proceeds theologically. Not indeed in such a form as to derive evil from God, or to assume a primal power of evil and two natures opposed from the time of creation, good and evil.1 But in keeping with his fondness for vast objective antitheses, he goes to the heart of the matter when, starting from God, he opposes the rooμos in general to God, and discovers the entire evil life in its innermost essence as antagonism to the divine. The word xóopos takes in John just the same commanding position as the "flesh" in Paul. The "world" has in him, first of all, the usual physical sense, without secondary evil meaning. Thus he calls the universe, the earth and this earthly system of things bound to time and space, especially the human world, kooμos. The word already contains an amphibological meaning, when God, who is the truth and light, the life and love, is opposed to the world. All this the world is not in itself. But still it is receptive of God. While it is not itself the supreme good, and ought not to be treated as such, it is capable of receiving, and destined to receive part therein. Of itself the world knows nothing of God and of fellowship with Him; in itself it is without truth, light, and blessedness, on which account Christ comes into it to speak and work. Nevertheless, this imperfection—its distinction from God-could not be described as sin. Only aversion from God, wilful ignorance of the truth and light, of life and love, and therefore the wilful self-centring of the world in its finitude, its exclusive self-attachment (Insichfixiren), as if it were the light and life, is sin and evil. But such living of the creature in itself, as if in self-glorification it were the real good, is based upon falsehood. In part it loves outward show, and lets itself be drawn 4 1 The Prologue of the Gospel derives everything finite from the life and light of the abyss. The finite is indeed without light in itself, and in so far darkness; but this innocent absence of light only becomes sin when the darkness asserts itself against the light (John i. 5), instead of accepting and retaining it. This is not prevented by its nature (i. 11, 12), which on the contrary needs the light (i. 4, xii. 35 f., 46). 2 John xvii. 5, 24, i. 9, 10, ix. 39, xi. 9, xii. 47, vi. 14, vii. 4, viii. 26, ix. 5 cf. Rev. xiii. 8, xvii. 8. The entirety of men : John iii. 16, 17, vii. 4, xii. 19. 3 John vi. 33, 51. Receptiveness: John iii. 16, 17, iv. 42, xii. 47, xvii. 21, 23. ix. 39, 41, xii. 35 f.; 1 John ii. 11. 6 John ix. 41. DORNER.-CHRIST. DOCT. II. 5 John i. 5. X ; 1 from God by sensuousness; in part it seeks its own honour, will not give it up, cannot submit to be rebuked by the light, but proudly closes itself against God. Thus, in John the world is called both the object of false, God-opposing love, and the subject. As the world, it loves not what is from God, but what is from the world. Both subject and object are combined, when it is said the world loves its own, i.e. the world loves itself. As the world, it cannot hate what is opposed to God, but loves it; it cannot love the good, but only hate it.5 In thus turning away from God and falling back on itself, it seeks to organize itself into a self-sufficing circle of its own, to which Christ and His people belong not, of which they are not, although found outwardly in the same world. And this it succeeds in doing to a certain degree. The whole world lies in wickedness through him who is in the world, the wicked One, Satan, who is the centre of all that is opposed to God, and who, as the world's false principle of unity, seeks to organize it into a counter-power to God, a kingdom of evil; for he is called ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμου τούτου. The world is thus a compact power, banded in conspiracy against Christ, and destined to be overcome. It would fain close itself against Christ; but it cannot prevent Him entering into it, into its compact unity, as light into its darkness. It may render itself insensible and blind to the light brought by Christ and His servants; 10 it may hate and slay His servants, but it must submit to have its nature judged by this light, nay, by its very opposition to the light, submit to pass unwilling judg ment on itself, to exhibit itself as darkness,11 and also to be judged at the last day.12 8 9 4. In thus thoroughly grasping evil in its absolute significance under its two main forms,--one more passive (where the spirit falls a prey to false dependence on the sensuous world, to deifying of the world), the other more 11 John ii. 16, 17. 31 John ii. 15. 5 John xv. 18, 19, xvi. 20; 1 John iii. 13. 2 John v. 41-44. * John xv. 19. 61 John iv. 4, v. 19. 7 John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11; cf. Eph. ii. 2, vi. 12. John xvi. 33. 9 John i. 9, ix. 5, xii. 46. 10 John i. 10, ix. 39, xiv. 17, xvii. 25; 1 John iii. 1. 11 John iii. 18 ff., xii. 31, 47 f., xvi. 11; cf. 1 Cor. vi. 2, xi. 32; Rom. iii. 6. 12 John v. 29, xii. 48. 5 3 active, deifying of self in pride and arrogance,-while deducing both from alienation from God, whose converse is some kind of false love, the New Testament leads at once to a standpoint, from which evil appears in a new light, namely as the irrational, as falsehood, as hollowness and emptiness, which has nothing but outward show and folly for its contents. To be falsehood is essential to evil in its sensuous form. For this form only gains acceptance through falsehood, as if the creature and not God were the supreme good, as if the world with its lusts did not pass away, as if the law were not given, and therefore God not holy, or in giving it not good, and finally as if, when the law is transgressed, God were not the righteous, almighty Judge of evil, and as if sin would lead to a higher state of existence in knowledge, freedom, and delight. Evil arrogates to itself a power which it possesses not; in order to cause despair of the triumph and power of good, it pretends to an immortality of pleasure, or at least impunity. But this falsehood is dissipated, and sin exhausts itself. The end of sin is the dispersion of the attractive show of false good; for all sin is a fantastic and false simulation of illusive benefits, a sort of superstition and deifying of the world. The end is death and destruction instead of life, bondage instead of freedom. The second chief form also only gains acceptance through falsehood. Pride before God rests upon untruth, upon denial of the creature's position. The "strong" are "weak." 8 Selfrighteousness is but a worse form of sin, because it denies the basis of morality and religion-humility. Whoever thinks himself pure deceives himself, i.e. untruth and falsehood is such a power in him as to deceive the deceiver who believes in it.10 The pre-Christian heathen religions, which exhibit an ethical character, like the higher dualistic systems, began indeed to grasp the fearful nature of evil, but not its reality 1 Rom. i. 21 ff., ii. 17 ff.; John iii. 19 f. 2 This is the diλsap in Jas. i. 14; the ways in Paul (Rom. xi. 9), 1 Tim iii. 7; 2 Tim. ii. 26. 31 John ii. 17. 6 Matt. iv. 8 f. 7 Rom. vii. 15 4 Gen. iii. 1. ávaros; Jas. i. 15; Rom. vi. 18 ff., 23. 9 Matt. xxi. 31 ff.; Luke v. 31, x. 29, xvi. 15; Mark ii. 17. 10 1 John i. 8. 5 Gen. iii. 4, 5. 8 Matt. ix. 12. and depth. They believe in the evil, which attributes to itself a power belonging only to God. They hold it to be inevitable, a view which maims the moral impulse, as it obscures the consciousness of guilt. On the other hand, in the O. T. and far more decisively in Christianity, the consciousness of the victorious power of goodness shows that the hollowness and folly of evil have been seen through. It is recognized as springing from falsehood, maintaining itself through falsehood, and also as ending, through the manifestation of its falsehood, in judgment. Satan is already judged.1 2 5. The superficial conception of evil stops at the evil acts, and does not recognize the evil state in which it culminates, and from which the evil act again issues. On this view it appears as consisting in mere isolated acts of momentary significance. But the N. T. recognizes also inherent sin." According to the apostle, alienation from God is accompanied by an evil state. He speaks of deadness to the divine, of insensibility, of a hard heart and conscience, of an old man.* Christ speaks in the same way.5 III-SIN AS A POWER IN THE HUMAN RACE, OR AS GENERIC SIN. § 736. According to Biblical teaching, the actual, like the inherent, sin of the individual does not stand as something isolated, but is in most intimate connection with the entire race. LITERATURE.-Oehler, Theol. of O. T. I. 235 ff. [Clark]. Weiss, ut supra, §§ 67, 153. Observation. As the generic character of evil is of the highest importance, both for a correct idea of evil and for redemption, it is worth while first of all to review the 1 John xvi. 11; Luke x. 18. [Blosse Einzelheit, mere individuality.] 3 àμapríα vexpά, Rom. vii. 8, is sin not yet active. Eph. ii. 12, iv. 17 ff., 22; Col. iii. 9. Matt. vii. 18, viii. 22; John iii. 5, viii. 38. Scripture history of the relation between the genus and the individual in reference to sin. 2 1. In the O. T. are already found the materials for the conception of evil as a generic characteristic, and not merely as a matter of the individual person. A common life in a good and evil sense is often spoken of, the ruling assumption in general being, that the members of a general body, kinsmen in race, are homogeneous by nature or by example and custom, specifically in a moral and religious respect, more certainly, however, in evil than in good. Here come in those two lines or circles of life in the oldest history of mankind, although the division is not such as to make all interchange in a good and bad sense impossible. In these circles the individual persons are considered as so bound together, that not merely is a general sum of evil spoken of (in which case certainly each individual might only be responsible for his share), but a general sin and guilt of this circle, and that the individual without more ado is regarded as jointly responsible for the whole to which he belongs, as involved in its guilt,1 and conversely, the righteousness of one benefits the whole. The less the advance in personal self-dependence, the greater the importance attached to the truth that the particular individual is to be estimated by the total life of which he is a member, and which exercises sway over him. According to the O. T., at first a preponderance of the generic over the personal life obtains. This is the physical stage, for the genus is necessarily preponderant, where the personal element has yet made no progress. Hence it is said, that the transgression of the fathers is visited upon the children, who are also assumed to be evil, to the third and fourth generation. The proverb: "The apple falls not far from the trunk," as Hengstenberg rightly says, has its application where no principle of regeneration as yet exists. The same thought of the responsibility of the individual for his race, and of the whole for the individual, this solidarity of their relation is also a fundamental assumption in the obligation of the nation to punish the sin of the individual and do away with wickedness, in order that the whole 1 Here the mention of the Flood is in place, Gen. vi.; the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrha, Gen. xix., and so on. 2 Gen. xviii. 22 f., 31. 3 Ex. xx. 5, 6; cf. xxxiv. 7, and Deut. v. 9. |