race, a new and pure beginning, not a continuance in the same line, perhaps with enhanced energy, but a turning back from the wrong path. But by this universal sinfulness, the personal participation and guilt of the individual is not meant to be excluded.1 As then John, in respect of universal sinfulness, does not so introduce the power of the Prince of the world as to overlook the fact of its being based on the natural interconnection of men, so Paul, while adhering to the Mosaic Hamartigeny, goes yet a step farther back to an historic cause within the human race, and in this way brings to a conclusion what is left still indefinite in the Johannæan passage under consideration. He goes back to the first progenitor and his actual sin, not to an irregularity in human nature due to creation, by which sin was brought into the world. Just as surely as he regards Christ not merely as the first in a series, but as the cause, the progenitor of a new race, so surely must he also have thought of Adam as a causality of the sinfulness of the entire human family, although he does not more particularly specify the manner in which the cause. operated. And as he had described heathen and Jews as equally in need of redemption, so now, by recurring to their common progenitor, he combines the sin of both as a whole, describes it as chargeable with general guilt and subject to general punishment, to a кaтáкpiμa, with which is contrasted as a healing, indivisible power the Sixaiwμa of Christ, our receptiveness for which is just as great as our need. 3. Distinctions of degree in evil and in guilt. The first men are not cursed, but only the serpent and the earth for man's sake; but in the case of Cain the curse is added, and similarly in the case of the Flood, a fact implying greater guilt. The O. T. does not favour a rigid, abstract doctrine of original sin, according to which all actual evil was the consequence of the evil generic constitution without assistance of personal volition, and according to which, therefore, all men would stand on the footing of a bare equality in sin. It rather acknowledges a difference of degree in evil and guilt. We might think ourselves compelled to decide for the 1 John iii. 19 ff., v. 38, 44; Matt. xxiii. 37. Rom. v. 12 ff.: rapáßaris, rapazon. Cf. Weiss, ut supra, p. 238 ff. former view by reason of the need of redemption, which is ascribed absolutely, and therefore uniformly, to all; whereas the moral consciousness, which is aware of degrees of guilt and sin, and that not merely in respect of the sphere of civil justice, testifies for the latter. The importance of this question is great, as on its decision depends whether we are committed to absolute predestination (either in the Monistic form of the restoration of all things, or in the Dualistic form of the antithesis between the eternally reprobate and eternally elected), or whether a place remains for human freedom and responsibility. Now Christ gives distinct intimation that in different persons a different amount of evil volition may be involved in an act. Even in the other world it will be more tolerable for some than for others.2 Jesus glanced lovingly at the youth who had striven to observe the Ten Commandments, although he had not gained life and peace thereby. And a difference is made between those who are not far from God's kingdom and others. But it seems to be in contradiction to these statements that not merely Paul, but the entire N. T., places all men on a level as those who in a moral and religious respect are destitute of praise before God; for by such language all worth seems denied to all pre-Christian virtue, (and that according to the true standard (évóπiov leoû),) and all distinctions in moral and religious character rendered indifferent. Nay, when Christ frequently prefers those who are stained with the most conspicuous vices and sins, Christianity seems directly to wish to build itself on the overthrow of all law and all effort after observing it. But just here the solution, and the harmony with the law, are disclosed. For the Pharisees are not pronounced worse, because they are really zealous to conform to the law, and the publicans and sinners better, because they are indifferent thereto; but the former are pronounced worse because their zeal for the law forgets the fundamental virtue of humility and faith in a soulless observance of the letter, and the latter are pronounced better, because they may be and usually are nearer to the acknowledgment of their need of redemption, and therefore to humility, than the uncreaturely spiritual pride which bases Luke xii. 47. 2 Matt. xi. 22, 24; Luke x. 12. 3 Mark x. 21. itself on legal righteousness, and is therefore pretence or hypocrisy. Accordingly, on the basis of the essentially equal, i.e. absolute, need of redemption by all a distinction arises, accordingly as one possesses more or less living receptiveness for redemption. To this more or less of receptiveness corresponds a distinction in the degree of sin and guilt. A higher degree of both lies in those acts or states of sin, by which the consciousness of sin, and therefore of the need of redemption, is stifled, and the possibility of conversion imperilled. This is done to the greatest degree by the sin which regards the sinful state connected with falsehood as righteousness, and thus uproots receptiveness for redemption. Although, therefore, outside Christianity all are alike in not being redeemed, while needing redemption, still one may stand farther from or be nearer and more accessible to actual redemption, accordingly as he is in a state which holds him back from redemption as supposed to be needless, or as his form or stage of sin is such as renders it difficult for him to deem himself righteous and obscures his need of redemption. But the sin against the Holy Ghost is described as the most grievous although avoidable sin, i.e. the rejection of Christ as Saviour in definitive unbelief,1 after He has begun to reveal Himself in man's spirit. Nowhere is it said that man must needs commit this sin on account of his natural sinful constitution. On the contrary, it is Christianity which so perfectly restores personal responsibility, that no one can be finally lost or forced to reject Christ on account of his connection with the race. From this it follows that sin is more perilous and deadly in the degree that it urges to unbelief in Christ. 1 Matt. xii. 31 ff.; Heb. vi. 4, x. 26. That definitive, irremoveable unbelief forms part of this sin, follows from this, that there is no forgiveness for it either in this world or the next. According to the Epistle to the Hebrews, it cannot be committed, unless free, prevenient grace has been previously lost; for only thus is it possible for the rejection of Christ not to take place in ignorance cf Christ's significance. B.-The Ecclesiastical Doctrine. § 74. The Historic Founding of the Doctrine of the After the physical conception of evil in Manichæism had been overcome, and the doctrine of natural goodness and the power of self-redemption or Pelagianism renounced, the dogmatic development of the idea of evil still remained entangled in the juridical conception until the Reformation advanced beyond it. LITERATURE.-Fr. Nitzsch, Grundriss der christl. Dogmengeschichte, pp. 348-370 (for earlier works on the History of the Doctrine of Sin, see p. 360; on Pelagius and Pelagianism, p. 370; on Grace and Freedom, p. 383). Worthy of special notice Vossii Hist. de Controversiis, quas Pelagius ejusq. reliquia moverunt, lib. vii. 1618. Walch, De Pelagianismo ante Pelagium, 1783. Jacobi, Die Lehre des Pelagius, 1842. Jul. Müller, Der Pelagianismus, Deutsche Zeitschr. für christl. Wiss. etc. 1854, N. 40 f. Wiggers, Pragm. Darstellung des August. und Pelag. 2 vols. 1821-33. Wörter, Der Pelagianismus nach seinem Ursprung u. seiner Lehre, 1866; Theil ii. of Die christl. Lehre von Gnade u. Freiheit von der apost. Zeit bis auf Augustin, Freiburg 1860. Landerer, Das Verhältniss von Gnade u. Freiheit in der Aneignung des Heils, Jahrb. für deutsche Theol. ii. 3, 1857 (the pre-Augustine doctrine). Dieckhoff, Augustins Lehre von der Gnade, see Kirchl. Zeitschr. 1860-65. Marheinecke, Ottomar, Berl. 1821. Bindemann, Der heilige Augustinus, ii. 1855. Thomasius, Die christl. Dogmengeschichte als Entwicklungsgeschichte des kirchl. Lehrbegriffs, vol. i.: Die Dogmengeschichte des alten K. 1874, pp. 438-558. A. Dorner, Augustin's theol. System und s. religions-philosophische Anschauung, 1873. 1. A deeply earnest conception of evil in its fearful character was widely spread in the East from early days, most of all in the Dualistic system. In the West also, through the influence of Platonism, a doctrine of matter was not rarely found which regarded the body as the grave of the soul. These modes of thought, so repugnant to the buoyant light-heartedness of the Hellenic spirit, were indeed attracted by the earnestness of Christianity; but in Gnosticism, to which even in its monistic forms a dualistic element belongs, and still more in Manichæism, which arose in Persia in the third century and found great acceptance in the more earnest Latin world in North Africa, Italy, and Spain, they threw their shadows into the church then in course of extension among the nations of the East. Gnostic Dualism divides mankind into two classes, Psychic and Pneumatic. As to substance, the one is evil and unspiritual, the other good. In both cases no place remains for a divine act of redemption, nor yet for a real second birth of man, but only for an intellectual process, an attaining by one class to true knowledge through the πνεῦμα. The acquisition of true knowledge redeems, ie. shows the Pneumatic man his inborn nobleness. Manichæism proper does not, like Gnosticism, divide mankind into two classes, but assumes that, while in themselves all are capable of redemption, there are opposite natural principles in every individual man. According to it, the spiritual side in itself is good and pure, allied to the divine; but mankind are evil and in need of redemption by reason of gross matter, which is alien and hostile to spirit, and springs from the primal evil principle (λn, Satan). This second form, therefore, finds evil only in the body, and is consequently superficial, nay, in course of approximation to the other extreme, to certain forms of Pelagianism. The body, this evil substance, according to it, is bound to man as by fate, a view which abolishes the idea of guilt. Evil being treated as something merely physical, redemption is properly to be found only in deliverance from the body, which again is a physical conception of morality. To this, in the next place, attaches itself, since there is no disposition to proceed to the annihilation of the body, a negative asceticism (signaculum oris, manus, sinus), which is the issue of true, redemptive knowledge. This Dualism also impinges upon the idea of God, because, although God is conceived as good, He is neither the sole primal principle, nor invested with creative, spontaneous power. Rather, in the rigid, unspiritual character of matter He has an eternal, undivine principle opposed to Him, which even His omnipotence is unable to control. The unsophisticated Christian consciousness of the church, therefore, opposes to Manichæism religious as well as moral reasons. The one absolute God, beside whom an eternal, |