THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
sonal life. Thus the New Testament attests that the individual is not accountable for the sin of the race as such, but only for his conscious participation of the same (Luke xii. 37; Matt. xxv. 42), and forgiveness is not of original sin, but individual sins (Matt. vi. 12, ix. 2). Guilt is always individual. It may be said that the greater the spiritual maturity of a man the more his sin has become his guilt, and the further his influence extends the more the sin of the community establishes his personal guilt. Likewise the traditional view of eternal damnation as the universal punishment of sin is not to be maintained. That the sin of man, awakened by divine revelation to his life mission, is at the same time guilt that estranges from God and must be removed by forgiveness is the irrelinquishable conviction of every Christian. It does not follow, however, that the punishment must be absolute and alike for all sins. Eternal damnation as a general punishment of original sin is inadequate to God's offended righteousness. The New Testament suggests an individualizing on the part of God's righteousness (Matt. xi. 24; Rom. ii. 2 sqq.). The Christian faith maintains, (1) without forgiveness of sins, no salvation; (2) every one that persists in unbelief will receive just punishment in proportion to his guilt known only to God. Religiously sin is unbelief, and as such simply godlessness, admitting of no degrees; ethically, it is a deviation from the moral standard, varying in extent, principle, and persistence. God judges according to the impartial standard of just ethical estimation. Only his pardon follows the higher norm of grace not conceivable on the principle of adequate requital, but immanent in him in the total idea of the moral world order.
The problem of the origin of sin offers no difficulties exclusively in the light of punishable sin. The basis of this is in the conscious practise of freedom on the part of the personal creature. More 8. Theory difficult is the inquiry how formal huof Sin. man freedom acquired a content contradicting the divine will. Reference to the total life and original sin only defers the problem. That God willed sin or imposed it on man through his nature or law of development is repulsive to Christian judgment, and would be inconsistent with the divine judgment of sin. Neither is the evil will creative, but limited to the choice of alternative conduct. Neither could an extra-human power contrary to God possess a creative power beside him to originate evil. Attempts at solution in this direction have resulted in holding evil to be the mere negation of the good, which is unsatisfactory to the Christian conscience. The only solution remains that the content of the evil will comes from God; but so far as this is true such content is not yet evil, but mere imperfection. This involves not only the sensuous character of the beginning of human life, but also the naive egoism which obligates man to self-preservation. Both advance to the valuation of spiritual and common good in the course of ethical development. With this, imperfection is transmuted into sin. God intends this imperfection to be removed by man's own moral self-determination; man wants to retain it
against the known requirement of God. Imperfection becomes sin when approved and asserted by the alienated will as the state adapted to the subject. A derivation of sin does not contemplate at the same time establishing the basis of its religious and moral judgment. The latter approves itself by the revealed will of God; the former may be attempted only on the basis of coherent reflection upon the facts of experience. If the preceding explanation should lead to an apology for sin, it were better to abandon all attempt and assert the inconceivability of sin. Paul assumes this deduction of sin; the Church in its teaching abandoned his view by exaggerating the original state. If the first state was one of innocency and imperfection, then the latter became sin as soon as the human will refused the divine law of life that prescribed conquest. That it refused is an act of free will not further explainable, yet always to be determined as avoidable.
Christian faith can neither admit that God causes
sin as such, nor can it escape the conviction that
he is eternally aware of it and subjects it to his
world-dominion. How an act in time may be subject
of eternal cognizance is inconceivable
9. The to finite mind. The fact itself is at-
Court of tested by the revelation of salvation Conscience; through the death of Jesus Christ on Forgiveness, account of sin. How God permits room for sin in the world is to be seen in fact. The judgment of sin is concomitant with its unfolding in that its promised success proves itself as deception and its expected freedom as servitude. Servitude is punishment for the sinful deed. The bondage of the will, however, consists less in a confinement of the field of its activity than in the contraction of its horizon of vision and in the determinism of its motives, both of which are characteristic of the natural man. Many other evils are attendant penalties of sin which manifest their contradiction to the divine order and may only be referred to the personal conscience for experience and proof. The same holds true of Death (q.v.). A revealing and intensifying judgment of sin takes place in conscience, which reckons it as guilt to the sinner; this happens to a certain extent in consequence of the moral law, and more extensively in consequence of the moral message of divinely sent prophets (Rom. v. 20). That God consents to the unfolding of sin and sustains humanity in spite of it receives full explanation in the manifestation of his holy love for human redemption. This is a progressive abolition of sin proceeding from within outward. Beginning with the forgiveness of the debt, it continues with a renewal of the will, and culminates in the removal of evil . Such a redemption must have a historical act of God as its starting-point, attesting the divine disapproval of sin as well as love for the sinner. The Gospel of such an act is essentially one of forgiveness. In the Vedas and the Babylonian prayers this appears rather as the removal of the penal consequences than the restoration of the personal fellowship with God, as in the New Testament (Matt. ix. 5-G, Rom. v. 2). In the forgiveness of sin, the interference of this with the central relation of life to God is annulled, hence within the conception of sin there is no wider con-