had not the requisite will-power. Accordingly, since without this disparity—as a counterpart to which we might also imagine a lagging of the intelligence behind the will, though this would be in appearance only—there could arise no consciousness of sin, the latter is to be understood simply as issuing from the former; indeed, it would be impossible for any one to specify any other mode of attaining to that consciousness. It is along the same lines that we can understand what is unquestionably the most pernicious element of all, namely, how the resistance of the flesh reacts upon the intelligence, so that for one thing the intelligence seeks to palliate the inner states thus produced, on the pretext of their being compatible with the God-consciousness;¹¹ and for another the God-consciousness, being seized upon when but in germ by the power of the flesh, is altered and disintegrated to such a degree that every state comes to be compatible with some aspect of it, and thus the moral antithesis itself is lost.¹² If on this view idolatry may rightly enough be thought to have the same origin as sin, no less rightly will all anthropopathic ideas of God which attenuate the antithesis or base it on distinctions of human law be regarded as survivals of idolatry.

2. Nevertheless, we are not entitled to say that sin, on the view taken of it here, would conflict with the original perfection of man, and thus annul it. On the contrary, we must rather insist upon the fact that sin in general exists only in so far as there is a consciousness of it; and this again is always conditioned by a good which must have preceded it and must have been just a result of that original perfection. The ‘bad conscience’ which we may have within us is there, for one thing, only because of our seeing the possibility of what is better—a conviction which must accordingly have come to us in a different way; and for another, because of the mere fact of our having a conscience, i.e. an inward demand for harmony with the God-consciousness. Hence if in an individual, at a time of life when the God-consciousness could have been developed, or among a people still at an early stage of development, the notion of that ‘better’ has not been evolved in similar fashion, we regard their imperfection and the power of the flesh in them not as sin, but as grossness and ignorance. Sin, accordingly, manifests itself only in connexion with and by means of already existent good, and what it obstructs is future good. Similarly, if the consciousness of sin comes about through the experience that the God-consciousness operates less effectively upon a sensuous disposition than upon any other, even in that case, too, it issues from a comparison with a previously existent good, and in point of fact that is confirmed by what forms a counterpart to the foregoing, namely, that a trace of the consciousness of sin lurks even in the most exalted moments of religious experience, just because the God-consciousness does not permeate our whole being uniformly; and this residuum is carried onwards to the time following, since a moment of that kind cannot leave behind it effects that will be homogeneous at every point. Thus the state of sin over its entire range actually presupposes the original perfection of man, and is indeed dependent upon it; and, accordingly, just as the latter conception expresses the unity of our development, so sin in turn represents its intermittent and disjointed character, though without in any way abrogating the unity itself.

3. Now if, after having thus found ourselves able to interpret sin in its relation to the original perfection of man, we could likewise become perfectly certain of its inevitability, we should have no choice but to acquiesce in the latter. The most natural thing would then be to say that the consciousness which we characterize as the consciousness of sin, taken in its widest compass and even including the God-consciousness, vitiated as that may be and in its distinctive nature subverted by disruption, is nothing but that consciousness of good still lacking to us which arises within us, as a result of individual acts and inner states. But this view, in nullifying as it does not only the reality of sin but also the need of redemption, leaves so little room anywhere for the peculiar work of a Redeemer that it can scarcely be regarded as a Christian view at all. As a matter of fact, the certainty with which we are aware of the good realized within us in some exceptional moment is at the same time a conviction that we might evade every moment in which the same degree of will-power is not demonstrably present; while again, every retrograde movement is a derangement of one originally provided for in our nature; and thus the experience of an abatement in will-power and the consciousness that sin can be avoided, as also the conception of sin as a derangement of our nature, are so far one and the same. In order to affirm, however, that it is possible to obviate entirely the active resistance of the flesh, we require to have an assured belief in a development of power of the God-consciousness that has proceeded continuously from its earliest manifestation to a state of absolute strength, i.e. a condition of human perfection evolved without sin. This certainty is therefore at once the basis of the full consciousness of sin as a derangement of our nature, and of faith in the possibility of redemption by the communication of the spiritual power so attested. For since even our most perfect inner states still retain traces of sin (this is the testimony of the universal consciousness of mankind), then he alone to whom we do not ascribe that common consciousness of sin, and in so far only as we are justified in not so ascribing it (such justification being asserted in the above formula itself), can exercise redeeming activity.¹³ It is of course true that the consciousness of sin comes from the law,¹⁴ but as the law in the very multitude of its precepts is but an imperfect representation of the good, and even in the unity of an all-embracing maxim does not show how it can be obeyed, the knowledge of sin that arises out of it is ever in some respects incomplete and in some uncertain; and it is only from the absolute sinlessness and the perfect spiritual power of the Redeemer that we gain the full knowledge of sin. And our belief that sin is a derangement of human nature rests solely upon the possibility that, on the assumption of the original perfection described above, the God-consciousness could have developed progressively from the first man to the purity and holiness which it manifests in the Redeemer.

§ 69. We are conscious of sin partly as having its source in ourselves, partly as having its source outside our own being.

1. The relation of the various dispositions and activities of sense—a relation varying in a special way with every single person—to the higher activity of the soul is based upon what we may provisionally call an innate difference in these dispositions, which serves in part to constitute the peculiar personality of the individual. Such differences, however, we observe being handed on within the same stock, and thus also coalescing when new families are formed from various stocks, while we find them also established among larger human masses as the distinctive characteristics of tribes and peoples. Hence in virtue of this dependence of the specific constitution of the individual life upon a larger common type, as also of the later generations upon the earlier, the sin of the individual has its source in something beyond and prior to his own existence. Hence it is just the same even if such differences are held not to be innate, but to be due to education alone, since the type of education itself is determined by proclivities and experiences which precede in time the life of the learner. On the other hand, as the swift movement of a sensuous excitation towards its object without ranging itself with the higher self-consciousness is unquestionably the act of the individual, every single sin of the individual must necessarily have its source in himself.

From the one point of view we distinguish between our good nature—for many impulses even of sense do not seek to pass beyond what the spirit itself demands of them—and our evil nature, and we are conscious of each of these as something got and received by us conjointly with others. From the other, we recognize our evil nature as being also our own sin, since, instead of having overcome it by our action, we voluntarily perpetuate it from one moment to another.

2. The fact that one person is more disposed to reflection, his external activity being either on the whole feeble, or, if vigorous, yet crude and ignorant, and that another gives himself to external activities, and, generally speaking, thinks but little, or thinks in a dull and confused way—this, too, we place among the innate differences. True, by the social life around him the former will be drawn into the sphere of activity; while, as regards the latter, the results of reflection that are accepted in his community will somehow be lodged also in his mind; but the original idiosyncrasies will continue to operate; and in the case of the former, dawning piety will combine more easily with his thought, though his modes of action will remain carnal; while, in the case of the latter, it will be the intelligence that proves refractory; and thus sin will take a different form in each. Now, in whatever degree such diversity is connected with the disposition natural to each, and in each prior to all action, in the same degree the sin of each, as regards its particular form, will be rooted in something beyond his own life. On the other hand, in so far as every moment (be its content an idea or an action in the narrower sense) owes its occurrence solely to voluntary action—even a moment which, though the God-consciousness has already become active, does not contain that consciousness—the sin of each, as regards its reality, uniformly has its source in himself.

3. It is true also of the development of the sensuous life, which takes place in all men before that of the spiritual, that it does not depend upon the individual alone. The coming of the Ego into this world as a result of conception and birth cannot be regarded by our immediate self-consciousness as our own act—though speculation has sometimes sought to represent this as the primary apostasy, and as due to ourselves. In truth, however, just as the coming of the Ego is, with respect to each later generation, due to the action of the one before it, so the sinful self-assertiveness of sense, proceeding as it does from its earlier development, has a more remote source than the individual’s own life. But once the God-consciousness has emerged as a definite and effective agency, and as capable of growth, then every moment in which it does not manifest itself as such, and with a certain increment of power, even if infinitesimal, in comparison with earlier moments of the same kind, is an arrest upon the higher activity—an arrest originating in the doer himself—and is a veritable sin.

Postscript.—It is this twofold relation, found universally though in varying proportion in all consciousness of sin, that forms the essential and ultimate ground of the fact that the explication of the Christian consciousness of sin in the teaching of the Church falls into the two doctrines of ‘original sin’¹⁵ and ‘actual sin.’¹⁶ And in fact the true significance of that division emerges clearly from the foregoing exposition. Thus under the one head the state of sin is considered as something received, something we bring with us, prior to any act of our own, yet something in which our own guilt is latent; under the other, it is set forth as becoming apparent in the sinful acts which are due to the individual himself, but in which the received element brought with us is revealed. The traditional terminology, however, is in every aspect unsatisfactory. Thus, in the second expression (actual sin), the term ‘sin’ is, in accordance with common usage, predicated of the real act, but the adjective suggests the misleading idea that original sin is nothing real, or at least that alongside of actual sin there is a type of sin that is merely in seeming or that lies outside the sphere of action. In the first term again, ‘original’ (Erb) correctly expresses the connexion of the later generations with the earlier, as well as with the process by which the race is preserved; but the word ‘sin’ is misleading, being used here apparently in the same sense as in the other expression; in which case an earlier source would be predicated only of some actual sins and not of others. Such, however, cannot be the true purport of the expression, since original sin indicates that inherent quality of the acting subject which is a part condition of all his actual sins and is anterior to all action on his part.¹⁷ Hence we might well wish for an alteration in these inexact designations, which besides are not found in Scripture; but such alteration will have to be introduced with great caution—a process to which the following treatment is meant to contribute; and if we would avoid breaking the historical continuity of doctrine, and causing fresh misconstructions and misunderstandings, we shall have to carry out the change by means of gradual adjustments.

---

← First Aspect of the Antithesis. The Consciousness of Sin · Contents · Original Sin →

Footnotes

1. Gal. 5¹⁷, Rom. 7¹⁸⁻²³. ↩

2. ↩

3. Rom. 7²⁵ 8³ ↩

4. Conf. Aug. xix.: Voluntas … quae avertit se a Deo. ↩

5. For others of this type cf. Gerhard, Loc. Th. t. v. pp. 2 ff. ↩

6. Aug., de vera relig. 31: Non enim ullum peccatum committi potest, nisi aut dum appetuntur ea quae ille contemsit, aut fugiuntur quae ille sustinuit. ↩

7. Gen. 8²¹. ↩

8. Rom. 7¹⁸. ↩

9. Rom. 7²². ↩

10. Rom. 7²³. ↩

11. Rom. 2¹⁵. ↩

12. Rom. 1¹⁸⁻²⁵. ↩

13. Rom. 7²⁴ 8². ↩

14. Rom. 7⁷. ↩

15. Peccatum originis. ↩

16. Peccatum actuale. ↩

17. Peccatum enim originis non est aliquod delictum quod actu perpetratur: sed intime inhaeret infixum ipsi naturae substantiae et essentiae hominis (Epitom., Art. i, p. 577, Ed. Rech.). ↩