7. The Biblical doctrine of sin, as here outlined, enables us to interpret the Incarnation in harmony with the best modern psychology. It is no longer possible to think of human nature apart from per- sonality as a bundle of facilities, among which, as
SINCERITY
ISINCEKITY
G35
we have experience of it, iw the faculty of sin. Sin therefore is not an ingredient in ordinary iiunian- ity, whicli must be regarded as absent from the pure liumanity assumed by the Son of God. To inquire wliether the manhood in Christ was callable of sin is irrelevant, when it is perceived that im- personal natures are abstractions of thought with no existence in fact. Sin is hostility to what Jesus Christ is, the living God. The house of a personality, human or Divine, or, as in the case of Christ, both, cannot be divided against itself. The trutli expressed in the old theological con- ception of the impersonal humanity of our Lord is simply this, that He received by inheritance from the human race whatsoever is capable of transmission, the structural fabric with which biology is concerned, the material within which conscious personality expresses itself. Thus He is in all points like to His brethren, who inherit from their ancestry what in itself is morally neither good nor bad. He was identified with human sin, not only representatively but vitally (Ro 5'-"-", Ps 2-*) — a truth which so far eludes state- ment as almost inevitably to involve in heresy those who, like Edward Irving, seek to express it. But the Word became flesh, and that without sin, not because the virus was omitted in the act of con- ception, but because, being God, He cannot deny Himself, the terms ' sin ' and ' God ' being mutu- ally exclusive. God became man under those con- ditions which sin had created, viz. the environment of Satan's kingdom together with the guilt and penalty of death. He did not therefore redeem by becoming man, but by surrendering Himself to the entire consequences, reversing the sentence of condemnation, by death overcoming death, and opening the new environment of the Kingdom of heaven to all believers. The fact of the Atone- ment witnesses against the view that the Incarna- tion was the destruction of an evil heredity through union with the Divine nature. Its principle is the indwelling of the Personal Spirit of holiness first in Jesus Christ (Ro 1^) and thereafter in the free personalities of the children of God (8"), expelling by His presence and power ' the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience' (Eph 2^).
Literature. — J. Miiller, The Christian Doctrine of Sin, Eng. tr. 2 vols.; J. TuUoch, The Christian Doctrine of Sin; A. Moore, Some Aspects of Sin ; C. Gore, Appendix ii. on ' Sin ' in Lux Mundi i" ; O. Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, § ' Sin ' ; Clemen, Die Christl. Lehre v. der Siinde; F. R. Tennant, The Origin and Propagation of Sin (Hulsean Lectures), also Sources of the Doctrine of the Fall and Original Sin (valuable on account of its historical survey of the development of Christian theory) ; Professor James Orr, God's Image in Man, etc. ; The Child and Religion (a volume of essays by various authors ; Hastings' DB, artt. 'Sin,' 'Fall, and 'Heredity.' In addition to these, most of the standard works on Systematic Theology may be usefully consulted ; also Sanday-Headlam's Commen- tary on the Epistle to the Romans. For science, G. Romanes, Exam, of Weismannisni ; Haeckel, The Last Link ; P. N. Waggett, Religion and Science. For the Ritschlian theory see A. Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, Eng. tr. ch. 5 ; also A. E. Garvie, The Ritschlian Theology, ch. 10.
J. G. Simpson. SINCERITY.—
The term.— In the English of 1611 'sincere' was an apt tr. of aioXo; applied to yocXx—' the sincere milk of the word ' (1 P 22). It has no longer, however, the sense of ' unadulterated ' other than in an ethical sense, so that the RV goes back to the older version of Wyclif—' without gile.' 'Sincerity' must, however, always bear the association of that which is unmixed. In origin and in meaning it is akin to ' simiilicity ' and ' single- ness ' (aTXoi/V) ; in meaning to ' purity ' {xxOxpo; , Uyvi;) ; but it is most often used in the RV to tr. uXixpny,;. In so far as this word differs from others of like meaning, it contemplates character as 'the purged, the winnowed, the unmingled.' If ' purity ' (xaOape;) speaks of freedom from the defilements of the world as soiling the soul, 'sincerity' speaks of freedom from its falsehoods as from a foreign admixture (Trench, Synont/ms, § Ixxxv.). The word is used also to tr. xyvu? and ■ytir.a-mv ; but in every case it implies the absence of all that is false and that makes life double (Lightfoot on Ph HC).
It follows from the usage of the Avord that it may be applied to mind, or to act, or to speech ; but
everywhere it carries the sense of unadulterated or unmingled, so that, while the word is not used in the Gospels, it is plain that these set forth in Christ the pattern of sincerity. It is also clear that Christ demanded of men sincerity, if they were to enter and to abiile in the Kingdom of God. It is at once the presupposition of a Christian experience, and the bond of the Christian society.