j BT 7 1 5 M6 1 9 2 2 Moxon, Reginald Stewart The doctrine of sin THE DOCTRINE OF SIN A CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE VIEWS OF THE CONCEPT OF SIN HELD IN EARLY CHRISTIAN, MEDIAEVAL & MODERN TIMES BY \y‘ REGINALD STEWART MOXON, B.D. Headmaster of Lincoln School, formerly Scholar of Gonville and Cains College, Cambridge LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1 First published in 1922 (All rights reserved) TO MY WIFE In Man there’s failure, only since he left The lower and inconscious forms of life. Browning, . CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY .... • • I I II. THE DOCTRINE OF SIN AS HELD IN THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES • • 16 III. PELAGIANISM .... • • 47 IV. AUGUSTINIANISM .... • • 77 V. SEMIPELAGI ANI SM .... • • 109 VI. SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS OF SIN • 141 VII. MODERN VIEWS OF SIN . • * 175 VIII. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN . • • 220 INDEX ..... • • 249 The Author wishes to record his gratitude to Canon M. Scott, D.D., for his patient criticism of the various stages through which this volume has passed before it reached its present form. THE DOCTRINE OF SIN CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY Stress was laid at a recent Conference 1 upon the urgent need for the reconsideration of the Doctrine of Sin, and it was plainly stated by one of the speakers that : “ It is the duty of theologians to rethink their way through the problem, and not only to denounce sin but to expose it It is the object of the present volume to undertake this duty, and with this purpose in view to call in the aid of history. By history is meant not merely the knowledge of facts, but of opinions and feelings which have prevailed in the past. The historical method is concerned not so much with the formulae which finally came to be regarded as authoritative, as with widespread tendencies of thought, which, though they may not have ultimately secured supremacy, are really a part of the mind of the Church. It is no longer possible to base the sense of Sin upon the teaching of Augustine, which has been somewhat erroneously identified with that of the Church. Augustin- ianism is by no means Catholicism, and it is worth while to undertake a critical and historical review of Augustine’s controversy wfith Pelagius in order to see how far from unanimously his views were realty accepted. It may reasonably be contended that the teaching of Augustine as well as the teaching of Pelagius should have come under censure as being, in some respects at least, an innovation and contrary to the Vincentian maxim, “ teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est 1 The Ecumenical Methodist Conference, September, 1921. 11 12 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN for it is an admitted fact that the East never held nor gave its real support to the anti-Pelagian views of the West. Indeed, Vincentius in his famous treatise indirectly 1 referred to Augustinianism as a novelty, though he is very far from being a follower of Pelagius. In spite of the vast service rendered by Augustine to the Church at large, it may well be asked whether he is not himself the author of some of our most pressing religious difficulties. To Augustine the world owes a , great debt for recognising the power of the habit of sin and our inability to do right in spite of formal freedom of will, and also for perceiving the solidarity of the human race and the resulting participation of every child of man in the weakening of Human Nature caused by sin. We owe much, too, to Augustine’s conception of Grace and to the theory of a universal Church which he based upon ihr- He did not, indeed, invent the doctrine of a visible organised ; Church and of the Sacraments as essential in sustaining . spiritual life, but he developed what the ante-Nicenes had merely held as general principles ; he laid stress upon these doctrines in a way which had never before been done, and he systematised and formulated them for the benefit of posterity. But is our debt to Pelagius much less, unhappy though he was in the course into which, partly through misappre¬ hension and partly through temperament, he was subse¬ quently led ? Men are only too ready even now to make weakness an excuse for sin, to be satisfied with a low moral standard and to forget or to ignore the essential need for individual effort. Moreover, Pelagius, who was led by his special theory of Human Nature to reject the doctrine of the Fall, has I clearly more claim to consideration now that the fact of I the Fall stands under suspicion. Indeed, if we except his 1 exaggerated view of free-will and his assertion of the possi- 1 bility of sinlessness in man, we can hardly help admitting that intellectually at any rate Pelagius had often the better of Augustine. The reason is not far to seek, j Pelagius was less involved than was Augustine in the 1 See the present author’s edition of Vincentius of Levins, Intro, p. 26. INTRODUCTORY 13 science of the day, and since this science was utterly im¬ perfect, he has the advantage of being less compromised by it. It is quite possible to hold that Augustine was logically justified in his inferences, but unfortunately he argued from insufficient and inaccurate premises. Pelagius refused for the sake of logic to give the lie to universal experience. Augustine argued that logically man was totally corrupt. Pelagius, looking around him, saw too many proofs of goodness to allow the inference. Pelagius has been justified, Augustine condemned. Pelagius’s insis¬ tence on the inalienable rights and responsibilities of the individual, which Augustine seriously underrated, drew attention to facts of Human Nature which no age of Christian thought should dare to neglect. It is, moreover, impossible to pass over the contribution towards the solution of this problem made by the so-called Semipelagian school, which has been most strangely under¬ estimated by theologians generally. The South Gallican Churches of the fifth century found themselves unable to agree either with Pelagius or with Augustine. Conse¬ quently they formed themselves into a middle party, led by John Cassian of Massilia, which insisted chiefly on co¬ operation between the will of man and the Grace of God. To this party the name Semipelagian was given, though it was a name they never applied to themselves. Indeed, they might with equal appropriateness have been called Semiaugustinians. Their opponents refused to recognise any middle party and regarded them as an offshoot of the Pelagians. This, however, was manifestly unfair, for in steering a middle course between the extravagances of Augustinianism and the errors of Pelagianism the Semi¬ pelagians conferred upon the Church a valuable service. Throughout the Middle Ages they exercised a most whole¬ some check upon the spread and development of extreme Augustinian views. It has been asserted that we are all Semipelagians to-day.1 This statement we may have reason to regard as being not very far from the truth, since it is in close harmony with the tendencies of modern thought. The view of sin held by the Reformers sheds little light 1 Cooper-Marsdin, The History of the Islands of the Levins p. 80. 14 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN on the subject. In this respect the Reformation was retrograde rather than progressive. The leaders of this movement fell back upon the doctrine of Augustine, but they developed it into a fatalism destructive of all human effort. Luther could see nothing but total depravity in Human Nature. Birth-sin was regarded as involving man in greater guilt than actual sin, and in Calvinism we have a view of Human Nature which is more paralysing to the conscience than any theory of sin ever held either before or afterwards. These views, however, have to no inconsider¬ able extent influenced modern theological opinion, and the Church is still struggling to free herself from the prejudices and traditions imposed upon her by the past. The problem of Sin has been much to the fore in recent years, and modern views and modern discoveries will claim consideration in the general reconstruction of ideas and re-enunciation of theological truths which the future will inevitably demand. But in spite of much good wTork done recently with regard to the problem of the sinfulness of Human Nature and the universality of evil, the world stil awaits a doctrine of Sin which will satisfy the demands of anthropological science and the experience of the Christiai conscience. In fact, no teaching on this subject whicl cannot be accepted alike by the theologian and the scientis* can be regarded as satisfactory and convincing. The purpose of the present treatise is to investigate the history of the Doctrine of Sin, and, in order to this, t< review the positions of Augustine and Pelagius, to examin the defects in the views of each of them, to consider th value of their respective contributions to theology, an1 to trace the subsequent development of thought on th problem that resulted from the controversy. It is hope that this study may be of service to those who ar interested in the re-expression of ideas on this momentor subject. An attempt will be made in the last chapter to sugges the outlines of a constructive theory of the Concept of Si based on the new knowledge of psychology. The need i our day is for a reformation in the teaching of the Churc — a reformation no less deep and searching than that < INTRODUCTORY 15 the sixteenth century, for the teaching of the Church, in so far as it is based on Augustinianism, has of late years been seriously discredited both from the standpoint of morality and of science. The world cries out, not for a new religion, nor for a new revelation, but for a re-inter¬ pretation of the cardinal principles of theology, so that it may be possible to reconcile the teaching of the Church ; with the claims of conscience and with the results of modern discovery. It must be admitted that nothing would be of more . practical value at the present time than a restatement of the Doctrine of Sin in the light of our latest knowledge, and that such a restatement is called for on every hand in order that this doctrine may become intellectually : possible of acceptance. One other thing must be said — since it is of the greatest possible importance. New knowledge is ours to-day, and we have no right to reject that knowledge, because in some measure at least it modifies the conclusions reached , j! in earlier ages. What was once said by the learned Puffendorf with respect to interpretation is fitly applied to the Doctrine of Sin as held in the past — “ eximendi sunt illi casus, quos exemturus fuerat ipse legislator, si super tali casu consultus fuisset”. We have not merely to ask what Augustine or any other theologian said, but . what, had he lived in our days, and had he possessed our knowledge, he would have said. What he said and what he would have said are not necessarily the same. CHAPTER II THE DOCTRINE OF SIN AS HELD IN THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES ANALYSIS § i. Teaching of the N.T. on the subject of Original Sin. § 2. Views of Irenaeus. § 3. Greek Anthropology : Early Alexandrines. § 4. Views of Clement of Alexandria. § 5. Views of Origen. § 6. Greek Anthropology : Later Alexandrines. § 7. Views of Athanasius. § 8. Views of Cyril of Jerusalem. § 9. Views of Gregory of Nyssa. § 10. Views of the Antiochene School. § 11. Views of Chrysostom. § 12. Views of Theodore of Mopsuestia. § 13. Summary of the Eastern View of Sin. § 14. Latin Anthropology. § 15. Views of Tertullian. § 16. Views of Ambrose. § 17. Gradual growth of doctrine of Original Sin in the West. CHAPTER II THE DOCTRINE OF SIN AS HELD IN THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES {Si- Teaching OF THE N.T. ON THE SUBJECT OF ORIGINAL SlN. The universality of human sinfulness and the need of Divine Grace in Christ to redeem mankind from it have been an acknowledged tenet in the doctrinal system of the Christian Church from the beginning, but it is deserving of notice that the doctrine of Original Sin and the imputation of Adam’s transgression to his posterity rests upon the very slenderest foundation of N.T. authority. Christ did not in any recorded utterance mention Adam and Eve, neither did He suggest that human sin was the consequence of an act of disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Had He done so, it is probable that this teaching, which seems to have been popular in certain rabbinical schools in His time, would have been preserved. The N.T. assumes, of course, that all men are sinners and that all men are mortal ; but as to how they became sinners or how they became mortal nothing either explicitly or implicitly is said, except at the most in two passages of S. Paul’s Epistles, and these of i uncertain interpretation. If these two passages had not been written or if they had been lost, there is nothing in the rest of the N.T. to suggest even remotely the doctrine of Original Sin.1 In the 5th chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, S. Paul speaks of sin entering into the world through one man, and as a result death passing to all because all had sinned. The difficulty of explaining these verses satisfactorily — a diffi¬ culty into which it is unnecessary now to enter, but which can be realised at once by a glance into the various commen¬ tators on the passage — renders it precarious in the extreme 1 Sec Dale, Christian Doctrine p. 325. 2 17 18 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN to base any arguments upon it and impossible to prove any doctrine from its contents. Again, in the 15th chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians, S. Paul writes : “ As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”. It is perfectly clear that this comparison is made merely for the purpose of illustration, and that no evidence for the existence of a doc¬ trine can be fairly drawn from a mere illustration where the language used is just as likely to be figurative as literal. In both these passages it is not S. Paul’s direct object to explain the cause either of human sin or of human mortality. His purpose is to declare that “ in Christ men are made righteous and are to rise again from the dead ”.r In view, therefore, of the lack of any real N.T. authority for the doctrine of Original Sin, it is not surprising to find that the Apostolic Fathers are silent on the subject and that after their time there was a considerable difference of opinion. This difference of opinion resolved itself into two main tendencies or lines of thought, one being the Eastern or Greek view, the other being the Western or Latin view. All, or at any rate the greater part, of the Fathers of the Greek Church before the time of Augustine denied any real Original Sin and knew nothing of any theory of an inherited cor¬ ruption derived from Adam’s sin ; although in the writings of the leading theologians of the West in the third and fourth centuries it is easy to discover the germs of that other theory which became dominant in the Latin Church from the time of Augustine onwards. It is proposed in the present chapter to give a brief survey of the views of the leading Fathers of the Early Church prior to Augustine on the subject of Original Sin, showing the sources from which this doctrine sprang and tracing its growth until it became a recognised dogma in the Christian Church. §2. (a) Irenaeus (a.d. 130-202). The Greek apologists had no occasion to discuss the question of the influence of Adam’s Fall upon his descendants, 1 Dale, Christian Doctrine p. 326. IN THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES 19 and did not in consequence say much about Original Sin nor form any theories on this subject. The first constructive theologian of the Church was Irenaeus, who represents neither Eastern nor Western thought exclusively. Born in Asia Minor in the middle of the second century and becoming in later years Bishop of Lyons in Gaul, he presents features peculiar to both Greek and Latin theology. As a natural result, his teaching on the subject of Original Sin, though it shows considerable advance upon the teaching of his pre¬ decessors, is nevertheless lacking in definiteness and con¬ sistency. As Dr. Tennant observes,1 we find in this Father statements so conflicting and opposed as that man was made after the likeness and image of God ; 2 that both image and likeness were lost through Adam’s Fall ; 3 that the image and likeness of God were both absent from man when he was first created and were afterwards to be acquired; 4 that man was created after the divine image alone, 5 the likeness being afterwards received through the Spirit,6 but that it was subsequently lost by man, though he did not lose the image of God in which he was made. 7 Two main lines of teaching, then, both more or less clearly defined but contrary the one to the other, are to be found in Irenaeus — the one corresponding with the Greek anthro¬ pology and derived from his early life in the East, and the other foreshadowing the development of thought peculiar to the West. It should be noted that Irenaeus in many passages lays strong emphasis on the doctrine of human freedom. “ Since man”, he says, “ from the beginning is endowed with a free will, and God, in whose similitude he was made, has a free will, the advice is always given to man to hold fast the good which is perfected by obedience to God.” 8 Freedom of will is a test of character ; “ for we have received freedom of will, in which condition a man’s reverence, fear and love of God are more severely tested”.9 This brings additional responsibility ; “ for man, being endowed with reason and 1 The Fall and Original Sin p. 285. 2 Adv. Haer. v 28, 4. 3 lb. iii 18, 1. 4 lb. iv 38, 3. s lb. v 16, 1. 6 lb. v 6, 1. 7 Xb. v 16, 1. 8 lb. iv 37, 4. 9 lb. iv 16, 5, libertatis potestatem acceperimus ; in qua magis probatur homo si revereatur et timeat et diligat Dominum. 20 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN in this respect being like God, is a perfectly free agent, with the power of self-determination, and is, therefore, responsible for the fact that he sometimes becomes wheat and sometimes chaff 1 The intention and purpose of God in giving man freedom of will is that he may choose the better course (ut electionem meliorum faciat), and the result of good moral choice is communion with God ; separation from Him of the opposite.2 The possession of free-will is, therefore, not only a privilege which distinguishes man from other created things ; it is also a responsibility. Hence it is clear that Irenaeus, with such Eastern thinkers as Origen, insisted on freedom of will as the endowment of rational creatures, and that though not going so far as to assert the self-suffi¬ ciency of man, afterwards known as Pelagianism, he regarded the freedom of the individual as expressed in the image of God, sometimes implying that it is the possession of this freedom which makes man capable of receiving in¬ corruptibility. The logical inference from all this is that the original destination of mankind was not regarded as having been abrogated by the Fall. Harnack 3 goes so far as to say that the Fall has in Irenaeus a * teleological significance * : by which is meant that he seeks to palliate man’s Fall, and regards it, so far from being an unmixed evil, as achieving an educational purpose, and as being the means to a fore¬ ordained end, viz. the redemption of the world by Christ. Man’s destination is to be like God, and the attainment of this likeness (oiiolojcus) is the ultimate object of his creation and is only to be accomplished by God dwelling in man and thus uniting him to Himself. Hence follows the necessity of the Incarnation in God’s original scheme. Man was not made perfect. He only possessed the power of becoming perfect — the germ or potentiality of perfection. Thus the Fall, according to Irenaeus, did not deprive the human race of the power of development nor of freedom of will nor of communion with God. Thus far Irenaeus is in close accord¬ ance with the Eastern mode of thought. 1 Adv. Haer. iv 4, 3. 2 lb. V 27, I, t><7oi a rovroig top dir * avTov xwpur/iov iirayu . . . separavit semetipsum a Deo voluntaria sententia. 3 History of Dogma (Eng. Trans.) vol. ii p. 270. IN THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES 21 But there is another side to the teaching of Irenaeus bearing upon the problem of Original Sin, which approxi¬ mates more to the anthropology of the West and corresponds rather with the views of such writers as Tertullian, Hippolytus and Cyprian. This line of thought is the logical result of his doctrine of the Person and Work of Christ, and in this doctrine the chief importance of Irenaeus as a theologian consists. The fundamental thought in his exposition of the Incarnation and of the Atonement is that Christ, in order to conduct the human race to its divine destination, must Himself recapitulate and pass through all the stages of ordinary human life in order to consecrate each of them by His own presence ; and that in order to unite the end with the beginning, He must gather into Himself all that originally belonged to the essence of humanity, restoring it to what it was when it was first created. This profound conception of a “ recapitulatio ” or avaKecfyaXaicocns of humanity in Christ (derived, doubtless, from S. Paul's expression in Eph. i io) is a valuable contribution to theological thought, and is much more in accord with modern views of the Atonement than the theories which confine saving grace to the Cross and Passion of our Lord. Irenaeus did not restrict the work of the Atonement to the Crucifixion, which merely marked for him the consummation of the Incarnation ; with a broader view than any who had preceded him, he saw that the whole life of Christ was a restoration to man of communion with God. Suffering and death were the ordinary lot of man, and therefore they were to be recapitulated or experienced to the full in the life of Him who summed up all conditions of this mortal life in His own experience. This theory, however, leads Irenaeus to conclusions which are inconsistent s with what he says elsewhere and which are opposed to the line of thought described above. He is now led to maintain that man was not created imperfect, and that the image and likeness 1 of God were the possession of Adam from the 1 Adv. Haev, v 16, i, 2, where the image and likeness of God are original endowments of human nature, restored to man by the Word of God at His Incarnation. Elsewhere they are spoken of as endowments gradually to be attained by man. According to the Schoolmen the image and the like¬ ness of God are separated, the “ image ” of God implying the higher mental faculties, the “likeness” the possession of the Spirit. 22 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN beginning, but were lost by the Fall. The uniting of the end with the beginning is a necessary element in the doctrine of recapitulation. “ When He became incarnate in man. He summed up in Himself the long roll of humanity, supply¬ ing us in a concise manner with salvation, so that what we lost in Adam, namely, the being in the image and likeness of God, we might recover in Christ Jesus.’ ’ 1 * Then again, developing the Pauline doctrine of the soli¬ darity of the race in Adam, Irenaeus taught that, as restored humanity is summed up in and represented by Christ, so the human race is to be identified with Adam, sinning against God in him, and through him becoming subject to death. In v 1 7, i sin is described as a debt to God, but there is little trace in Irenaeus of the ideas of “ propitiation ” and “ satisfaction ” which his legal training helped Ter- tullian to formulate, and still less of the theory of a ransom paid to the devil. As a matter of fact, sin is, in Irenaeus, to a certain extent, kept in the background. Death and life are with him the absorbing themes. Thus he speaks of Adam as being “initium morientium”, just as Christ was “initium viventium”, depriving death of its prey and bring¬ ing back to life man who had been slain.3 Irenaeus thus held that there was some sort of organic union of the human race with Adam, whereby the first sin became the collective deed of all subsequent generations of mankinds but nowhere does he attempt to define the nature of this connexion, nor does he hint at the doctrine that Adam’s posterity already existed seminally in him and so was identified with him when he sinned. The union of which he speaks may perhaps, as Dr. Tennant says, be described as “ mystical ”. 4 It is rather to be regarded as a figurative and pregnant expression than a relationship to be taken literally or to be explained philosophically. 1 Adv. Haer. iii 18, i, in compendio nobis salutem praestans = owto^mq. 1 lb. v 21, i, uti quemadmodum per hominem victum descendit in mortem genus nostrum, sic iterum per hominem victorem ascendamus in vitam. 3 lb. v 1 6, 3, in primo quidem Adam offendimus, non facientes ejus praeceptum, also v 34, 2, percussus est homo initio in Adam inobediens, etc. * Tennant, The Fall and Original Sift p. 289. IN THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES 23 In conclusion it may be remarked that Irenaeus knows nothing about the second element in the Augustinian theory of Original Sin, viz. the inherited corruption of Human Nature. True, he speaks of death as inherited,1 but he does not mean by that that Adam’s Fall was the cause of an ingrained bias to sinfulness in man, nor that human infirmity is in any way due to the reception of an inborn taint. The method whereby sin is produced in mankind as a result of Adam’s transgression is left entirely undefined ; the ‘ will * and not the ‘ flesh ’ is regarded as the source of all sin, and nothing whatever is said about evil concupiscence. Irenaeus, then, on the whole may be said to incline more to the Eastern than to the Western mode of thought on the subject of Original Sin, and while foreshadowing some elements of the later Latin doctrine, he nevertheless preserves the older and more indefinite mode of appre¬ hending the problem of Human Nature in its relation to free¬ will, sin and grace. §3- (b) Greek Anthropology. (i) Views of the Early Alexandrines. The views of the Ancient Church during the second and third centuries in reference to sin and to the power of free¬ will in apostate man were influenced very largely by the controversy with Gnosticism. As a result of their dualistic theory of the universe the Gnostics maintained that man is sinful by creation because all creation is the work of the Demiurge. They denied that man is a responsible agent and refused to admit that he has any freedom of will. In opposing this view, the Greek Fathers strongly insisted on the Biblical doctrine that man was created holy and a free moral agent and that by the misuse of his moral freedom he is himself the author of his own sin. They were content to claim for man a plenary power to do good and the ability to turn from sin by the exercise of his own inherent energy (avregovcnov) , without concerning themselves with the con¬ sequences of human apostasy in the moral agent and in the 1 Adv. Haev. v i# 3. 24 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN human will itself. The result is that Eastern speculation in general and Alexandrine speculation in particular is characterised by very strong emphasis being laid on the reality of human freedom. §4- Clement (a.d. 190-203). In consequence of his view of sin as that which is irra¬ tional and the fruit of ignorance, Clement of Alexandria does not give the doctrine of the Fall any prominent place in his teaching. The introduction of sin into the world he regards as in some sense connected with the transgression of Adam, and this in turn with the victorv of Christ over death ; but of the relation of that first sin to us and to our sins very little is said. Of the Fall itself Clement gives the following somewhat allegorical account : “ The first man, when in Paradise, sported free, because he was the child of God ; but when he succumbed to pleasure (for the serpent allegorically signifies pleasure crawling on its belly), he was as a child seduced by lusts, and grew old in disobedience ; and by disobeying his Father, dishonoured God. Such was the influence of pleasure Adam, then, was not created perfect in the sense that he could not transgress, but in the sense that he was adapted by nature to receive virtue,2 and that he lacked none of the distinctive charac¬ teristics of “ the idea and the form ” of a man. 3 By his deliberate choice of evil he exchanged an immortal for a mortal life, but not for ever. 4 In this respect Clement agrees with Irenaeus and the Greek Fathers that man’s original endowment was not a developed state of virtue (for in a state of original righteousness Adam could not have sinned), but merely an aptitude for perfection. The existence of sin in the world does not, in the eyes of Clement, depend upon the Fall of Adam. We only lie under the sin of Adam in respect of the likeness of sin. 5 Man * Protrept. xi 111 (trans. of Anti-Nicene Library). * Strom, vi 12, 96. 3 lb. iv 23, 150. 4 lb. ii 19, 98. s Adum. in Jud., Stah., vol. iii p. 208. Sic etiam peccato Adae sub- jacemus secundum peccati simiiitudinem. IN THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES 25 commits sin as the result of choice, and we need look no farther for its origin than his freedom of will. In fact, the causes of all sin may be reduced to two, namely, ignor¬ ance and weakness.1 No one chooses evil as evil, but, misled by its attraction, he erroneously supposes it to be good. But for this illusion men are themselves responsible. It rests with them to be delivered from ignorance and to save themselves from such miscon¬ ceptions.2 * 4 5 Sin is that which is contrary to right reason ; hence to be instructed and disciplined by the Lord is to be set free from sin. This emphasising of the voluntary nature of sin, the responsibility of the individual in com¬ mitting it, and the power of man to avoid it, leaves no room for the doctrine of inherited sin, still less of inherited guilt. Not only is such a doctrine entirely absent from the writings of Clement, 3 but it is opposed to his psychological views and to his theological system generally. For example, he rejects Traducianism, with which the doctrine of here¬ ditary sin was at first closely connected, and in commenting on David’s statement in Ps. li, “ In sin did my mother con¬ ceive me ”, he says that this refers to Eve, the mother of the living, and adds that in any case, even if he were conceived in sin, yet he himself was not in sin, nor was he himself sin. 4 Thus, even if Clement believed in the Fall of Adam as a fact, he does not derive from it the theory of a congenital taint nor anything resembling the doctrine of Original Sin. Lastly, Clement can see no connexion between the Fall and physical death. He nowhere implies that men in general owe their mortality to Adam. Sin, he says, is death ; 5 but that is the death of the soul — -not the death which dis- 1 Strom, vii i6, ioi. 2 lb. i 17, 84. 3 One passage in Clement is quoted as nearly approaching the doctrine that Adam’s sin involved posterity, viz. Protrept. xi. In speaking there of the redeeming work of Christ, he says, “ and most marvellous of all, man that had been deceived by pleasure and bound fast to corruption, had his hands unloosed and was set free”. But it is most likely that here, as else¬ where, Clement is thinking of Adam as the type and not the source of sin. 4 Strom, in 16, ioo. Neander points out that Clement was unconsciously combating the doctrine of the North African Church, which was at that very time first appearing in Tertullian. 5 Prot. xi 1 15; Strom, iii 9, 64. 26 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN solves the union between soul and body, but that which dissolves the union between the soul and the truth. In commenting on S. Paul's statement in Rom. v 12-14, 1 “ By sin death has passed to all men ", he explains it to mean that by a natural necessity of the divine economy death follows on birth, and the dissolution of soul and body neces¬ sarily follows their union. This compulsory relationship involves no participation on our part in the sin of Adam. This denial that bodily death is a punishment for the Fall is an anticipation on Clement’s part of the teaching of Pelagius. To sum up, the existence of sin Clement holds to be suffi¬ ciently explained by the freedom of the will. Necessi¬ tarianism and Predestination as taught by the Gnostics would, he points out, cancel the guilt of unbelief by freeing man from responsibility and leave no room for repentance or forgiveness. Evil is the deliberate act of man and is not to be ascribed to any congenital taint in Human Nature. It is only wilful sin that God punishes. The soul is not begotten ; it enters the body separately, preceding the advent of the reasoning faculty.2 Men fall as Adam fell, not because of his sin, but through their own lust. But while denying Original Sin and while maintaining that the first motion towards holiness is the work of man, Clement admits the need of Christ’s help. The object of His Incarnation and death was to deliver us from guilt and to accomplish our salvation, which man is unable to achieve by his own unaided power.3 §5. Origen (a.d. 185-254). Following in the footsteps of his teacher and prede¬ cessor in the Catechetical School of Alexandria, Origen laid great emphasis on the free-will of man, and this doctrine forms an integral part of his philosophical views, but his 1 Strom, iii 9. 3 lb. vi 16, l7T£l(TKpivETai Ce 1] 4/vX11 KUl irpOtUTKpivtTCU TO l/yeflOVlKOV, Ip £taXoyi£o/ie0a, ov Kara tijv tov (nrep/naTog KaTafioXriv ytvvi ouevov. 3 Paed. i 4. IN THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES 27 doctrinal system was developed on original and highly speculative lines, and he imported into Christian theology ideas which were destined to find echoes in the thought of later centuries. With regard to the Fall, Origen held the view that it was pre-mundane, and that the account of Adam’s trans¬ gression and expulsion from Paradise in the Book of Genesis is purely allegorical.1 Thus the creation of the world as described in the Bible is, in his view, not the commencement but an intermediate stage of spiritual history. Life on earth is the continuation of a prior existence, and corporeal being is the consequence of our fall from virtue in that state. This doctrine of the pre-existence of souls, which seems to be derived from the Platonic myth in the Phaedrus, forms an essential part of Origen’s scheme, and in this respect he ranks himself as an opponent of both the creatianist and the traducian theories as to their origin. But this theory does not, in Origen’s view, militate against the doctrine of free-will.2 The fallen spirit still retains its freedom and has not lost the power of restoring itself to its original condition. The image of God, stamped upon man at his creation, guarantees to him the possibility of reaching perfection ; but he can only hope to attain finally to God’s likeness by his own efforts and by the constant practice of virtue. That freedom of will is the prerogative of all men is a principle of the utmost importance in Origen’s system. In combating the Gnostics, who held the doctrine of absolute Predestination, he vehemently asserts that free-will is bound- up with reason, and is possessed by every moral creature. The faculty of reason enables man to choose either good or evil, so that the will initiates both holiness and sin. 3 Accord¬ ing to this theory of the indifferentism of the human will, which Origen shared with Clement, it is as incorrect to deny 1 De Princip. iv i 16. See also Contra Cels, vii 50. It should be noticed, however, that elsewhere, e.g. Comm, in Rom. v, he treats the Fall story as historical. 3 lb. iii 1, where Origen enunciates his view of human freedom and examines the Scripture texts which relate to this subject. 3 lb. i 5, 2. “ Every rational creature is capable of earning praise or blame — praise, if, in conformity to that reason which it possesses, it advance to better things ; blame, if it fall away from the right course.” 28 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN to the will the power of holiness as it would be to deny to it the power to sin. In this formal conception of freedom it is to be noticed that no account is taken of the result of past choice in the attainment of good or in forming the habit of evil, and in assigning the beginning of salvation to man’s own effort, the Alexandrines furnish a precedent for the Semipelagian view of Grace held in the West in the fifth century. These two doctrines of pre-existence and free-will com¬ pletely dominated Origen’s conception of sin. The former, in his view, accounts for the fact, and the latter for the guilt, of sin. Sin is universal because it is inseparable from man’s earthly environment. Man enters life in a sinful condition because his soul was stained with sin in its former state. In disputing with Celsus, Origen distinctly ascribes the origin of sin to a pre-natal Fall.1 2 Thus Origen, unlike Clement, arrived at some form of a doctrine of Original Sin. In de¬ veloping this theory, he arrived at the conclusion that there is a certain hereditary pollution 3 attaching to everyone born into the world. 4 Spermatic germs * of evil are in¬ herent in every human being. Following Plato and S. Paul, he subdivided the constitution of man into three parts, body, soul and spirit. 3 Of these the last, which is the rational and spiritual principle, is the highest, having, according to Origen, come down from the angelic sphere and being joined to the body through the medium of the soul, which includes the principle of animal life. The soul, then, which derives a taint of sin from its former existence, stands midway, so to speak, between the weak flesh and the willing spirit. Original Sin is confined to the two lower subdivisions of man’s constitution, viz. body and soul ; it cannot exist in the rational spirit, which always remains intact and cannot inherit anything because it is not itself propagated. Thus Original Sin 4 is traced to a purely physical cause, and was, therefore, not regarded as truly and properly culpable by 1 Contra Celsuni vii 50. 2 For the doctrine of the physical heredity of sin see his Comm, in Rom. v. 3 In Joh. ii 9, xxxii 11 ; In Matt, x 11. 4 Origen’s views of a ' sordes peccati ’ are chiefly found in his Comm, in Rom. v. IN THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES 29 Origen. Sin, in the strict sense, is the act of the individual will, and only in so far as it is actually committed by man does it involve him in guilt. The reason for this is that evil is not invincible. With God’s aid the tendency to sin may be overcome. All depends upon the use man makes of his faculty of free-will. The guilt of sin is bound up with the idea of freedom. For though Origen regards the sin of all men as in some sense inherited from Adam, he by no means accepts the doctrine of total depravity. Man has an innate disposition towards good as well as evil. In other words, he has the law of God written in his heart. Origen also, like Irenaeus, held the doctrine of the soli¬ darity of mankind, and was the first to account for this by the conception of the seminal presence in Adam of all his posterity.1 But the inference he draws from this idea is widely different from the conclusions based upon the same fact by Augustine. So far from seeing in this theory a physical explanation of the universal taint of sin in man¬ kind, Origen preferred the view which later came to be looked upon as the peculiar tenet of Pelagius, and regarded sin as the result of example and of training, and not as due to any connexion or identity between posterity and the progenitor. “The individual”, he says, “cannot dissociate himself from humanity in the aggregate. Between parents and children there is a subtle affinity of such a kind that all who are born into the world are not only the sons but the disciples of sinners, and they are urged to sin not so much by natural connexion (natura) as by training.” 2 To sum up, Origen taught a doctrine of the Fall and Original Sin which to some small extent resembled that which subsequently reached its developed form in Augustine, but was far more indefinite and differed in certain material points. He sometimes regards the Fall story in Genesis as allegorical and sometimes as historical. He holds the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls and treats Original Sin as a condition inseparable from man’s whole earthly 1 In Joh. xx 21, but especially In Rom. v, Si Levi, qui generatione quarta post Abraham nascitur, in lumbis Abrahae fuisse perhibetur, multo magis omnes qui in hoc mundo nascuntur et nati sunt, in lumbis erant Adae, cum adhuc esset in paradiso, a In Rom. v 18. 30 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN surroundings, owing to a pre-natal Fall. He also teaches that there is some hereditary taint of sin, but denies man's responsibility for this taint and maintains that it can be overcome by will. He minimises the heinousness of Adam's sin, and repudiates the idea of the total depravity of the human race. He believes in the solidarity of mankind, but is emphatic in his rejection of Original Guilt. The one respect in which Origen's system may be said to anticipate the teaching of Augustine is this : he held that physical heredity plays some undefined part in the propa¬ gation of sin, maintaining that each individual comes into the world in a “ state of sinfulness " and is not free from taint at birth. Hence the need of baptism to wash away the stain. He was also the first to explain race unity by seminal existence in Adam — an idea which played no small part in the doctrine of Augustine. On the other hand, his views in other respects are, with a few modifications, the generally accepted Eastern opinions. He denied that there is any guilt attached to birth-sin, or that concupiscence is sinful until it is indulged in, and he rejected the doctrine of the total corruption of the race. He laid great stress on freedom of the will, somewhat ignoring the force of habit and maintaining that there are always the seeds of good as well as of evil in the heart of man, and he held that the first steps towards holiness come from man, but that to complete a good action and to work out his own salvation he needs divine aid and the co-operation of God. Lastly, in his teaching on the subject of the propa¬ gation of sin and inherited taint (sordes peccati), with regard to which he is neither very clear nor consistent, he seems to incline to the view that sin is rather due to the force of example and education than to physical heredity. §6. (ii) Views of the Later Alexandrine School. Great though the influence of Origen was on subse¬ quent theological thought, his teaching received considerable modification at the hands of the Greek thinkers who succeeded IN THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES 31 him, and who flourished not only in Alexandria but in the other parts of the Greek-speaking world. The Eastern Fathers tended to ignore those features in Origen’s system which might be said to favour the type of doctrine regarding Original Sin which was rapidly gaining favour in the West, and they resolutely adhered to the traditional views of the Eastern Church respecting free-will and the nature of sin. But there was a reaction against his Platonic speculations on the subject of human sinfulness as derived from man's original estate, a reaction which took the form of the more literal interpretation of the Fall story in the Book of Genesis and a fuller recognition of the indirect effects of Adam’s sin upon the human race. The later Alexandrines exhibit a modification of Origen’s views in the denial of the pre¬ existence of souls 1 and the substitution of the theory of Creatianism ; at the same time there are traces of a more systematic attempt to define the universality of sin in its relation to the transgression of Adam without any admission of a propagated sinfulness of the will. s 7* Athanasius (a.d. 296-373). Athanasius was not a systematic theologian. Unlike Irenaeus or Origen, he had little interest in theological speculation as such, nor did he attempt to elaborate the many problems in Christian doctrine which were in his day awaiting solution. His theological greatness lies in his deter¬ mined subordination of everything to the central fact of Y the redemption, and his clear estimate of the position and importance to be assigned to the Person of the Saviour. The doctrine of the Trinity monopolised the attention of Athanasius almost to the exclusion of everything else, and he exhibits his anthropological views only in so far as they bear upon the Person and work of the Redeemer. His firm grasp of soteriological principles made him realise that Human Nature was changed by the Incarnation, but his views as 1 This theory fell more and more into discredit, until it was finally con¬ demned at the Synod of Constantinople, a.d. 553. 32 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN to the original state of mankind and the effects of the Fall have to be gathered from various remarks made in different parts of his writings, of which the most significant occur in the treatise De Incavnatione. First, then, we learn that Athanasius did not hold the doctrine of Original Righteous¬ ness. Man was not created in a state of perfection, but only with a capacity for perfection.1 Neither was man before the Fall immortal, except prospectively.2 Death would in any case have ensued, but death of a different kind from that experienced by unredeemed mankind. 3 Without minimising in the least the evil effects of the transgression of Adam, Athanasius did not hold that there was such a vast difference between the condition of fallen and unfallen man as has usually been supposed to exist. The change wrought by the Fall was in the eyes of Athana¬ sius largely physical. 4 Man’s original state was corrupted by it. In fact, the Fall is regarded by Athanasius as a relapse of mankind to the condition of ‘ nature ’, above which they were originally raised by being created in the “ Divine Image ”. As a natural being, man is unable to maintain his proper relation to God, but by reason of the divine image he is able to do so. The image of God in man is regarded by Athanasius as a supernatural endowment, but it is an inalienable possession in the sense that it may be impaired but not absolutely lost. 5 By the Fall the image of God was impaired and the process of corruption was begun. This is what Athanasius means by (j>06pa. But it is to be noticed that while Athanasius admits that all subsequent generations have been born in this “ natural state ” into which Adam fell, he more usually regards the fallen state of the human | race as having been brought about gradually and not as the i result of Adam’s one great sin.6 To arrest this corruption, I therefore, the Incarnation was necessary. The presence of the Word in human body was essential for the restoration * Or at. ii 66, 67 (rfXttoc icncOde). 2 De Incar. iii 4. 3 lb. xxi 1, 2, where he speaks of natural death as mere dissolution without perishing. 4 Qdvarog, )vp6v7]fia rrjs oapKos ”,z is in his eyes a necessary consequence of the Fall. Gregory is thus the first Greek Father in whom we find the beginnings of the doctrine that Original Sin is distinctly due to the Fall. He speaks of the sinfulness of our nature 3 as something separate from the actual sin of individuals — a sinfulness inborn in man because we partake of Adam's physical characteristics, and he speaks of the transmission of sin through one to the whole race. 4 We share in Adam’s Fall because we share in Adam’s nature, and our corruption is derived from Adam by physical descent. He speaks, too, of inborn sin being removed by baptism. 5 In a word, the essential ideas of Augustine’s theory, which was so soon to dominate the Western Church, already appear, though in a rudimentary form, as integral elements of the anthropology of Gregory of Nyssa, and seem in the main to have been derived from the tentative teachings of Origen. § io. (iii) Views of the Antiochene School. This school, which may be said to be represented by Chrysostom and by Theodore of Mopsuestia, adopted sub¬ stantially the same anthropology as the later Alexandrines. They held the doctrine of the Adamic connexion only so far as the physical nature is concerned, and taught that * 7Tf.pl KaraoK. avQpaiTr. 17. » Migne xlvi 376 B. 3 De Orat. Domin. 4, duQevijg rj dv9pio7rh’tj pvauog OTztpuaTa ; ra ce tt)q Kcuciag irapd (pvcnv ior'iv. 8 Prosper apud Aug. Ep. 224, 6. 112 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN may be lost and it may be retained by man’s free-will, and not by any God-sent gift of perseverance.1 Thus, he ac¬ knowledged the reality of Grace and admitted its necessity to the work of restoring and assisting Human Nature, and he even admitted that it must be ‘ prevenient ’ if the operation of man’s will is to result in the performance of good deeds,- but he denied that it was either irresistible in its working or that it was limited to a fixed number of persons who were specially selected and were assured of final perseverance. Such a belief was to his mind both unscriptural, as falsifying the purpose of the death of Christ, and a departure from the older theology and even from the early teaching of Augustine himself. Furthermore, Cassian rejected the idea of an absolute Predestination on the ground that it also was non-catholic and unsupported by antiquity, and that it was, in addition, subversive of all incentive to effort, encouraging either carelessness or despair. He was not averse from recognising a Predestination contingent upon foreseen merits and perseverance, but he protested against the general and indiscriminate teaching of the doctrine of Predestination in any form, inasmuch as the preaching of it might do harm, ; whereas its omission could hurt nobodv.3 J §2. I Rise of Semipelagianism. Prosper and Hilary. Controversy EETWEEN MASSILIANS AND AUGUSTINE. These views rapidly spread, and were held generally by the clergy of Southern Gaul, who thus formed themselves into a middle party between the Pelagians and the Augus- tinians. To this party the name of Semipelagian was given, though they never called themselves by that name, having disowned all sympathy with the Pelagians and being closer in thought to those of the Augustinians who held a more moderate position than that of the majority of Augustine’s followers. Their opponents, however, refused to admit this, and unfairly classed them with the Pelagian school m Accordingly, two laymen of Aquitania, named Prosper anc 1 Cassian Conf. xiii ii, 13, 18. * Aug. De Pracdes. 2; De Dono Pcrsev. 41. 3 Prosper apud Aug. Ep. 226 iii. SEMIPELAGIANISM 113 ! 3 : cl( F fl | t : Hilary, both zealous followers of Augustine, wrote to that bishop giving an account of these opinions which were becoming prevalent in Gaul, and asked him to deal with them. Thereupon Augustine wrote two treatises called De Praedestinatione Sanctorum and De Dono Per sever antiae. In the first of these two books he admitted the great and radical difference between the Pelagians and his present opponents, of whom he spoke with great respect as brethren whose views on the subject of Grace were on the whole sound and catholic,1 and who were only wrong in thinking that the beginning of faith came from unassisted free-will.2 Predestination was not, he urged, based upon foreseen merit, 3 and he repeats a favourite statement of his, namely, that men are chosen not because they believe, nor because God knows beforehand that they will believe, but in order that they may believe. 4 He meets, but in a somewhat unsatisfactory way, the charge of novelty by declaring that the silence of the Early Fathers on the subject is due to the cursory manner in which they treat the question of Grace. Thus he confuses the issue by ignoring the fact that the charge was particularly made against the doctrine of Predestination. 5 In the second book he insists on the view that persever¬ ance is a gift of God, declaring that the reason why it is granted to some and not to others is unfathomable.6 He again asserts that election and rejection are arbitrary, but he recommends that care be taken in dealing with this difficult subject before general congregations.7 These treatises by no means allayed the controversy or set at rest the real doubts and reasonable objections of the South Gallican Church. On the contrary, the direct assertion of the overmastering and controlling power of Grace and the statement that salvation was not really within the reach of all Christians caused the so-called Semi¬ pelagian views to spread rapidly and to gain a firm hold in the towns of Southern Gaul. The opinions of Augustine, however, were zealously upheld and championed by Prosper, * De Praed. Sand, ii 25. • lb. 7. 3 lb. 30. 4 lb. 34. s lb. 27. 6 De Dono Pevsev. 1, 21, 30, 35. 1 Ib. 58. 8 114 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN who threw himself heart and soul into the controversy and attacked the Massilians vehemently in letters, in treatises, and even in poems.1 * At this juncture Augustine died, and his death was the signal for renewed activity on the part of the Gallican school. A list of sixteen objections 3 4 5 to the teaching of Augustine was put forth by a certain Vincentius, whose identity with the author of the famous Gommoni- torium, then living in the Isle of Lerins, seems now to be fairly established. 3 These Objectiones Vincentianae were answered carefully and in great detail by Prosper, who, together with Hilary, proceeded to Rome in order to lay the matter before Celestine, and to complain of the con¬ nivance of the bishops of Southern Gaul at this teaching on the part of their clergy as a slight on the memory of Augustine. Celestine accordingly addressed a letter 4 to the bishops of Southern Gaul, in which he censured them for ignoring an error in which their very silence made them partakers, and eulogised Augustine as one who had ever been regarded as a great teacher and a holy man, charging them as follows : “ Rebuke these people ; restrain their liberty of preaching. If the case be so, let novelty cease to assail antiquity, let restlessness cease to disturb the Church’s peace ”.5 This letter, however, was converted by the Semipelagians into a weapon for their own defence. “ Who are the introducers of novelty ? ” they ask. “ Not the Massilians, for they appeal, as is well known, to antiquity, but the followers of Augustine themselves. The novelty which must be repressed is Augustinianism. The teaching of antiquity which must continue is the catholic teaching of the party attacked by Prosper.” Failing, therefore, to suppress Semipelagianism by authority. Prosper now undertook to criticise the teaching of Cassian with his own pen, and wrote a book Against 1 Carmen de Ingratis, an extraordinary poem of a thousand lines. 3 Known to us only by the reply of Prosper, to be found in the Appendix to vol. x of the Benedictine Edition of S. Augustine’s works. 3 See H. Koch, Vincenz von Lerin und Gennadius, Leipzig, 1907. 4 This letter is No. 21 among the letters of Celestine in Migne, Pair. Lat. vol. 50, 528. 5 See Vincentius’ treatment of this letter, Commonitorium ch. 32 SEMIPELAGIANISM 115 the Author of the Conferences ( Contra C ollat or em), in which, hoping to enlist the sympathies of Celestine’s successor, Sixtus III, he points out the inconsistency of Cassian, who at one time ascribes even the beginnings of good desire to God and at another declares that some approach Him by their own unaided will. Prosper defeated his own purpose by emphasising those features of Augustine’s teaching which had already been received with such disfavour, for he exaggerated the extent of inherited corruption and exalted the power of Grace at the expense of human freedom, ignoring or explaining away all texts which opposed his theory. Soon after this, how¬ ever, he disappears from the scene, and is supposed to have gone to Rome as secretary to the new Pope. §3- Lerins the Stronghold of Semipelagianism. Views of Faustus. Semipelagianism continued to flourish in Gaul, chiefly owing to the influence of the great monastery of Lerins, which was illustrious from the fifth century onwards as the home of some of the most famous saints and scholars of the age. It is a well-known fact that this monastery was a stronghold of Semipelagianism. Indeed, as M. Amp&re says,1 the leading champions of that school of thought came from this abbey. The writer of the Commonitorium , Vincentius, who died in 450, himself inclined towards Semi¬ pelagian views, and Faustus, the abbot of the monastery at the time this treatise was written, viz. 434, and who was elected Bishop of Riez in 460, not only held the same opinions but played no inconsiderable part in the ensuing controversy. He himself claimed that he pursued the middle path,2 3 neither ascribing, like Pelagius, too much to human liberty nor, like Augustine, too little. He was a very stern and uncompromising adversary of Pelagius, whom he styled “ pestifer doctor,” 3 but he was equally definite 1 L’Histoire litteraire de la France, vol. ii pp. 23-28. See also Fauriel, Histoire de la Gaule Meridionale, vol. i p. 404 ; Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en France, vol. i p. 121 ; and Neander, Church History , vol. iv 399. * Ep. ad Lucidum. 3 De Gratia Bk. i ch. 1. 116 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN in his views on the subject of Predestination, which he stigmatised as " blasphemous, erroneous, heathen, fatalistic and immoral/* The attitude of Faustus towards Augustine’s teaching is clearly revealed in his controversy with a presbyter named Lucidus, who held predestinarian views, and whom, failing to convince by other means, he cited to appear before a Council at Arles in 475. Here he extracted from him a confession that human exertion as well as Divine Grace is necessary to enable a man to do what is right, and to attain to salvation. The acts of this Council are now lost, but the statement which Faustus submitted to Lucidus for his signature is still extant.1 From this statement it appears that Lucidus was persuaded to repudiate all views which favoured Predestination or seemed to compromise the universality of salvation. Amongst these the following three propositions wrere specially reprobated : (1) That in the foreknowledge of God a man may be predestined to eternal death ; (2) that a man made as a vessel unto dis¬ honour can never become a vessel unto honour ; and (3) that Christ did not die for all, and does not desire that all should be saved. Faustus wras subsequently requested by the members of the Council to wrrite a fuller exposition of their views and a complete refutation of the predestinarian opinions therein condemned. This he did in a work in two books entitled Grace and Free-will, in which he maintained that God has implanted in man an indestructible germ or spark 2 of good, which, if cherished and nurtured, will co-operate with the will of God and become efficacious for salvation. This implies that Faustus must be definitely regarded as an upholder of the doctrine of the necessity for human effort and as an opponent of the doctrine of irresistible Grace. In his view of the necessary co-operation of the human will (co-operatio voluntatis humanae) wfith the Divine Grace, he sides writh Cassian, but endeavours to avoid any exaggeration or overstatement. He admits that free-will has been weakened 1 Migne, Pair. Lat. liii 68 1. > De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio Bk. i ch. i : Hie in homine ignis interior a Deo insitus et ab homine cum Dei gratia nutritus operatur. SEMIPBLAGIAMISM 117 by sin,1 and that it cannot attain to salvation apart from the Grace of God, but at the same time he is careful to safeguard human responsibility. It is thus seen that Faustus took up a position midway between Augustine’s theory of the total depravity and disability of Human Nature on the one hand, and the Pelagian doctrine of the absolute power of the will on the other, and that he was equally opposed to those who extolled Divine Grace at the expense of human exertion on the ground that the will had been altogether destroyed, and to those who ascribed too much to man’s power, and by minimising his weakness to do any good thing were guilty of underrating his need of Grace. This treatise found great favour in Gaul, and a subse¬ quent Council of Lyons asked Faustus to enlarge it, so that it went forth with a certain measure of official sanction. - The result was that, in spite of one or two dissentient voices and written protests, 3 this work was so widely read that it even found its way to Constantinople, where it caused no small stir. Faustus died about 491, and though soon after his death Gelasius of Rome issued a decretal letter condemning his writings, he wTas in his own country for ages celebrated as a saint. 4 $4- Caesarius and the Council at Arausio. Articles of the Council DIRECTED NOT AGAINST SEMIPELAGIANISM BUT AGAINST ITS ERRORS. Semipelagianism had now become the recognised doctrine of Southern Gaul, and it was not until the time of Caesarius that opposition to these views asserted itself strongly enough to gain a hearing among the Gallican bishops. Strangely enough, Caesarius, to whom the official condemnation of these views was due, came himself from the stronghold of Semipelagian opinions, Lerins, and he only succeeded in securing that condemnation by carefully modifying and 1 De Gratia et Lib. Arbit. Bk. i ch. 9. 1 See Tillemont, Memoires xvi 424-5. He endeavours, however, to minimise this stamp of authority on the part of the Church of Gaul. 3 Avitus of Vienne wrote against this treatise (Tillm. Mem. xvi 426). ♦ Faustus bears the title of saint in the Patrologia. 118 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN mitigating such parts of the Augustinian system as had already encountered grave disapproval and dislike. Caesarius became Bishop of Arles in 501, and very soon endeared himself to his people, by whom he was venerated alike for the saintliness of his character, his wisdom and the excellence of his administrative ability. Being, in spite of his early life at Lerins, a disciple of Augustine and borrowing largely from his views and sermons, he set himself in opposition to the prevalent Semipelagian opinions of his country. But though he loved what he called “ the catholic sentiments of Augustine/’ 1 he had no sympathy with his extreme views and strongly protested against the doctrine of Predestination to evil. To settle the controversy finally, he summoned a Council at Arausio (Orange) in a.d. 529, where a series of twenty- five doctrinal articles were laid before the assembly, composed of thirteen bishops and seven illustrious laymen. In these articles all that might be regarded as offensive in the teach¬ ing of Augustine was carefully excluded. Predestination to evil was utterly condemned, and it was definitely laid down that sufficient Grace is bestowed upon all the baptised. This is, of course, directly contrary to the theory of irresis¬ tible Grace and absolute decrees. It is interesting to observe that these articles were not drawn up in Gaul, nor were they formulated by Caesarius himself. They had been sent to Caesarius by Felix IV of Rome, and were based on the works of Augustine and Prosper. The reticence displayed by these articles on the subject of Predestination is very significant, since it shows that, in spite of the importance attached to this doctrine by Augustine, a mediating theology was gradually growing up even in the Church of Rome. The first two articles merely assert the doctrine of the Fall and the transmission to posterity of the evil result of Adam’s sin. These are directed against Pelagianism, which denied the corruption of the human race through Adam. The next six articles deal with the subject of Grace, main¬ taining that owing to the weakening of our natural powers we need to be prepared by Grace before we can be cleansed 1 Vita S. Caes. ii 33 in Migne, Pair. Lai. 67. SEMIPELAGIANISM 119 from sin or begin to believe, or do any good thing pertaining to salvation. These articles are directed against that Semi¬ pelagian view which held that the beginning of faith precedes the Grace of God, and that the latter is consequent upon a previous application on the part of the believer. The remaining seventeen articles, some of which are very brief, are occupied with an exposition of Grace in its various aspects, of its necessity for the performance of all good works, of its power to restore freedom to the will, to rescue the fallen, to exalt the saint, to impart Christian fortitude by the presence of the Spirit, and point out that it is of it's essence to exclude ‘ boasting ’, being given irrespective of all merit either earned in the past or foreseen in the future. After the articles follows a general conclusion, which states that 1 “ according to the teaching of the Holy Scrip¬ tures and the definitions of the ancient Fathers, we ought with God’s help to preach and believe that through the sin of the first man free-will has been so debased and enfeebled that no one can now either love God as he ought or believe in Him or do good for His sake unless prevented by the Grace of His Divine mercy. We ought therefore to believe that to Abel the Just, to Noah, and to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and to the whole multitude of the patri¬ archs, that illustrious faith of theirs, which the Apostle Paul praises, was not given on account of any natural good which had first been bestowed on Adam, but through the Grace of God. Now, we know and believe that since the coming of our Lord this Grace may also be possessed by all who desire to be baptised. This Grace consisteth not in free-will, but is conferred by the bounty of Christ, according to what has been already often said and according to what the Apostle Paul preaches : ‘ To you it hath been granted in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer in His behalf ’ : and again, ‘ God who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of our Lord Jesus Christ ’ ; and again, ‘ By Grace have ye been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves : it is the gift 1 Translated from the Acts of the Council in Bright’s Antipelagian Treatises pp. 390-1. 120 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN of God * ; and, as the Apostle says of himself : ‘ I have obtained mercy that I might be faithful 1 (he did not say ‘ because I was/ but ‘ that I might be ’) ; and again, 4 What hast thou that thou didst not receive ? * and again, ‘ Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, coming down from the Father of lights * ; and again, * A man has nothing good unless it have been given him from heaven.’ 1 There are innumerable testimonies from the Holy Scriptures which can be produced to prove the need of Grace, but they have been omitted for the sake of brevity, and because ‘ he who is unbelieving in that which is least will be unbelieving also in much V* This insistence upon the need and reality of Grace con¬ cludes with an important modification, added, one may suppose, in order to prevent it being assumed that the assertion of Grace was in any degree subversive of the doctrine of liberty as set forth in the body of the articles instead of merely expressing a complimentary truth. This concluding summary, with its bold preference of duty to theory, might well have closed the door against extreme Augustinianism for ever. It runs as follows : “ This also according to the catholic faith do we believe, that all the baptised, by the Grace received through baptism, can and ought to perform with the help and co-operation of Christ all things that appertain to the salvation of their souls, if they are willing to labour in faith. Moreover, that some men are predestined by Divine power to evil, we not only do not believe, but also, if there are any who are willing to believe so evil a thing, against such we do with all abhor¬ rence pronounce an anathema. This also we profess and believe as we are bound to do, that in every good work it is not we who begin and are afterwards aided by the mercy of God, but that He Himself, without any preceding merit on our part, inspires us with the faith and love of Him in order that we may faithfully sue for the sacrament of baptism, and after baptism may be able with His help to do those things which are pleasing to Him. Wherefore we must clearly believe that the admirable faith of the robber 1 These, it is to be noticed, are some of the texts constantly quoted by Augustine in support of his views. SEMIPELAGIANISM 121 whom the Lord invited to His own land of Paradise, and that of the centurion Cornelius to whom the angel of the Lord was sent, and that of Zacchaeus who earned the privilege of entertaining the Lord Himself, did not come by nature but was the gift of Divine bounty.” Such were the decisions of the Council of Orange under Caesarius, remarkable alike for their good sense and for their studied moderation. Indeed, so important did Caesa¬ rius regard them that he invited the laymen present at the Council to sign the document after the assembled bishops had affixed their names, and then sent it to Rome to receive the Papal sanction. It was ratified by Boniface II in the following year in a letter 1 declaring the formulary of the Council of Orange to be agreeable to the catholic rules of the Fathers, and expressing the hope that all who dissented from the sound doctrine therein contained would themselves soon be the recipients of the Divine gift of goodwill. This Council is generally regarded as having pronounced the final condemnation of Semipelagianism, and there are those who consider the question to be thereby closed, but it is important to observe that the Council condemned not Semipelagianism itself, but the errors of Semipelagianism — a very different matter. Not only does the formulary refrain from any direct reference to the Semipelagian party, or from a wholesale condemnation of their views, but itself expresses opinions which were in some respects of a Semi¬ pelagian tendency. For example, the definite assertion that all baptised persons might be saved if they chose is directly contrary to the spirit of Augustine’s system, and the doctrine of prevenient Grace, the denial of which was the main error reprobated by the Council, was acknowledged by many Semipelagians even before the Council met.3 J § 5- Prevenient Grace regarded as “ Initium Salutis”. The Real Meaning of Prevenient Grace. Semipelagianism was by no means suppressed in the West as a result of this Council. The Conferences of Cassian 1 Migne, Patr. Lat. lxv 31. 3 Cf. Faustus De Crat. et Lib . Arb. i 9, 122 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN lost none of their popularity, and what might perhaps be described as a modified Semipelagianism continued to pre¬ vail even in monasteries where the opinions of Augustine were openly professed. In fact, Semipelagian views have continued to be held up to the present day, and though at certain times they have assumed more definite form than at others and have been branded with distinctive names, such as Arminianism, yet there is now a widespread feeling that they are nearer to catholic truth than are the opposite views, which have been responsible for much that is harsh and unlovely in Latin Christianity. How, then, is the charge against Semipelagianism to be answered when it is urged that it denied the necessity of Grace as prevenient to the first motions of conversion in man ? Two problems here present themselves for consideration. First, what is the exact meaning of prevenient Grace, which catholic doctrine maintains to be essential for salvation,1 and secondly, how far did Semipelagianism deny the necessity of this Grace ? First, let it be remembered that Grace is simply the action of the Holy Spirit which works unseen in the heart of man. “ The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit.’ ’ Nor is the operation of the Holy Spirit within man capable of being accurately measured. “ He giveth not His Holy Spirit by measure”, so that it is impossible to assert that Grace is granted in a greater degree to one man than to another, or at one time rather than at another. Therefore any attempts made to compare the measure of Grace given before baptism with that given after baptism, or the measure of Grace given to man without being sought with that which is given in answer to man’s earnest entreaty, and so forth, must of necessity be futile. But with this warning borne in mind, certain observations may be made which tend towards a solution of the problem. 1 The doctrine of prevenient Grace finds expression in the tenth Article of the Church of England, and in two Collects, that for Easter Day and the one commencing : “ Prevent us, O Lord,” both of which are translated from Latin Collects of the seventh or eighth century. SEMIPELAGIANISM 123 The performance of any action implies two things — it implies the will to do that action, however aroused, and it also implies the power to carry the action into effect. These two functions are separable — we may have the will with¬ out the power, we may have the power without the will. (In the case of doing what is right, we have not the power. The teaching of Scripture agrees with the experience of (life in declaring that man, unaided by Grace, cannot supply the adequate power, cannot, apart from Grace, do either the things that he would or the things that are pleasing to God. Grace supplies power — this is acknow¬ ledged by all, and should have been acknowledged by Pelagius. Does Grace also supply will in the same sense that it j ' supplies powrer ? This is the real question, and it is a question which, however it be answered, cannot be answered without peril. The will is the man, and to take it away from the man is not merely to deprive him of his human dignity, but to relieve him of his human responsibility. On the other hand, the will is sore let and hindered by the natural promptings of selfishness and by the spontaneous solicitation of the passions inherent in man’s nature. But if man is to be moral at all, the decision must be his decision, the choice must be his choice. But as his choice is influ¬ enced from below7 in one direction, so it may be influenced from above in another direction. Must we not say that, apart from this influence from above, man is incapable of choosing the right, just as apart from the influence from below he wrould be incapable of choosing the wrong ? The will to do right must be aroused. A call is necessary before man can turn to righteousness as the longing of his soul and seek after God. This call is what is understood by ‘ prevenient Grace’. Mere knowledge of right and wrong does not suffice to make men desire right in preference to wrong. It supplies no motive. It does not alter the inherent tendency of man to satisfy his selfish desires and to sin. This is seen at once by a comparison of the child of Christian parents with the child of the uninstructed savage. The one turns to evil as instinctively as the other. And even in the instructed adult, as Augustine rightly points 124 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN out,1 the knowledge of the law only makes the natural man, out of sheer perverseness, more determined to violate it. Hence the limitation of prevenient Grace to an external gift, namely, the preaching of the Gospel, is inadequate and Pelagian. Free choice is certainly useless unless a man knows the way of truth, but knowing the way of truth is in its turn useless without the influence of the Holy Spirit to enable him to love it and to desire to follow it. §6. Three Propositions concerning Prevenient Grace. The beginning of salvation, then, does not come from man, but God. It is a Divine call to love the way of righteousness and to hate sin, a call which comes to man after the knowledge of the truth has been obtained and is the direct result of the working of the Holy Spirit within the heart of man. The error into which Augustine fell with regard to the commencement of faith in the individual was that he did not lay enough stress on or allow sufficient importance to the human element and to the part played by man himself in the work of salvation. Accordingly, three propositions with regard to the nature of prevenient Grace may here be laid down, which, although not in agreement with the theory of Augustine, seem nevertheless to be demanded by common sense and to be established by the evangelical declaration of the accountability of man, i.e. his power and obligation to will to do that which is right and to shun that which is evil and perverse. The first proposition is that prevenient Grace is universal. God wills earnestly the salvation of all, and, inasmuch as Christ died for all, God gives to each man at the outset of his life that measure of Grace and help which, if supported by free-will, will lead him to salvation. The assertion of Augustine that prevenient Grace was given to a certain number chosen for that purpose by God, and not to all men, impugns the righteousness of God and destroys our conception of justice at its very source, for man’s idea of justice can only be derived from and based 1 De Spiritu et Littera . SEMIPELAGXANISM 125 on that quality as seen in God. This violation of the principle of equity cannot be explained by any of the reasons which have been variously assigned for the partiality of an eclectic gift of prevenient Grace. Some have maintained that God need not have given Grace to any man, and the fact that He gives it to some is a gratuitous favour on His part, bestowed in order that His mercy might be known unto men. Others have urged that those to whom pre- venient Grace has been given have received it for some foreseen merit, or because it was known beforehand that they would use it aright. It has also been said that God's reason for giving prevenient Grace to some and not to others rests in the secret counsels of God, and is therefore inscrutable and unfathomable by man. None of these explanations, however, can now be accepted, and the only theory possible, the only sound and catholic doctrine, is the one which makes the gift of prevenient Grace impartial and universal. Indeed, the fact that Augustinianism was not a universalist doctrine was its gravest defect, and every attempt to make it so, or to combine it with a doctrine of universality,1 failed, and was bound to fail, because Augus¬ tine's conception of election could fit in with no scheme which threw open the door of salvation freely to all men. If a man argues that prevenient Grace implies from its nature a certain measure of favouritism, it is because he to all, and this in virtue of the essential relation of man to God. True, it is only known by those who accept it, but it is there, and there is no one to whom it is not offered. There is no favouritism with God. The second proposition is that prevenient Grace is not irresistible . That doctrine which regards Grace as being irresistible at any stage of a man’s life must on many grounds be rejected. Not only does such a theory render everything affecting faith vague and uncertain, even to the believer, 1 Such an attempt was made by the unknown author of the treatise entitled De Vocatione Omnium Gentium, which ineffectually endeavoured to combine the doctrine of the exclusive efficacy of Divine Grace with a recognition of the universality of God’s purpose of salvation. This work is included among the works of Prosper and Leo. 126 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN inasmuch as it necessarily lies outside the domain of ex¬ perience, but it leads to a determinism conflicting with the Gospel and with the universal sense of individual freedom. It is useless to exhort, to pray for, or to reprimand sinners. Human effort and good works are thereby discouraged, because in any case they can make no difference and cannot alter the predetermined issue. In short, the doctrine of irresistible Grace, however explained, cannot escape the charge of fatalism, and must lead either to dull resignation or to despair. It destroys man to exalt God. Moreover, if prevenient Grace be universal, it cannot be irresistible. Irresistible Grace could only be maintained in the case of the favoured few who are destined to perse¬ vere to the end, and who, in spite of all lapses, are to be brought finally to a state of perfection. But if prevenient Grace be given in equal degree to all, as equity demands, the fact that some through their own fault fail to attain salvation causes the thesis of a prevenient Grace which is at the same time irresistible to break down on the very threshold. The truth is that, though God wills all men to be saved. He imposes salvation as a necessity on none. The third proposition is that prevenient Grace is powerless to produce any result unless it he followed by voluntary effort on man's part. The prevenient Grace of the initial call follows immedi¬ ately after the awakening of the intellectual sense of right and wrong by a knowledge of the law, and gives to man the first impetus in the right direction, the first feeling of love for God and the desire to do right. But in order to become operative, prevenient Grace must meet with a response on man’s part. He must meet God half-way. As a result of the Divine * vocatio ’ he must begin not only to will to do right and to fulfil the law of God, the existence of which he has already learnt, but he must also “ ask and seek and knock ” in order to obtain a continuance of that Grace which is to work with him and assist him in his pursuit of holiness. This co-operation of free-will with prevenient Grace is a factor of vital importance. In fact, it may be declared to contain the key to the whole problem. God has given man a free will, and, however weakened that SEMIPELAGIANISM 127 free will may have become, it cannot be destroyed. Nor can its existence be neglected. Whatever measure of Grace is given by God to man at the outset of his life, it calls for and demands an equal and corresponding effort on man’s side, without which it is powerless to effect his salvation. Any exaggeration of the importance of either of these two elements, the slightest disturbance of the equilibrium, leads to heresy, and makes man’s will all-sufficient or makes God’s Grace overmaster man’s will altogether. If Grace be too powerful, then God is destroying His own work. He is obliterating man’s free-will, and reducing him to the level of a beast or a plant. If man’s will is all-sufficient to effect his salvation, prevenient Grace is superfluous and the work of the Holy Spirit is rendered null and void. Prevenient Grace is not to be confused with co-operative Grace, which is given in answer to prayer after the work of salvation has begun, yet the doctrine of co-operation applies to the one as much as to the other. The difference is that in the case of co-operative Grace man’s will and effort work side by side with it, while in the case of preveni¬ ent Grace they follow it. But in either case the doctrine of perfect co-operation between the Holy Spirit and the individual in whom He works not only avoids the Pelagian error of minimising the power of Grace, but it gives full force to the responsibility and accountability of man. This aspect of Grace enables us to assign to the right source the blame for all failure to do right. When a man does wrong, it is due not to insufficiency of Grace but to insufficiency of will : if he fails to attain salvation, it is his part of the combined action of Grace and free-will that is lacking. The fault lies with him and not with God. ; §7- Relation of Prevenient Grace to Baptism. One other point remains to be considered, and that is the relation of prevenient Grace to baptism. How far is this doctrine affected by, or opposed to, the sacramental view of Grace ? On this subject a certain amount of inconsistency is found. Augustine, as has been already seen, emphasised 128 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN the fact that the spiritual life of man is begun, continued and ended in Grace, that Grace even anticipates baptism, and that man is led by Grace to seek it. The case of the Ethiopian Eunuch is a Biblical illustration of this truth. The followers of Augustine, on the other hand, exalted the sacrament of baptism as the source of all Grace, regarding it, as Harnack says,1 almost as a magical miracle. And in course of time this aspect of baptism became more and more the popular doctrine. Indeed, the sacramental view of Grace became the recognised view through the Middle Ages. A similar inconsistenc}7 is observed in the Canons of the Council of Orange. At one moment we read that the power of choice residing in the will, which was weakened in the first man, cannot be repaired except by the Grace of baptism,- at another that the state of believing by which we attain the regeneration of Holy Baptism is brought about through the gift of Grace. 3 In several places Grace is spoken of as an inner process anticipating every natural i effort and every motion of righteousness, and yet under¬ lying all this is the external conception of Grace as the gift of baptism alone.4 This inconsistency is due to a somewhat natural confu¬ sion in the application of the term Grace. All working of the Holy Spirit in the heart of man is Grace, but the Grace consisting in the initial call — that “ inspiration of the Holy Spirit which repairs our will from unbelief to faith ”,5 and to which the name prevenient Grace is given, effects nothing j more than the origination of the desire to do right. Man is led by it to love God, to believe in Him, to serve Him and to desire to please Him, but it does not aid him in his efforts to attain salvation. That is the function of co-opera¬ tive Grace, which is given in baptism and is continued constantly throughout life in answer to prayer. Sacra- 1 Hist, of Dogma (Engl. Trans.) v 260. 3 See Canon xiii : Arbitrium voluntatis, in primo homine infirmatum, nisi per gratiam baptismi non potest reparari. 3 Canon v : Initium fidei quo in eum credimus qui justificat impium, et ad regenerationem sacri baptismatis pervenimus, per gratiae donum (est ). 4 Hoc etiam secundum fidem Catholicam credimus, quod accepta per baptismum gratia, omnes baptizati, Christo auxiliante et co-operante, quae ad salutem animae pertinent, possint et debeant si fideliter laborare voluerint, adimplere. Bright, Antipelagian Treatises p. 391. s Canon v : Per inspirationem Spiritus Sancti corrigentem voluntatem I nostram ab infidelitate ad fidem. SEMIPELAGIANISM 129 mental Grace works with man, helps his weakness and enables him to do that which prevenient Grace teaches him to long for, and which by himself he could never do. Prevenient Grace, then, is independent of baptism. It anticipates all human endeavour, and may be described as the inspiration of faith and love ; while co-operative Grace is the assistance of God’s Holy Spirit, which alone enables man to carry out the good that the will desires to do. §8. Discussion of the Charge made against Semipelagians that THEY DENIED PREVENIENT GRACE. We now pass to a consideration of the second problem raised by the charge usually made against Semipelagianism, and proceed to investigate how far Semipelagianism denied the necessity and existence of prevenient Grace. In order to estimate this it is essential to examine the view of Cassian, who may be regarded as the father of Semipelagianism in Gaul. The following extracts from his writings will show his position on this subject. In the Conference with the Abbot Daniel, Cassian points out that free-will without Grace is inadequate, and that human efforts without Grace are unavailing. Without the Grace of God, he says, “ the efforts of the worker are useless ”.x In the Conference with Serapion it is stated that it is an impious notion and an impertinence to ascribe everything to man’s own exertions. There are many passages in Scripture proving that foes cannot be overcome by man’s own strength without the help of God.2 In the Conference with Paphnutius, Germanus asks : “ Where, then, is there room for free-will if God both begins and ends everything concerning our salvation ? ” 3 The answer is that the be¬ ginning and the end are not everything; there is a “ middle in between From these and many other passages it is evident that Cassian fully admitted the need of prevenient • ' Grace. “ If Christ said, ‘ I can of mine own self do i nothing ’, shall we who are but dust and ashes think that ‘ we have no need of God’s help in what pertains to our 1 Conf. iv 5. J lb. v 15. 3 lb. iii 11. 9 130 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN salvation ’ ? ” 1 The truth is that Cassian fully realised that the will of no one, however eager to reach “ the palm of righteousness ”, is sufficient, “ unless he is protected by Divine compassion”,3 but he felt that there is always the danger of man becoming discouraged and relaxing his efforts on the ground that prevenient Grace to enable him to do right is lacking. Hence Cassian was really the first theologian to emphasise the paramount need of man’s co-operation with the Grace of God. He did not go so far as to say that prevenient Grace is dependent on foreseen merit, but he went so far as to say that it is conditional upon the free self-determination of the human will, 3 by which apparently he meant that unless prevenient Grace finds an immediate response in the human heart, and is in fact met, as it wTere, half-way, it ceases to operate and is withdrawn. In view of the universal corruption of Human Nature, which Cassian admitted, he acknowiedged that man cannot be restored to health without the physician’s aid, but at least, he w7ould say, man can desire that aid. This led him to the position that moral improvement is partly the work of man’s own will — that sometimes God antici¬ pates the desire and effort of man, as in the case of Matthew and Paul, but that sometimes the first impulse comes from man’s own heart, as in the case of Zacchaeus and the penitent thief. The mistake he made here is in treating the visible part of the story of these men as if it wrere the whole, neglecting the fact that wTe are not told anything about the antecedent conditions and underlying motives of the souls of these men. The desire to be healed is itself stirred up by Grace. Moreover, there is an element of truth in Prosper’s criticism of Cassian, namely, that he is proposing an inconsistent and wffiolly unsatisfactory theory in ascribing to God a diversity of procedure in dealing with souls, so that some are drawn to Him by prevenient Grace, wffiile others approach Him of their own unaided wall. Thus Cassian’s contribution may be regarded not so much as a solution of the problem as an opening of the question. Yet very shortly after this, the Massilian clergy as a body, if Prosper is to be believed, held definitely to the ? Instit. xii 17. * lb. xii 10. Conf. iv 4. SEMIPELAGXANISM 131 ! belief that Grace is given to none but those who strive for it, and he speaks of the phrase “ asking, seeking and knocking ” as one of the technical terms of the Semi¬ pelagian party, used by them of the state of mind antece¬ dent to and necessary for the reception of Divine Grace. This is specially referred to in a letter of Prosper to Augustine,1 which says that the Gallican clergy assert that if the decree of God anticipate human will, all effort Iis removed and all virtue is taken away. They teach that they can attain to the Grace by which we are new-born in Christ by natural powers, namely, by asking and seeking and knocking. In Augustine’s reply this view is directly condemned. ‘‘They are wrong”, he says, “who think that the impulse by which we ask and seek and knock originates with us and is not given to us.” 2 Thus before the middle of the fifth century the theory of the Semipelagians in Southern Gaul had advanced a step farther than that of Cassian. He had merely said that Grace need not be and was not always prevenient ; they now asserted that it never was. This was an important and unfortunate development, for the denial of prevenient Grace became, for a time at least, the characteristic view of the Gallican theologians. This is seen by a reference made to the subject in his Commonitorium by Vincentius of Lerins, who, though a Semipelagian, certainly represented the most moderate party of that school of thought, in which he definitely condemns the idea of prevenience and styles men heretics who teach that Grace is given by God to men without any effort on their part, and even though they do not “ ask and seek and knock ”.3 1 Epistle ccxxv among Augustine’s letters, § 3 removeri . . . omnem industriam tollique virtutes si Dei constitutio humanae praeveniat volun- tates. § 4 Possit suam dirigere voluntatem atque ad hanc gratiam qua in Christo renascimur pervenire per naturalem scilicet facultatem, petendo, quaerendo, pulsando. 2 Be Bono Perseverantiae 64 : Attendant ergo quomodo falluntur qui putant esse a nobis, non dari nobis, ut petamus, quaeramus, pulsemus. Et hoc esse dicunt, quod gratia praeceditur merito nostro, ut sequatur ilia, cum accipimus petentes, et invenimus quaerentes, aperiturque pulsantibus. Nec volunt intellegere etiam hoc divini muneris esse ut oremus, hoc est petamus, quaeramus, atque pulsemus. 3 Audent etenim polliceri et docere quod in ecclesia sua magna et specialis ac plane personalis quaedam sit dei gratia, adeo ut sine ullo labore, sine ullo studio, sine ulla industria, etiamsi nec petant nec quaerant nec pulsent. 132 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN At this period it seems as if the Semipelagians were in danger of holding as an essential part of their doctrine what was, as a matter of fact, an error based on a miscon¬ ception of the real meaning of prevenient Grace. In their desire to emphasise the vital importance of human effort they lost sight of the inability of man to turn to God by his own unaided powers without the initial impartation of faith and love. This attitude was not, however, necessary for the Semipelagian position, and one notices a gradual tendency among the theologians of the more moderate Semipelagian school to recede from it even before the doctrine of prevenient Grace was asserted by the Council of Orange as a catholic truth. Faustus, for example, though in one passage he compares the case of a soul which desires to be drawn to God to that of a sick man trying to rise and asking for a helping hand,1 admits that there is an element in the soul of man which can only be ascribed to the inspiration of God, being not merely anterior to all human effort, but even to the desire for righteousness. He declares that although after the Fall the human will lost its original power, nevertheless it was not entirely destroyed, nor completely deprived of Grace; that there is an inde¬ structible germ and spark 2 of good implanted by God within, which, if cherished and nurtured by man, operates in him with saving effect. And a little later he declares that owing to the weakening of the will it requires Divine help to enable it to move towards good. 3 This tendency to greater moderation of statement culminated in the perfect readiness of the Gallican bishops at the Council of Orange to accept without protest the statement that man cannot, apart from Grace, think or choose by his natural powers anything good that pertains to salvation^ and that the beginning of faith is due not to man, but to the Grace of God. 5 quicumque illi ad numerum suum pertinent, tamen ita divinitus dispen- sentur, ut angelicis evecti manibus . . . numquam possint scandalizari. Common, xxvi, Author’s edition (Camb. Univ. Press), p. 109. 1 De Gratia i 17. 3 lb. i 1 : Hie in homine ignis interior a Deo insitus, et ab homine cum Dei gratia nutritus operatur. 4 Cone . Araus. Canon vii. 3 lb. i 9. s lb. Canon vi. - SEMIPELAGIANISM 133 In any case, there is no evidence that the denial of prevenient Grace survived that Council, and the fact that it did not do so and that Semipelagianism, as has already been shown, continued to flourish, proves, if proof were needed, that the denial of prevenient Grace had no permanent or essential place in the Semipelagian position. | §9- Three Inherent Characteristics of Semipelagianism. i What, then, were the features of Semipelagianism which ‘ persisted in spite of the decree of Orange, and which may for this reason be regarded as its inherent characteristics ? ■ They may be summed up as being three in number : (i) opposition to Predestinarianism ; (2) insistence on the ! moral responsibility of man ; and (3) the denial that marriage involves any violation of chastity. Not only were these points not condemned by the Council, but the fact that they have survived in spite of : the sifting and scrutiny through which in successive ages they have passed, and in spite of the hold that Augustine’s ’■ name and views had upon subsequent generations, goes a | long way towards establishing their truth. The objection to the theory of absolute Predestination ' seems to have been the first, as it was the chief, ground of ! protest against Augustinianism on the part of the Church of Massilia, and it forms the starting-point from which the Semipelagian school arose. If Augustine had not laid such rigorous and unqualified emphasis on this stern and unbend¬ ing doctrine, he would never have elicited from the pres¬ byters of Gaul criticisms of which no candid mind can dispute the justice. Nor can it be urged that Augustine did not realise to what objections his theory lay open, and that, had he done so, he would have corrected, or at least modified, its severity. His reply to Prosper and Hilary is his final answer to his Massilian critics, and in the two books which form that reply he not merely restates and insists on his predestinarian theory in its entirety, but abates nothing of its intensity and sternness. He actually declares that Predestination is wholly irrespective of fore¬ seen piety, that it is simply and literally absolute, and that 134 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN it is inexplicable save on the grounds of the inscrutable will of God. He defines Grace as an overpowering and irresistible force bestowed on some men and not on others, leaving those on whom it is bestowed no room for the exer¬ cise of will and giving them no choice but to obey : the logical conclusion of all which is that man’s will is not a free will at all, but a determined will, that election and rejection are purely arbitrary, and that salvation is not really offered to all men. Augustine’s reply, therefore, as Dr. Bright says, “ failed to satisfy the natural doubts or to meet the real objections of the Church of Marseilles.” 1 Indeed, the validity of their protest is confirmed by the attitude of the Council of Orange. Not only is there in the resolutions of that Council a most significant absence of any positive assertion respecting Predestination, but an anathema was pronounced against any — if any there be — who should hold a Predestination to evil.2 In a word, it may be stated that the objections of the Semipelagians to the doctrine of Predestination as propounded by Augustine, based as they are on truth, reason and experience, remain unanswered and unanswerable. § io. Original Guilt and Moral Responsibility. The question of the moral responsibility of man is intimately connected with the question of Predestination, yet, inasmuch as it involves the further question of the real meaning of guilt, it will be best to treat it separately. First, then, let it be understood that sin and guilt are two totally different ideas, whether sin be regarded as an individual act or a universal taint. An individual act may be sinful without necessarily involving the doer in guilt. It may, for example, be committed involuntarily, or it may be committed under constraint, or it may be done in ignorance. This difference between sin and guilt is recognised by S. Paul, e.g. Rom. iv 15 : “ Where no law is, there is no transgression ” ; and v 13 : “ Sin is not 1 Introduction to Antipelagian Treatises of Augustine p. lviii. * Cone. Araus. concluding Summary (Bright, Antipelagian Treatises P- 39i). SEMIPELAGIANISM 135 imputed when there is no law ” ; and also vii 8 : “ Without the law sin was dead”. Then, again, by Original Sin is meant a universal propensity to evil ; a universal taint contracted somehow which predisposes a man to do wrong even in violation of his will and against his better judgement. But this is a totally different concept from the idea of guilt, whether regarded as original or not. Guilt can only be applied to the act of an individual committed wilfully, contrary to his conscience and to his notion of what is good and right. Guilt is the meriting of punishment for wilful sin. It is the verdict of a man’s own conscience passed on a voluntary violation of a universal law by one who is fully responsible and fully aware of what he is doing. There are also degrees of guilt, so that some, we are told, will be beaten with many stripes and some with few stripes, according to the measure of their accountability. A man cannot be held accountable for something that he has not done, nor can he be regarded as responsible for something that happened before he was born. Original Guilt is a contradiction in terms, for what is original is not guilt, and what is guilt is not original. If in place of guilt accountability be substituted, all difficulty will be avoided. Degrees of guilt are degrees of account¬ ability, and there can be no degrees of accountability in the possession of a hereditary liability for which all are either equally responsible or equally devoid of responsi¬ bility. The doctrine of Original Guilt was, nevertheless, retained by various Protestant Churches after the Reforma¬ tion, yet being, as it is, contrary to common reason, it has necessarily been abandoned by modern theology. The great service rendered by Pelagius, who, as has been pointed out in a former chapter, began his public activity simply as a moral reformer, was his insistence on the fact of the moral responsibility of the individual. Unfortunately, he was led by his desire to uphold this truth into a false conception of sin, for he regarded each sinful act as a separate and isolated factor, with no bearing whatever upon the character of the doer. It was this denial of the existence of sinful habit and the disregard of our inability, in spite of formal freedom, to do the things we would, which 136 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN was the weakest feature of his doctrine, causing him to recognise but imperfectly the nature of individual responsi¬ bility and to interpret it as being the power and obli¬ gation of every man on all occasions to do right. This, of course, implies unqualified free-will and the possibility of sinlessness, both of which, as experience teaches, are contrary to fact. Augustine, on the other hand, in his desire to emphasise the generic aspect of evil and the physical unity of the race, unduly minimised the responsibility of the individual. His doctrine of imputation and his confusion of Original Sin with Original Guilt led him to the impossible conclusion that the voluntary consent of a person is not an essential factor in guilt, and that all men are equally guilty. This totally disregards the will to do right and makes no differ¬ ence between those who exercise that will and those who do not. In fact, as a doctrine it is subversive of all moral responsibility, and is contrary to our fundamental moral judgement, which imputes to man those sins alone for which he is personally responsible, and which recognises degrees of guilt according to the knowledge, the environment and 1 the previous history of the sinner. Augustine himself was not unaware of the weakness of his theory, and tried to cover it by allowing full moral responsibility to Adam and by maintaining that we were all potentially in Adam, and, indeed, were Adam, when he sinned. But this explanation, however satisfactory to Augustine with his necessary limitations in scientific know¬ ledge, cannot be accepted by an age which regards personality as the sole sphere of sin and of virtue. The personality of Adam was his own, and was incommunicable ; his nature was, it may be, communicable, but not his guilt. To participate in his nature may be to our grave disadvantage, but so far as it is this, it diminishes our guilt. Moral accountability cannot Ipe assigned where there is no actual and conscious participation in sin. This grave weakness which lay at the base of the whole Augustinian system was corrected by the representatives of the Semipelagian school, who refused to recognise any theory which did not secure the full and complete responsi- SEMIPELAGIANISM 137 bility of the individual, in view of which each man is condemned by his conscience for each individual sin as if it were his sole creation. But they did not, in shunning the error of Augustine, fall back again into the error of Pelagius. They kept in mind not only the fact of the universality of sin, but also the terrible weakening of the will wrought by sinful habit. Therefore they steered a midway course between the two extremes, and declared not only that the full and complete moral responsibility of man is a sound and catholic conception, as of course it is, but that the real meaning of moral responsibility is not that man has the power to do right and to abstain from sin in all circumstances, whatever his previous history may have been, but that he has the power and is morally bound to desire to do right and to endeavour to do right, however unsuccessful may be the attempt. The reason why man's conscience condemns him when he does wrong, even in the case of severe temptation, is that he has not exerted sufficient effort or yielded himself so completely to the impulse to do right as he feels he ought to have done and might have done. § ii. Marriage no Violation of Chastity. The third essential feature of the Semipelagian position is the denial that marriage involves any violation of chastity. The doctrine of the sinfulness of sexual desire arises from, and is inseparably connected with, Augustine’s theory of Original Sin. His contention that the sin of Adam corrupted the whole of Human Nature, and is handed down from father to son, seemed to him to involve the view that evil is neces¬ sarily propagated by sexual intercourse. This view Augustine doubtless derived from his Manichaean days, but it remained with him till the end. The reason for this was that the Manichaean opinion of the intrinsic sinfulness of concu¬ piscence fitted in well with his scheme of inherited sin and caused him erroneously to identify Original Sin with the natural sexual impulse. This was a great mistake on the 138 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN part of Augustine. No natural law can be in itself bad. All the bodily appetites may be perverted, but the sin lies i in their abuse and not their use ; and the worst feature of ; Augustinianism is the continual and undue attention it has drawn to the sphere of sex. This is seen in the extravagant exaltation of celibacy and in the morbid contemplation of virginity which it would impose upon the Church, laying stress upon, and continually recalling to the mind and 1 1 imagination, matters of which no one wishes either to speak or to think. Unfortunately, this view of the sinfulness of the natural function of procreation was encouraged by the monastic ideal. The monks readily applauded any doctrine that depreciated marriage and exalted celibacy, and there is no doubt that it was due to monasticism that this perverse view of marriage gained so firm a hold on the mind of the , . Church. To this debased view of matrimony Semipelagianism was inherently opposed. This opposition was, it is true, not realised in the early stages of Semipelagianism, and 1 , some individual Semipelagians — for example, Faustus — regarded sexual desire and marriage in almost the same light as did Augustine himself. Indeed, the attention of I these early champions of Semipelagianism was monopolised upon the main and central issue, and they were naturally reluctant to widen the field of their controversy with Augustine. It may also be said that the Gallican party, . ' in contending for what they regarded as orthodoxy, did not 1 at first realise the whole extent of its implications nor grasp all that followed logically from their principles. The denial of the impurity of marriage was the inevitable infer¬ ence from their worthier view of Human Nature, even though j individual members of the school may have failed to see | the logical connexion between the speculative doctrine and the practical conclusion. In opposing the Augustinian J doctrine of Original Sin, the Semipelagians necessarily opposed all that followed from that doctrine by way of deduction and consequence. Their main contention on j j behalf of more liberal views of Human Nature, their denial of its utter corruption by the Fall, their assertion that there are in man ineradicable seeds of goodness implanted by SEMIPELAGIANISM 139 • ‘A St i d l i; S'i i d the generosity of his Creator,1 could not but modify the doctrine of the evil of sin as necessarily propagated by sexual intercourse, and are logically inconsistent with the idea that all men are born of sinful lust. Therefore the Semi¬ pelagian theory is essentially opposed to the view of the impurity of marriage, and, as Harnack says : “It is quite indifferent how individual Semipelagian monks looked at sexual desire and marriage, as also whether this point came to light at once in the controversy ”.2 m $ 12. SEMIPELAGIANISM AN ORTHODOX PROTEST AGAINST THE NOVEL Teaching of Augustine. Semipelagianism, then, was in the main an orthodox protest based on traditional views against the novel teaching of Augustine’s scheme of Christianity, for there is little doubt that in most of its tenets Semipelagianism repre- sented the old and therefore catholic conception of the Church. In the points enumerated above it was, as has been shown, merely a restatement of the ancient doctrine of the Fathers, both Eastern and Western, whereas .3 * Augustinianism, though undoubtedly based on the Pauline conception of Grace, went much farther than could be justi¬ fied by the statements of S. Paul, and was in many respects an absolutely new and unheard-of doctrine. But, at the ; ! same time, those features of Augustine’s theory which were obviously sound and in accordance with Scripture were not rejected by the Gallican school ; on the contrary, they i were unhesitatingly adopted into their scheme, so that Harnack rightly says : “ Semipelagianism was popular Catholicism made more definite and profound by Augustine’s doctrines ”.3 But in one particular Semipelagianism never was and never could be reconciled with Augustinianism, and that is in its view of Original Sin and its theory of irresistible and indefectible Grace. The latter was a purely Western doctrine which was never held nor approved of by the M • 1 See Cassian Conf. xiii. * Hist, of Dogma (Eng. Trans.) v 262 n. 3 lb. v 245 n. 3. 140 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN East, and Semipelagianism reproduced through Cassian the older and Greek tradition which he had derived from his Eastern instructors. Thus Semipelagianism, in holding a milder view of the effects of the Fall than that which has been current in the West since the time of Augustine, is found to be in accordance with the most recent thought upon this subject, and being based on the teaching of the Greek Fathers, preserves a true continuity of doctrine between antiquit}' and the present day. In conclusion, be it said that we to-day owe the very greatest debt to Semipelagianism for its manly protest against Latin novelties which not only rendered mediaeval Christianity hard and coarse, but which have up to the present day been a source of great weakness to the Western Church. CHAPTER VI SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS OF SIN ANALYSIS § i. Augustine’s views, though adopted by some schoolmen, not univer¬ sally accepted. § 2. Predestinarian views of Gottschalk opposed by Hincmar at Council of Quiercy. § 3. Scotus Erigena and Second Council of Quiercy. § 4. Anselm's attempt at founding a ‘ natural theology § 5. Distinction between the individual and the genus as a theory of Original Sin. § 6. Anselm’s theory of Free-will. § 7. Criticism of Anselm’s theory. § 8. Thomas Aquinas on Original Sin. § 9. Thomas Aquinas on Free-will. § 10. Thomas Aquinas on Grace. §11. Council of Trent Semipelagian in tendency. §12. Luther and Calvin on Original Sin fall back on Augustine’s theory. §13. Their views on Free-will and Grace push Augustinianism to its logical and fatal conclusion. §14. Arminianism a return to Semipelagianism. §15. Two currents of opinion running parallel through the Middle Ages. Augustinianism not the vox Ecclesiae. CHAPTER VI SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS OF SIN § i. Augustine’s Views, though adopted by some Schoolmen, not UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED. After the Council of Orange the Augustinian theory of Human Nature, though rejected in the East, became for a time the accepted doctrine of the Western Church, yet, as has been shown, Augustine’s views did not meet with unqualified approval, nor were they held in their entirety even by those who professed to be his followers. The truth is that the practical part of his anthropology, namely, that part of it which dealt with the corruption of the human race and with the work of Grace in its regener¬ ation, was received and taught [by the more devout A ii i , Fathers of the fifth and sixth centuries, like Leo and Gregory, and of the eighth and ninth, like Bede and Alcuin, but the speculative part, which dealt with the doctrine of Predestination, was passed over almost in silence. The efforts of the ecclesiastical authorities to mitigate the asperities of Augustine’s tenets and the general decline in the desire and ability to grapple with or to grasp intellectual and speculative problems resulted in the universal acceptance of a theology so much milder in tone and so far removed from rigid Augustinianism that it became more or less identical with the Semipelagian position. In fact, Semipelagianism always appealed to a large class of minds, not only because of its apparently less speculative character and its silence with respect to the more difficult parts of the doctrines of Original Sin and free-will, but also because of its opposition to the Augustinian theory of Predestination and because of its introduction into the doctrine of regeneration of the element of human co-operation and practical effort. SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 143 But though Augustinianism was gradually displaced by the Semipelagian theory of synergistic regeneration and its milder view of inherited evil, and slumbered until the time of the Reformation, yet there were a few in¬ dividuals during the scholastic period who advocated it in all its uncompromising severity. These were chiefly Gottschalk, Peter Lombard, Bede, Anselm, Bernard and Aquinas. When Augustine’s views triumphed in the West, it was tacitly understood that his theory of Predestination went too far, and so the doctrine was passed over in silence by the Council of Orange. But this method of treating an unsatisfactory statement of the relation of God to man could scarcely be regarded as final, and merely postponed the consideration and settlement of the question till a later date. I §2. 1 ■ GrOTTSCHALK (A.D. 808-69). HlS PREDESTINARIAN VIEWS OPPOSED by Hincmar at Council of Quiercy. In the ninth century the controversy broke out anew. Gottschalk, a Gallican monk who was a devoted student }f Augustine’s works, was the first to bring this dark and difficult problem to the fore again by asserting the doctrine }f Predestination with all the vigour and energy of which re was capable. He was, however, a man of narrow views md limited ability. After a personal experience not unlike :hat of Augustine himself, he vehemently asserted the loctrine of Predestination as having been his own strength md stay after a misspent life, but he entirely ignored all )ther essential and corresponding parts of Augustine’s eaching, confining himself to that feature in which he 00k especial interest. In his zeal for Predestination lottschalk went farther than the usual language per- nitted by the Church on this subject, which was that he righteous are predestinate but the wicked merely oreknown, and he applied the term ' predestinate ’ to both lasses, thus introducing the theory of a Double Predes - \ination (duplex praedestinatio), i.e. the theory that the loctrine of Predestination to life logically implies also a Predestination to death, and this became the main point 144 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN of contention in the controversy. The following five heads embrace Gottschalk’s chief doctrinal statements : (1) Before all ages and before God made anything, He predestined to life everlasting those whom He willed, and those whom He willed He pre¬ destined to destruction. (2) Those who are predestined to destruction cannot be saved, and those who are predestined to life everlasting cannot perish. (3) God does not will all men to be saved, but only those who are in the way of salvation ; and when the Apostle says “ Who willeth all men to be saved ”, he means all those, and only those, who are in the way of salvation. (4) Christ did not come to save all men, nor did He suffer for all, but for those only who are placed in the way of salvation by the mystery of His 1 passion. (5) After the Fall of the first man by his own free-will, no one of us can use his free-will to do well, but only to do evil.1 The controversy was taken up and conducted by Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, on the one side, and by Remigius, Archbishop of Lyons, on the other, and though . it raged vehemently for two years (849-50) the result was far from being satisfactory or conclusive, partly because, owing to the then weak state of theological and metaphysical science, the disputants failed to get to the root of the matter and were content with a merely verbal discussion, and partly because the Gallican Semipelagians 1 (1) Ante omnia saecula et antequam quicquam faceret a principio Dens quos voluit praedestinavit ad regnum, et quos voluit praedestinavit ad interitum. (2) Qui praedestinati sunt ad interitum salvari non possunt, et qui praedestinati sunt ad regnum perire non possunt. (3) Deus non vult omnes homines salvos fieri, sed eos tantum qui salvantur : et quod dicit Apostolus “ Qui vult omnes homines salvos fieri " illos dicit omnes qui tantummodo salvantur. (4) Christus non venit ut omnes salvaret ; nec passus est pro omnibus nisi solummodo pro his qui passionis eius salvantur mysterio. (5) Postquam primus homo libero arbitrio cecidit, nemo nostrum ac bene agendum sed tantummodo ad male agendum libero potest uti arbitrio C 1 c i» SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 145 were just as reluctant to make concessions in regard to a doctrine which had caused such offence in the past, and about which the Councils had been silent, as the Augus- tinians were reluctant to alter their phraseology or to abate one iota from the severity of their views. Hence, as Mozley says,1 this controversy does not offer much valuable material to the theological student. One thing, however, it brought to the fore, for, though it cannot be said to have settled the point satisfactorily, it did at least draw the attention of the Church to the question whether Predestination ought to be applied to the punishment of the wicked and whether men can rightly be said to be predestinated to death. In 849 Hincmar brought Gottschalk before a Council at Quiercy, which condemned his opinions and issued a counter-statement of doctrine confining Predestination to goodness, and maintaining that where evil is con¬ cerned there is only foreknowledge on the part of God. Thus a Predestination to life was admitted, but a Predes¬ tination to punishment was denied. A distinction was drawn by Hincmar between leaving man in his sinful state, of which punishment will be the inevitable conse¬ quence, and predestining him to that punishment. Scotus Erigena and the Second Council of Quiercy. The only attempt at scientific argument and the only solid contribution to theological thought in this con¬ troversy came from Scotus Erigena, who, on the invitation of Hincmar, entered the lists and wrote a book against Gottschalk and his partisans. In this treatise he took his stand on Neoplatonic philosophy, and argued that no distinction can be drawn between Predestination and fore¬ knowledge, that they are one and the same thing, and that with God they could not be otherwise than identical, but that they relate only to good and not to evil, this being merely a negation. God cannot foresee nor ordain a thing which has no existence. Sin, as Augustine him- 1 Predestination p. 234 11. 10 146 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN self had taught, is merely the defect of righteousness, and punishment is the defect of bliss ; therefore there can be no Predestination to or foreknowledge of these negations. In this way Scotus denied on scientific grounds the double Predestination advocated by Gottschalk and Remigius. A second Council at Quiercy in 853 issued four decrees J almost Semipelagian in tone, rejecting a double Predes- ^ tination and maintaining the complete restoration of free¬ will through the Grace of Christ. The substance of the decrees is as follows : That man fell by the misuse of his free-will ; that God by His foreknowledge chose some whom by His Grace He predestined to life and life to them ; that as for those whom He by righteous judgement J left in their lost estate. He did not predestine them to perish, but only predestined their sin to be punished ; that free-will was lost by the Fall, but was recovered through : Christ ; that there is a free-will to good, if aided and pre- 3 vented by Grace, as well as a free-will to evil, if deserted by Grace ; and that, lastly, God would have all men to be saved, and that Christ suffered for all, so that the perdition of those who perish is due to their own fault alone. Though this Council under the direction of Hincmar inserted a special clause 1 to the effect that only a single Predestination is to be spoken of, relating either to the gift of Grace or to the retribution of justice, yet a little later we find Hincmar himself writing a treatise in which he admitted a double Predestination in the sense that while the righteous are predestined to life and it to them, punishment is predestined to the reprobate, but they are not predestined to it. They are merely forsaken by God. With this work the controversy ceased, and Gottschalk, after much ill treatment, died in prison in 869, clinging to the last to the doctrine of Predestination to death, although it was now condemned as heretical. From this point the Latin Church, though holding the name of Augustine in high respect, lapsed generally, with one or two notable exceptions, into a Semipelagian position. 1 Cone. Carisiac. II, a.d. 853, c. i. I 1 SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 147 o 4* Anselm (a.d. 1093-1109). Attempt to found a ‘Natural Theology \ Not until the eleventh century was any positive con¬ tribution made towards a defence of the somewhat dis¬ credited Augustinian anthropology, and for this we turn to Anselm, who was archbishop of the then insignificant see of Canterbury. Since the time of Augustine himself the Church had produced no teacher of such eminence and power as Anselm, or one whose influence on later ages has been so great. He has been described as the founder of 1 natural theology ’, by which we must understand a theology which attempted to support orthodoxy by the aid of philosophic thought. It is advisable to summarise as briefly as possible Anselm’s attempts towards a meta¬ physical solution of the difficult problems of Sin and free-will. On the subject of Original Sin the views of Anselm are hardly to be distinguished from those of Augustine. He has, however, some features peculiar to himself. He points out, for example, that the sins of other ancestors than Adam are not imputed to posterity because they are not committed by one representing or containing in himself the whole of Human Nature. Moreover, Adam’s own subsequent sins do not involve us in further guilt, nor do they affect posterity otherwise than as being further instances of the generic sin which had been committed by him while still the representative of entire humanity. That sin only is imputed to all men which all men have committed. § 5- Distinction between the Individual and the Genus as a Theory of Original Sin. Anselm also endeavours to explain definitely the con¬ nexion between the individual and the genus, and to show the importance of this connexion to any discussion of the necessity of sin and assignment of guilt. Adam sinned not only as an individual but as the pro- 148 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN genitor of the whole human race. His posterity existed in him, not as so many distinct persons, but their essence, spiritual and physical, lay seminally in him and their nature was consubstantial with his. Therefore Adam’s sin, though an individual transgression, corrupted the whole of Human Nature, which as yet lay in him. Hence the individual by a single act corrupted the genus, because the genus wras at the time included in the individual. But in Adam’s posterity the reverse process operates. Here the genus corrupts the individual. No individual born into the world can escape the universal depravity, because of the vitiation and apostasy of the nature in which he necessarily partakes, and because of that depravity he cannot avoid sinning as an individual. In this way Anselm asserts a necessity of actual sin in the individual, a necessity not imposed upon him by God, but involved in his unavoidable relation to the sinful race of which he is a member. Thus, to sum up, Anselm declares that as in Adam’s case the single transgression or actual sin vitiated the nature and became responsible for Original Sin, so, in the case of posterity, the sin of the nature vitiates the individual and is responsible for single trans¬ gressions or actual sin. From this it follows that in the case of Adam the guilt of nature, i.e. the guilt of Original Sin, rests upon the guilt of the individual act, but in the case of posterity the guilt of the individual act rests really upon the guilt of nature, or Original Sin. This is nothing less than the statement that the guilt of actual sin is not so heinous as the guilt of Original Sin. By an act of his will Adam vitiated Human Nature and handed on to all his posterity a tendency to sin. The guilt of originating this generic taint obviously rests upon Adam’s individual transgression. But the children of Adam are in a dif¬ ferent position from their first parent. We are all indi¬ vidual members of a common Human Nature, but none of us represents the wThole of Human Nature ; none of us includes nature in its entirety in himself. Therefore our individual sins are merely manifestations of the inherited corruption. They are the result of Original Sin, the production of our tainted nature. Therefore SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 149 the guilt of actual sin can in some measure be removed from the individual and placed upon our common Human 1 Nature. In other words, the origin of actual sin must be sought not in individual life or experience, but in the unity of -the race in Adam. The individual is corrupted by the nature which we share with and receive from Adam. Con- i? sequently the guilt of the individual, who is under the ; dire necessity of sinning, rests upon the guilt of nature, 1 but in that, as Anselm has already asserted, the individual fully shares. It is thus seen that in Anselm’s scheme the source of : Original Sin is to be found in the original unity of the | human race. Sin, considered as an evil principle, ori- ' ginated at the commencement of human history. If the historical existence of Adam and Eve be denied and the doctrine of the Fall (literally interpreted) be rejected, then the whole of Anselm’s theory of Original and trans¬ mitted Sin falls to the ground. Original Sin, according to him, implies an original agent, and this original agent must have been one man, containing in himself the whole human race unindividualised and the whole of Human Nature undistributed. The change in moral nature occa¬ sioned by Adam’s apostasy was left behind by him as an inevitable legacy, to be handed down from generation to generation. Thus the individual must have been born in sin, because he is born of Human Nature, and because Original Sin is transmitted from father to son together with all other inalienable characteristics of Human Nature, flowing in an unbroken stream through all men— except in the case of our Lord alone, who by His miraculous and anomalous birth was kept out of the line of ordinary generation. §6. Anselm’s Theory of Free-will. Anselm’s views on this subject are expressed in his treatise De Liber o Arbitrio,1 which takes the form of a dialogue between himself and a pupil. He begins 1 Hasse, Anselm von Canterbury ii 364 seq. 150 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN by discussing the meaning of free-will. The old defi¬ nition 1 which declares free-will to consist “ in the power of sinning and of not sinning ” he pronounces altogether unsatisfactory, on the ground that it withholds moral freedom from God and from the angels, who cannot now sin. Power to sin does not constitute freedom : on the contrary, this faculty, if attached to the will, must neces¬ sarily lessen its freedom, inasmuch as inability to lose a thing gives greater freedom in the possession of that thing than when there is the possibility of its loss. But if power to sin be not of the essence of freedom, must not sin be a necessity ? — for there can be no middle course between a voluntary act and a compulsory act. No; sin must not be regarded as a necessity ; it is merely a possibility. It was -a possibility and nothing more with the evil angels, as with Adam. They had the power to lose their holy estate, just as a rich man has the power to give away his riches, but it is not right to suppose that in doing so they lost their freedom altogether. Man has, it is true, become the servant of sin, but he has not lost his voluntary faculty. His will is still there, and every sin committed remains the voluntary act of the will. But can man be said to be a voluntary agent ? Is he not compelled to sin owing to the great power of temptation over the will and owing to the weakening of his will through Original Sin ? Not really, for God gave man full power to retain his original state of righteousness if he had wanted to do so and had used that power. The fact that he lost his original righteousness may have in one sense placed man under the guilty necessity of sinning, but that is a different thing from saying that he is not a voluntary agent. To explain this Anselm distinguishes between the faculty of will and the act of will. The former is the instrument, the latter is merely the use of the instrument. As a faculty the will is unconquerable. It cannot be made to sin against its choice. In the use of it, on the other hand, we often find that the will is powerless owing to the misuse of the original faculty. Thus the will can be both enslaved and free at the * Potestas peccandi et non peccandi : or Possibilitas utriusque partis. SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 151 same time. Its enslavement arises not from creation, but solely from the fact that it has dispossessed itself of its original dowry of righteousness. The fact that now it cannot help sinning does not alter the fact that there was no necessity for it to lose its first holiness, and if it had not done so it could easily have continued in the right course. Its freedom consists in the fact that its sin is the result of self-decision and was in no way forced upon it. It is still in a sense voluntary, because a man cannot sin if the act be done against his will. Temptation is no more compulsory than is the action of the Holy Spirit within us. Here Anselm points out that the true end and destina¬ tion of the will is not to choose indifferently either good or evil, but to choose good alone. God intended man to will to do right and nothing else. That is why the Creator endowed man with original righteousness instead of giving him merely a neutral or colourless character. Man was not expected to originate righteous¬ ness : he merely had to accept it and to retain it. But as he was created holy, there was thus far no merit in his goodness. This could only be acquired by something of which he himself was the author. Therefore the possi¬ bility of losing that state of righteousness was placed within his power, so that by its retention by means of a voluntary act he might win the praise which could only follow an act of self-determination. It is not, therefore, true to say that the Creator's intention with regard to man was that he should have the option of good and evil and that in that option his freedom of will consisted. Caprice is not freedom. God intended man to will to choose the right, or rather to retain that holy state in which he was created, that is, that he should possess a self-determination to righteousness. But if the self-determination is to lie entirely with man and not to be forced upon him, there must be the possibility of the alternative course, namely, a self-determination to sin. But that this course was only a possibility and nothing more is proved at once by the fact that in choosing this alternative man had to originate sin. Sin was not the continuance but the inauguration 152 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN of a state. Man had to become the author of sin. The fact that he did so shows that the choice of sin was a self¬ activity. It was absolutely unforced. Nay more, it was a voluntary desertion of the course and destiny which God had intended for mankind. Hence Anselm even attempts to draw a distinction between voluntariness and freedom. Real freedom, he says, is the choice of good and not evil. A man may choose to do wrong voluntarily, but if he does so he ceases to be truly free. If he con¬ tinues in righteousness, he is both voluntary and free. When he abandons the right path, he is voluntary but no longer free. The connexion of God with sin is, in Anselm’s scheme, merely one of permission. The only Divine causality about its origin is the negative fact that God did not pre¬ vent it. Prevention on His part would have destroyed free-will in man and made him an involuntary agent, a machine acting always in one way because it cannot help it. Self-determination would in that case not exist in Human Nature ; and the self-determination of man to¬ wards right is the one thing above all others that God willed and desired for mankind. Thus the key-note in Anselm’s anthropology is the term ‘ voluntary ’. Original Sin was a voluntary departure from original righteousness due to the self-will of Human Nature while yet in Adam and yet not individualised. Actual sin is the voluntary repetition of this choice of evil due to the self-will of Human Nature distributed and individualised. The whole process from first to last is voluntary. Having considered the origin of sin, Anselm proceeds to investigate its nature. Here he makes a departure from the views of his predecessors and rejects the view of sin as a negation. Scotus Erigena, like Augustine, had taught that sin is the defect of righteousness. Anselm ascribes to it a positive existence, but defines it in a some¬ what novel way. Sin, according to him, consists in doing dishonour to God. There has been much discussion of Anselm’s introduction into theology of the honour of God. What does he mean when he says that the man who sins 1 :o I t! j i la I; OB 1 l; I ki I k 1 1 I ! th pj if: !| F I iff i (: i * > £ (j j] ev j iri m to 1 1 ffi \ S] 1 ® j in !j >3 j i | it :! i SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 153 robs God of His honour (Deum exhonorat) ? He means that when we sin we are doing more than merely violating a law or a principle : we are injuring a person ; we are wronging God. He who does not render to God the debt of a holy life, which is the honour that is His due, is taking away from God something that is His. Such a one may be said to be actually wronging God. But Anselm goes further. Sin regarded in this light is something for which God requires satisfaction. His honour has been violated. An offence against Him has been committed. Justice demands. Divine interest de¬ mands, that reparation be made. Hence Anselm’s view of the vicarious nature of the Atonement. As sin must be punished, Christ suffered instead of the sinner. His sacri¬ fice was offered as a means of placating God, who has been grievously wronged. The death of Christ is substituted for man’s punishment as the full satisfaction for sin. § 7- Criticism of Anselm’s Theory. Anselm is so important a figure in the history of Christian thought that it is worth while to state what seem to be the merits and the demerits of his theory. Its chief merit is that it has a profound sense of the seriousness of sin. Anselm never tires of insisting on its gravity. In his time men thought that all was well if satisfaction for sin was made. They thought that this could be done by them without very much trouble. They even thought that in some cases they could pay others to make satisfaction for them. In our day the tendency is to think satisfaction unnecessary. An age brought up on natural science is inclined to minimise the gravity of sin — to put it down to heredity, to surroundings, to natural impulses which will in due course be outgrown, and which, in any case, do not matter very much. To Anselm belongs the credit of recognising that sin creates an infinite liability which has to be dealt with by an infinite satisfaction, and it is not very bold to say that no conception of sin which underrates its seriousness and minimises the desperate 154 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN nature of the condition it produces is adequate to the truth about sin as it stands revealed in the Christian con¬ science. As against all such imperfect views, the New Testament and the conviction of every thinking man support Anselm when he says : “ Nondum considerasti quanti ponderis sit peccatum It is a further merit of Anselm that he approaches the vexed question of free-will in such a way as to avoid doing violence either to the holiness of God or to the reality of evil. In other words, he is the first theologian to attempt a solution of the problem of theodicy, even though his solution may not be altogether satisfactory nor cover the whole ground. His theodicy breaks down in his failure to explain satisfactorily God's permission of evil in the universe and His delegation of the power to make it actual, as also in his highly artificial distinction between what is ‘ free * and what is * voluntary \ The utter futility of this hair¬ splitting shows that the true solution of the problem of evil cannot be found at all along these lines. A still more serious demerit in Anselm's system is his revival of the old discredited Augustinian theories. If Adam had existed before the Fall in a state of Original Righteousness, his sin is inexplicable. So far is this theory i from revealing or accounting for the origin of sin that it . merely removes it farther back and makes it harder to i discover. The later schoolmen were nearer the truth i and approximated more to modern views in describing Adam's first condition as negative or neutral and as i being capable of turning in the direction of either good i or evil. Anselm's theory of Original Sin, too, is illogical in the i utter disproportion he supposes to exist between Adam's first transgression and the subsequent transgressions of him¬ self and of other men. The experience of life proves that a first offence, however critical it may be, is less heinous than subsequent repetitions. Anselm makes it in Adam's case not only greater, but greater to an infinite degree and absolutely catastrophic in its results. Then, again, the fallacy of connecting Original Sin with SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 155 personal guilt has been discussed in a previous chapter. Any attempt to identify the human race with its head is purely fictitious and must, when tried at the tribunal of sound reason, be found wanting. Guilt is only predicable of a single person’s volitional act. Yet Anselm goes so far as to assert not only that Original Sin involves every man in individual guilt, but that the guilt thus inherited is greater than that incurred by actual sin. It is also a demerit of Anselm that he treats the Atone¬ ment as depending solely on the death of Christ and as something separate from His life and holy example — a view which cannot be maintained. And in regarding Christ’s death as an alternative to and a substitute for the punishment of sin, he is ascribing an arbitrariness to God’s dealing with man which is repugnant to our sense of equity. One other criticism must be passed upon the frequent reference made by Anselm to sin as an offence against the honour of God. It might be this if we could really believe that such a thought could ever enter the heart of the Father in heaven, and no other deity is made known to us in Christ. Anselm, quite according to the mind of his time, magnifies the transcendence of God, if indeed it be really magnifying it to regard it as standing in need of vindication. Christ taught the Divine immanence, or in other words, the Divine love. Sin is that which grieves, not that which aggrieves God. When Anselm places the origin of sin entirely with man, he seems to forget that every individual man starts, not merely with a choice to make, but in such circum¬ stances, both external and internal, as must make that choice terribly difficult. Why does God place men in so hazardous a position ? For the same reason that a loving parent sends the child to school, where there is an ever present risk that it may learn evil rather than good. God does it — the parent does it — because there is no other way in which it is possible for the child to choose good rather than evil except by standing where it is possible to choose evil rather than good. 156 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN §8. Thomas Aquinas (a.d. 1227-74). The next theologian to make any real progress towards an understanding of the Doctrine of Sin was Thomas Aquinas, who, being a deep student of philosophy, applied the teaching of Aristotle to Christianity and constructed a theory of Human Nature based on the system of the great Greek ethical philosopher. His contribution to theo¬ logy was a distinct advance on anything that had been achieved before. Unfortunately, however, Aquinas was unable to shake himself free from the shackles of Augus- tinianism, and he hampered his investigation at the very outset by founding his new system upon the doctrine of the great African Father in all its uncompromising severity. He failed because he essayed the impossible. He failed because he endeavoured to reconcile two views of Human Nature which were essentially irreconcilable. But the work of Aquinas has the merit of originality, and because of that merit his Summa became the ; handbook of many mediaeval theologians, and may be said to reflect the theological thought of the Middle Ages. First, then, his views on the subject of sin demand examination. I Thomas Aouinas on Original Sin. The great difficulty that every system of anthropology has to face at the outset is the origin of evil. Three possible explanations are given by Aquinas. The first is that evil is permitted by way of contrast, to show up good to greater advantage and to make it appreciated as it ought to be.1 If it be true that good gains in value I owing to the presence of evil in the world, then it must be allowed that evil is a necessary part of the ordered universe and could scarcely be dispensed with. This is a very remarkable anticipation of the evolu¬ tionary view of evil, but a discussion of this must be deferred until the next chapter. 1 Summa Theol. ima Q. 22 Art. 2. Si enim omnia mala impedirentur, multa bona deessent universo. SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 157 The second explanation is based on the necessity of variety. It is essential that there should be different natures in the world. The law of variety seen through¬ out the visible universe requires this. The differentiation of natures renders it necessary that some should be nobler than others, that some should possess a finer and stronger will than others, that some, in short, should be strong enough to do right in spite of all temptation to do otherwise. This view is a corollary of the previous view. It is clearer if expressed in terms of evolution. Evolution demands imperfection in its earlier stages, an imper¬ fection of which, as Bishop Butler argues,1 the justification can only appear when the scheme has reached its con¬ summation. Evolution also conduces to variety — it is the very law of variety which Aquinas had discerned to be present in the universe, though unaware, of course, of the scientific cause of this variety. The third explanation given by Aquinas is based upon Augustine's theory that evil is negative. In this respect both are following a Greek philosophy that first entered Western theology through Alexandrine Neoplatonism. God is the source of all existence. Evil is a defect : a departure from real existence. Evil, therefore, so far from having its origin in God, is a departure from God and a desertion of His will and His purpose. Evil, therefore, is outside the category of substance and is no-being, or in a word, nothing. Aquinas also goes on to show that there are two respects in which evil is to be regarded as nothing. It is first of all nothing in the sense of pure negation, and it is in the second place nothing in the sense of privation. Evil is a privation of form. It is a defect of action. It is failure to do that which man was intended to do. It is failure to attain that end for which the moral creature was designed. As evil in the case of salt, for example, is lack of saltness, so evil in the case of the will is a defect of the natural and proper action of the will. This argu¬ ment as applied to the origin of evil seemed to Aquinas to 1 See his Sermons on Human Nature. 158 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN be a satisfactory solution of the problem. That which has no existence has no cause, and that which has no cause it is impossible to ascribe to a Universal Cause. Hence evil is not to be referred to the causal will of God. This argument was clearly derived from earlier writers, but the approval bestowed upon it by Aquinas is explained by his anticipation of the answer to be supplied in after-times by the philosophy of evolution. Evil is ‘ i negative in the sense that it is the failure on the part of man to consent to be evolved. It is not an entity ; it is a privation. §9- Thomas Aquinas on Free-will. Aquinas maintained that God was the prime cause of . the will 1 and that it was derived from Him as the great Universal Cause which set all things in motion and gave all things their characteristic nature. But while God moves inanimate things by necessary causes, i.e. by causes that are external and unalterable, He moves other things by contingent causes, i e. causes not fixed by God but ; i dependent on some intermediate agent. Thus the will is moved by the voluntary motion of its possessor. Man is master of his will and moves it to action or refrains from ; moving it to action at his pleasure. It appears from this paragraph that Aquinas is in process of emancipation from the doctrine of necessity. He acknowledges that man is in a different category from nature and that his will tends towards freedom. Aquinas is not to be blamed because he did not pursue the subject farther — the wonder is rather that he advanced as far as he did, and that he cut himself adrift in so many respects from Augustinianism, which must have possessed an influ¬ ence on the minds of mediaeval scholars of which it is now hardly possible to frame an adequate conception. All praise then to Aquinas for his bold assertion of human freedom, in spite of the risk of being accused of Pelagian tendencies. 1 Summa Theol. ima 2dae Q. io Art. 6. Voluntatis causa nihil aliud esse potest quam Deus. SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 159 Aquinas next applies himself to the question why some men are endowed with Grace to aid the will while others are not. Here Aquinas falls back upon the old position of Augustine, that weakness of will is not the fault of the individual but the fault of the whole race. Aquinas does not mean by this that man is free from blame. Responsi¬ bility rests on man, inasmuch as after all he is a voluntary agent and is possessed of will, though it be but a weak will. He is therefore capable of praise or blame. But the real reason why Grace is withheld, where it is withheld, is the want of desire for Grace in the individual due to the cor¬ ruption of Human Nature through the sin of Adam. Holding the literal interpretation of the Genesis record, it is hard to see that Aquinas could have gone further than he did. He safeguarded individual responsibility as much as he dared. § io. I * Thomas Aquinas on Grace. It is in his doctrine of Grace that the philosophical leaning of Aquinas is most clearly seen. Beginning with the Augustinian doctrine of irresistible Grace, which neither iin its first bestowal nor in its continuance depends upon 'any act of man’s will, he incorporated with this the Aristotelian doctrine of ' habits ’, maintaining that God imparted goodness in the form of habit, and thus drawing a distinction between habitual and actual Grace.1 By ' habit ' is meant a certain bias or tendency to act in a certain way. Dealing with the subject of * infused habits Aquinas divides them under two categories : (i) those bestowed by nature at birth, and (2) those bestowed after birth by God. The first class, consisting of natural habits,3 he con¬ fines chiefly to those connected with the body, such as Chastity, Temperance and so forth, which some possess by nature in a marked degree and others seem totally 1 Summa Theol. ima 2dae Q. no Art. 9. Donum habitualis gratiae ion ad hoc datur nobis ut per ipsum non indigeamus ulterius divino auxilio. 1 lb. ima 2dae Q. 51 Art. 1. Sunt in hominibus aliqui habitus laturales. 160 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN to lack. Aquinas admits, however, a natural moral virtue in a limited way (called by Aristotle (fivcnKT] a perrj), and says that principles of Honesty, Justice and Upright¬ ness may be, and sometimes are, inherent even in a pagan, though in their truest form they can only be found side by side with Christian faith. Under the heading of the second class, or habits infused by God, Aquinas places the theological virtues — Faith, I Hope and Charity. But these virtues, even when bestowed, cannot be put into action without another spiritual force, t Consequently, Aquinas added to the imparted habits the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost — Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude and Fear. This second class of infused habits differed, according to Aquinas, from the first class in this, that they were intended for the spiritual benefit of man, while the former were designed for his worldly good. But the two together constitute what he termed * habitual ’ Grace, or the Grace of im¬ parted habits. Habitual Grace, however, by itself is inadequate, because it cannot put itself into motion. A disposition to do a thing does not necessarily mean the performance of the action, nor does the possession of a habit imply also the exercise of that habit. One theory was that the power which sets these habits in motion is free-will, but Aquinas and the schoolmen repudiated this as implying that free¬ will had an originating and causative function assignee to it, which they denied. They fell back, therefore, or another explanation and assumed an external power, namely a further and different kind of Grace, which they callec ‘ actual Grace ' (gratia actualis). This, according tc Aquinas, is the real motive power which acts on habitua Grace, giving effect to it and making it bear fruit. ‘ Actual Grace, in fact, is only an extension of the Augustinian theory of Grace, but it was made much of and insisted on wit! great emphasis by the Thomists and by their successors the Jansenists, as the only doctrine which precluded th boast of merit on man’s part, for if he was moved by hi own choice to make use of habitual Grace, then he migh claim credit for his action, which was absolutely oppose SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 161 to the doctrine of Predestination. ' Actual 1 Grace, there¬ fore, was the special discovery of Aquinas, and this doctrine was vigorously defended by him as being one of the most important and impregnable positions of Christian truth. It is thus seen that, while supporting the main prin¬ ciples of Augustinianism, Aquinas introduces important modifications, which mark a more liberal attitude. Especially remarkable is his admission of natural virtues even in the heathen. This liberality was forced upon him by his dependence upon Aristotle, for whom he had, as in private duty bound, to find a niche in the temple of God. Such is a brief account of the system of Aquinas, based, as has been shown, on the anthropology of Augustine, but tending to a more liberal outlook on Human Nature generally, owing to the influence of Greek philosophic speculation. There was throughout the Middle Ages a general restlessness and dissatisfaction with the uncompromising severity of Augustine’s views, even among those who ranked themselves amongst his followers, and side by side with a willingness to accept in the main his theory of sin there flowed a strong current of opinion inclining to the less rigorous modes of thought represented by the Semipela¬ gian school. These two opposite tendencies had to be reckoned with when the Council of Trent met, a.d. 1546. In attempting to reconcile them, therefore, the Tridentine reformers were compelled to resort to a somewhat am¬ biguous method of phraseology, but it will be seen on examination that they themselves favoured on the whole the Semipelagian and not the Augustinian anthropology. The language of their decrees, it is true, seems to support the Augustinian doctrine, but they were composed with such ingenuity that Augustine’s real views on the subject of Original Sin were in reality left free to be received or rejected at will, while in the explanation of the Canons in the anathematising clauses they actually took up a Semipelagian position. 11 162 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN § ii. Council of Trent (a.d. 1546). Semipelagian Tendency of the Tridentine Decrees. The statement of the Council respecting the doctrine of Original Sin is expressed in the three following Canons, which are certainly capable of an Augustinian inter¬ pretation : “ If anyone shall not confess that the first man Adam, when he had transgressed the command of God in Paradise, lost immediately the holiness and righteous¬ ness in which he had been created, and incurred through the offence of this transgression the wrath and indignation of God, and thus the death which God had previously threatened, and with death captivity to the power of him who had the kingdom of death, that is, the devil, and that the entire Adam, both body and soul, was through this transgression changed for the worse : let him be accursed/' 1 “ If anyone assert that the transgression of Adam injured himself alone, and not his posterity, and that in losing the holiness and righteousness which he had received from God, he lost it for himself alone and not for us, or, that having been polluted by the sin of disobedience he transmitted only death and the punishment of the body to the whole human race, but not sin itself, which is the death of the soul : let him be accursed, since he contra¬ dicts the Apostle who says : ‘ By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, seeing that in him all sinned/"2 “ If anyone assert that this sin of Adam, which is one in origin, and, being transmitted by propagation and not by imitation, is inherent in all and belongs to each, is removable by the power of man's nature, or by any other remedy than the merits of the only Mediator our Lord Jesus Christ ... let him be accursed." 3 The language of these Canons on the difficult problem of Original Sin is intentionally vague, and might even have been accepted by Augustine himself without sus¬ picion, but when we turn to the Roman Catechism, 4 which I : n - 2 ; : I I: I i 1 - ( It):; 1/ b 1 Canones Concilii Tridentini, Sessio V § 1. 2 lb. Sessio V § 2. 3 lb. Sessio V § 3. 4 Catechismus Romanus P. 1 Cap. ii Q. 18. SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 163 followed the Canons and had the same authority, we find a the statement that original righteousness is not a natural hut a supernatural endowment , i.e. that it was added to man by God after his creation and did not form an original part of his constitution. This, though not con- trary to the Canons, is directly in conflict with the Augustinian theory. It implies that man was created imperfect. He is not, to commence with, sinful, but neither is he holy. The addition of the gift of original righteousness, added after creation, or at least inde- :• pendently of the creative act, is necessary in order that the soul, which, as being rational and immortal, tends upwards, may obtain the victory over the body, which, _i as being full of carnal propensities, tends downwards,1 and that thus the natural antagonism between body and soul may cease and the creature become perfect. Augustine’s theory, on the other hand, regarded man as being created a perfect. Original righteousness entered into his very com- i position as coming from the Creator, and was not a thing v | which had to be superadded afterwards. Thus the Tri- • dentine theologians may be said to be on Semipelagian fines in modifying the Augustine doctrine of Original Sin. : They did not admit the total corruption of man by the Fall. They merely said that he was changed for the worse (in deterius), and in asserting or implying that man was created imperfect they take the prime cause of Original ... Sin farther back than the Fall and place its origin in the natural tendency of the body as opposed to the soul, that is, in the lower part of created Human Nature as opposed to its higher — in the natural part as opposed to the spiritual — in the earthly part as opposed to the Divine. But it is in the logical conclusion of this theory that its Semipelagian tendency is most clearly seen. The above doctrine that original righteousness was a super¬ natural gift resulted in the tenet that the Fall brought about the loss of a supernatural and not of a natural gift. JAs a result of Adam’s sin the spiritual part of man lost its ascendancy over his body, and the two natures, the 1 See Bellarmin, Gratia Primi Hominis, and his explanation of the official :heory of original righteousness. 164 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN higher and the lower, with which he was created, fell back into their primitive antagonism. Original Sin in this scheme means nothing more than the loss of original righteousness. Man was not thereby totally depraved, but “ changed for the worse,” that is, he was turned back into the negative condition in which he was created. Augustine regarded the conflict between the flesh and the spirit as the result and the proof of the Fall, and would condemn as Gnostic the idea that by creation and the nature of things there must be opposition between the two. The Tridentine theologians, on the other hand, following the Semipelagian opinion, held this conflict to be the primitive and natural condition of created man, ■ in which the spiritual side needed to be aided by the addition of a supernatural gift. The logical result of this view was the denial of the doctrine of irresistible Grace and of the passivity of man t n the work of regeneration, a doctrine which was con¬ demned by Roman Catholic theologians as sheer fatalism, and the definite adoption of the Semipelagian theory of co-operation, which they defended with great vehemence, as the following quotations show : “ If anyone shall affirm that the free-will of man was lost and became extinct after the sin of Adam . . . let him be accursed.” 1 “ If anyone shall affirm that the free-will of man, moved and roused by God, co-operates not at all by assenting to God thus rousing and calling, in such a way as to dispose and prepare itself for obtaining the Grace of justification, but that, like some inanimate object, it does nothing at all, but is merely passive: let him be accursed.”2 “ If anyone shall affirm that the sinner is justified by faith alone, in the sense that nothing else is requisite which may co-operate towards the attainment of the Grace of justification, and that the sinner does not need to be prepared and disposed by the motion of his own will: let him be accursed.” 3 This attitude towards Original Sin could only result u 1 Canones Concilii Tridentini, Sessio VI § 4. » lb. Sessio VI § 5. 3 lb. Sessio VI § 9. SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 165 in the denial that it is really to be regarded as sin — a view which was first propounded by the Semipelagians, who looked upon Original Sin as a malady rather than as being truly and properly sin. From them the idea spread widely, and continued to be held by theologians of all shades of opinion, from Duns Scotus to Zwingli and the Arminians. This view the Tridentine reformers did not hesitate to adopt. Since the condition of man after the Fall is the same as when he was first created, before the bestowal of original righteousness, the assertion that the Fall has left man in a sinful state would imply that God created man in a sinful state and would charge Him with the responsibility for human sin. The endowrment of the natural man with original righteousness was com¬ pared by the Council to the covering of a naked man with clothes. The effect of the Fall was to strip man of his outer covering and leave him in his original condition (in puris naturalibus), neither better nor wTorse. Hence it was decided at the Council that Original Sin in the re¬ generate is not properly sin. It is only the fuel of sin (fomes peccati). Thus they changed Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin into a doctrine of Original Evil. Concu¬ piscence, it is true, remains even in the baptised, which is sometimes styled sin, and was so styled by the Apostle,1 but this wras not because it was really and truly sin in itself, but because it came from sin and inclines to sin.2 Semipelagian viewrs w7ere thus definitely adopted and stated in an exact form by the Council of Trent, and they held full sway until the Reformation, when the Protestants revived the Augustinian anthropology and reinstated Augustinianism in the Churches of the West. § 12. The Reformers fall back on Augustine’s Theory. Luther and Calvin. Exception may perhaps be taken to the inclusion of these Reformers among the Mediaevalists, on the ground that the Reformation was not so much a mediaeval phe¬ nomenon as a breaking away from Mediaevalism, but in 1 Rom. vi 12, vii 8. 3 Canones Cone. Trid., Sessio V. 166 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN so far as they based their anthropology upon the con¬ clusions reached by Augustine, they went backwards rather than forwards, and they are more fitly included with their predecessors than with their successors. The leaders of the Protestant Reformation did not attempt a reconstruction of any of the great theological doctrines which had been formulated in the past. The definitions already reached were taken over and embodied in the Reformation Creeds and Confessions ; no change was made in them. Most theological conceptions, though not quite all of them,1 had passed through epoch-making periods when each separate doctrine was discussed, for¬ mulated and incorporated in a recognised definition. These definitions the Reformers accepted, not blindly indeed, but because they thought they found support for them in Scripture, and because they needed them as the basis of their evangelical faith. ; Particularly did their doctrine of Justification require as serious a view of sin as possible. Consequently Luther, seizing upon the Pauline proposition that whatsoever is not of faith is sin, declared the state of the natural man ' to be one of guilt, and reaffirmed the old Augustinian doctrine that Original Sin is truly and really sin, that owing to Adam’s Fall mankind is completely and utterly depraved and corrupt, and that this corruption involves all the descendants of Adam in personal guilt, for which the punishment is eternal death unless they are regenerated by the Grace of God. Luther’s theology is summed up in the Augsburg Confession , which is very clear and definite in its assertion of the guilt of Original Sin. Melanchthon’s ' Apology, which is an explanatory defence of the Augsburg Confession, denies that Original Sin is merely a condition of servitude, and states emphatically that the nature of « man is at birth corrupt and vitiated, and that Original Sin of itself entails the penalty of eternal death. The Formula of Concord, a summary of High Lutheranism, affirms not only that actual faults and transgressions of God’s commandments are sins, but that the hereditary disease by which the whole nature of man is corrupted 1 E.g. Eschatology. SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 167 is a specially awful sin, and is itself an offence whereby all men are rendered odious in the sight of God. Calvin adopts a similar view, though he arrives at it in a rather different way. He begins with the premise, which he regards as a self-obvious fact, that all men are justly condemned in the sight of God and are liable to ; punishment. Working back from this theory, he infers . that Original Sin cannot be a mere individual sin, but i must be common or generic. Otherwise the individual, ■ being innocent, would be undeservedly loaded with the ; guilt of a sin not his own. This view is brought out still ; more clearly in the Formula Consensus Helvetici , a symbol which may be regarded as the fullest expression of scientific Calvinism on the subject of Original Sin and | Grace. In opposition to the theory of mediate impu¬ tation 1 put forth by one Placaeus in 1640, this formula maintained that hereditary corruption could not fall upon the entire race unless some fault of this same race had preceded, since God punishes none but the guilty. Adam’s : sin, therefore, must be immediately and justly imputed [ to his descendants, as well as the consequences of that sin, and this can only be due to the fact that his descendants were in the person of the progenitor at the moment when he sinned, and shared in committing the transgression, being at that time in the loins of Adam. ! Thus both Lutherans and Calvinists maintained a depravation of Human Nature so complete and entire that man is only inclined to evil, and they used language on this subject so strong and exaggerated as to suggest that : since the Fall the image of God is wholly obliterated in mankind.3 ! The Views of Luther and Calvin on Free-will and Grace push Augustinianism to its Logical and Fatal Conclusion. These two Protestant Reformers are no less definite in their affirmation of the impotence of the will of man 1 I.e. that God imputes to Adam’s posterity not his sin but the conse¬ quences of his sin. 2 The Formula of Concord says that Original Sin is so deep a corruption of Human Nature that nothing healthy or uncorrupt is left in a man’s soul or body, either in inner or outward powers. See also Confessio Helvetica II c. 8 and the Westminster Confession c. vi. 168 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN to do any good thing and of his total inability to attain holiness. Luther’s expressions, indeed, regarding the im¬ potence of the sinful will are so extreme as practically to amount to a denial of free-will and of human responsi¬ bility.1 This, of course, goes far beyond anything that Augustine ever taught. Calvin, on the other hand, though he declares that man in his state of sin has lost his spiritual freedom and the power of doing anything truly good, is more strictly Augustinian. He acknowledges the presence of a will in man, but this admission is purely theoretical, since all virtue is ascribed to irresistible Grace. Man’s accountability must be secured by the admission of so much will as would make him capable of sin — he must have will enough to be damned, but not will enough to be saved. The Augustinian belief in free-will was based on the argument that man has power to resist Grace. Calvin, too, admitted that man had the power to resist Grace if he willed, but asserted that he could not will to resist effective Grace, since this Grace determined his will and his inclination. In effect, therefore, Calvin denied the existence of free-will2 in man, though not so emphati¬ cally and boldly as Luther. The leading Protestant symbols use language in exact agreement with these views. The Formula of Concord, expressing the Lutheran view, declares that “ before man is illumined, converted, regenerated and drawn by the Holy Spirit, he can no more operate, co-operate, or even make a beginning towards his conversion or regeneration with his own natural powers than can a stone, a tree or a piece of clay.” The Second Helvetic Confession , repre¬ senting the Calvinistic view, teaches that activity on the part of man can only result from the operation of Grace : ” Regenerati in boni electione et operatione non tantum 1 Cf. the language from his treatise De Servo Arbitrio, quoted in Browne On the Articles p. 259 : “In his actings towards God, in things pertaining to salvation or damnation, man has no free-will, but is the captive, the subject and the servant either of the will of God or of Satan." “ If we believe that God foreknows and predestinates everything . . . then it follows that there can be no such thing as free-will in man or angel or any other creature." 2 Voluntas, quia inseparabilis est ab hominis natura non periit ; sed pravis cupiditatibus devincta fuit, ut nihil rectum appetere queat ( Instit . I, ii). SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 169 agunt passive sed active : aguntur enim a Deo ut agant ipsi quod agant/’ By this the framers of the symbol appear to mean that the sinful will is inert and lifeless until it is passively acted upon by the influence of the Holy Spirit, but when it has been so acted upon it is spiritually quickened and becomes actively energetic in the pursuit of holiness. Perhaps a few words should be said here respecting the Calvinistic theory of Predestination. Mozley says that he sees no substantial difference between the Augus- tinian and the Calvinist doctrine of Predestination, inas¬ much as both alike hold an eternal Divine decree which antecedently to all action separates one portion of man¬ kind from another and ordains one to everlasting life and the other to everlasting punishment.1 2 It must be ad¬ mitted that Augustine from time to time used language which practically involved the conclusions which Calvin did not hesitate to draw, but Augustine never definitely formulated the dreadful dogma of reprobation, even though it be admitted to be the logical development of his teach¬ ing. Calvin, with remorseless logic, said plainly what Augustine merely hinted at, and there is no doubt that he went beyond Augustinianism in his definite and systematic doctrines of particular redemption and total ruin, as well as in his doctrine of Predestination to destruction. By particular redemption is meant the doctrine that Christ died not for all men, but only for the elect, i.e. those predestined to life, which is of course directly contrary M to Scripture.3 By total ruin is meant the doctrine that after the Fall man was wholly deprived of original ! righteousness and became a mass of corruption. In his i teaching on reprobation Calvin did not shrink from adopt¬ ing as an integral part of his system Gottschalk’s theory of a Double Predestination, i.e. a Predestination to death as well as a Predestination to life, although that theory had been definitely condemned in the ninth century. 1 Predestination p. 393, Note xxi. 2 Particular redemption is directly contrary to such passages of Holy Scripture as S. John iii 16-17 i 1 Tim. ii 3-6, etc. 170 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN Indeed, it was this part of his teaching which stamped Calvinism as a form of fatalism which tended to paralyse effort and reduce man to despair. It has thus been seen that both the Lutheran and Calvinistic creeds were a reversion from mediaeval Semi- pelagianism to the Augustinian anthropology in teaching the unity of mankind in Adam, the imputation of the transgression of Adam to all men, the guilt of Original Sin and the inability of man to co-operate in the work of his own salvation. It is not surprising therefore that a reaction to these views soon set in in the direction of the Greek anthropology of the Ancient Church. § 14- The Return to Semipelagianism. Arminianism. The followers of Calvin gradually broke up into two parties. There were those who adopted the sternest aspect of his system, such as Beza and Gomar, and to these the name ‘ supralapsarian ’ has been assigned. Going back to a point prior to creation itself, they regarded creation, the Fall, sin itself, and even redemp¬ tion, as so many links in the working out of God’s original decree predestining some to life and others to wrath. The milder or ‘ infralapsarian ’ school began with the Fall and regarded election as interposing to save a portion of the fallen race. This party was very strong in Holland, where opposition to the sterner doctrinal symbols, and especially to the tenet of Predestination, gradually culminated in an open remonstrance. This move¬ ment was begun by one James Harmensen, or Arminius as he is usually called, who was a professor of theology at Leyden University. A native of Amsterdam, he was born in 1560 and became a pupil of Beza, but wras sub¬ sequently led to change his views and declare for the con¬ ditionality of Predestination and the universality of Grace. Though he died in 1609 at the early age of forty-nine, the party led by him continued to flourish after his death. Indeed, it was not until 1610 that they adopted a definite and avowed position, when under Episcopius they presented SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 171 their famous Remonstrance,1 setting forth those features of the Calvinistic system which they rejected and giving a clear statement of their own doctrine. From this statement and from the apology 2 which Episcopius composed later in explanation and defence of it, we gather, in the first place, that the Arminian theologians held Original Sin to be original evil only, which, while it renders all the posterity of Adam unfit for and incapable of attaining eternal life without the Grace and help of God, does not of itself render man blame¬ worthy, for the reason that to be born is an involuntary thing, and therefore to be born with this or that stain, infirmity or injury cannot involve guilt. Consequently, if Original Sin be not sin in the sense of implying guilt, neither can it be sin in the sense of deserving punishment. The Remonstrants therefore denied Original Guilt, and [declared that Original Sin can only be called sin by a misuse of the term, and is not sin in the strict sense, being only unavoidable evil. Their objection to the doctrine that Original Sin is guilt is based upon the assumption that the original unity of the human race must not be taken to mean literally that Adam’s posterity was actually in him when he sinned, as Augustine and Anselm main¬ tained, but must be taken only in a potential sense, and that Adam’s sin was purely individual and was not shared by his descendants. Secondly, with regard to the doctrine of imputation, the Remonstrants admitted that the sin of Adam may be said to be imputed to his descendants in the sense that the evil to which Adam subjected himself by his sin, whether this evil be regarded as a taint or as a punish¬ ment, affects his posterity, with the clear understanding that in the case of his posterity it is not punishment but simply propagated evil, but they deny that the sin of Adam is imputed to his descendants in the sense that God actually judges the posterity of Adam to be guilty of and chargeable with the same sin and crime which Adam com¬ mitted. The contrary assertion, they say, is at once 1 Confessio sive Declaratio Remonstrantium, Episcopius, Op. II, Roterdami 1665. * Apologia pro Confessione. 172 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN opposed to Scripture, truth, wisdom, the nature of sin and the idea of justice and equity.1 Thirdly, the Remonstrants declared that Predestination only implied a conditional election, or an election upon the ground of foreseen faith, and they repudiated the doctrine of absolute reprobation as a gross error. Inas¬ much, they say, as the evil which has come upon the posterity of Adam is of the nature of a misfortune rather than a fault, justice demands that a remedy should be provided for the innocent victims of this unavoidable infirmity. Such a remedy, we find, has been provided, and it is open to all men without exception. God has given in His Son Jesus Christ a free and gratuitous antidote for the universal evil derived from Adam. The doctrine of Redemption by Jesus Christ, who died for all, is in itself a sufficient and complete refutation of the “ hurtful error of those who are accustomed to found upon Original Sin the decree of absolute reprobation — a doctrine invented by themselves.” 2 Lastly, the Remonstrants showed plainly that they held a synergistic view of Grace. According to the Augustinian theory, no man receives a Grace sufficient for regeneration without receiving at the same time such a degree of Divine compulsion as overcomes the hostility of his will and effects his regeneration by an irresistible energy. The dependence upon Grace in the Augustinian anthropology is total. The Arminian anthropology admits that the will must first be excited by prevenient Grace, but urges that this is merely a matter of arousing it, not of renewing it. The faculty is merely inert and sluggish, not dead nor yet actively hostile. After the will has been aroused by the action of Grace, then it can and must co-operate in its own regeneration. Hence the Remon¬ strants asserted that every hearer of the word receives a degree of Grace sufficient to effect his regeneration. If, therefore, a man is not regenerated, the fault must lie with himself, and must be due to his failure to co-operate with the Divine powTer. Grace can only be rendered 1 Apologia pro Confessione Remonslranliwn cap. vii. a Confessio Rcmonstrantium cap. vii. SCHOLASTIC AND MEDIAEVAL VIEWS 1T3 I t t ' 1 l f| effective by the working of man’s own will.1 Therefore, in the opinion of the Arminians, the elect differ from the non-elect not in the degree of Grace received from God, for even unbelievers receive sufficient Grace to effect con¬ version and salvation, but in the use they make of their own energy and in the co-operation of their own will and effort with the Divine influence acting upon them from above. § 15- Two Currents of Opinion running parallel through the Middle Ages. Augustinianism not the ‘Vox Ecclesiae.’ It is thus seen that throughout the Middle Ages there were two opposing currents of opinion with regard to the doctrine of Human Nature, one tending to the Augustinian or Latin view of inherited guilt and monergistic regeneration, with all its logical conclusions, and the other tending to the Semipelagian or Eastern view of inherited evil (but not inherited guilt) and synergistic regeneration. The Augustinian anthropology, though triumphant at first in the West, was gradually superseded by the Semi¬ pelagian anthropology, which may be said to have had full sway in the Mediaeval Church, with the exception of the few theologians who still adhered to the main teaching of Augustine. At the Reformation the Protestants, partly to widen the breach with Rome and partly to support their special doctrine of Justification by faith, leaned towards Augustinianism, while the Roman Church, under Jesuit influence, refused to abandon the Semipelagian position. When, however, the Reformation was once established, the old antagonism broke out afresh amongst the Protestants themselves, the Calvinists holding to extreme Augustinianism and the Arminians receding to the Semipelagian view, thus perpetuating the controversy, which has continued with undying vigour down to the present time, so that it may safely be said that the whole of modern Christendom is ranged either on the one side or on the other. But it is highly essential for the student to see where 1 Confessio Remonstrantium cap. xvii. 174 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN the deviation from primitive simplicity began. It began with Augustine himself, with his false and Manichaean views of Human Nature, which threw all subsequent inquiry as to the Doctrine of Sin into utter confusion and into an arid wilderness of tangled speculation. The supposition, so frequently implied, that the doctrine of the Church is Augustinianism rests upon ignorance of two great facts : (i) that there was no Augustinianism before Augustine, and that his views are no part of primitive Christianity, and (2) that the individual specu¬ lations of Augustine were profoundly modified by Semi¬ pelagian tendencies, which from their wide acceptance have a far greater right to be regarded as vox Ecclesiae. CHAPTER VII MODERN VIEWS OF SIN ANALYSIS § i. Influence ot Evolution on the Doctrine of Sin. § 2. Theories which resolve sin into mere illusion and unreality — Spinoza. § 3. Theories which trace sin to the will. § 4. Views of Kant. § 5. Views of Julius Muller. § 6. Views of S. T. Coleridge. § 7. Theories which regard sin as a necessity. § 8. Views of Schelling. § 9. Views of Hegel. § 10. The defects of Hegelianism. § 11. Theories which confine sin within the bounds of religion — Schleier- macher. § 12. Views of Ritschl. § 13. Theories which seek to explain sin from empirical observation— Pfleiderer. ! § 14. Views of Tennant. § 15. Criticisms of Tennant’s theory. § 16. Views of McDowall. § 17. Evolution of Personality the key to the problem of evil. CHAPTER VII MODERN VIEWS OF SIN § I. ; Influence of Evolution on the Doctrine of Sin. j It has been shown in the preceding chapter that the Protestant Churches have generally been Augustinian in their tendencies ; while the Church of Rome, though pro- < fessedly Augustinian both in the earlier and the later stages of its history, has in point of fact become Semi¬ pelagian in its sympathies. Indeed, throughout the whole course of the controversy there has continuously been a strong undercurrent of Semipelagian feeling, even when Augustinianism has held most sway. But in spite of strong Semipelagian leanings everywhere and constant Semipelagian reactions, Augustinianism played a great part in moulding the views of the Church on the subject of Sin. During the last century, however, liberty of thought has led students to express their opinions more I boldly, even at the risk of conflicting with the accepted doc¬ trine of the. Church. The fear of being branded with the stigma of heresy has ceased to seal men’s lips, and thinkers have gradually found courage to formulate new theories openly, even when they have felt that their theories opposed beliefs which have long been regarded as sound and orthodox. Scientific discovery and growth in knowledge demand a re¬ adjustment of ideas with regard to much that has long passed as true. Many traditional views must be restated in terms of modern thought, and some may even have to be discarded altogether. On the subject of Sin it was scarcely possible for Augustine to arrive at the truth by mere logic. He had not the facts of science before him. Evolutionary science has altered all preconceived ideas on the subject of the Fall of Adam and the resulting legacy 176 MODERN VIEWS OF SIN 177 of a fatal heritage of Sin, which is the essential doctrine and the foundation of the elaborate system constructed by him. The evolutionist sees in the story of the Fall merely a sym¬ bolical description of the gradual passing of primitive man¬ kind from an original state of ignorance to the attainment of moral consciousness. The present chapter will be devoted to a brief considera¬ tion of some of the more important theories which have been propounded in recent times regarding the nature of Sin and the condition of mankind in relation to Sin — theories which owe their conception to advance in knowledge of i anthropology, evolution and kindred subjects. Modern speculation on this subject may be roughly divided into five classes : 1 I. Theories which resolve Sin into mere illusion and unreality. II. Theories which trace Sin to the will of man. III. Theories which regard Sin as a necessity. IV. Theories which confine Sin within the bounds of religion. V. Theories which seek to explain Sin from empirical observation. Theories which resolve Sin into mere Illusion and Unreality. It will suffice to turn to Spinoza as the chief modern 'representative of the negative view of evil, and to inquire how far his speculations contain anything which can be said to contribute towards a solution of the problem of Sin. i § 2- Spinoza. Attacking the nature of evil from a purely metaphysical point of view — a point of view independent of all Christian presuppositions, Spinoza 3 reduces Sin to a mere defect of 1 knowledge. “The knowledge of evil ”, he says, “is an 1 Orchard, Modern Theories of Sin , disregarding the first of these classes, reduces tHeir number to four. * Ethics iv and lxiv. 12 178 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN inadequate knowledge. If the human mind possessed only adequate ideas, it would be unable to conceive of evil.” That is to say, if we possessed sufficient knowledge and were able to see things, as God does, “ sub specie aeternitatis ”, we should have no conception either of good or of evil. They simply would not exist for us. This treatment of sin as non-existent and as an illusion due solely to the imperfection of our knowledge renders any consideration as to its origin impossible and un¬ necessary. In this respect Spinoza differs materially from Augustine. Augustine taught that evil is a lack of J something which we ought to have — a “ privatio boni ” ; but in his theory the ‘ privatio with which moral evil ; is to be identified, is something more than a mere lack of what is good ; it is something deeper than a mere failure to do right. In its essence it is negative; but in its effect it is accompanied by an inborn corruption, a depraved activity of the will. Thus his conception of the twofold nature of sin provided a philosophical foundation for his explanation of its origin. Spinoza, in rejecting that part of Augustine’s doctrine which dealt with the innate corrup¬ tion of the will, however right on other grounds he may be proved to have been in so doing, deprived himself of the only justification he had for retaining the negative portion of Augustine’s theory of evil. We may agree that evil in one sense partakes of the nature of a defect, but only when coupled with the admission that it has also positive results. The latter fact wre learn from experience : evil has definite and far-reaching effects, both physical and moral, such as no mere negation could produce : its presence makes itself felt and leaves its mark behind it. If evil be an illusion, our whole experience is an illusion, knowledge is an illusion, conscience is an illusion, life is an illusion ; but being unable to regard these facts in any other wray than as realities, we must admit that sin has a truly positive existence. The reasons for the rejection of the ‘negative’ or ‘privative’ theory of evil may be summed up as follows : The very term ‘ good ’ implies the existence of something which is not only ‘ not good ’ but positively ‘ bad.’ The only means man has of perceiving and knowing the good MODERN VIEWS OF SIN 179 is by contrasting it with something which is its opposite and not merely its negative. Evil must have a real existence and a positive character in order to constitute the antithesis to good. Choice implies an alternative. There can be no true choice between good and a negation. If good and evil be not two real and positive existences, ethical distinctions ■ vanish and moral character and conduct becomes a mean¬ ingless phrase. But we can go even further than this. The whole evolu- I tionary process gives the lie to the doctrine of the non-reality of evil. The struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest are based on the antagonism between good and evil. If there were no antagonistic forces there could be no struggle, and there would be no survival of the fittest. Life in all its phases and stages of development, whether physical or spiritual, is a life-and-death struggle between the powers of good and evil. Nay more, in each succeeding stage in the great cosmic process the contrast between good and evil becomes deepened and intensified. It is now generally admitted that the existence of progress implies an end, that the very idea of development is teleological. The 3 .theologian sees in evolution not only purpose but Divine purpose. That purpose is the final victory of freedom, or in other words, the preparation of the soul of man by a continuous increment of consciousness for union and fellowship with God. The struggle between good and evil :is the essential condition of the evolutionary process, and on the issue of the conflict man’s spiritual progress depends. Destroy the power of choice and free-will, and man ceases to be a moral agent. Destroy the presence and antagonism of good and evil in his surroundings, and you remove the Very condition on which psychical development depends. The theories, therefore, which tend to the resolution of evil into illusion, and which treat human personality and will as mere appearance to which no reality corresponds, :annot be said to contribute much towards a solution of the problem of sin, inasmuch as they conflict with inner experience and with the facts of evolution. 180 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN II Theories which trace Sin to the Will of Man. § 3- In the next place, those theories must be considered which seek to place the origin of sin in the human will, and thus endeavour to steer clear of the charge of dualism, from which, in spite of all explanations urged in its defence, Augustinianism has never been able to shake itself entirely free, and at the same time to avoid the grave difficulty of attributing evil to God. All advocates of any such theory, however, find them¬ selves at once in a dilemma from which there seems to be no escape. If the will is free, why does it universally incline to evil ? If, on the other hand, it has an innate tendency > to evil, whence did it get this tendency ? The origin of evil is in that case merely moved farther back and is as inexplic¬ able as ever. Those who maintain that the will is neutral I in tendency and free to choose whichever course of action presents itself in the most attractive light must suppose, in order to account for the universality of evil, either that the inducements to sin are stronger than the inducements to goodness, or that the inducements to goodness are inade¬ quately apprehended and that the moral imperatives have insufficient force to persuade the will of their desirability. But the same tendency is found alike in the ignorant and in the instructed, and the saintly is exposed to sinful impulses no less than the sensual. On the other hand, those who assert that the vail is naturally bad are led to an infinite regress in their quest g for the origin of sin, and must admit that if the will merely follows its natural bias, no condemnation is possible and the guilt of sin is destroyed. There is, therefore, considerable doubt whether those philosophers are right who maintain that the human will is the ultimate cause of sin. If it indeed be the ‘ causa originans ’ which they postulate, it remains to inquire how they account for the conflict between the will as prompted MODERN VIEWS OF SIN 181 to a lower and the will as prompted to a higher end in this struggle between impulse and reason. The chief representatives of this school of thought are Emmanuel Kant, Julius Muller and S. T. Coleridge. , • Kant. Kant takes his stand on the freedom of the human will, and begins by demonstrating that it is really free, in ; spite of the fact that it is, to a certain extent, influenced by phenomena about which nothing can be known or said. ■ The reasoning faculty of man he divides into two parts, 1 which, he says, are totally different, nay, are mutually {opposed, viz. pure reason and practical reason. Under the heading of ' pure reason * he places the whole intellectual life, which is only able to grasp phenomena and can give r no account at all of the moral life. Pure reason, he maintains, has no point of contact with ethics. Practical reason, on the other hand, is able to perceive at once a moral law which is generally recognised as ‘ con¬ science *, and which teaches man not what is right, but : that he ought to do right. This consciousness of a moral law and the resulting desire for ethical perfection is itself the proof of our freedom. ‘ I ought 7 necessarily implies Pf 4 1 can.’ i But can there be such a thing as freedom ? Everything in this world is subject to an inexorable law of cause and effect. Freedom, as applied to the will, apparently contra¬ dicts the necessity of nature and violates the universality of causation. This difficulty Kant endeavours to overcome by pointing out that there is in man a dualism, that he must be regarded from two points of view. He is at once a 4 phenomenal 7 being — that is, he belongs to the world of things seen and felt ; and he is also a ‘ noumenal 7 being — that is, he has the power of thought and choice. As a ‘ phenomenon 7 he 1 is bound by the law of cause and effect ; but as an intelli¬ gent entity he is himself a spontaneous and free cause, and 182 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN by virtue of the latter capacity he is able to step out of the fatally determined series which attaches to all appearance of things. In this way arises the possibility of asserting the existence and reality of freedom. The human will is an originating cause, which, in spite of all external influences, we feel and know to be free. In fact, the knowledge that we are free is another proof of freedom, and it is from this freedom of will that Kant attacks the problem of the nature and origin of evil. Kant repudiates the idea that evil is to be identified with sense and rejects the view that it has any material or objec¬ tive reality. It is an ethical term, and it is impossible to apply ethical terms to anything except the will. Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a good will. Conversely, nothing is bad except a bad will. Evil, therefore, resides solely in the will. It consists in adopting ‘ maxims ’ of the will which are opposed to law. It is the perversion of the true balance of reason and sense. It is not a natural property of the will, but something that can be attributed or imputed to the will ; and this arises when man complies with the impulses of his sense-nature rather than with the dictates of his reason. Such, briefly, seems to be the nature of evil, and from this point of view he proceeds to investigate its origin. Why, with absolute freedom to obey the moral impera¬ tives, does man live in open and flagrant violation of what is right ? How is the universality of sin to be accounted for ? Kant assumes a ‘ radical badness ’ in Human Nature. He does not, indeed, accept the Church’s doctrine of Original Sin, because that doctrine implies that moral qualities can be transmitted by natural generation. Evil, he teaches, is not to be regarded as a natural characteristic of our species. We, and not our nature, are responsible for its existence, since good and bad, as has been said, can be predicated only of the will. This radical badness, then, in Human Nature is, in Kant’s eyes, a propensity or tendency to a deter¬ mination of the wall in the direction of a violation of the moral law, which, though not in itself sin, is yet the source of all sin in man. MODERN VIEWS OF SIN 183 M ' : ; i I *\ f i ;■ j i ; f I I ; r : ; i. ; I, ; I i On this universal propensity to evil the philosophy of Kant can shed but little light. He cannot see its origin, nor any prospect of deliverance from it. The only thing that can be said about it is that, being evil, and being imputed as sin, it must have been adopted by free-will. The pro¬ pensity itself is, of course, not an act, but the adoption of it into the will is an act ; and since its origin lies somehow in our freedom and yet seems to be prior to any conscious act, it must be of the nature of a super-sensible or ‘ timeless * act. Further than this it is impossible to go, and in the last resort Kant declares that the origin of the ‘ radical badness ’ in Human Nature is quite inscrutable. Kant is the first philosopher to have perceived clearly the tremendous difficulty of reconciling the fact of an innate bias to sin with the fact that man’s conscience charges him with the guilt of it as if it were his own creation. He appre¬ hends the problem, but he offers no solution. Summed up, Kant’s conclusions amount to little more than this, that we are all absolutely free ; that man has universally used his freedom so as to subordinate the moral law to self-love, and has thereby created for himself a pro¬ pensity to sin, but that the reason for his doing so lies beyond rational discovery. Though he ignores the fact of moral development and the bearing of evolution on the problem of sin,1 yet to him we owe a clear statement of the moral law, namely, man’s consciousness of a moral imperative and his realisation that he has not obeyed it. For this reason Kant is generally regarded as the bulwark of the orthodox conception of sin and the vindicator of conscience. The chief weakness of the Kantian position lies in his attempted separation of the moral and the intellectual faculties. The two spheres are closely connected and are not independent of one another. Nor is it easy to see why sin should be confined to non-compliance with the imperatives of the moral law. The intellectual life also has its imperatives, to ignore which must equally be regarded as sin. Moreover, 1 “ Kant was ready to admit the possibility of evolution, but to him it did not seem to affect the absolute claims of moral reason. "—-Oman, Faith and Freedom, p. 188 foil. 184 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN Kant leaves out of sight the fact that the imperatives of the moral law are not perceived by all men in the same degree. Children, for example, and adults endowed with limited reasoning capacity cannot be said to have the same freedom of choice or the same perception of the moral imperatives as those whose mental powers are more fully developed. Much more difficult, then, is it to reconcile Kant’s concept of freedom with the admitted fact that a man in full posses¬ sion of his faculties may perceive the moral law without having the power to fulfil it. Lastly, when Kant speaks of the bias to evil as being a * timeless act ’ which is prior to consciousness and yet not referable to a previous existence, he is using a phrase to which it is well-nigh impossible to assign any intelligible meaning. His whole theory conflicts with the evidence of experience, which is directly opposed to the idea that sin arises from the adoption of a universal rule or general maxim, since many evil acts are committed every day without any such deliberate and voluntary acceptance of a disposition to sin, which in his view must precede the determination of the will. § 5- Julius Muller. The second representative of this school of thought is the philosopher and theologian, Dr. Julius Muller, whose chief aim is to discover a rational ground for the consciousness of guilt winch is experienced by every human being, and to reconcile that consciousness of guilt with the fact that there is in the human race an evil taint for which, it being prior to any action on the part of the individual, the reason of man declares that he is not responsible. He dismisses the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin as valueless to explain the feeling of guilt, for there can be no guilt attaching to such an inheritance. Accepting the doctrine of the Fall of Adam to account for this innate propensity to sin, he endeavours to explain the universal consciousness of respon¬ sibility for this sinful tendency in another way. He assigns MODERN VIEWS OF SIN 185 to the feeling of guilt for inborn sinfulness an extra-temporal origin.1 He imagines a mode of existence of created person¬ alities before time began, in which transgression first took place, and upon which our life in the sphere of time is depen¬ dent. There was no universal extra-temporal Fall : this transgression was the spiritual act of each individual being. The pre-natal sin of man resembles to a limited degree, and may be paralleled by, that of Satan himself. The world may be looked upon in the light of a kind of a penitentiary in which we are afforded our means of redemption, save that we neither have nor can have any memory of this pre-natal Fall. Hence Adam possessed the capacity to be tempted afresh and to sin. This theory of a personal Fall for every man previous to that of the race in Adam would account for the universality of sin, and would provide what is at least an intelligible explanation of the fact that, as soon as moral consciousness awakens, man finds a sinful condition to be already present, and yet is convicted by his conscience with the feeling of responsibilit}^ for it as if it were his own fault. Muller then proceeds to state that, in order to account for guilt, there must be a free falling away in this life. Sin does not originate in our temporal existence, it only steps forth. But as soon as it does step forth, then guilt begins and guilt-sense grows with our moral development. This last is a factor ignored by Kant, but regarded by Muller as containing the key to the whole problem. When did this ■ development begin ? Far back in our childhood, when the first sin of our temporal existence was committed. WTth the first wrong act, the first “ stepping forth of sin”, the guilt- sense arises and moral development begins. Furthermore, “ our developing consciousness of the moral law”, he says, : “ is always in advance of our moral attainment This state¬ ment leads Muller to draw a distinction between law and i duty, the former being the perfect moral ideal, the latter ■ being that which is morally required from the individual at any given moment of time ; for development implies temporary imperfection in regard to the moral ideal. Then, again, while Kant makes every sin equally guilty, 1 Christian Doctrine of Sin, Urwick’s Trans, ii 400. 186 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN and guilty in the highest possible degree, Muller, on the other hand, recognises degrees of guilt. The degree of guilt, according to his theory, is determined by the magnitude of the sin and the extent of causation present at the moment. By causation he understands the power of the will and the degree of consciousness that an action is sinful. Hence Muller admits that sin resides largely in the will. With regard to the will, he holds that freedom is very limited.1 There never is a moment in moral development when there is perfect equipoise of oppositely determined impulses. The will is influenced chiefly by two factors, conscience and habit. Conscience is an uncertain element, because it is limited by the result of previous development. Habit, on the other hand, is a powerful influence, because the will cannot be excluded from the result of its own past decisions. To sum up, Muller retains the doctrine of the Fall of the whole human race in Adam in order to account for the inborn propensity to sin ; and he even goes so far as to maintain that Adam might have become “ the originator of a development liberating the will from its original variance, provided that he had transmitted to his posterity a sensuous nature untainted by sin ”. He did not do so, however, and therefore subsequent generations inherited from him a corrupted sensuous nature. But to account for the feeling of individual responsibility for the innate “root of evil", Muller supplements the received teaching with the supposi¬ tion of an individual pre-temporal Fall. This work of Dr. Muller is still regarded as a standard treatise on the doctrine of sin. Not only is it less open to criticism on philosophic and scientific grounds than the work of Kant, but it more nearly approaches, especially in the matter of moral development, to the most recent theories on the subject. Nor is there any doubt but that, had he lived at the present day instead of seventy years ago, he would have been a ready listener to the arguments against the validity of the Augustinian theory based on Natural Science and the results of the recent critical investigation of the Scriptures. 1 See Orchaxd'o criticism, Modern Theories of Sin p. 51. MODERN VIEWS OF SIN 187 \ |i One objection to Muller’s system has been raised,1 and may perhaps be mentioned here, viz. that in making a child’s first sin responsible for all life’s sins, it exaggerates its seriousness and makes it the greatest of all sins, whereas it is really the least both in magnitude and in the realisation of its frightful significance. This can perhaps be met by the reply that the first act of sin in childhood has really little significance in comparison with the first real act of sin, which in Muller’s theory was committed in the pre¬ natal existence. The first sin of childhood is merely the first manifestation of the inborn root of evil, the necessary * stepping forth ’ of the sinful taint. Though the guilt- sense which regulates and controls all later actions com¬ mences then, guilt itself lies not in that isolated act, but in the accumulation of sinful acts as growth proceeds, which accounts for the increase of sin-consciousness with the years. The most unsatisfactory, or at any rate the least con¬ vincing, feature of Muller’s theory is his conception of a pre-natal Fall. It was doubtless formulated by him not because of its intrinsic probability, but because it occurred to him as a possible solution of the great antinomy which Kant’s work had served to emphasise : the antinomy between the fact of an innate taint of sin and the responsibility felt by the individual for his sinful state. Its weakness lies partly in the fact that it is unscientific, as being at best a dim conjecture as to the truth of which the experience of our present life yields no indication, and partly in the fact that it increases the difficulty of the origin of sin. To remove the first sin to an extra-temporal sphere affords no explanation of its source. It merely puts it farther back. Either our pre-natal Fall was arbitrary, in which case it is inexplicable and savours of insanity, or it was a diabolical act, like Satan’s, and shows us to be evil by nature, which leads to an infinite regress. Moreover, if each being fell independently of others and the pre-temporal state was one in which man was less beset by temptations than he is in this life, the universality of sin becomes more mysterious and more inexplicable than it was before. 1 Orchard, Modern Theories of Sin p. 53. 188 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN That Muller realised this defect of his theory is shown by his statement that he was ready to accept any explana¬ tion which should view man as existing within the bounds of time and would enable us to understand his guilt, provided that this explanation did not surrender the truths to be explained.1 § 6. S. T. Coleridge. The third representative of this school of thought is Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose “ Reflections ” 2 on Original Sin were merely a development of the Kantian theory of radical evil. He recognises this infirmity, but he seeks another avenue of escape from the difficulty of accounting for its origin than that suggested by Kant. This he does by supposing not an individual Fall, but a simultaneous and universal apostasy of the whole human race. First, however, he endeavours to show that the origin of evil is not to be traced to nature nor to a propensity to evil naturally inherent in mankind, as Augustine taught, but solely to the will of man. All nature, he says, is bound by cause and effect. Nothing in the world happens without reference to some¬ thing that occurred previously and on which it is dependent until we come to the sphere of personality. There we find the one and only independent energy capable of stepping outside the natural sequence of events, and that is the human will. The will contains in itself the power of opposing nature, of resisting causation and of originating an act or state. Will is an inseparable characteristic of ‘ personal being and the essential idea of ‘ personal being * is the capacity of recognising and acknowledging the moral law. The moral law, once perceived, should of itself suffice to determine the will to a free and voluntary obedience to this law. Whatever tendency there is in the will to resist or oppose this obedience is evil. The will ought to will the good. It * Christian Doctrine of Sin, Urwick’s Trans, ii 397. * Aids to Reflection. MODERN VIEWS OF SIN 189 universally inclines in the opposite direction. The reason for this is the corrupt nature of the will. Sin resides in the will ; but how the will became corrupt is a mystery. Thus far Coleridge is in substantial agreement with Kant : but now his peculiar theory begins to emerge. The corruption of the will, he says, must have a common ground, because of its universality ; but it is a mistake to suppose that it can be an evil principle inserted or infused into the will by another or be the result of the action of another, as the Augustinian doctrine of the Fall implies. In that case the will would be no will. It would cease to have an existence as an independent and originating force. He therefore absolutely rejected the notion of hereditarily transmitted sin. Since the corruption of the will is a fact, it must be self- originated ; for if it were not self-originated, man would not be responsible for his own corruption. But that he is responsible not only for his actual sin but also for his sinful condition is declared by the universal verdict of the human conscience. Therefore, a cause for the corruption of the will must be sought which will enable it to be attributed not to an individual sinning for the rest, but to the whole race sinning together. This thought leads Coleridge to a somewhat incompre¬ hensible idea, namely, that Adam represents not an individual but the genus, and that Original Sin is a ‘ timeless ’ act of all human wills collectively. Thus, abandoning the indivi- . dualism of Kant, he predicates sin of the race instead of the individual, and so arrives at his theory of a universal apostasy. But, like his master, he resorts to another sphere in¬ dependent of relations of time for this universal act of sin, and so is driven to repeat the Kantian idea of a ‘ timeless : act ’, which, so far from explaining the origin of sin, is admitted by Coleridge himself to lie causes in him, when he wilfully opposes it, that inner con¬ viction of guilt which Augustinianism with its doctrine of a corrupted nature found so difficult to explain. What has this theory to say about the solidarity of mankind and the connexion of the individual with the community ? Every nation must consciously aim at improvement if it is not to fall out of the main stream of progress. Absence of progress, or even equilibrium, means in the long run de¬ terioration and death, and the nation that ceases to progress must in due course cease to exist, and progress includes moral and ethical development as well as mental and physical. This is what is meant by the often repeated statement that ethics necessarily arise with communal life. A nation, however, can only develop through its component indivi¬ duals. Therefore no individual can cease to progress without injuring the whole community. No one lives for himself alone. By the defection of one, the community becomes the poorer ; by the defection of all, it ceases to exist. So the failure of one individual to develop ethically thwarts the progress of the whole society. Since, then, the possibility of ethical development rests entirely on the individual, on each one singly rests the future not merely of the com¬ munity to which he belongs, but of the entire human race. It is this that from an evolutionary standpoint makes sin so exceedingly sinful. Each man who fails to go forward is using the freedom which he has gained to check the growth of freedom of the spirit and so to hinder the great world- plan. The actuality of sin, then, is derived solely from the individual will, influenced by its social environment and directed by personal experience. Solidarity and guilt each finds its recognition in this account of sin and theory of human nature. Is there room in this theory for the work of a Redeemer ? Undoubtedly. The death of Christ is an historic fact : its significance is accepted by all Christian people : in some manner it reconciles man with God. But it is also true that the nature of redemption needs to be defined some¬ what differently than in the terms to which we have long been used. Mr. Me Do wall’s book, as its title implies,1 is 1 Evolution and the Need of Atonement. 216 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN an attempt to assign to the central fact of the Christian faith its true meaning from the new standpoint of the evolu¬ tionary theory of sin. His conclusions may be summed up thus. The true condition of evolution is altruism. Sin is over-emphasised individualism. By sin man leaves the course of evolutionary progress and strikes out in a morally wrong direction. This means a limited moral evolution, terminating in a cul-de-sac of moral and spiritual imperfec¬ tion. The struggle of mankind to win freedom, the great struggle between the anabolic and the katabolic principles, has met with failure because of its immense difficulty. But is God’s plan to be thus thwarted ? This is inconceivable, and the only possible method, so far as we can see, whereby God could save man from the consequences of his sin and set his will again in progress towards freedom, which is the true goal of evolution, was by the identification not only of God with man but also of man with God.1 Christ suffered and was buried. Pain and death were necessary to progress, and therefore the Incarnation must be a Kevwcns and must be full of pain. In Christ was revealed the perfection of manhood. By Himself entering into the pangs of spirit fettered by matter, He liberated the spirit of man from its self-imposed bondage. Hence Mr. McDowall sees in the Incarnation the triumph of altruism. The Atonement is not substitution : nor is it an object- lesson in perfect love and self-sacrifice. At least, it is neither of these things alone : it is something more. Jesus came to vindicate the great principle of altruism which underlay the whole of God’s world-plan.2 But man must accept that principle and make it his own before he can be saved. He can receive none of the benefits of the Passion except by the conscious dedication of his will to the cause of progress and the divine process of world-development. Only thus is the wall set up by ‘race-rejection of ideals’ broken down and the check to the continuity of evolution removed. Christ’s death renewed the growth of fuller personality and aided the eternal process whereby a spirit is to be formed that is perfectly free and man is finally to become like God. 1 Evolution and the Need of Atonement p. 171. * lb. p. 177. MODERN VIEWS OF SIN 217 Evolution of Personality the Key to the Problem of Evil. Modern scientific research as applied to the perplexing difficulties presented by the existence of sin has resulted in one undeniable discovery, namely, that evolution is the true key to the problem of evil. Evolution postulates the existence of evil. It postulates a struggle between two opposing principles, through which vital energy forces its way upwards to the attainment of higher values. It is based on the antagonism between ‘ good ’ and ‘ evil \ The * struggle for existence ' and the * survival of the fittest ’ are recognised canons of evolutionary progress. Without the antagonistic force of evil to oppose the good there would be neither struggle nor selective survival. Evil, then, is a necessary condition of evolution, and evolution is the only phenomenon which can shed real light on this :[ baffling problem. But though evolution has long been known as a scientific fact, many erroneous views of evolution as a principle have been held, and it is only recently that its true operation has been realised. It is not true to say that evolution applies to one sphere of energy and not to another. Its operation is universal. It is not true to say that evolution is limited in its possibilities. Its range is infinite and its goal is absolute perfection. It is not true to say that evolution can exhaust its powers. It is a continuous and everlasting process : it is a necessary condition of life. It has been said that evolution reached its climax with the formation of man and that when it had produced the human body its operation ceased. It may be doubted whether man has yet reached the limit of his physical evolu¬ tion, but even if it be granted that there is no higher stage of development possible for the body of man, yet there can be no break in the evolutionary process. It must continue in another sphere. The line of further development is moral and spiritual. Ethical progress is a matter of experi¬ ence and is visible no less in the individual than in the community. One of the first properties of self-consciousness 218 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN is the ability to recognise the possibility of moral improve¬ ment ; and on the use made by the individual of the power of ethical development the future of the race of which he forms a member wholly depends. Every part of the complex nature of man has its own evolution. Hence the will of man is subject to the same immutable law. It used to be thought that man was endowed at birth with a ready-made will. This was the error under¬ lying all the controversies which raged round Free-will and Necessitarianism. The will of the child is in its infancy as much as his mind, and is subject to the same rules of development and growth. Freedom is not the beginning but the end. It is not the starting-point but the goal. Will first emerges in the course of the evolutionary process as a voluntary striving towards self-expression and self-realisa¬ tion and a conscious effort to cope with and master matter. It has been described as the “ in-turning on itself of the con¬ sciousness or vital impulse that underlies all progress As man begins to know himself, to recognise his partial freedom, he seeks to perfect it. In this way the will is developed and further freedom gained. This freedom may be used either to check the great cosmic process, in which case it leads to retrogression and death, or it may be used to further and help on evolutionary progress, in which case it leads to life and fullness of development. Free-will can only strictly be predicated of the final stage of human evolution. It is the ultimate product of progress. Absolute freedom is not attained until the will is entirely consonant and identi¬ fied with the will of God. Then, and not till then, is free-will perfect and complete. Then, again, it is only in recent times that attention has been seriously directed to the meaning of personality and its bearing on the problem of sin. The nature of personality is not easily defined. Professor Bergson describes it as ‘ self- consciousness \ It is a mystery which is dimly foreshadowed in that theory of the Incarnation which regarded it as the fulfilment of a destined plan for uniting man to God in still closer bonds. Modern thought seems to be moving towards the belief that it was with a view to the development of. 1 See p. 213. t MODERN VIEWS OF SIN 219 personality that the world came into existence. Personality is an end in itself, intimately connected with man’s spiritual relation to God, and when once created it is immortal. It can never be absorbed again into nothingness. Here, even more than in the will, with which, however, it is closely allied, seems to lie that causative force of self-expression which is able to oppose the stream of progress, aid katabolism and so create sin. Any further interpretation, then, of the nature of evil must undoubtedly be sought in the realm of personality. CHAPTER VIII THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN ANALYSIS § i. Former views of Sin unsatisfactory. A new view required to meet new facts. § 2. The Genesis story not to be rejected. The Doctrine of Original Sin falsely inferred from this account. § 3. The new view of Sin to be based on Psychology. § 4. Personality a prerogative peculiar to man. § 5. The duality of the mind : conscious and subconscious. § 6. The power of the natural instincts. § 7. Repression of the instincts advocated by the Church a mistaken and harmful teaching. They must be sublimated. § 8. The sublimation of the instinct of fear. § 9. The sublimation of the instinct of pugnacity. §10. The sublimation of the instinct of curiosity. §11. The sublimation of the instinct of sex. §12. The psychological view of Sin true to the teaching of Christ. §13. The view that Sin arises in the unconscious is not subversive of ethical judgement. §14. Psychological definition of Sin, Original and Actual. CHAPTER VIII THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN (An attempt at reconstruction of the concept of Sin based on the known facts of psychological evolution and on the new science of psycho-analysis.) § i- Former Views of Sin Unsatisfactory. A New View required to meet New Facts. We have tried to trace the views of Human Nature as implied in the concepts of sin prevailing in the very various ages of the Church. We have seen that there are two views in perpetual competition — a severer view and a milder view, the former being that specially associated with the great name of Augustine, which passed on into the theology of Calvin and the Jansenists, the latter being that which, roughly speaking, may be described as the view of the Greek Fathers — a view continued in the teaching of the Semipelagians and maintained by the Council of Trent. Augustine held that the effect of the Fall was to destroy in mankind the power to do right, to such an extent that Human Nature became entirely corrupt and depraved, the object of God's uttermost reprobation and wrath. The Greek Fathers, on the other hand, did not regard Human Nature as having become totally depraved through the Fall, but as retaining a large measure of natural righteousness ; they defined ‘ Original Sin * as being such a weakening of man's will by the first wrongful act that it was not fully able to keep the animal appetites under control. We have seen the gradual acceptance of Augustinianism in spite of the protests made by the Semipelagian school, and its formal adoption by the Reformers, who emphasised its most repug¬ nant features and introduced the monstrous figment of the ‘ total depravity ' of Human Nature and the necessary damnation of infants dying unbaptised. Gradually, how- 221 222 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN ever, the reaction has set in. Calvinism is as much re¬ pudiated by Nonconformists as by members of the Church of England. Wesleyans, it may be noted, were always Arminians, and most Churchmen may be regarded as holding Semipelagian views, albeit unconsciously and in¬ stinctively. We have also seen that the view of man’s history put before us by modern science is entirely inconsistent with the idea of a ‘ Fall ’ of any sort. Modern evolutionary thought knows nothing of an alleged condition of ‘ original righteousness ’ or of a catastrophic departure from it ; on the contrar}^ it sets before us the picture of a slow, gradual ascent from a purely animal stage, an ascent extending over hundreds of thousands of years, marked, no doubt, by many retrogressions and setbacks, but exhibiting an unbroken continuity between the hairy, low-browed, prog¬ nathous ape-man of the Pliocene geological epoch and the refined and sensitive European of the present century. The substitution of the scientific for the theological view of man’s origin and early history provides a totally different view of sin and moral evil. Acts which we call morally wrong are the expression of primitive instincts and impulses, which were necessary to the well-being of our non-human ancestors, but which, under the conditions of modern social life, are now evil, not because they have changed their nature but because they are anachronisms. Like the “ troublesome wisdom-tooth or the dangerous appendix ”, which have out¬ lived their original usefulness in the body and now survive only to be the occasional causes of pain, disease or death, so man’s carnal passions and innate desires are merely the survivals of appetites and instincts once necessary to the struggle for existence, but now out of harmony with the social fabric into which the human race has built itself. It would seem to follow from this view that sin needs reformation only, and not expiation and satisfaction ; the matter is summed up by a great scientist in these words : “ The higher man of to-day is not worrying about his sins : his mission is to be up and doing ”. This position in regard to sin is far from satisfactory. The universal verdict of the human conscience cannot thus be dismissed and lightly THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN 223 set aside. The old view has been weakened ; the presump¬ tions of theology have lost their hold ; doubts have been cast on the seriousness of sin, but no consistent teaching has come in to reconcile theology with anthropology. The present is a time of transition, and such times are perilous. The clergy are constantly lamenting the decay of the sense of sin, but they will never be able to improve matters by bringing in dogmas, even though temperately stated, which have once for all been repudiated by the lay mind. A new foundation must be laid : we must have a new view of sin, a view consistent with our present knowledge of the evolu¬ tion of mankind, which yet does not minimise sin’s gravity. §2. The Genesis Story not to be rejected. The Doctrine of Original Sin falsely inferred from this Account. The question first arises how far we may incur the charge of irreverence if we refuse to regard the first chapters of Genesis as serious history, and how far we become guilty of disloyalty to the faith we profess and to the religion of Jesus Christ in rejecting the doctrine of a Fall and Original Sin as its consequent. The narrative in the second and third chapters of Genesis, as might be expected from the age in which it was composed, is not unlike the legendary history of early Greece and Rome, and may be regarded as originally a naive folk-tale relating the circumstances in which the Golden Age came to an end and the misfortunes brought upon the first men by their presumption, and which was afterwards employed by the compiler of Genesis as the vehicle of instruction as to the nature of sin. Indeed, the substance of these chapters, as distinct from the allegorical and poetical form in which they are clothed, must be considered as representing objective fact, and it is broadly true as an account of human origins. Here we see the naked savage, lisping for his first words new names of beast and bird, innocent in sheer ignorance of evil, becoming dimly conscious of disobedience, of guilt and of shame, twining leaves to cover his nakedness or sewing together the skins of beasts, desperately fighting for existence against thorns and briars, bearing children who 224 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN murder one another in senseless jealousy. This record seems to be very little removed from the evolutionary view which says that man has fought his way up from the very dust of chaos, moving steadily onwards in spite of many setbacks and coming at last to a conception of morality and of God. But it is impossible to extract from these chapters any¬ thing like the theological inferences of a Fall and of Original Sin. They are entirely devoid of any theological or meta¬ physical theories of a weakness of will or bias towards evil inherited by the descendants of our first parents. The theological doctrine of the Fall occurs neither in Genesis nor in the rest of the Old Testament ; the sole Scriptural authority for it is to be found in the writings of S. Paul. Now, it is no longer possible to feel certain that all the ideas of S. Paul are necessarily identical with those of the Founder of Christianity ; on the contrary, there is every reason to believe that he retained much of his antecedent thought 1 when he passed from Moses to Christ, and that Christians | are not of necessity bound to accept, as inherently Christian, much that S. Paul taught, not as a Christian but as a learned Jew. Even an Apostle could not change his past. His j theology is of Christ, but his anthropology is Jewish. The i teaching of Jesus, as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels, J contains not the slightest allusion to an alleged Fall, nor to j a hereditary bias towards evil, but this idea was familiar to the Rabbinical teachers of the first century a.d. It is therefore probable that the conception of the Fall i and Original Sin as it appears in Rom. v 12-14 forms no part of the original Gospel, but represents ideas imported f by S. Paul into Christianity from the Rabbinical Judaism \ in which he had been brought up. If, therefore, we wish, j according to the modern catch-phrase, to get ‘ back to ! Christ *, we must go behind S. Paul and sweep away the doctrine of the Fall and Original Sin as mere speculations which we are at liberty to consider for ourselves without being committed to regard them from the standpoint of one whose views were moulded by Jewish antecedents, except ' ; in so far as he had consciously remodelled them to fit his new faith. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN 225 There is no need to discard the fascinating story of Gen. iii, so long as it is read in its natural sense and apart from the very questionable philosophy which has been inferred from it. It distinctly teaches that the entrance of sin into the human heart is always and everywhere due to the misuse of choice, and the preference of the lower to the higher nature. It regards the passions as having been the cause of man’s fall, but not the fall as having been the cause of man’s passions. The imported view thus seems to be wholly inconsistent with the intention of the writer, who is endeavouring to give a picture of the way in which men sin ; and it is perfectly obvious that men sin in that way, viz. by the misuse of choice. Otherwise, every subsequent sin was of a different nature from the first sin, and this account would lose its moral value, and would indeed become, as it so evidently has become, an excuse for sin, that it was the fault of somebody else, for which fault the sinner cannot be held guilty. Thus the moral of the story has been entirely inverted by subsequent commentators, who have by this misconception been responsible for centuries of confusion and error in regard to the meaning and origin of sin. §3- The New View of Sin to be based on Psychology. What, then, is to take the place of this pre-Christian anthropology which has been foisted upon the Genesis story ? What view of sin can be substituted for the tradi¬ tional account ? Any theory propounded must, to gain acceptance, fulfil two vital requirements. It must do justice to man’s sense of sin, which tells him that his sin is the result of his own unfettered choice, for which he is alone and entirely responsible. The sense of sin is an element of the utmost importance to mankind. It cannot be ignored, for it is the chief incentive to moral progress and to ethical development. Without a sense of sin there can be no guilt. Guilt is the intellectual judgement pronounced by us on our wrong¬ doing, arising from and based on our sense of sin. A modern theory of sin must not do violence to the verdict of the human heart. Such a theory must, on the other hand, be in absolute 15 226 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN agreement with the view of evolution and anthropological science. This seems to make sin a necessitv and an essential •j stage in the cosmic process, and in so doing is opposed to the theological notion of sin as that which ought not to be. Harnack is inclined to think that reconciliation between these two opposing points of view is impossible, but it is incredible that convictions imperative to the conscience should be contradictory or inexplicable to the reason. It is hard to suppose that there can be any such wide gulf fixed between the intellectual and the moral life of man. Some means of harmonising these two demands there must surely be. It might be found by speculation, and there are those who are attempting to face the difficulties imposed by such a task. There is, however, another and a more excellent way. The mind itself must be examined in order to find out what solution it has to give of that anomaly in its constitution which theologians call ‘ sin ’ and which, in relation to society, is termed ‘ crime’. Fortunately, this essay has not to conduct the examina¬ tion — it has only to see how far the present results of that form of introspection which we call psychology fit in with — (1) The recognised facts of evolution. (2) The spiritual fact of sin and the sense of sin as felt universally by man. §4- Personality a Prerogative Peculiar to Man. Psychology teaches that man differs from the non-human organisms from which he has sprung and by which he is surrounded in the possession of what is called ‘personality’. Our personality is the one fact about our nature of which we can never entertain a doubt. It is the starting-point from which the psychologist sets out in quest of further knowledge respecting himself and his environment, for per¬ sonality implies consciousness of self. The personalities of different types of men differ enor¬ mously, but the personality even of the lowest existing THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN 227 savage is different in kind from anything that we can de¬ scribe as resembling it in the higher vertebrates. We cannot refuse to admit that man has a value peculiar to himself, in that, so far as we can see, he alone among living animals consciously strives for goodness, beauty and truth. Thought, memory, will, purpose, all can be seen in the instincts of insects and the lower animals, but personality, involving, as necessary qualities of its being, reason, will and a moral ideal, is incomparably the highest phenomenon known to experience, and is the peculiar prerogative of man. We see in man three elements : the material body, the life-principle, and the element of human personality. The last has only slowly reached its present complexity, and is still far from the power and perfection that we can imagine it will some day possess. Evolution as a principle of life cannot cease, otherwise life itself would end. There is no equilibrium in nature. All is progress, or if progress is arrested, death ensues. Scientists have contended that the evolution of the material part of man ended with his appearance on the scene about a million years ago as the final and complex result of the development of rudimentary forms of life. But the evolu¬ tionary process by no means ended with its first stage. The line of development continued in another sphere. Hitherto all living organisms that had existed on the surface of the earth, from the speck of protoplasm up to the majestic saurians of the secondary period, had been mere mechanisms, wound up in such a way as to produce the appropriate action in response to a given stimulus — mere bundles of sensory-motor reflexes. But the coming into existence of man marked the intervention of a third term between stimulus and reaction, namely, a reflective self-conscious¬ ness with the power of distinguishing ‘ I ' from everything that is not ‘ I with its corollary of ‘ will * or the ability to balance considerations, to select motives, and to choose one from amongst two or more possible courses of action. But his mind was in its infancy. Man's mental powers were so undeveloped, his self-conscious reason so weak, that he was still largely under the control of the powerful physical appetites inherited from his animal ancestors. In 228 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN this region, then, evolution renewed its process in order to secure a new end. With the evolution of the mind there began also the development of the moral sense, based on such natural impulses as parental and filial affection, which have been rightly described as 4t the raw material of full morality ”, and which, beginning in selfish desire, lead on to sacrifice. The sense of sin takes the same place in the spiritual development of man as is taken by the vital impulse in the physical. This view enables us to correlate the whole process of physical, mental and spiritual evolution from its earliest beginnings in reflex action and aneuric consciousness to its higher development in self-consciousness and moral and religious perception. But why do moral and intellectual evolution not keep pace ? Mental development ought to mean spiritual develop¬ ment ; intellectual growth should invariably be attended by moral growth. In actual experience the contrary result is sometimes found. Why is this ? The answer is to be sought in the sphere of personality. Animals have con¬ sciousness but not personality. In all vital organisms below that of man the consciousness is only of the instinctive order, and does not rise to the higher, self-conscious, reflective and spiritual level. In man consciousness took a mighty leap forward and upward. It became reflective ; man became the object of his own consciousness, and thus attained a new and spiritual value. He became a person. §5- The Duality of the Mind : Conscious and Subconscious. Now, the main teaching of psychology bearing on the subject of personality is the duality of the mind, the conscious and subconscious, or even unconscious mind, which latter may be taken together. It teaches that beside the threshold or supraliminal consciousness, which really means the normal waking consciousness, there is a subliminal consciousness which lies outside the ordinary range of the mind’s opera¬ tion. For example, none will deny that while a man is asleep and his normal consciousness is in abeyance, his sub¬ conscious mind may be in a state of great activity. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN 229 The conscious mind is that part of man which is endowed with the power of choice and volition ; it can reason and invent ; it can think and plan and reckon. The subconscious mind, on the other hand, is the seat of the instincts and the natural impulses. To it belong the animal passions, habits, and the almost unconscious desire of self-gratification. Through its involuntary action the bodily appetites make their clamorous appeal for satisfaction. In relation to evolution the conscious mind is the latest development. Multitudes of living creatures get on with¬ out it. It only finds itself in man. This agrees with the discoveries of scientific knowledge and with the records of progress. The survival of the fittest does not mean the survival of the strongest, for these have perished, but the survival of the thinkers — those most possessed of reason and will. The conscious mind is as yet only half developed. There are many things done by insects far more perfectly than we can do them, but the insect never gets any further. It makes no mistakes, and therefore never learns. There is no duality in the insect, and therefore no progress. It possesses instinct but no conscious mind. Man is slowly becoming a rational animal, and his instincts are slowly coming more and more under the control of reason. In man there is duality, and all the disagreeableness of a transition state. Our present conscious mind is an un¬ finished thing ; our personality is in the making. Man is in process of passing from the subconscious to the conscious — from the natural to the spiritual — from Adam to Christ. What, then, is sin ? It is being influenced by the sub¬ conscious instincts, tendencies, desires and habits when the time has come to pass under the higher rule of reason and of conscience. The subconscious is primitive, and is that part of the mind which we share with lower animals. It is, as has been said, the seat of the instincts, passions, appetites. These are not wrong, for they cannot be dispensed with. They are parts of our nature, and we can no more do without them than without our senses. As Butler points out in 230 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN one of his famous sermons on Human Nature / our appetites, passions and senses in no way imply disease, nor, indeed, do they imply deficiency or imperfection of any sort ; but only this, that the constitution of nature is such as to require them. To argue that we ought to eradicate our passions because they are lacking in the Supreme Being is as absurd as to suggest that we ought to get rid of our senses because God discerns things more perfectly without them. But what in that case becomes of sin ? Does that vanish ? Does it become natural and excusable, that is, excusable because natural? No; for God’s whole object for man is to effect the transformation of the crude instincts into some¬ thing higher. Our passions, our appetites and our senses are a God-given aid to supply what is lacking in our imper¬ fect Human Nature, and so far from being suppressed as a weakness, they must be used as a support to reason and intelligence while the reason and intelligence are weak and undeveloped. The exaltation of will power has been in recent years the special doctrine of certain philosophers, but that doctrine rests on false assumptions and is now largely discredited. Experience teaches that the will frequently fails to accomplish its resolves. One thing is willed, another performed. S. Paul enunciated an eternal truth when he declared : “ What I would, that do I not, but what I hate, that do I ”. Life is full of examples of the impotence of the will 2 and of its dependence on some other power. That power is the power of the instinctive emotions. It is they which give the driving force to the will. The time may come when the conscious mind is so fully developed that we shall be able to dispense in large measure with the instinctive emotions and give ourselves up entirely to the control of pure reason, but that time has not yet come. Meanwhile the will must work in conjunction with the instincts : it must utilise the potent forces that have their origin in the far past, forces which must not control reason but must them- 1 Sermon V, Upon Compassion. It is remarkable that Butler hardly ever refers to the Fall in these sermons. His treatment of the necessity of the passions is masterly. Read in the light of psychology, these sermons lose all their difficulty. It is a relief to find that the master of English Theology is at one with our newest knowledge. * For the impotence of the will see the valuable essay of Baudouin, Suggestion and Autosuggestion, esp. pp. 37, 116 and 180 (George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1920). $ J] C r I j F I e * r \ f I c : t ( I t I t I I 'c I I e I ' I I § S' I a a S( e c. Ci T h THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN 231 selves be directed and controlled by reason. They must not be allowed to dictate to man or to gain the supremacy over him, but must be regulated and transformed to nobler purposes — must, in a word, be spiritualised. § 6. The Power of the Natural Instincts. The strength of the instincts has not yet been properly appreciated, nor is it fully realised how great a part they play in common life. They dominate our whole human existence, and so far from being mere brutish survivals, as many cultured persons have thought, they are a powerful factor which will have to be reckoned with and taken account of in connexion with the problem of sin, alike by the social reformer and by the theologian of the future. This has been recently shown by Dr. W. McDougall in his treatise on Social Psychology, and to him we owe the first recogni¬ tion of the intimate relationship between the instincts and the emotions, and of their paramount importance in, and practical bearing on, social life and human conduct. It has furthermore been demonstrated by psychologists that the chief source of human energy is the subconscious and not the conscious mind : it is psychic rather than intel¬ lectual. Not in the deliberate choice of the will, but in the emotion of the soul, is to be found that sudden access of strength which can perform the apparently impossible task. The instinct of self-preservation has frequently given to a desperate man surrounded by the enemy the strength of six. The maternal instinct bestows on a woman almost superhuman power to defend her child against over¬ whelming odds. Fear has been known to enable a man, pursued by a savage bull, to scale a wall which he could never afterwards accomplish by power of will alone.1 The instinctive emotions, then, are, humanly speaking, the chief sources of our human energies. They are a potent force for good or evil, according to the way in which they are treated, and constitute the main driving power of life. The instincts cannot be ignored in the future as they have been in the past. They have only recently been recognised by sociologists, but their religious value is yet to be fully understood. 1 For the power of the instinctive emotions see Essay III in The Spirit > by Captain Hadfield, edited by B. H. Streeter (Macmillan, 1921). 232 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN There must not be repression. Any attempt to repress the instincts, though it is even to this day advocated by many moralists, is doomed to failure, and must be productive of disaster. An instinct may be suppressed for a time, in which case we are fully conscious of the impulse, but do not allow it to affect our action. In repression the thing goes a stage further, and an instinct or an emotion connected with an instinct is driven into the depths of the unconscious, so that we no longer feel the impulse. It still exists, but seems to have come under the ban of what Freud1 calls the Censor or Door-keeper, which prevents it from reaching the con¬ scious levels of the mind. Not only is it practically impossible to eradicate deep-rooted hereditary predispositions, but the act of trying to do so dams up the streams of power which nature has provided. All instincts, as has been seen, have latent within them a vast amount of energy which is con¬ stantly striving for expression in action. If suitable action is denied, as it is to a repressed instinct, the energy, in its struggle for expression, gives rise to those unconscious mental conflicts from which spring most of our latter-day neuroses. Repression is essentially an evil thing which tends to throw the whole of the unconscious mind out of balance. The danger of this is shown by the phenomenon known as shell-shock, which is solely due to the repression of fear. Repression of the sex instinct is as bad. This is, of course, the great problem of the boarding school to-day, as it was of the monastic institution in the Middle Ages, and up to the present no satisfactory solution has been found. The treatment of the passions must not be merely negative. This only drives them farther in, to be dammed up in the unconscious by Freud’s Censor and to become buried com¬ plexes — to burst out later perhaps into madness. §7- Repression of the Instincts advocated ey the Church a Mis¬ taken and Harmful Teaching. They must be sublimated. The error of the Church in the past has lain largely in its treatment of the instincts ; it has either ignored them 1 The chief exponent of that form of psychology known as Psycho¬ analysis. He first put forward his special views in 1895. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN 233 or it has repressed them. This attitude is in great measure responsible for its impotence and failure to-day. The old saying of the Roman satirist still survives in all its bitter truth, “ You may expel nature with a pitchfork, but it will always return ”. Mankind will always answer to its old stimuli, and the instinctive impulses which the Church once hoped to have got rid of by repression will reappear in a thousand different forms. Christianity has tended to a narrowness which has often caused its rejection by the lay mind. It has been negative, whereas it is essentially positive ; it has been a law rather than a Gospel, a scruple rather than an enthusiasm, and so falls short of its first glorious simplicity, that reduced ethics to the single commandment of love. Christianity to-day is largely the residuum of fifty generations of pedants, who have done for the Gospel what their predecessors did for the prophets of Israel. Theology has meant antipathy to Human Nature, whereas in Christ there is nothing but the most profound and all-embracing sympathy. Strange that the nation which produced a Shakespeare should have so fallen down before the great god propriety. Shakespeare finds in man nothing that he would lop off. He accepts nature and finds it beautiful in its entirety— he touches the real even to its filth, and lifts the ideal as high as heaven. Let Shakespeare reinterpret Christ, and let him who saw man as he is explain to us the yet greater power of Him who came not to destroy Human Nature, but to raise it to its highest development, most human when most divine. The Church must shift its ground. It must abandon a purely negative attitude in regard to the instincts in favour of teaching which is definite and positive. That is the need and the demand of the present day, and unless it can in future be shown that Christianity directs and converts the instincts and the passions to useful and harmonious ends, unless it ‘ sublimates * the instincts, liberating instead of repressing the free energies residing in them, it will never commend itself to the modern mind, which has now learnt to regard the instinctive emotions as being for the most part healthy, and certainly implanted in man for a definite and salutary purpose. 234 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN What method of instruction must the Church adopt in substitution for the useless and now discredited system of repression ? Teaching must be clear to be effective and must be definite to have a chance of gaining acceptance. The basis of the new teaching will be altruism. The instincts must be directed to the good of others and not to selfish ends. Sin is selfishness. It is clearly the duty of those possessing this knowledge to produce in others, by influence, by sermons, by written articles, a similar know¬ ledge, to show the multitude what to seek, that seeking they may find. Evolutionists have hitherto largely studied only the evolution of the individual, and the evolution of the group, though closely connected therewith, seems almost to have passed unnoticed. Yet here is the key to the whole. Wherever selfishness is the only or even the principal motive, the group — be it family, pack or tribe — breaks up. The uphill task is for the minority possessing this knowledge to impart it to the majority, to cultivate in the public mind a will to serve. Christ’s work was to give the world a will to serve. That work has been progressing for nearly two thousand years. It must now be accelerated by a fresh effort. Selfishness is the root of all wrong, past and present. Neither this nor that section of the community is solely to be blamed, but man in general, in yielding to his animal instincts for his own base ends, instead of moralising them and using them for the benefit of the human race. God has always desired and always will desire good to triumph ; it rests with man to co-operate with Him by making altruism the basis of all his actions and to ensure its final victory by self-sacrifice. The transformation of the instincts and the use of their vast potentiality for the benefit of man¬ kind is the greatest work of life, which every individual must aid and further to the utmost of his power, unless he would defeat the purpose for which he came into the world. The reproof of sin is its resistance to the whole process of evolution. The subconscious mind is the flesh ; the con¬ scious mind is the spirit. To subordinate the spirit to the flesh is to oppose the development of the conscious mind THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN 235 and to arrest the only course of evolution which now remains for man, viz. evolution in the mental and moral sphere, which arrest means of necessity katabolism and death. Christianity is the very religion to assist this divine process : it is the very religion Human Nature needs. Christ took our passions and dealt with them in the only way which could conserve their energy and press into human service the immense powers that lie latent therein. He took our ambition, but made it the ambition to raise men and draw them to Himself. The Cross means the consecration of every instinct, every passion, every emotion to the work of Christ, which was the service of mankind. To bear the cross is not mere self-denial, but the sacrifice of the lower to the higher self. The instincts must be ' sublimated \ The direct expression of the instinct in action must be modified and the liberated energy turned into new and ethically more valuable channels. Sublimation and absence of repression are essential for a healthy development of the conscious mind. §8. The Sublimation of the Instinct of Fear. The instinct of fear affords a good example of the way in which the instincts may be dealt with to our profit and to the development of our higher nature. This instinct is a primitive precaution against danger, and is closely connected with the desire for self-preservation. No wonder, then, that it never leaves us as long as we value our lives. But, as Captain Hadfield points out in his Psychology of Power , owing to the comparative safety afforded by modern civilisa¬ tion, there is a superfluity of fear, and the instinct remains in man in a greater degree than is necessary for the preserva¬ tion of his life. This superfluity is apt to find an outlet in ways which are futile and absurd. Most people either fear immoderately things in regard to which a certain measure of fear is both reasonable and natural, or they fear things which ought not to be feared at all. The result is that our lives are filled with needless worry and anxiety, often to the ruin of our health and to the undoing of our peace of 236 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN mind. Some men have frightened themselves into mad¬ ness ; others have gone so far as to take their own life under the influence of groundless apprehension. This instinct must be sublimated, not repressed. It must be directed under the control of reason into proper channels. It must be turned to good account for the benefit of ourselves and others. Wrongly used, it debases and degrades, making life a misery ; rightly used, it raises us to unsuspected heights of energy and usefulness. Fear that paralyses the nerve and unfits us for further effort is the crude instinct of the subconscious mind, seen in the case of the terror-stricken animal or the cowering bird unable to move or to escape its foe. But fear which, under the guidance of reason, inspires action, stimulates effort, and encourages the utmost use of existing faculties is the same instinct transformed and converted to higher ends. Fear of poverty rescues us from idleness and sloth ; fear of failure spurs us on to greater exertion and further toil ; fear of disease leads us to temperance and self-restraint ; fear of death makes us cautious, active and alert. In short, the instinct of fear, transformed and sublimated, so far from enervating man or obstructing human enterprise, becomes a well of energy, and is itself a force of incalculable value to mankind. In this sense, the fear of God is not a servile thing, as has been thought by some. It is not the mere shrinking from punishment, nor yet the cowardly dread of a stern task¬ master, which can only lead to the concealment and neglect of the talents entrusted to our care, but it is the natural emotion of awe, elevated and ennobled to inspire us to active service and indifference to self, so that in humble reverence we may further the Divine purpose in the world, labour for God among our fellow-men, and hasten the coming of His kingdom here on earth. §9- The Sublimation of the Instinct of Pugnacity. The instinct of pugnacity , though closely connected with that of fear, affords another illustration of the manner in which a natural desire is capable of transformation from THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN 237 a lower to a higher end. It would seem at first sight as if this instinct, however suitable for a primitive state of existence, is out of place in civilised society, where peace, not war, is the ideal condition and ought to be the aim of all human endeavour. The combative instinct leads to strife and bloodshed if its natural impulse in uncontrolled and is yielded to for selfish ends. Animals fight to satisfy their hunger, to save their lives and to keep what they possess. Self-preservation I* is a law of nature, and the instinct of pugnacity prompted primitive man to appease his craving for food, to protect his own life and the lives of his dependents, and to retain the spoils he had already won. In modern life the laws step in, and by protecting life and property for man, render this primitive instinct to a large extent superfluous and unnecessary. Is this, then, an instinct which must be repressed ? That, for reasons already stated, is both undesirable and impossible. The instinct must find an outlet, and such an outlet is afforded by friendly rivalry in games and exhibitions of skill, which stimulate and promote efficiency and health. Those most addicted to sport of various kinds and most proficient at it are generally the least provocative and quarrel¬ some of men. On the contrary, they are, as a rule, found to possess more chivalry and self-control than those whose instinct for combat has been either over-developed or repressed. The very fact that games are based on a primitive in¬ stinct explains the tremendous hold which they have on the mind of boys, particularly when one remembers that the evolution of the individual epitomises the evolution of the race, and that the boy must in many ways be regarded as corresponding to primitive man. Our own country affords a good example of this. There has been little mental repression in English history. Our intense national devotion to outdoor sports and games has sublimated the fighting instinct. We still have it in perfect working order, as was proved during the recent war, to the surprise of the so-called militaristic nations. In peace we have for centuries turned its energy into other 238 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN channels, and in so doing have learnt determination, team¬ work, and, above all else, we have acquired the power of keeping our temper and our heads in an emergency. These two things, absence of repression and sublimation of the combative instinct through sport, account not only for the vigour of the fighting spirit in Englishmen when need calls it forth, but for the very existence of the British Empire. The instinct of pugnacity, when transformed and subli¬ mated, is directed to altruistic ends. It becomes protective, not aggressive. To take up arms for others, to help the weak, to succour the oppressed, to deliver the victims of injustice and wrong, is to utilise this instinct for right and noble purposes. The life of Christ was a crusade against unbelief and vice. True, His battle was waged with other weapons than those devoted to war and slaughter : “ They that take the sword ”, He said, “ shall perish with the sword Yet every day He fought for justice and for truth, though He refused to do so for Himself. In this way He ennobled and sublimated the instinct of pugnacity, and thus set us an example that by fighting for purity and right we might gain increase of energy to serve our generation and confer no little benefit upon society at large. § io. The Sublimation of the Instinct of Curiosity. Again, the instinct of curiosity has always been regarded as an impulse that ought to be repressed, on the ground that it is a reprehensible tendency in the individual to interfere in things with which he has no concern. In the eyes of moralists it is a sheer weakness of Human Nature without any redeeming feature or social value. This is a most unjustifiable assumption and is due to utter ignorance of the immense utility of the instinct and the purpose for which it exists. The primitive form of this instinct and the form in which it occurs in the lower animals is the inquisitive desire to peer into all that is unfamiliar and to examine closely anything novel or strange. This not unfrequently leads to 1 . c ; i I r (. I 2 0 I *" V r it 1 1 c, i 1 z lo ti: L: in in th sc in; re; ce fc: by h:' of Jfes THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN 239 disaster : the prying animal, for example, falls into the huntsman’s snare and becomes the victim of its own curiosity. The same result is often seen in man when curiosity is indulged in merely for the sake of self-gratification. Sometimes it takes the form of prying into other people’s affairs, sometimes of committing some indiscretion in order to gain experience. In the first case it is idle and annoying ; in the second case it is pernicious, and may even be attended by fatal results. The busybody may possibly . do no further harm then irritate his neighbours, but the victim of an overpowering desire to ‘ see life ’ may be led into dire calamity. One often hears it said : ‘‘I did it just to try what it was like ”. The desire ‘ just to try ’ has ruined many a promising career and blighted countless happy homes. An act makes a habit, and a habit makes a character. Chance visitors to gaming- halls have been known to become confirmed gamblers ; medical students who have ‘just tried’ cocaine have deve¬ loped into drug-takers ; casual tasters of strong drink have turned into drunkards, and young men have fallen into licentious habits solely through giving way in the first instance to morbid curiosity. So far as this instinct is a survival of mere animal inquisitiveness, it is to be condemned as being evil : it is the subordination of the reasoning faculty to a subcon¬ scious primitive impulse. But rightly used and directed into proper channels, it may be converted to excellent and philanthropic purposes, in which case it becomes a reservoir of energy which stimulates research, promotes discovery, encourages invention, adds to knowledge and leads to higher things. To the instinct of curiosity we owe the scientific dis¬ coveries made after years of tedious research. To the same instinct we owe much of the medical skill acquired by patient and laborious investigation. To the same instinct we owe the unveiling of many of the mysteries of Nature whereby mankind has greatly benefited in the past — nor can we fail to believe that Nature possesses yet untold secrets containing vast potentialities for remedying 240 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN human ills which she will yield to those alone who, in obedience to this instinct, patiently and diligently pursue their scientific research, regardless of labour or reward. May we not say without fear of exaggeration that but for the instinct of curiosity many of the greatest achievements of Europe during the last thousand years which have con¬ tributed to the advancement of mankind could never have occurred ? This instinct, then, like others, must be viewed as a potent source of energy and usefulness, and is capable of being sublimated into a power for social service and for the benefit of man. It is worthy of notice that the tendency of the Church has ever been to place a ban upon curiosity. It has dis¬ couraged investigation and independent thought. It has expected its members to take blindly ready-made opinions and to accept implicitly the dogmas it has imposed. This is entirely opposed to the method of our Lord, who reverenced whatever the learner had in him of his own. He merely guided aright the instinctive tendencies, fostering whatever was of native growth, and was glad when His words induced a man to think on his own account. Thus He sought to rouse curiosity by means of parables. §n- The Sublimation of the Instinct of Sex. Another instinct residing in the subconscious mind is that of sex — a powerful impulse necessary for the repro¬ duction of the race. This instinct is, perhaps, with that of self-preservation, the most primitive of the instincts inherited by man from the animal kingdom. But, like that of fear, it also seems to exist far in excess of its need for the preservation of the species, and the surplus of this emotion tends to flow into wrong channels. Hence arise j fleshly lust and the mere gratification of carnal desire, which debases and destroys the higher nature and is subversive - of all virtue and of all ethical progress. The attitude of the Church towards this natural instinct has in the past inclined towards suppression, partly because of the constant abuse of the sexual impulse, and partly because of an erroneous identification of the act of pro- THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN 241 creation with sin, a survival from the monastic days, when celibacy and continence were extravagantly exalted as a Christian ideal. The result of the suppression of this instinct has been frequently found to be disastrous, and, apart from the vice for which enforced celibacy has been in the past responsible, many of the nervous ills in people of both sexes treated by the medical profession have been traced to this cause, and this alone. The question, then, arises whether this instinct is capable of sublimation. Can transformation here take the place of suppression ? Is it possible for the excess of this im¬ pulse to be raised to nobler ends ? That the answer is in the affirmative is at least suggested by the fact that the sexual instinct has given rise to some of the most admirable qualities that have adorned mankind. Chivalry, honour, knight-errantry, profound reverence for women, all had their root in, and in great measure sprang from, this impulse. Love in its highest form is undoubtedly the sublimation of the sex instinct. It is the tenderest, most fragile of the human emotions, yet it may be “ stronger than the grave Sometimes it comes to a man or woman slowly, gently, unnoticed, making the very soul its own ; some¬ times the vision flashes suddenly, and the whole world is illuminated by its splendour. It speaks with an irre¬ sistible voice of chivalry, honour and self-sacrifice, and like some old Hebrew prophet it pours bitter scorn on things base and evil. In a word, no human emotion is capable of leading men and women to higher acts of self- abnegation and devotion to the welfare of others than the instinct of sex in its sublimated form. Noble thoughts and feelings take the place of low desires, and from this root springs all that is pure and holy in human life. Then, again, the sexual instinct is intimately connected with the parental instinct, which is not merely a desire to propagate the species, but a strong impulse to cherish and to protect. Men and women alike feel an innate longing to foster someone belonging to them and dependent on them who looks to them for maintenance and preserva- 16 242 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN tion. In short, the desire to “ have someone to care for ” is part of the sexual instinct and is practically universal. This natural longing may in the unmarried find a noble and altruistic outlet. Men and women to whom marriage is denied may transform their suppressed parental instincts by devoting themselves to children, by feeding the hungry, by protecting the weak, by nursing the sick, and by ministering in countless ways to those who need their help. As Captain Hadfield points out in his essay on this sub¬ ject already referred to, the instinct of sex, as revealing itself in the desire to “ mother ” the lonely, has led many a woman during the recent war to marry an invalid or a cripple simply to gratify her maternal yearnings in caring for him. Lastly, the instinct of sex, as manifested in admiration for beauty, may be sublimated and find its true expression in the development of the artistic sense. The phrase ‘ wedded to art * is not merely a cant expression denoting whole-hearted devotion to some artistic pursuit. It con¬ tains a further truth. It implies that art is capable of transforming the emotion of the soul and of giving the desire to create and the desire to admire (both of which are included in the instinct of sex) an object which calls forth and absorbs the highest energy of which this passion is capable. As the noblest forms of sculpture, painting, and even music, have been in the past inspired by love, whether sacred or profane, so it is impossible to foresee to what heights of creative art men under the influence of this instinct may yet advance. § 12. The Psychological View of Sin true to the Teaching of Christ. Enough has been said to show how the instincts in their cruder form, as handed down to us by our brutish ancestry, must be sublimated and the powers which lie latent within them be redirected to nobler purposes. We may trans¬ form where we cannot suppress, and on this theory a whole dogmatic ethic might be based, and be not the less dog¬ matic because it takes into account facts of Human Nature often ignored in the past. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN 243 Indeed, this ethic is precisely the ethic of the Christian religion, for the teaching of Christ, in fact if not explicitly, was based upon a value for the creative impulses and a hatred of everything that represses them ; and in its doctrine of forgiveness it implies a recognition of the unconscious — “ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do ”. Christianity combines a readiness to for¬ give with a very clear standard of ethical judgement ; it is both judicial and pitiful, because it recognises that for the most part men know not what they do or what they are. The Christian religion is the only religion which tends to liberate energies capable of transforming the living soul into a quickening spirit. Its doctrine of love towards God and man harmonises the instincts with one inspiring purpose, thereby destroying a conflict of emotions which is one of the main causes of weakness, and by setting free instead of suppressing the full powers of mankind, gives man perfect freedom to perform the will of God. The history of theology shows that men can rarely grasp the full orb of truth at once. The facts of faith are so great, the realities they certify are so large, that the mind must needs be content to grasp but a part of their implications. No doubt the basal facts of Christianity are few, but they are infinite in content, and the meanness of our minds can hold but little of their meaning. It would seem as if we must be satisfied to apprehend little by little and part at a time of that which is revealed. A ' century ago Christians made all things turn round the atoning death of Christ. Then came a period when their j faith was expressed in terms of the Incarnation. Perhaps; it is now time that we should emphasise the full ethical value of the unconscious and the sublimation of the here¬ ditary instincts. We know how men can pass their days with powers of body and mind undeveloped and with faculties dormant, never discovering the possibilities which lie buried in the secret depths of their personality. In like manner men may also miss their share in the full energies of the spirit. So many are unaware of the im¬ mense reservoir of power latent in the unconscious, ready for them to tap. They are blind to the potency of the 244 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN instinctive emotions, which, when rightly used, would open up for them undreamt of resources of strength and give them in abundance energy and life. Life demands ex¬ pression, and Nature is lavish in her gifts to those who will use them and devote them to altruistic ends, for such ends harmonise the soul. Men hear the warning of the Church that sin ought to be resisted to the uttermost, but they look around and see it as a universal fact. Thinking that they find experience at variance with theology, and con¬ scious of their weakness and their inability to succeed where others have failed, they are inclined to give up the struggle, to cease to worry about sin, and to pass on their way ignoring it. They lack the confidence and the determination necessary to fight against their selfish desires, because they are ignorant of the real nature of sin and the real source of power waiting for them to use in this eternal conflict, if they will but call it forth. This is precisely the true teaching of Christianity. The recognition by psychology of the fact that there is un¬ bounded energy residing in the emotions and that the right exercise of the instincts brings fresh access of strength is in entire agreement with the Biblical claim that the spirit is power. No student of the New Testament can fail to notice the emphasis it lays on the element of power in religion. “ All things are possible to him that believeth.” The promise " ye shall receive power ” was followed by the confident assertion : “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me”. What was the Pente¬ costal gift of the Spirit but a new strength, an energy which, though rightly called Divine, was really inward, an en¬ hancement of power which surmounted obstacles, over¬ came difficulties, and enabled weak men to perform heroic deeds, to achieve the apparently impossible, and to work miracles of faith, of endurance and of missionary activity ? §13- The View that Sin arises in the Unconscious is not Subversive of Ethical Judgement. The discovery, or rather the growing awareness, of ‘ the unconscious ’ is^ having an effect, w7hich must still THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN 245 increase, upon ethical theory and practice. The human being, as a whole, is to be judged, and must judge him¬ self, ethically. But, it may be urged, a great part of that whole is not subject to the conscious action of the will ; therefore ethical judgement seems unfair, if it implies praise or blame, reward or punishment, in so far as it affects that part of the self which is not consciously controlled. Yet it has seemed to some of the greatest minds in the past that the unconscious, even more than the conscious, is the sub¬ ject of ethical judgement. The lie in the soul, the sin against the Holy Ghost — these phrases both express ethical judgements of the unconscious ; and they imply, what as a matter of fact is here affirmed, that the unconscious is to a large extent, and ought to be, under the control of the conscious, that the unconscious should be guided, led, ruled by the conscious, and that the unconscious must be drawn away from base self-gratification and be directed by aid of reason and the higher emotions to nobler pur¬ poses, must, in short, be transformed and sublimated by the conscious, or condemnation necessarily ensues. There is no part of us immune from ethical judgement, because the more obvious and more superficial part of character controls the deeper and more hidden quite as much as it is controlled by it. All through the ages men have recog¬ nised this, in fact if not in theory ; for they have valued most the instinctive virtues and hated most the instinctive vices. Good manners, we say, come from the heart, by which we mean from the unconscious. We trust or dis¬ trust a man most confidently by what we discern of his unconscious ; and our own judgements are most secure when they have something of the unconscious in them. Here a remark may be made about a theory of the unconscious put forward by certain psychologists who differentiate between creative and possessive instincts, asserting that the former have value and are capable of sublimation, but the latter not. Those who adopt this view fail to see that possessive instincts are not really instincts at all, but inhibitions. When I have got, then I would keep : I would put a check on my own positive activities and on those of other people. The real problem 246 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN is not to destroy these negative impulses, but to get behind them to the positive impulses which they impede, and to achieve a society in which the positive impulses will be able to realise themselves. We must think, then, of sin as something inseparably connected writh personality — something which emerges and asserts its character at all stages and levels of human development. It is resistance to the Divine process of mental evolution in man. It is unfaithfulness to the moral ideal — refusal to moralise the animal instincts and to use the energies latent within them for the benefit of others instead of for the gratification of selfish desires. The moral ideal, it will no doubt be said, varies ; different ^ people have different ideas of what is God’s will in regard to the use of those elemental forces inherited by man from the far-off past in the process of self-transformation by Grace. That is quite true, but it only means that there are differences of endowment and of privilege in men ; it does not affect the truth that at every stage of our life we have the responsibility of subordinating the instinctive emotions to moral ends which for us have absolute authority. The law of God is an ideal which defines itself through conscience in a form appropriate to each suc¬ cessive moment of our existence ; and the obligation of it is never less than unconditional. It is not wicked to have passions, but it is wicked not to transform them, and it is as truly sin to neglect to utilise their vast power for the good of others as finally to turn one’s back on Christ and His salvation. § 14- Psychological Definition of Sin, Original and Actual. It follows from the foregoing that ‘ Original Sin \ which has for some years fallen into discredit as a theolo¬ gical doctrine, represents nevertheless, though under a mis¬ leading and erroneous name, a psychological fact. Original Sin may be defined as the universal tendency in man, inherited by him from his animal ancestry , to gratify the natural instincts and passions and to use them for selfish THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SIN 247 ends. This definition goes farther than the unsatisfactory explanation of ‘ Original Sin ’ as being merely something negative, as, for example, the absence of ‘ sanctifying Grace * ; it shows it as a positive flaw or defect which is only seen to be such when our de facto nature is com¬ pared with what it was intended to be. It has become a taint in the race. But whilst in the abstract it may be said to deserve God’s wrrath, as representing the marring of His plan for man’s development, yet in the concrete, as manifested in particular individuals, Original Sin is not ‘ sin ’ at all in the strict sense, but rather the possibility of sin, or a high degree of liability to sin, higher than ought to be. Actual Sin manifests itself as selfishness resulting from over -individualised personality. Personality is not to be regarded as a definite entity. It is, as it were, a stream constantly receiving from other streams and giving to them. The evil in it is disruptive : the good is the uni¬ fying factor. Our present consciousness is an unfinished thing. Our personality is in the making. It is in this direction that our evolution now tends, and the tendency must be helped and not thwarted. The perfect personality, of which Christ is our sole example, is wholly strong because wholly good. By virtue of its perfection it resists the evil flowing from other personalities, but it gives of its strength to them. Our Lord was the type of what we may hope to be when the Christ in us has struggled into existence. Psychology has thus opened up lines along which one may look to see a new view of sin prevail — a view not less serious than that held by theology in the past, but even more serious, because of the issues at stake, without, how¬ ever, involving men in hopelessness or despair. It is to be hoped, too, that this practical view of sin may in due course effect that complete reconciliation between science and religion which has for years been longed and prayed for by all earnest men. ' INDEX Abel, 1 19 Abraham, 54, 73, 119 Adam, 17 ff. Adam story, value of, 223, 223 Alaric, 52 Alcuin, 142 Alexandria, 24, 26, 31 Ambrose, 43, 52, 88 Ampere, 115 Amsterdam, 170 Anselm, 143, 147 ff., 171 Aquinas, 143, 156 ff. Arausio, Council of, 62, 118, 12 1, 128, 132, 134, 142, 143 Aristotle, 156, 159, 161 Arles, 1 16, 1 18 Arminians, 122, 165, 171, 173, 222 Arminius, 170 Athanasius, 31 ff. Augustine, 1 1 ff. Augustinianism, 77 ff. Aurelius, Bishop, 52 Avitus of Vienne, 117 Basil, 35 Baudouin, Professor, 230 Bede, 142, 143 Bellarmine, 163 Bergson, Professor, 218 Bernard, 143 Bethlehem, 56 Beza, 170 Boniface II, 121 Bright, 65, 1 19, 128, 134 Browne, 168 Butler, Bishop, 157, 230 Caelestius, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57. 58, 59, 60, 62 Caesarea, 57 Caesarius, 117, 118, 12 1 249 Calvin, 14, 101, 163 ff., 221 Canterbury, 147 | Carthage, 51, 52, 57, 58 ; Cassian, J., 13, 40, no, hi, 112, 114, 121, 129, 130, 1 3 1, 139 i Celestine, 114 ! Celsus, 28 | Chrysostom, 37, 38, 40, in i Clement of Alexandria, 24, 28, 40 j Coleridge, S. T., 181, 188 ff. ! Constantinople, 31, 60, 117 i Cooper-Marsdin, 13 Cornelius, 12 1 Ctesiphon, 56 Cyprian, 21, 43, 88 Cyril of Jerusalem, 34 Dale, 17, 18 Daniel, Abbot, 129 Demiurge, 23 Diospolis, 57, 58, 68, 74 Donatists, 52 Duns Scotus, 165 Dvde, 194 Eden, Garden of, see Paradise Elizabeth, 75 Enoch, 54 Ephesus, 53, 61, 62 Episcopius, 1 70-1 Erigena, Joh Scotus, 145, 146, 152 Ethiopian Eunuch, 128 Eulogius, 57 Fauriel, 115 Faustus, 1 15, 1 16, 1 17, 121, 132, 138 Felix IV, 1 18 Freud, 232 Gayford, 210 Gelasius, 117 250 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN Genesis (early chapters of), 36, 223 Germanus, 129 Gnostics, 23, 27, 164 Gomar, 170 Gottschalk, 101, 143, 144, 145, 146, 169 Gregory, Pope, 142 Gregory of Nazianzus, 35 Gregory of Nyssa, 35 Guizot, 1 15 Hadfield, Dr., 231, 235, 242 Hamack, 20, 36, 39, 52, 62, 73, 74, 78. 91, 128, 130, 139, 226 Hasse, 149 Hegel, 191, 194 ff. Hilary of Aquitania, 113, 114, 133 Hilary of Poitiers, 43 Hincmar, 144, 145, 146 Hippolytus, 21 Hippo Regius, 51 Honorius, 60 Horace, 233 Infralapsarians, 170 Innocent, 58, 59 Irenaeus, 18, 29, 31 Isaac, 1 19 Jacob, 1 19 James, 54 Jansenists, 160, 221 Jerome, 48, 56, 57 Jerusalem, 34, 57 Jesuits, 173 John, Bishop, 56, 57 Julian of Eclanum, 48, 51, 60, 61, 62, 67, 74, 75, 87 Kant, 70, 1 81 ff. Koch, H., 1 14 Lacey, Canon, 86 Leo I, 125, 142 Lerins, 114, 115, 117, 118 Leyden, 170 Lombard, Peter, 143 Lotze, 67 Lucidus, 1 1 5, 1 16 Luther, 14, 165 ff. Lyons, 19, 117, 144 McDougall, 231 McDowall, S. A., 202, 212 ff. McTaggart, 195, 196, 197 Manichaeans, 61, 68, 87, 92, 103, 137. i74» 198 Mansi, 60 Marius Mercator, 49, 52, 6i, 69 Mason, Dr. A. J., 108 Massilia, 13, 40, no, 133 Matthew, in, 130 Melanchthon, 166 Milevum, 58 Moses, 54, 224 Mozley, 71, 75, 78, 80, 103, 145, 169 Muller, Dr. J., 181, 184 ff. Neander, 25, 115 Neoplatonism, 145, 157 Nestorius, 49 Noah, 54, 1 19, 137 Oman, 183 Orange, see Arausio Orchard, Dr. W. E., 177, 186, 187. 198 Origen, 20, 26, 31. 33, 36, 37, 40 Orosius, 57, 58 Pammachius, 49 Paphnutius, 129 Paradise, 17, 24, 27, 36, 121, 162, 223 Paul, S., 17, 18, 2i, 26, 28, 38, 87, 89. 90. 93. 95. i°3. 104, hi, 1 19. 130, 134, 139, 230 Paul's view of Original Sin, 17, 18, 89,*,224 * Paulinus, 49, 52 Pelagianism, 47 ff. Pelagius, 11 ff. Pfleiderer, 202, 203, 204 Phaedrus, 27 Placaeus, 167 Plato, 27, 28 Prosper of Aquitania, hi, 112, 113, 114, 115, 118, 125, 130, 133 Puflfendorf, 15 Quiercy, 145, 146 Remigius, 144, 146 Remonstrants, the, 171, 172 Rheims, 144 Riez, 115 INDEX 251 Ritschl, 200, 201 Rome, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 58, 59, 60, 114, 115, 117, 118, 121 Rufinus, 49 Semipelagianism, 109 ff. Semipelagians, 13, 28, 38, 39, 109 ff., 142, 144, 165, 221, 222 Serapion, 129 Schelling, 192 ff. Schleiermacher, 198, 199 Scott, Dr. M., 33 Shakespeare, 233 Sixtus III, 1 15 Spinoza, 177, 178, 179 Stoics, 41 Supralapsarians, 170 Tennant, Dr. F. R., 19, 22, 39, 92, 202, 204 fl. Tertullian, 21, 25, 41, 44, 45, 67 Theodore of Mopsuestia, 37, 39, 49 Theodosius, 60 Thessalonica, 61 Thomists, 160 Tillemont, 101, 117 Timasius, 54 Trent, Council of, 161, 162 ff., 221 Tridentine decrees, 162, 164 Urwick, 185, 188 Vincentius, n, 12, 108, 114, 115, 131 Wesley, John, 56 Wesleyans, 222 Wilson, Canon J., 19 1, 205 Zacchaeus, hi, 121, 130 Zacharias, 75 Zosimus, 59, 60 Zwingli, 165 Printed in Great Britain by UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED WOKING AND LONDON ( 0 Date Due