Traducianism, leaving a place open for Creationism. He is sharp-sighted enough to perceive that, on the view of pure Traducianism, posterity are innocently involved in Adam's guilty sinfulness and mortality simply as in a penalty, and that this mode of conception bears too physical a character. He is therefore never able to decide altogether in favour of Traducianism. On the whole, his aim is, with the universality of sinfulness, for which Traducianism seemed to give the surest guarantee, to connect something which it does not supply, namely, to conceive individuals as having participated with their will and fault in their sinfulness (whereas the latter again is certainly supposed to be connected with Adam); sine voluntate peccatum esse non potest, nec originale peccatum. He endeavours to unite the two by affirming that all were that One; he was nothing but their entirety. Only to one peccans volens can sin be recte imputed; but omnes fuimus in illo uno, quomodo omnes fuimus ille unus. Thus all are jointly guilty of Adam's free act, and liable to punishment, to spiritual and physical death, a massa perditionis, absolutely incapable of good, salvable only by divine elective predestination, which is the irresistible cause of faith in the one class. He does not say that all personally pre-existed in Adam; but as regards their voluntas, they existed in Adam. But without personal life, no rational voluntas, but only nature could exist, which must operate as it is, which therefore cannot even corrupt itself, but can only produce what is defective, in case it is itself originally defective. Thus, if in the idea of Adam as the homo generalis something were meant to be advanced towards solving the enigma why sin and guilt rest upon all, an actual, personal pre-existence of all must be assumed, a pre-existence which, if it were placed in Adam, would involve a monstrous thought; for then Adam could no longer be a single historic person, but merely an idea, or symbol of an idea, namely of collective humanity, whereas Augustine, on the other hand, decidedly contemplates him as a free, acting person, and as a historic progenitor. Thus Adam is to him a double amphibological notion, which

1 De Civ. Dei, xiii. 3, 14. Cf. Contra Fortun. Manich. Disp. ii. 23; De peccat. meritis et remiss. 1. i. § 11, iii. § 14; De nuptiis et concup. l. ii. § 15; Op. imperf. c. Jul. 1. iv. § 104, p. 1466.

seeks to combine in thought irreconcilable factors, in order to satisfy those two interests. The fixed element, which to him is the main thing, consists therefore only in this, that all posterity participated in Adam's guilt. He therefore does not deem it unjust for children who die unbaptized, and the heathen, to be damned on account of the peccatum originale, because every one springing from Adam is damnatus antiqui debiti obligatione, from which nothing but election can set free. Great as is Augustine's merit, his system suffers under various considerable defects. Although an Infralapsarian, he values freedom far too little. He invests the original state with a perfection which anticipates the work of freedom, while it makes the Fall inexplicable. His conception of the power of peccatum originale is such that he not only regards the virtue found among the heathen as insufficient and imperfect, but simply stamps it as moral corruption. After the Fall he no longer leaves any place for free will, neither in passing over to faith, nor for the preservation of faith. Rather, faith to him is exclusively God's work in virtue of absolute and particular predestination, God also endowing all the elect with the donum perseverantiæ.

Not merely did the Oriental Church never accept his doctrine, but in the West also many voices were raised in opposition. Thus John Cassian, Vincentius of Lerins, Faustus of Rhegium, and Gennadius, and the so-called Massilians generally, who taught that fallen man can do some good, namely, begin, while grace alone can complete the good work. This is the later Semi-Pelagianism so called, to which original sin is a disease, but which still leaves some freedom, namely for the beginning of conversion.1 But later, again, Avitus of Vienne, Cæsarius of Arles, and Fulgentius of Ruspe, excited a reaction against the Massilians, and thus at the Synod of Orange 529 a more moderate Augustinianism carried the day, which did not teach absolute and particular predestination, while laying down the proposition: Primum peccatum primi hominis originaliter in omnes transiit.

3. In the following centuries opinion fell still further behind the position of Augustine, and in the Middle Ages it rested at an externally juridical conception of malum originale.

1 Cf. Wiggers, ut supra, ii. 6 ff.

Opinion, it is true, was unanimous on this point, that the loss of Adam's high prerogatives, and especially of justitia originalis, passed over to his posterity. Nevertheless, for the most part this was not understood in the sense that posterity on this account were corrupt in themselves. Those prerogatives were conceived as a supernatural addition to Adam's free personality, which was sinless in itself and complete without them, and posterity, although inheriting that loss of justitia originalis, are still in possession of freedom of moral choice pretty much like that which Adam had. Only offences, it was said, which are the results of freedom can be called evil. But this, taken alone, would have led to the Pelagian doctrine of natural purity and moral strength, and have left but a precarious position for the need of redemption and reconciliation. And this all the more, since for the most part pure Creationism prevailed in the Middle Ages, which, seeing that nothing sinful can spring directly from God's hand, would lead to the supposition that the soul of every man is really pure originally. Only when, as often happened, a corrupting influence of the body and its disorderly desires upon the soul was assumed, did a certain place remain, on the view of pure Creationism, for the necessity of redemption,—an insecure one, however, when the natural moral strength for virtue was conceived as still existing in Adam's posterity. But in order to obtain a place for the universal necessity of redemption and reconciliation, a sort of law of inheritance-an externally juridical standard-was applied to the relation between Adam and his posterity. As children, who inherit the property of their parents, are bound also to assume their debts, so men, who have received through their parents the blessings of their life, are also under obligation to answer for their debts, here the guilt of their first parents. Moral guilt (culpa) is thus treated as a species of private debt (debitum), and when with this was connected an inherited infirmity of spirit or concupiscence in the lower parts of man, the question still was, whether concupiscence bears a sinful character, which many doubted. Abelard went the farthest in this direction: sin is not transmitted, but penal liability. In this case the only thing left, from which certainly redemption is necessary, is punishment, as formerly according to the Greek doctrine death. Thus the Lombard

could say: All men sinned in Adam, in the sense that as Adam's posterity God regards them as jointly responsible for the sin, by which the donum superadditum was lost. But thus men are regarded under one aspect as mere generic beings, not as free persons, and under the other are merely treated as self-dependent persons with capacity of moral choice, not as generic beings. But this is simply the contradiction which during the Romish period is repeated in so many dogmas. The one aspect by itself inclines to entire dependence on the race, and with this corresponds the magical influence of grace through the Church; the other inclines to Pelagianism. One tempers the other, but only in an external manner. No interpenetration of the two legitimate factorsthe personality and the genus-is attained.

In the Tridentine Creed the definition is formulated, according to which an inherited penal liability of the race is indeed decisively adopted, and so far Adam's peccatum transfunditur in posteros; but otherwise no secure place is preserved for the universality of the necessity for redemption from sin. According to the Tridentine Creed, man's nature is weaker since the loss of the donum supernaturale, but is still uninjured, so far as it consists in freedom, i.e. in capacity of moral choice. He only lacks now the golden bridle, by which he would have been able with ease to control the lower powers and desires. Nevertheless, the defect of justitiæ originalis does not involve sin proper. The concupiscence, which remains even in the regenerate, can only improperly be called sin, although Paul occasionally calls it sin. Therefore, according to this view, strictly considered, reconciliation and redemption would not be necessary for man on account of his personal character. No sinful corruption exists, nor is any inherited from Adam; but only in virtue of a mysterious imputation of Adam's sin have men to suffer for something of which they are not personally guilty. But when it is not a sinfulness inherent in man, but merely a debitum aliena culpa contractum which imposes the need of redemption and reconciliation, it is no wonder that the necessity of Christ's redeeming work remains in suspense, and indeed in the days of Scholasticism after Anselm was often denied; for if man does not carry evil or guilt in himself, but has only to bear

another's guilt by a sort of fiction, then the simple omission of the divine imputation of sin would have sufficed for redemption.

Observation.—If we say with Bellarmine, that the donum supernaturale is not an incidental, superfluous addition, but necessary, in order to keep under the natural rebellio carnis against the spirit, this involves a Manichæanizing tendency, because involving an innate insubordination of the lower powers. But since he regards this natural rebellio carnis, now obtaining in us, without the restraining counterpoise of the spirit as just as little evil as the Tridentine Creed regards concupiscentia, this mode of representation avails nothing towards establishing the necessity of redemption, but only issues in a lowering of moral duty and an exculpation of man. For this reason Luther's doctrine of justitia originalis is a loftier one.1 He reckons justitia originalis a part of man's original nature (natura), i.e. of his idea, so that, when it is absent and its opposite is present, the idea of man suffers grievous injury. It is the vere naturale, non donum, quod ab extra accederet, separatum a natura hominis. In Adam's case, indeed, Luther made too little distinction between the idea and its realization; but he saw that justitia originalis cannot be something incidental to man, like a superfluous ornament, but that it forms the centre in the very idea of man, and makes such unconditional claim to realization, that, where it is consciously lacking to man, whereas it ought to be present, sin exists. The mistake of identifying realization in Adam's case with idea, and of making him in the beginning not merely innocent and good in tendency, but already perfect in all virtues, persists long in evangelical theology, although this might have been obviated by the circumstance that self-preservation in the primal state, which confessedly remained a duty, must needs have involved discipline, and therefore growth in moral power. But still the advance in teaching, that perfect righteousness belongs to the nature, i.e. to the concept or idea, of man, is independent of this uncorrected mistake.

§ 75.-The Doctrine of the Evangelical Church.

The Reformation brings to completion the opposition to Manichæism and Pelagianism; for, while rejecting the 2 See above, p. 77 ff.

1 Comm. on Genesis, Walch, I. 258 ff.