Biedermann's Dogmatik is based upon the Hegelian philosophy. At page 649 we read: “Evil is the finiteness of the world-being which clings to all individual existences by virtue of their belonging to the immanent world-order. Evil is therefore a necessary element in the divinely willed being of the world.” Bradley follows Hegel in making sin to be no reality, but only a relative appearance. There is no free will, and no antagonism between the will of God and the will of man. Darkness is an evil, a destroying agent. But it is not a positive force, as light is. It cannot be attacked and overcome as an entity. Bring light, and darkness disappears. So evil is not a positive force, as [pg 566]good is. Bring good, and evil disappears. Herbert Spencer's Evolutionary Ethics fits in with such a system, for he says: “A perfect man in an imperfect race is impossible.”On Hegel's view of sin, a view which denies holiness even to Christ, see J. Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:390-407; Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, B. 3:131-162; Stearns, Evidence of Christ. Experience, 92-96; John Caird, Fund. Ideas, 2:1-25; Forrest, Authority of Christ, 13-16.
(c) It is inconsistent with known facts,—as for example, the following: Not all sins are negative sins of ignorance and infirmity; there are acts of positive malignity, conscious transgressions, wilful and presumptuous choices of evil. Increased knowledge of the nature of sin does not of itself give strength to overcome it; but, on the contrary, repeated acts of conscious transgression harden the heart in evil. Men of greatest mental powers are not of necessity the greatest saints, nor are the greatest sinners men of least strength of will and understanding.
Not the weak but the strong are the greatest sinners. We do not pity Nero and Cæsar Borgia for their weakness; we abhor them for their crimes. Judas was an able man, a practical administrator; and Satan is a being of great natural endowments. Sin is not simply a weakness,—it is also a power. A pantheistic philosophy should worship Satan most of all; for he is the truest type of godless intellect and selfish strength.
John 12:6—Judas, “having the bag, made away with what was put therein.” Judas was set by Christ to do the work he was best fitted for, and that was best fitted to interest and save him. Some men may be put into the ministry, because that is the only work that will prevent their destruction. Pastors should find for their members work suited to the aptitudes of each. Judas was tempted, or tried, as all men are, according to his native propensity. While his motive in objecting to Mary's generosity was really avarice, his pretext was charity, or regard for the poor. Each one of the apostles had his own peculiar gift, and was chosen because of it. The sin of Judas was not a sin of weakness, or ignorance, or infirmity. It was a sin of disappointed ambition, of malice, of hatred for Christ's self-sacrificing purity.
E. H. Johnson: “Sins are not men's limitations, but the active expressions of a perverse nature.” M. F. H. Round, Sec. of Nat. Prison Association, on examining the record of a thousand criminals, found that one quarter of them had an exceptionally fine basis of physical life and strength, while the other three quarters fell only a little below the average of ordinary humanity; see The Forum, Sept. 1893. The theory that sin is only holiness in the making reminds us of the view that the most objectionable refuse can by ingenious processes be converted into butter or at least into oleomargarine. It is not true that “tout comprendre est tout pardonner.” Such doctrine obliterates all moral distinctions. Gilbert, Bab Ballads, “My Dream”: “I dreamt that somehow I had come To dwell in Topsy-Turvydom, Where vice is virtue, virtue vice; Where nice is nasty, nasty nice; Where right is wrong, and wrong is right; Where white is black and black is white.”
(d) like the sense-theory of sin, it contradicts both conscience and Scripture by denying human responsibility and by transferring the blame of sin from the creature to the Creator. This is to explain sin, again, by denying its existence.
Œdipus said that his evil deeds had been suffered, not done. Agamemnon, in the Iliad, says the blame belongs, not to himself, but to Jupiter and to fate. So sin blames everything and everybody but self. Gen. 3:12—“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” But self-vindicating is God-accusing. Made imperfect at the start, man cannot help his sin. By the very fact of his creation he is cut loose from God. That cannot be sin which is a necessary outgrowth of human nature, which is not our act but our fate. To all this, the one answer is found in Conscience. Conscience testifies that sin is not “das Gewordene,” but “das Gemachte,” and that it was his own act when man by transgression fell. The Scriptures refer man's sin, not to the limitations of his being, but to the free will of man himself. On the theory here combated, see Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:271-295; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:123-131; N. R. Wood, The Witness of Sin, 20-42.
3. Sin as Selfishness.
We hold the essential principle of sin to be selfishness. By selfishness we mean not simply the exaggerated self-love which constitutes the antithesis of benevolence, but that choice of self as the supreme end which constitutes the antithesis of supreme love to God. That selfishness is the essence of sin may be shown as follows: