Basic HTML Version
216
independent of the human will, and thereby really destroys the idea of sin. (c) It also does away
with the responsibility of man by representing sin as a physical necessity. The only escape from
sin lies in deliverance from the body.
2. THE THEORY THAT SIN IS MERELY PRIVATION.
According to Leibnitz the present world is the
best possible one. The existence of sin in it must be considered as unavoidable. It cannot be
referred to the agency of God, and therefore must be regarded as a simple negation or
privation, for which no efficient cause is needed. The limitations of the creature render it
unavoidable. This theory makes sin a necessary evil, since creatures are necessarily limited, and
sin is an unavoidable consequence of this limitation. Its attempt to avoid making God the
author of sin is not successful, for even if sin is a mere negation requiring no efficient cause,
God is nevertheless the author of the limitation from which it results. Moreover, it tends to
obliterate the distinction between moral and physical evil, since it represents sin as little more
than a misfortune which has befallen man. Consequently, it has a tendency to blunt man’s
sense of the evil or pollution of sin, to destroy the sense of guilt, and to abrogate man’s moral
responsibility.
3. THE THEORY THAT SIN IS AN ILLUSION.
For Spinoza, as for Leibnitz, sin is simply a defect, a
limitation of which man is conscious; but while Leibnitz regards the notion of evil, arising from
this limitation, as necessary, Spinoza holds that the resulting consciousness of sin is simply due
to the inadequacy of man’s knowledge, which fails to see everything sub specie aeternitatis,
that is, in unity with the eternal and infinite essence of God. If man’s knowledge were
adequate, so that he saw everything in God, he would have no conception of sin; it would
simply be non-existent for him. But this theory, representing sin as something purely negative,
does not account for its terrible positive results, to which the universal experience of mankind
testifies in the most convincing manner. Consistently carried through, it abrogates all ethical
distinctions, and reduces such concepts as “moral character” and “moral conduct” to
meaningless phrases. In fact, it reduces the whole life of man to an illusion: his knowledge, his
experience, the testimony of conscience, and so on, for all his knowledge is inadequate.
Moreover, it goes contrary to the experience of mankind, that the greatest intellects are often
the greatest sinners, Satan being the greatest of all.
4. THE THEORY THAT SIN IS A WANT OF GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS, DUE TO MAN’S SENSUOUS
NATURE.
This is the view of Schleiermacher. According to him man’s consciousness of sin is
dependent on his God-consciousness. When the sense of God awakens in man, he is at once
conscious of the opposition of his lower nature to it. This opposition follows from the very
constitution of his being, from his sensuous nature, from the soul’s connection with a physical
organism. It is therefore an inherent imperfection, but one which man feels as sin and guilt. Yet