RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Adoption
getic writers, to be a child of God means subjectively the ethical resemblance with God which man realizes in himself by his free action on the basis of the knowledge of God as taught by Christ. Since ethics was absorbed in individual practise of virtue and consciousness of moral freedom, the desire for a counterbalance against the moral checks from the world was not felt so much. Irenaeus follows Paul by conceiving adoption as the specific effect of redemption; but he understands it, in the 5. The first place, in a moralistic sense, as a Apologists, call to the fulfilment of the deepened law of nature, not only in increased love, but fear; in the second place, in a physical sense, as the sacramental elevation of the spirit to deification or imperishableness. This combination remains a characteristic feature of the Greek Church. Augustine deepened the physical change into an ethical change which governs ethical actions. Because God's nature is first of all justice, and only secondarily immortal, adoption, as being deification, is in the first place justification, infusion of love (amando Deum efjicimur dii — " by loving God we are made gods"; again — "he who justifies also deifies, because by justifying he makes sons of God"), which takes place under the influence of faith, i.e., hopeful prayer, or through baptism. Thus man faces the task — Reddite diem, efjicimini spiritus (" Do your part, and become spirit "). Adoption becomes a reality in a process in which the capacity for it increases by continual forgiveness and inspiration of love until after death the second adoption occurs, the liberation from the body which contains the law of sin.
6. Augus- Our life is a relation between child tine. and father in so far as love to God,
childlike fear, and hope rule in it. But the idea of the New Testament is curtailed in so far as forgiveness concerns always only past sins, and hope is bound to rely upon one's own consciousness of love to God and upon merit, and forgiveness becomes uncertain in consequence of predestination, and in so far as, with the task to serve God in the world, the New Testament manner of trusting in God is also done away with, and a holy indifference takes its place. The relation of God seems to be intensified in so far as there is added as a new element the highest stage of divine love — the mystical contemplation of God; but the apparent plus discloses itself as a minus, since love to God is now conceived of by analogy with that between man and woman instead of that between father and child. Mysticism, it is true, elevates man to freedom from the Church, but it effects also indifference toward men; however, in the premystical stage there shows itself lack of independence of the Church.
In the Occident the curtailment of the childlike
in Christian life was still further indulged in by
bringing to prominence the ideas of
7. Scholas- the natural, juridical, and mystical; ticism. of the natural in so far as according
to the scholastics a habit of grace is infused into the secret recesses of the soul, the existence of which can only be surmised by way of inference from one's own ethical transformation; of the
juridical in so far as the provenience of hope from merit (" spes provenit ex m,eritis ") is more strongly emphasized; of the mystical inasmuch as the higher stage of the love of God seems realizable only in a thorough separation from occupation with worldly matters (the lower stage is identified with childlike fear) and inasmuch as even the mysticism of calmness and resignation over against an arbitrary Lord is far inferior to trust in the Father.
It was Luther who again conceived the relation of Christians to God as that of children to a father in the full sense of the word. For Luther Christ is the " mirror of the fatherly heart of God," the revelation and security of God's gracious disposition, and he draws from this " image of grace " faith and individual trust. He differs from Paul in so far as he understands by the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit the personal certainty of faith which has its basis in Christ. As for Paul, so for Luther,
forgiveness of sins or justification or 8. Luther, adoption is a declaration of the will of
God that he adopts us as children. It is more than the remittance of past sins, it is the reception of the whole personality into the grace of God, the transposition into a permanent state which always has to be seized again by faith. Thus it is shown to be an error that meritorious works are necessary in order to obtain grace and eternal life. In this way Luther does not destroy the ethical quality of adoption, but makes it more prominent. For secure trust unites the will with God's entire will in love and thus spontaneously produces, without needing the instruction and inculcation of the law, the free and cheerful fulfilment of the will of God which takes place without any thought of reward and in which eternal life is enjoyed. This psychological derivation of morality from the nature of faith actually invalidates Luther's other derivation from the natural or unconscious impulse of the Holy Spirit. Only his opposition to the doctrine of merits made him forget to do justice to the eschatological motives of morality as they are found in Jesus and Paul, although he might have done so, considering his premises; for will needs an aim and for the will united with God in faith and love, this aim can only be the completion of that which was begun here. Faith gives him new courage and power for trust in the guidance of the whole life by the Father in which again the joy of eternal life is anticipated, and thus lays the basis for the freedom of the Christian or his royal dominion over all things which manifests itself in fearlessness and pride and defiance of Satan, world, and death as the counterpart of humble submission to God and which through the certainty of the blessing of divine guidance surpasses mysticism — ecstasies as well as resignation in God. This attitude of children is a life which is homogeneous to that of the Father, in the first place, to his disposition, in so far as our trust is a reflex of God's disposition toward us and our love corresponds to the love of God since it is not borrowed from the amiability of men, but is spontaneous, and not a divided love like that of men, but an all-comprehending one; in the second place, to the nature
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