Just as certainly, however, we should fall into the Pelagian heresy were we to admit the validity of the second part only of our proposition, and so do away with all distinction in the divine causality, which would thus be identical alike in the activities of the flesh and the energy of the God-consciousness. In that case the spontaneous activity of man must be the same throughout; the antithesis between our native incapacity and the imparted energy of the God-consciousness would disappear; and, since the most powerful element in us, equally with the power of the flesh, would be the outcome of our own activity, the consciousness of incapacity that forms part of our inward experience can indicate only a transitional and even now evanescent state of the social life of mankind. In such an indistinguishable ‘more or less’ of flesh and spirit, redemption inevitably comes to occupy a very insecure position, and it is virtually a matter of accident how much or how little special influence is ascribed to the Redeemer, whether more as the Author of redemption or as its occasion. This attenuation of the specific difference between Redeemer and redeemed—this, as we might almost call it, merely figurative use of the term ‘grace’—marks the Pelagian heresy. Pelagianism, therefore, on the one hand sacrifices the practical religious interest (which postulates somewhere a perfectly pure impulse) to the theoretical (which demands that every vital activity shall have the same relation to the divine causality), and on the other feebly and through mere stolidity surrenders all hope of perfect satisfaction. Manichæism in turn is a surrender of the theoretical religious interest in the reality of the divine omnipotence, in favour of the practical interest attaching to the idea that evil is real in the most unqualified sense, so as all the more to bring out the necessity that the perfect good should counteract it redemptively. And this, too, is to despair of reconciling the existence of sin with the divine omnipotence.

§ 81. If ecclesiastical doctrine seeks to solve this antinomy by the proposition that God is not the Author of sin, but that sin is grounded in human freedom, then this must be supplemented by the statement that God has ordained that the continually imperfect triumph of the spirit should become sin to us. —in whom lay the timeless causality of sin, but who must also have been the creator of finite being, and that not merely in part, as some have idly said, but wholly.⁵ From this point of view, accordingly, we are shut up to the choice between saying that for sin there is no eternal causality at all, and finding that eternal causality in God.

A transition from the first main idea of our proposition to the second is found, however, in the theory that traces the sinful state in its entirety to the loss of the God-consciousness originally imparted to human nature by God Himself.⁶ Thus, while generally the cessation of anything must be due to the same divine will from which it took its rise—otherwise, indeed, there would be no finite being at all—yet it would seem that there must be a difference in the case of the God-consciousness, the cessation of which, i.e. of the presence of God in man, could not be due to the divine causality. Now this plea might no doubt hold good were sin a complete cessation of the God-consciousness, and if the sinful nature were wholly sin. But in the sinful nature the bad exists only correlatively with the good, and no moment is occupied exclusively by sin; for sin actually presupposes the God-consciousness, so that the sinful nature always retains the presence of God as something imparted, though only in the most limited degree. Hence in this respect, too, the limitation of the God-consciousness, as well as its impartation, may be grounded in one and the same divine will.

The second thought taken as starting-point is that God cannot possibly have brought about, and therefore cannot be the Author of, what He Himself forbids. Now we must of course admit that the will of God which commands other beings, though we call it will, is not identical with His efficient will.⁷ For the divine command does not manifest itself in addition as a will that, in all cases falling under the command, effects what is in conformity with it; in fact, the Scripture actually says that the commanding will of God does not of itself secure obedience,⁸ and we are all clearly conscious of the difference between the state in which what is given us is only the commanding will of God, and that in which God’s efficient will is added as well.⁹ And we are quite as clearly conscious that the difference between the will of God as commanding and His will as accomplishing what is commanded is altogether unlike that, e.g., in the narrative of the creation, between God’s utterance of this fiat and the will that carries it out. A further reason why the commanding will of God is not as such an operative will is that sin is committed only where there exists a commanding divine will to which some active impulse is the opposition. For if sin be committed by one who thinks he is fulfilling the divine will, then what is sin is not the act itself, but only the mistaken thought, and even this is sin only where it has arisen in antagonism to God’s commanding will. This holds good likewise when sin is committed inadvertently. Thus all sin lying between the extremes of innocence and hardening¹⁰ presupposes the consciousness of a commanding will. Now, though the commanding is not identical with the efficient will, yet the latter cannot be opposed to the former; for the prohibition could not be genuine if God Himself brought the transgression of it to pass. Here, however, we must not forget that the divine commanding will was posited solely as an absolutely perfect will, to which accordingly even what is effected in us by divine grace as efficient divine will never wholly corresponds. If then this shortcoming in us be described as sin still clinging to us,¹¹ then even from this point of view the negative part of the Church’s doctrine will require modification. We must say that the negation is to be understood only in the sense that a want of conformity to the commanding will of God can none the less be brought about by His efficient will, and that so far sin is grounded in the divine causality.

2. As regards the second or affirmative part of the Church’s doctrine, it is no doubt perfectly accurate; but we cannot regard it as fitted to nullify those limitations of the first part which we had to claim on behalf of our religious consciousness. It is, in fact, only in view of these limitations that we are able to interpret the combination of both facts in the sense that sin, so far as there is no divine causality for it, is not grounded in human freedom either. This is the only conclusion that agrees with the relationship we have formulated between the divine eternal causality and the temporal and finite causality.¹² But the fact of sin’s being grounded in our freedom is all the more compatible with its being rooted likewise in the divine causality because, with regard to the feeling of absolute dependence, we recognize no difference between the greater and the less activity of temporal causality.¹³ It is only the temporal cause that is stated in this part, and the statement is first and foremost intended to obviate the idea that, if no divine causality can be assumed for sin, the consciousness of sin is a mere delusion. Sin is therefore referred to that highest degree of inward activity which constitutes the distinctive element in our being. What then is here asserted is that in the whole range of life between the inward state of the Redeemer, in whom no break in the supremacy of the God-consciousness could issue from His highest spiritual activity, and those states of human disorder in which the spiritual functions are brought under the power of disease, and responsibility ceases owing to a lack of freedom, free self-development is always attended by sin. Hence if this whole form of existence—the life of the natural man—subsists in virtue of divine appointment, sin, as proceeding from human freedom, has also a place in that appointment.

Next, our proposition affirms for the sphere of finite causality as well, that we cannot truly regard ourselves as merely passive and extraneously determined in our acts of sin.¹⁴ The very phrase ‘freedom of the will’ conveys a denial of all external necessity, and indicates the very essence of conscious life—the fact, namely, that no external influence determines our total condition in such a way that the reaction too is determined and given, but every excitation really receives its determinate quality from the inmost core of our own life, from which quality, again, proceeds the reaction, so that the sin proceeding from that core is in every case the act of the sinner and of no other. In like manner, the expression ‘freedom of the will’ negatives the idea that the individual is in all cases pre-determined by the common nature of man. In reality, the common elements of our nature are the results of a process of development, and the expression in question marks out each individual as ab initio distinct and apart from all others. Hence no one can transfer the guilt from himself to common human nature; a man’s particular sinful self-determinations are his own acts, alike whether they issue from the sinfulness that is part and parcel of the principle of his individual will, or whether by means of them that sinfulness itself becomes more and more confirmed in him. None of these cases of determination, however, excludes the possibility of sin being related to the divine causality.

Besides, the proposition must only be interpreted in a sense compatible with the fact that sin is a state of bondage.¹⁵ If the bondage ceases when redemption begins to operate—a process that cannot be conceived as independent of divine causality—but in such a manner that the operation annuls the bondage only by degrees, and is therefore permanently limited in scope by it, then we are again shut up to the conclusion that the sin which is rooted in a freedom thus linked with impotence is as such ordained by God—unless, indeed, we are positively to assume that divine action can be limited by what does not depend upon the divine causality.

3. Since then the Church doctrine, as an accurate expression of our self-consciousness, does not exclude the possibility of God’s being in some sense the Author of sin, and since we are drawn by opposed interests to both alternatives; then in seeking to solve this apparent antinomy we have no choice—if we are to keep the divine omnipotence unlimited and unabridged—than to assert that sin, in so far as it cannot be grounded in the divine causality, cannot in that measure exist for God, but that, in so far as the consciousness of our sin is a true element of our being, and sin therefore a reality, it is ordained by God as that which makes redemption necessary. The more closely these two things are capable of being unified in the sphere of actual fact—in the same way as the diverse elements of our Christian consciousness form a unity within us—and the more definitely we can keep them apart in our thinking, so that neither will seem to involve the contrary of the other, the more completely shall we find all difficulties disappear, and that without our either in Manichæan fashion ascribing to sin a reality independent of and opposed to God, or with the Pelagians minimizing and by degrees annulling the antithesis of sin and grace. Now the latter part of the Church’s formula asserts the reality of sin as our own act, while the first declares that sin is not brought about by God. If then, with that formula, and with the problem still set us, we collate the passages cited from the confessional documents, we note that certain of these bring out that the temporal source of sin lies in human freedom, while they do not say that sin involves a divine eternal causality as well; in others, again, what comes out is that sin cannot have its source in the divine will, though they do not assert that, in so far as such a source is actually lacking, it does not exist for God. Now the more fully those one-sided views are both developed, the more do the difficulties increase, and we must either resort to over-subtle distinctions in which our immediate religious self-consciousness does not recognize itself, and which cannot be combined in a single organic view, or else we must renounce all deeper inquiry, and so arrest the development of theology.

In endeavouring, therefore, to obviate this one-sidedness by combining the two points of view, we ask first—starting with the former group—what is that element in sin for which, so far as it is rooted in human freedom, we might look to find also an eternal divine causality? Well, in every distinct moment of sin there is for one thing the manifestation of a sensuous natural impulse, in which of course the eternal divine causality is implicated; and, for another, we posit the God-consciousness as capable of being related to that impulse—else there would be no question of sin at all—and the God-consciousness of course goes back to the divine causality in the primordial revelation. But these two elements taken together do not constitute sin; it follows that so far this divine causality does not bear directly upon the sin. In so far as the sin consisted in the impotence of the God-consciousness, it would be a mere negative, i.e. something that could be neither a divine thought nor the result of a divine act;¹⁶ however, a mere negation of power does not amount to sin, and, in fact, the mind is never satisfied to have sin explained as simply a defect.¹⁷ The defect becomes sin for us only in virtue of the fact that the God-consciousness, impotent against the sensuous impulse, disavows as consciousness of the divine will that state of defect, whether simultaneously or before or after; for, without such disavowal, which is simply the recognition of a commanding or prohibiting divine will, there is no sin. We shall accordingly be able to say that, as the recognition of the commanding will is wrought in us by God, the fact that the inefficacy of the God-consciousness becomes sin in us is likewise wrought by Him, and indeed wrought with a view to redemption.¹⁸ For the consciousness of an as yet meagre potency of the God-consciousness would be that of a state that must needs be transcended, but the consciousness of a state in which there is antagonism to the divine will is a consciousness of something that must be wholly annulled.

Taking up now the other standpoint, let us ask what meaning compatible with sin’s being our own act we can give to the idea that sin is not brought about by God. If sin is not to be attributed to the divine causality on the alleged ground of its being a negation, we must bear in mind that, in accordance with what has been said above, it shares that feature with all finite being, and may therefore be none the less our own act, as finitude is the very stuff of our experience; yet negation too is eternally wrought by God within and along with the whole development of the God-consciousness. Again, if the reason why there can be no divine causality for sin is that it is out of harmony with the commanding will of God, let us remember that it has this in common with all the good that is indubitably originated by God, to which sin is always attached, as indeed it is present in association with all good whatever; and even so it is still our own act, as yet out of connexion with redemption.¹⁹ Only if sin were a thing absolutely contradictory to the commanding will of God, such as would utterly annul sin in us, would it be impossible to think of the efficient will of God as related to sin. Sin, however, is never such, else it would imply the state of absolute hardening which, as we have seen, does not lie within the human sphere at all. Hence our supplementary clause is fully justified, for it is through the commanding will of God present within us that the impotence of the God-consciousness becomes sin for us. By that will, accordingly—though it may be impossible to ascribe any particular act of sin to a divine causality specially pertaining to it—sin has been ordained by God, not indeed sin in and of itself, but sin merely in relation to redemption; for otherwise redemption itself could not have been ordained.

4. Nevertheless, if it be held that sin arose out of a sinless state of morally perfect activity, we must concede that our proposition does not solve the difficulties. On the assumption of a state of that kind, we must either have recourse to the theory of such a withdrawal of God’s hand as would imply a special divine act veritably giving rise to sin, or else we must represent sin as a revolt—surely least explicable in such a state—directed towards the complete subversion of the commanding will of God. Hence thinkers who proceed on that assumption usually resort to the idea that, as God is not the Author of sin, and nevertheless sin actually exists, it exists by His ‘permission.’ A term such as this, however, derived as it is from human government and its conditions, is admissible only in a sphere of divided causation. But eternal causality is like no other, and all temporal causality must be uniformly related to it. More confusing still than the idea of permission, however, is the hypothesis that, though God may have ordained sin, He ordained it only as an indispensable means to wider ends of high moment, making the evils consequent upon sin a source of more than countervailing gain, and through Christ completely effacing the mischief of sin itself.²⁰ But quite apart from the fact that the antithesis of means and end cannot exist for a purely creative and all-creating will, we could not well imagine a more fallacious way of presenting Christianity than to say that Christ came only to make good the mischief arising from sin, while God, looking to the manifold gains to come thereby, could not dispense with sin itself. As against this, our own theory is that sin was ordained only in view of redemption, and that accordingly redemption shows forth as the gain bound up with sin; in comparison with which there can be no question whatever of mischief due to sin, for the merely gradual and imperfect unfolding of the power of the God-consciousness is one of the necessary conditions of the human stage of existence.

§ 82. What has been said concerning the divine causality with regard to sin holds good also with regard to evil, in virtue of its connexion with sin.

Sol. Decl., p. 641: Poenae vero peccati originalis, quas Deus filiis Adae ratione huius peccati imposuit, hae sunt, mors, aeterna damnatio et praeter has aliae corporales spirituales temporales atque aeternae aerumnae et miseriae. P. 819: Ut enim Deus non est causa peccati, ita etiam non est poenae.—Conf. Bohem. iv.: Insuper docent, omnia incommoda et adflictiones quibus hic quatimur conflictamurque meritissimo iure a Deo ob peccata hominibus infligi.

1. The parallelism expressed in this proposition is for the most part recognized and assented to, but it is only sparingly dealt with in the symbolic documents, and seldom consistently developed in the systems of doctrine. This is more or less due to the fact that the treatment of the subject has had mixed up with it two irrelevant matters, and these we would eliminate at once. To begin with, everywhere in the discussion we meet with the misleading assumption that God has conjoined evil with sin in the purely arbitrary fashion exemplified in the penalties of human law; and with this, again, has been combined the idea of eternal penal suffering—a procedure which, though compatible with the assumption just indicated, we for our part cannot follow, since we are here concerned only with what is given in our self-consciousness, and as yet we lack all the data for the discussion of the latter problem. Just as little, however, have we any occasion to suggest the idea of an arbitrary penal law instituted by God. Were we to apply the previously cited Mosaic passages²¹ to this point, we should also have to make room for the fantastic notion that the nature of the physical world had been changed by the entrance of sin. In the economy of the world, resting as it does upon the divine causality, it is impossible that one thing should be more and another less arbitrary; everything is equally arbitrary, or else equally not so.

2. Now, keeping to what is given in our self-consciousness on the matter, we find there two opposed interpretations of evil. One is that we ascribe evil to ourselves as the consequence of our sins, thereby denying that God is the Author of evil in the same sense as He is the Author of the original perfection of the world; and this view is amply justified by the fact that the latter conception implies, not that the world is the domain of evil, but rather that everything involved in the relative antagonism between our own life and other things operates merely as a stimulus. The other interpretation is that we acquiesce in all the evils of life as the expression of a divine decree passed upon us. Now, this acquiescence justifies itself most completely in those cases where we can regard evils affecting us as linked up with the atoning sufferings of Christ—as indeed all fellowship with Christ must be capable of being regarded as a fellowship in His sufferings. Observe, however, that the said evils, if viewed purely and exclusively in this light, could not really be regarded as evils in which we must simply acquiesce, but would rather be calls and incentives to a definite spiritual activity—challenges to be embraced with joy. Since, however, we are at the same time conscious of evil, and the said interpretation is also applied in cases where there is no special ‘link between that evil and our participation in Christ’s redemptive work; this clearly implies the assumption that evil as such has its origin in God—not indeed evil taken purely by itself, but only in its relation to sin, as that which alone runs counter to the simple and unqualified interpretation of the hindrances of our sense-life as being but incentives to action. Here again therefore the true solution is to be found, not in the view that, as evil is grounded in our freedom through the medium of sin, it is not derived from God, but rather in the view that, as we posit everywhere the eternal along with the temporal causality, evil likewise, just in so far as it is grounded in our freedom, is at the same time ordained by God, while if it is not ordained by God, it cannot properly exist at all. It cannot be grounded in God in so far as it takes the form of a conflict of finite beings, for these are ordained by God not in their particularity, but solely in their mutual dependence and measure. So far therefore it does not really exist, but is for us merely a semblance arising from our way of isolating things. God has ordained, however, that the natural imperfections are regarded by us as evil in proportion as the God-consciousness is not yet dominant within us, as also that sin develops into social evil in proportion as it is dominant, while at the same time both sin and evil are likewise grounded in our freedom.

3. The two facts, however—that connexion of evil with sin which is grounded in our freedom, and the divine causation of evil in relation to sin—become explicable only when we look at sin as corporate action and at evil as corporate suffering. The individual cannot say, except incidentally, that the evils from which he suffers are traceable to his own freedom; the truth is that wherever the sin is with which evil is linked, there too is the freedom from which it issues. But as no sin belongs exclusively to the individual, the said connexion can be exhibited only in the context of a corporate life, and that the more clearly the more independent and self-contained this corporate life is. Taken strictly, therefore, even this explanation only covers those whose existence is due to natural generation and who depend upon a corporate life from the outset; whereas, with regard to the first human being, considered by himself, it is difficult to represent the divine causality present in evil as combined with the fact that evil originated in his own freedom; and the difficulty is all the greater the more necessary we find it to assume an initial condition free from natural imperfections. In that case it is, in fact, hardly possible to avoid the thought of an arbitrary decree of God linking evil with sin—and indeed the attempt to explain our present human evils from the natural properties of the forbidden fruit does not evade it either; in which case the confessional statement quoted above can claim no sort of validity.

Postscript.—We can exhibit divine attributes only as modes of the divine causality; it follows that, were God in no sense the Author of sin and evil, there could be no divine attributes in virtue of which sin and evil would exist. If, however, we have satisfactorily proved the existence of that causality, we must also enunciate divine attributes or modes of action of a peculiar type and distinct from those hitherto laid down—all the more that sin and evil are on the one hand ordained by God, and on the other are to be done away by redemption. Now, if we had to formulate the concepts of these attributes for the first time, we might hesitate as to whether it were better to propose two—one for sin and the other for evil—or one only, since evil depends solely upon sin. But in point of fact, the religious consciousness has long ago attained to clearness about this situation, and has expressed this aspect of the divine causality in the twin concepts of holiness and justice. This might doubtless be criticized on the ground that in our ordinary language the former concept does not relate to sin alone so much as to the antithesis between good and bad, and similarly the latter not so much to evil alone as to the antithesis between reward and punishment. But in fact the two terms, especially the first, have been defined and explained in so many other ways as well, and even—reward and punishment being simply the outflow of the divine pleasure and displeasure—brought so close to each other in meaning, that the following discussion of them will best show how relevant they are at our present stage, and how no other meaning can be held to than that which we shall attach to them here.

Note: 40, 1 and § 55.

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Footnotes

1. See § 48. ↩

2. Melanchthon, Loc., p. 121: Respondeo de renatis adultis omnes concedere coguntur reliqua esse peccata. Cf. 1 John 1⁸.—Conf. Anglic. xv.: Sed nos reliqui etiam baptizati et in Christo regenerati in multis tamen offendimus omnes. ↩

3. Cf. § 74, 3. ↩

4. Gal. 4⁴. Conf. Aug. 19: Tametsi Deus creat et adiuvat naturam, tamen causa peccati est voluntas malorum videlicet diaboli et impiorum, quae non adjuvante Deo avertit se ad alias res.—Sol. Decl., p. 647: Neque Deus est creator vel autor peccati.—Melanchthon, Loc., p. 72: Non igitur Deus causa est peccati, nec peccatum est res condita aut ordinata a Deo. P. 76: peccatum ortum est a voluntate diaboli et hominis, nec factum est Deo volente.—Exp. Simpl. viii.: scientes … mala non esse quae fiunt respectu providentiae Dei voluntatis et potestatis Dei, sed respectu Satanae et voluntatis nostrae voluntati Dei repugnantis. —Conf. Hungar. (Ed. Aug., p. 251): Sicut impossibile est contrarie inter se pugnantia … causam efficientem for- malemque esse posse sibi contrariorum … ita impossibile est Deum, qui est lux, justitia … causam esse tenebrarum peccati … sed horum omnium causa Satanas et homines sunt. Quaecunque enim Deus prohibet et propter quae damnat facere ex se et per se non potest. 1. The use of the terms ‘Creator’ and ‘creation,’ as bearing upon sin, was made possible only through that scholastic misuse of abstract terms which gave to the controversy about original sin the peculiar turn represented by the question whether it was a substance or an accident. That usage, however, is as it stands quite inadmissible, since sin is not an independent entity, and does not form an independent process. And just as little—least of all if we distinguish between ‘creation’ and ‘preservation’—can we apply the said terms to the sinful nature, since that nature does not start with sin, but sin first makes its appearance in the course of life. If, however, we still keep to the statement that God is not the Cause or the Author of sin, we find that such denial, taken strictly, involves two distinct ideas, one of which stands out more prominently in the first two, the other in the last two, citations given above. The first is that, as in God thought and creation are one,[^a] and as sin cannot be a divine thought or purpose, there cannot be in God any creative will in relation to sin or the sinful nature. But the same might be said of every finite nature. The sinful nature is a blending of the being and not-being of the God-consciousness, but in the same way every finite nature is a blending of being and not-being; and not-being can no more than sin be the divine purpose. Yet in relation to every finite nature there is a creative divine will—not, however, as something existing purely by itself, but as comprised in the will that creates the finite God-consciousness in its entirety, and thus embraces redemption likewise. Hence the first or negative clause of the Church’s doctrine requires modification in the sense that the negation is not to be taken as implying that sin must be referred to another creative will which is actually such in the same sense as God is Creator in general, i.e. in virtue of a timeless eternal causality; for, were the negation so taken, the same would hold good in every case of individual differentiated being, and ultimately therefore of the entire aggregate of such. In that case we should be forced to choose between a demiurge—distinct from God—as the creator of the world, who created also the sinful nature as such, and an evil primordial being—opposed to God ↩

5. It is quite clear that in bringing the devil into the matter our confessional documents had not this in view. For they regard the devil as coming under the same category as man, namely, that of a free finite being, so that his sin, too, is to be thought of as grounded in his freedom, and his relation to human sin is by no means to be regarded as prejudicing the fact that man’s sin is grounded in his own freedom. Thus the introduction of the devil brings no Manichæan element whatever into the Church’s doctrine, especially as that heresy is none the more easily obviated if we leave the devil out of account. ↩

6. Cf. § 72. ↩

7. Calvin., Inst. i. 18. 4: Perperam enim miscetur cum praecepto voluntas, quam longissime ab illo differre innumeris exemplis constat. ↩

8. Rom. 7⁸ᶠ. ¹⁶⁻¹⁸. ↩

9. Phil. 2¹³. ↩

10. Cf. § 66, I; § 74, 3. ↩

11. Cf. § 63, 3. ↩

12. Cf. § 51, I. ↩

13. Cf. § 49. ↩

14. Cf. Gen. 3¹². ¹³. ↩

15. Cf. § 74. ↩

16. Melanchthon, Loci. Th., p. m. 76: Etsi enim sustentat naturam, tamen defectus illi in mente non efficiuntur ab ipso. ↩

17. Cf. § 68. ↩

18. Gal. 3²². ↩

19. Only in this sense can we accept the formula of the Augsburg Confession: voluntas non adjuvante Deo avertit se ad alias res. The original German phrase, which, however, has been altered in the revised German Confession, certainly points to a more positive sense: alsbald so Gott die Hand abgethan (’ as soon as God withdraws His hand ‘). For this withdrawal of God’s hand, as a special divine act, would then be the primary condition of sin. ↩

20. Cf. Reinhard, Dogm. § 75. ↩

21. Gen. 3¹⁴. ¹⁶⁻¹⁸; cf. § 75, 1. ↩