impulses have once found a false centre. Moreover, God does not at once intervene by an act of self-communication, in order by reimplanting the good to extinguish the delight kindled in evil, but first of all permits it to run its course. This is not divine caprice or want of love, but the course necessary in the ethical sphere; for God's influence cannot be compulsory. This would be to degrade the ethical into the physical. No ethical result would be reached in this way. Grace cannot combine with actual, so to speak, budding lust.' In such circumstances it could not even be understood. Hence, Christianity only appeared when heathenism declined. The divine activity rather prescribes to itself a rudimentary spiritual economy of a subjective kind, consisting generally in this, that God causes sin to be revealed to man as falsehood, and compels it to disclose its disastrous effects.2 This aim is supported by the education of the moral consciousness, and of self-knowledge which judges itself by the law. Not that this is done in a way to imply that evil can be vanquished by a cognitive process alone, or come to an end by selfexhaustion. But a diversion of the will from the deceptive lust, a turning of the desire to something better, is indispensable, in order that grace may be fruitful, i.e. be understood and accepted. Therefore God in His long-suffering accompanies even the development of sin, nay, awakens and encourages such desire by gracious promises of His favour, in order to show the creature that, even when it is estranged from God, God has not given it up. But this does not prevent another process going on at the same time, apparently in opposition, really in harmony therewith, namely, an economy by which evil is multiplied, while also compelled to reveal its nature. But this point is dealt with more fully under the Third Head. 8 4. The character of evil is ascribed with perfect right to inherent evil, wherever it is found. This is opposed to the view which ignores the natural side in the idea of evil, and will only acknowledge evil in the act or actual sin, and further to the opinion that evil can only exist where personal, conscious guilt exists in the strictest sense. This opinion has been touched on and provisionally refuted before. It must 2 Rom. i. 18, 24 ff. § 77, 3. 1 Matt. vii. 6. DORNER.-CHRIST. DOCT. II. 2 C now be examined more closely. The argument may be stated thus: Evil is not in the nature, Manichæism is to be rejected; there is only evil in free beings; therefore evil is only evil, so far as freedom actually partakes therein, so that through it in the moment of the act evil was always avoidable, and only in reference to such avoidable things is there participation in guilt and punishment. We have seen already, how the abstract juridical standpoint, which is so fond of laying stress upon free acts, consists specially in this, that it will allow no responsibility except for free acts. But such isolated insistance on individual acts is not strictly consistent with the interests of right and law itself. Even law refers not merely to acts, but also to states. Its desire is not merely to have legal acts, but also to regulate Being, the latter being the consequence of the conjunction of the act and the disposition, which is something inherent, or the effect of the prohibition of evil desire. Even human justice, which, from its inability to discern the inner motives of man, must be chiefly directed to the acts in which the motives are expressed, must in more than one point proceed to such an estimate of evil as not merely looks at the act, but also takes into account the evil being, which, as every one concedes, does not depend on man's freedom at the given moment only; for in the eyes of human justice, even unintended evil is evil and punishable, if at least culpa was involved therein. The character of sinfulness and punitiveness may belong even to an unintended injurious act, if inherent deficiency in moral watchfulness, e.g. in regard for human life, was shown therein. It is punishable, because implying inherent indifference and torpor of the moral sense. Not merely, therefore, is the act of free choice and the act of distinct, definite resolve on the part of the will, evil and chargeable with guilt; but that which is inherent and breaks forth in act incurs responsibility, although in the moment of the act it may not be under the power of freedom. Nay, even in the case of dolus, justice acknowledges the punitiveness of inherent evil, in so far as in such a case it is not asked by what means the man became what he is, how far evil example or education, and how far free will, contributed thereto; but it is only asked how far the presence of inten tion obtained in the evil act, and how far the absence of intention, but yet culpable negligence obtained; and the crime would be regarded with perfect justice as evid and punishable, if it could be proved that the previous life of the evil-doer had reduced the freedom of the evil-doer in doing good to the smallest degree at the moment of the act. Justice also in the main disregards the possible effects of education, and in addition, in the case of a morally degraded state, punishment itself is an indispensable means of discipline or education to freedom. Thus, right and the consciousness: of right directly suggest that it is not merely the evil, which is avoidable in the moment of the act, of which penal judginent takes cognizance, although it must always be reserved to God's all-seeing justice to determine the measure of personal guilt and punishment more perfectly than human judgment is able to do. The same conclusion follows from the moral standpoint. If nothing ought to be reckoned evil which is unavoidable in the moment of the act, those forms of evil in which its power is most signally displayed would be innocent. Where the will is reduced to bondage by the spirit and practice of evil, we recognize not innocence, but profound degradation. Where even the knowledge of good is obscured and falsified by ancient national custom or former evil action, we recognize the presence of a truly fearful power, not the absence of evil. But even vice proves that anything being evil or not does not essentially depend on the question, whether in a given moment it was avoidable to freedom of choice. But it is then said: "No doubt the conscious free act wills what it pleases, even at the peril of the consequences. Therefore the willing of these consequences, or at least acquiescence in them, is included in the free act, and, as thus willed, inherency is evil and incurs guilt. For this reason, what is inherent (which may be conceded) may be evil and punishable, but only when it is the consequence of a former conscious act of the person, and therefore arose from personal guilt for that act.” But are these consequences of the evil act really willed along with it? Is there acquiescence in the bondage of the will and the evil tendency? By no means, for in the moment of the evil these consequences are not recognized. Sin is essentially bound up with falsehood, and is inconceivable without falsehood. Clearness of consciousness is lacking, where sin is. In evil acts, such as we know, men will increased freedom, and will nothing so little as the inherent consequences of sin, which both enslave the will and give birth to new sins; but these consequences follow of themselves, apart from consciousness and volition on the part of the person. Nevertheless, we may not say that, because the consequences are not consciously willed, they are not attended with guilt or responsibility. For what should we say, if some one supposed that, by proving that he was brought into bondage to evil by former evil acts without prevision and volition of these consequences, he was justified in declaring himself innocent of everything which followed from the evil inherency incurred unintentionally? But still less can the character of evil be denied to will, on the ground that in the moment of the evil act it was not free. To dwell a little on this point, every one believes that a will and state in a rational being, which are in opposition to the good order of the world, to God's law and man's destiny, are evil and absolutely culpable; and the law is entirely within its right in requiring a change. We thus see that the question, whether anything is evil, and in what degree, cannot depend on the degree in which avoidable guilt in the subject lay at the basis. But instead of directing our thoughts to the possibility of being different, as to which deception is so easily possible, the better and only right course is to fix attention on the absolute duty of being different, on the opposition of volition and being to the obligatory law; and instead of going back to an avoidableness of guilt at any moment, we should rather go back to the absolute, unavoidable obligation to change the state, an obligation which, rooted in the nature of the spirit, condemns the evil state, even though one of bondage, as absolutely culpable. Instead of taking our stand upon the empirical avoidableness of evil any moment, instead of at least acknowledging the character of evil to exist only where a free act, consciously acquiescing in all the consequences of evil, is present (and no such act exists, or can exist), we must be satisfied in this respect with saying that, absolutely considered, i.e. regarded 1 § 77, 4, 6. from the standpoint of the divine idea of man, which also embraces his future, evil (which always remains a matter of volition) is avoidable. But there is no contradiction between such avoidableness and impotence towards evil existing at the time, and therefore an empirical unavoidableness of evil conduct, which nevertheless is condemned by the idea of man and by God's law, and is absolutely culpable. We are led to the same result, indeed a step further, by the consideration to be examined further on, whether, e.g., other beings of our species are able by their influence to contribute to our moral worth or demerit.1 To all this is to be added the definite affirmation of the Christian consciousness. When the Christian reviews his life before conversion, he is far from only regarding that as evil, as his own evil and chargeable with guilt, which he was or did with the consciousness or existing possibility of something better. But the more he knows that he obtained true insight into the nature, compass, and consequences of evil, and into the powers of improvement, first in Christianity, the more he is inclined to acknowledge that the evil in his pre-Christian life was not avoidable in the sense in which he then perhaps supposed, and not accidental, but was grounded in his general state. And this state he now so clearly sees to have been one of bondage, that he sees something of sinful error in his former opinion, that he was able any moment to shake off evil, and therefore that it was avoidable. Despite this fact, the Christian regards his pre-Christian state as sinful, because in contrariety to the law and his moral destination, and also as chargeable with guilt, because he did not live in evil and become a causality in evil mechanically or under external constraint, but from his own desire and inclination. We therefore affirm summarily: Human nature is so constituted, both that evil acts pass into evil inherency, which again is the cause of evil, and also in general that evil, when it once exists, becomes a cosmical causality among mankind, a factor in the system of the world; and the law of our nature, lying at the basis of this result, is part of the original perfection of its adaptation to that moral life, without which there could be no good being and no cosmical system of good. 1 See below, § 83, 1. 2 * Rom. v. 12. |