FALL OF MAN
474
FALL OF MAN
"that neither 'the ima<;e of God,' -vvhorein man was created, nor God's pronouncini^ everything ' very good,' prevents our believing that the fall was only the out- ward manifestation of a perversion of the will preced- ing the empirical life of man — the outgo of an evil al- ready present in potentia, which might, indeed, bj' a persevering effort, have been crushed, but which forms the basis of an original moral depravity in human na- ture. The endeavor of the tempter was to bring out to view, and into action, this hidden evil" {Doctrine nf Shi, Edinb. lf<()8, ii, 385). This view of Miiller's rests upon his theory of a sin of man in some pre-existent state, which he calls a "self-determination of the trans- cendent:il freedom before our individual existence." IJotho, on the other hand (Ethik, ii, 180), places the es- sence of sin chiefly in the necessit}' of matter. " The passage through sin, in his opinion, is a metaphj^sical necessity. He conceives of our first parents not as mature at their creation, but destined to spiritual de- velopment ; consequently their material part, in the aljsence of training, must gain the upper hand; and imperceptibly, and without blame, they found them- selves, by their development, in sin. Hence evil lies in the divine world-plan, not merely as something per- mitted ; it lies unavoidably in the creature, on account of his origin- — in the fact of his coming into existence in contradistinction from God ; but as creature-evil has been ordained in the plan of the world, so'also has its destruction, as it may come to light. Rothe (p. 204) opanly declares that the ' effort to separate evil from all connection with the divine causalitj' must ever re- main an idle undertaking;' although even he himself, in a measure startled at this result, imagines himself to hold the causation of human sin entirely apart from God. He says : ' The divine production of evil is at the same time its absolute destruction. Within the sphere of redemption the necessity of sinning is not entirely removed, but is conceived of as constantlj' vanishing.' "
In opposition to Miiller and Rothe, as well as to all who presuppose evil as fundamental and its develop- ment as necessary. Pastor Rinck wrote an able article. Von dem Ursprung des Bosen, in the Theol. Studun u. Kritikcn for 1852 (p. 651 sq. ; translated by Dr. Nadal in the Methodist Qwirterhj, October, 1853), from which we make the following extract. After stating that it matters not, for this discussion, whether the Scripture ryirrative be literal or figurative, he states its substan- tial import as follows: "God caused ths tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil to grow up in the midst of the garden, and commanded man, ' Of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat ; for in the daj' thou eatest thereof thou shalt sure- \y die.' This tree of knowledge, as planted by God, is not yet evil, but contains in itself the choice hetireen good and evil^the innate possibility of sinning, which possibility is bound up with the \GTy conception of a free being, whose liberty is not the divine necessitj', but lies outside of it. It is a tree of divine commands and prohibitions — olijectively conceived, the object of knowledge ; or, subjectively, the possibility of trans- gressing the command, the object of free choice. Alongside of this stands the tree of life ; and both arc united to prove that the mere possibility of evil, which is involved in the creation of man, is not vet anything evil or death-bringing. Onh' with the realization of the possibility does opposition to the tree of life arise, i. e. the true life is forfeited, and death, curse, and de- struction appear in its place. The tree of life, which the liring (iod had ]ilanted for man, and his expressed will not to eat of the tree of knowledge, presuppose tiie possibility of not transgressing, because God could neither require anj'thing impossible of man, nor in- volve him inextricably in the meshes of a scheme which would certainly exclude him from the tree of life. 'I'be origin of evil from absolute good must for- ever remain inconceivable ; not so with relative good.