in maintaining that a diseased man is truly possessed with a devil." Comp. Storr, § 52 (quoted by Hase, p. 238.) [On Farmer, see § 292, note 1.] • The exorcisms practised by Gassner, a member of the Roman Catholic Church (from the year 1773). See Walch, neueste Religionsgeschichte, vol. vi., p. 371, p. 541 ss. Justinus Kerner (who belongs to the Protestant Church), Die Scherin von Prevorst, Stuttg., 1832, 2 vols.; Ueber das Besessensein, Heilbr., 1833. Geschichte Bessessener neuerer Zeit, nebst Reflexionen von Eschenmayer, Karlsruhe, 1836.

⚫ Glaubenslehre, i. § 45, p. 243.

'Judas Ischariot, oder das Böse im Verhältnisse zum Guten betrachtet, 2 parts in 3 sections. Heidelb. 1816-19. Comp. Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, p. 99 ss. Among the recent divines Martensen has endeavored to prove the existence of the devil on biblical and speculative grounds; Dogmatik, 170 sq. Lücke, in reply in the Zeitschrift f. Christl. Wissenschaft, Febr., 1851. Ebrard (i. 392) shows the difference between the Biblical representations and the later perversions. See also Lange, ii. 559, sq. [Twesten on Doctrine respecting Angels, transl. from his Dogmatik, in Biliotheca Sacra, i. 768-793, ii. 108-140. Whately, Scriptural Doctrine of Good and Evil Spirits, Lond., 1851. Prof. Stuart, on Angelology, in Robinson's Bib. Sacra, 1843. Analogues of Satan, Christ. Exam., July, 1860; Theory of Personal Devil, ibid., Sept., 1861. Letters to the Rev. W. E. Channing, on the Existence and Agency of Fallen Spirits. By Canonicus, Boston, 1828.]

8

360.

Kant, 1. c., p., 66. Twesten, Dogmatik, ii., p. 331 ss., Comp. p. 358

• Martensen, Dogmatik, 119, conceives of the Angel-world, as the "world of ideas;" but "not ideas as they stand before abstract thought, but ideas viewed as living powers, acting spirits." The notion of personality he considers as changeable. "From the storm-wind that executes the orders of the Lord, to the seraph that stands before his throne, there is a manifold variety of angelic beings;" and "no speculation will ever be in a condition to decide how far there may be powers in creation, having such spirituality, that with personal consciousness they may serve or resist the Creator." Lange thinks that the angels are the spirits of the primeval world, ii. 578 sq. Weisse (Phil. Dogmatik), tries in respect to the angels to "steer clear of the Scylla of dogmatic superstition, as well as the Charybdis of materialistic unbelief;" and he does this by recurrence to the Böhme's idea of "nature-spirits, and fountain-spirits," and bringing them into connection with the attribute of God's glory.

10 Ebrard, Dogmatik, i. 276 sq.

THIRD DIVISION.

ANTHROPOLOGY. CHRISTOLOGY. SOTERIOLOGY, AND THE ECONOMY OF REDEMPTION.

$298.

THE DOCTRINES CONCERNING MAN, SIN AND LIBERTY.

We should expect, as a matter of course, that in an age in which philosophical and theological works were full of " Philanthropy and humanity," much would be said concerning the nature, dignity and destination of man.' In opposition to Augustine's views, the excellency of the human nature was extolled, and (after the example of Rousseau) many indulged in fanciful representations of the ideal state of man.' While enlightened theologians erased the doctrine of original sin from their systems,' Kant on the contrary, himself pointed out the radical evil in man, but did not understand by it original sin in its ecclesiastical usage. The adherents of the later speculative philosophy were also far from believing that the natural state of man was the normal one: they admitted that he had fallen from his original state, that a reconciliation had become necessary, and attached little importance to the Pelagian idea of liberty, upon which the rationalists had laid great stress. But a closer examination of their theory showed that this kind of original sin was identical with the finite character of human nature and human consciousness, and was a mere matter of natural necessity: so that the idea of sin and responsibility was destroyed, and a doctrine introduced which would prove fatal to the ethical standpoint, which rationalism had maintained from regard to practical morality. In opposition to both these tendencies (the rationalistic and the speculative) the Pietists, and those theologians who returned to the old faith of the church, revived the doctrine of Augustine in its essential points, to which the followers of Schleiermacher and those of like tendencies also adhered, though with various modifications. the other hand, the idealistic view of man, as God awakening to consciousness, was pressed with all its energy by the left side of the Hegelian school; and of course sin was regarded as only a vanishing

On

factor. But thus it became only the more apparent, that at present the regeneration of the church and of theology are chiefly to be expected from a right understanding of the doctrine concerning

sin."

It is worthy of notice, that physical and psychological anthropology, which had formerly been treated in connection with systematic theology, was now separated from it. Man was made the subject of philosophical treatises written in a popular style. See Pope, Essay on Man, 1733. Spalding, Bestimmung des Menschen, Lpz., 1748. J. J. Zollikofer, Predigten über die Würde des Menschen, Lpz., 1783. J. Ith, Anthropologie oder Philosophie des Menschen, vol. i. Winterthur, 1803. (For further particulars see Bret schneider, Entwurf, p. 493, ss.) Herder has most ably represented man in his purely human aspect.

2

Comp. 275. The modern system of education was, in particular founded on the doctrine of the excellency of human nature. Comp. Campe, Theophron, 1806, p. 234, ss.

3

Steinbart (in the 5th section of his: System der reinen Philosophie). Henke, Lineamenta, lxxxi.: Cavendum est, ne hanc peccandi facultatem, hunc vitiorum fomitem cum ipsis vitiis, ignis materiam cum incendio permisceamus, atque propterea totum genus humanum perditum, corruptum, propter hanc suam indolem displicere Deo, vel parvulos adeo recens in lucem editos indignationi divinæ obnoxios esse dicamus, quod ne de catulis quidem sanus quisquam ausit dicere, etc. Quæ omnia (he then continues, p. lxxxiv.) ambiguitatis et erroris plena commenta sunt, pro lubitu arrepta, et præter sanæ rationis ac scripturæ sacræ assensum.

• Vom radicalen Bösen in der menschlichen Natur (Berliner Monatsscrift, April, 1792); Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, etc. (against the fantasies of pedagogues, pp. 4 and 5). The natural tendency to evil manifests itself in three different ways: 1. As frailty (fragilitas); 2. As impurity (impuritas, improbitas); 3. As malice and perversity (vitiositas, pravitas, perversitas). The proposition: Man is evil, means, that he is conscious of the moral law, but he thinks it consistent with his principles of action, occasionally to deviate from it. The proposition: He is by nature wicked, means, he is wicked as belonging to the genus humanum. (Vitiis nemo sine nascitur, Horat.) This tendency (to evil) has not its origin in the sensuality of man, but in his liberty, hence he is responsible for it. There are also different degrees of innate guilt (reatus). The culpa corresponds to frailty and impurity; the dolus (dolus malus) corresponds to malice. Nevertheless Kant maintains (p. 37) that of all theories respecting the propagation of this original evil, that is the most incorrect, which represents us as having inherited it from our first parents; for what the poet says in reference to good, may also be applied to moral evil: Genus et proavos, et quæ non fecimus ipsi, vix ea nostra puto.-In his opinion the narrative of Adam's fall is only a symbol, which he explains according to his principles of moral interpretation, p. 40-44. Therefore the doctrine of innate evil is not of importance for moral theology, but only for moral discipline (p. 55). On this account Kant's theory of original evil does not lead to the doctrine

of redemption (in its ecclesiastical sense), but he comes to the conclusion: "That which man, considered from the moral point of view, is or is to be, whether good or evil, depends on his own actions" (p. 45). Comp. also § 298, on the economy of redemption. Herder therefore said: "Nobody kuows how this original evil entered into the human nature, nor how it may escape from it." (Von Religion, Lehrmeinungen und Gebräuchen, pp. 204, 205.) For the further development of Kant's theory, see Tieftrunk, Censur, iii. p. 112, ss. The later rationalists rested satisfied with regarding evil as something which experience proves to exist among men, without tracing its origin to the sin of our first parents; nor did they deny that those who aspire after higher moral perfection may rise above sin. Wegscheider, § 118.

Schelling, Methode des akademischen Studiums, p. 176. The new (Christian) world commences with a general fall, a breaking away of man from nature. The surrender to nature itself does not constitute sin, for, as long as it is not conscious of the opposite, this forms rather the golden age. The consciousness of this surrender destroys innocence, and therefore demands reconciliation and voluntary submission, in which liberty comes off both conquered and a conqueror. This is more fully developed by Blasche, 1. c. p. 224: "Original sin did not propagate itself, because our first parents accidentally sinned, and all other men are their descendants, but because the first conscious life of man, and the continuance and growth of this consciousness, are an original act of sin. The propagation of sin does not take place so much by physical, as by psychical generation, by which we understand education,* on which the development of man's consciousness, in a social point of view, depends. The biblical narrative of the fall is an allegorical representation of the development of this consciousness on the part of our first parents. Their condition antecedent to this event, the life in paradise, the state of innocence, was (like the state of earliest infancy in general) an unconscious life of instinct; for all mental development commences with consciousness. From this it is evident, that as, in the physical creation, it is not good, but evil, which is first, or primary, the same must be the case in the higher spiritual creation (the culture of the mind), which commences with consciousness. In the world of spirits good must first come into existence, and is based upon evil." (Comp. the theory of the Ophites, vol. i. § 62.)-Hegel defined original sin as the natural state (das natürliche Ansichsein) of man, so far as he is conscious of it. Philosophie der Religion, vol. i. p. 194, ss., ii. p. 208, ss. Strauss, Dogmatik, ii. p. 69-74.

• The Pietists and Methodists laid great stress upon the consciousness of sin (comp. § 277, 278). In the Idea Fidei Fratrum, § 50, ss., the doctrine of the deep natural corruption of mankind is treated of earnestly, yet not without suggestion of hope, with all the seriousness appropriate to this subject.-Concerning Oetinger's views of the nature of evil, see Dorner, Chris

"Education must necessarily first lead man astray, in his course towards spirituality, before it can lead him to virtue." (?)

The word "sin" is here used in such a sense, that it may be applied even to physical diseases. Kieser in Blasche, ubi supra. But where all is sin, sin loses its significancy

tologie, pp. 310, 311.-Swedenborg departed from the church doctrine, inasmuch as he did not believe in original sin, properly speaking, but represented man as a free agent, who is placed between heaven and earth, and exposed to the influence of good and evil spirits. But still man derives from God all the good which he possesses. Comp. his Divine Revelation, ii. p. 147, ss.; Heaven and Hell, No. 589-596, and 597-603.-Among modern theologians, Tholuck first gave a more orthodox definition of sin in his work: Die Lehre von der Sünde und vom Versöhner, oder die wahre Weihe des Zweiflers. Hamb., 1823, 7th edit., 1851 [translated and publ. in Boston.] Comp. Steudel, Korn, and Klaiber (see Bretschneider, p. 530). 'These modifications chiefly consist in a renunciation of the strictly historical interpretation of the fall, which is also abandoned by Tholuck (Die Lehre von der Sünde, etc. Append. 3*) and the want of more precise definitions concerning the justitia originalis. Respecting the latter, Schleiermacher (Christliche Glaubenslehre, i. p. 336), gives it as his opinion, that idea of the justitia originalis cannot be demonstrated dialectically. On the other hand he maintains (1. c. vol. i. p. 412, ss.) the original depravity, and entire inability of every man to perform virtuous actions; this inability ceases only in connection with the work of redemption. De Wette asserted that the representations of (orthodox) Protestant writers were founded upon exaggerated views, but still defended them in opposition to the superficial theories of the rationalists: see Dogmatik, § 56. Comp. Hase, Dogmatik, pp. 102, 103.

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Feuerbach, Wesen des Christenthums, s. 49: "The incarnate God is only the manifestation of man become God-which, in fact, lies in the background of the religious consciousness; for the elevation of man to God necessarily precedes the condescension of God to man. Man was already in God, was God himself, before God became man.

man. Ex nihilo nil fit."

How otherwise could God become

' Julius Müller, die christliche Lehre von der Sünde, vol. i., New edit., Berl., 1844, vol. ii. ibid., 1844. Comp. with it, G. Ritter, über das Bose, etc., Theologische Mitarbeiten, ii. part 4), Breslau, 1839. Rothe, Ethik, ii. 170, sq., partly against Müller. [Rothe puts the essence of sin more in the physical constitution.] Martensen, p. 144, sq. Schenkel, Gespräche über Protestantismus und Katholicismus, Heidelb., 1852, s. 128, sq. Tholuck, ubi supra. [Müller's theory of preexistence is also, under other relations, advocated by Edward Beecher, Conflict of Ages, Boston, 1853. See also Prest. Marsh, Three Discourses on Nature, Ground and Origin of Sin, in his Remains (1845), pp. 439-502. Shedd, Sin a Nature, and that Nature Guilt, in his Essays and Reviews.]

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary has also been awakened from the slumber in which it seemed to have sunk, and brought to a definitive decision by the Papal Bull of Dec. 8, 1854, yet not without weighty objections and opposition from Catholic quarters: see the Brief of

* Reinhard advocated the historical reality of the fall, but thought the forbidden fruit venomous, on which account it caused the death of our first parents. (?) Dogmatik (3d edit.), p. 273.