Thus it is a peculiarity of the Oberlin ethical philos- ophy to regard virtue, or righteousness, and sin as in their own nature antagonistic to each other, each being contradictory of the other, and necessarily exclusive of it. Virtue being benevolence, and sin the refusal to be benevolent, they cannot coexist in the same will. The will must be, at any given time, wholly in one at- tituile or the other. They may alternate, one giving place to the other, but in the unity of action which of necessity belongs to the will they cannot coexist. The supposition of coexistence involves essentially a twofold personality, capable of maintaining at the same instant contradictory ultimate attitudes of will. Hence the sinner, in turning from his sin, discards it utterly for the time being, and yields his whole will to God ; and the good man, falling into sin, fails utterly in the benev- olent attitude of the Avill ; and, so far as his moral ac- tion is concerned, during that lapse he is wholly wrong. Many of his former experiences and plans and execu- tive purposes may remain unchanged ; but the element of righteousness — the benevolent attitude of the will — is at the time wholly wanting,
3. This view of moral action as necessarily either right or wrong, and of moral character as necessarily, at any given time, either one thing or the other, has shaped what has been known as the Oberlin doctrine of sancti- fication. The view first promulgated at Oberlin by JMr. Finney and others was based upon the prevalent idea that somewhat of sin still remains in the character and action of the converted man, coexisting with his obe- dience. Tlie problem of sanctification must be to elim- inate this remnant of sin, and make the obedience entire and permanent. This view led to the idea of a special experience, corresponding with the original conversion, in which the Christian rises from a partial to a comjjlete obedience. The attainment of this condition must be always possible and obligatory, just as the original con- version was possil)le and obligatory to tlic sinner. The oidy difliculty in the way must be a partial and imper- fect faith. On this view, there woukl be two classes of Christians — the simply converted, rendering a partial consecration and obedience, and the entirely sanctified,
whose consecration and obedience are entire. The preaching of the privilege and duty of entire sanctifica- tion, as thus apprehended, in the community at Oberlin, led to a very general quickening of the religious life, and to many marked experiences regarded at the time as the experience of entire sanctification. But in the fuller development of the conception of moral action as necessarily simple, forbidding the coexistence of sin and holiness, a restatement of the doctrine of sanctification became necessary. In this view conversion necessarily becomes entire consecration, and obedience and faitli, as moral exercises, are necessarily comjilete. The ditHculty with the regenerate soul is not that he has made only a partial surrender of his will, but that he is weak and temptable and inexperienced, liable at any moment to lapse into sin under the pressure of temptation. Sanc- tification, then, becomes a growth, an attainment of ex- perience and strength, not to be found in one special experience, an instantaneous rising from a partial to an entire consecration, but in the attainment of stabil- ity and strength and spiritual power by successive en- lightenments and baptisms of the Spirit, and by "patient continuance in well-doing." No clear line of division can separate sanctified and unsanctified Christians. Every believer is sanctified in the sense of being entirely conse- crated ; and there are as many degrees of enlightenment and strength and stability as there are varying experi- ences in the Church of God. With this clearer view of the nature of moral action, the inculcation of the attain- ment of sanctification by one special experience ceased to be a feature of the religious instruction at Oberlin. The baptism of the Spirit is still presented as an object of faith and prayer, the standing promise of Christ to his people, affording to him who receives it light and strength and stability.
4. The theoretical and practical views maintained at Oberlin may be gathered from the following publica- tions: The Oberlin Evanf/elist (Oberlin, 1839-1862, 24 vols.) ; The Oberlin Quurterly Revieio (ibid. 1845-1849, 4 vols.) ; Finney's Systematic Theoloyy (ibid. 1845, 1840, 2 vols.; republished in London, 1851, 1 vol.); Accepta- ble Holiness and The Gift of the Holy Ghost (two small vols, by Prof. Morgan [ibid. 1875]) ; FairchikVs Moral Philosophy (N. Y. 18G9). See also New-Englander, Oct. 1872, art. vi; Bullet, thiol. 1869, Dec. 25, p. 310; Hauck, Theol. Jahresbericht, 1869, ii, 65. (J. H. F.)
Oberndorfer, Celestin, a German Roman Cath- olic theologian, was born at Landshut in 1724. He joined the Benedictines, and became successively pro- fessor of logic, then of natural philosophy, and after- wards of theology in the College of Freysing. He died in 1765. He wrote, Scholw catholicorum, turn philoso- phia, ttttn theologia propter snam, quam indocendo usur- pant, etc. (Freysing, 1756, 2 pts. 4to) : — Resohitiones ex psychologia et thcoloyia naturali (ibid. 1758, 4to) : — Brevis apparatus eriiditionis de fontibus theologice (Augsb. 1760, 5 pts. 4to) : — Theoloyia dogmatico-histo- rico-scliolasticn (Freiburg, 1762-1765, 5 vols. 8vo) : — Sy sterna theologice dogmatico-histoiico-criticum (Frey- sing, 1762-1765, 5 vols. 8vo) ; Zacher added seven more volumes to this work. See Baader, Lexifcon Buierischer Schrtftsteller ; '^lcuic\, Lexikon. — lloefer, Kouv. Biog. Generale, xxxviii, 401.