choice, the man goes beyond it, and determines himself in favor of one or the other; and every new act serves to confirm him in the direction taken. The formal power of choice ceases to be simply formal; acquires real force, and so overthrows itself more and more, in proportion to the moral development of the subject. The sinner becomes the slave of evil, the good man a child of God, who in the end is no longer able to choose and do evil, because he cannot have any such will. True freedom, therefore, as recognized in the holy Scriptures, is self-determination to good, and to good only, and so of course becomes identical in the end with moral necessity. Such power of choice as leaves the man just as much inclined to evil as to good, is in itself an imperfection, that shows already a removal from the original goodness of the creature. Man may possess this indeed, in his present state, in things of inferior account; but where precisely it comes to a life question, the radical change is his nature itself, he shows himself bound by reason of sin. His present state is one of slavery; not Hercules at the forks of the road, but Hercules on the highway of evil. Pelagius knows only the two contraries, free choice and constraint; and his freedom of choice is without past or future, externally and internally dependent on nothing, a continual tabula rasa, that may take meaning at its own pleasure every moment, but only to fall back again after each single act to the indeterminate and undeterminable character it had before. Whilst Pelagius thinks to elevate man in this way, he binds him fast in fact to the starting place of his proper life. Nay more, he makes the essence of morality, a good disposition, to be impossible. Virtue and vice, according to his abstract conception of freedom, can consist only in single good or bad actions, that have no inward connection, and affect not the power of choice on which they depend. An atomistic morality, however, is no morality whatever. The other point, namely, the view taken of death, which Pelagius sundered from all connection with sin, shows also the superficial character of his thinking. One that understands not the bitter fountain, cannot make right account of the stream that flows from it. The view leads besides to an unworthy conception of God, since it makes him to be the author directly of death, with its gloomy train of pains and sicknesses and evils of every kind. AUGUSTINE has a much higher conception of Paradise, involving of course the possibility of a far deeper fall. The original state of the human race is viewed as of the same nature with the state of the blessed after judgment; only with this difference, that the first is to be compared to the germ, the second to the full grown fruit. According to Augus 1848.] The original State only relatively perfect. 219 tine, man came absolutely faultless from the hand of his Maker, the true masterpiece of creation. He possessed freedom to good, reason for the knowledge of God, and also God's grace-by which is meant here, not exactly in its proper sense indeed, the divine assistance, without which no creature can continue in good. His relation to God was that of joyful and complete obedience. So also the relation of the body to the soul. There was as yet no lusting of the flesh against the spirit. "Tried and assaulted by no intestine war, Adam enjoyed in that happy place full peace with himself." With this inward state corresponded also the outward. It was not only a spiritual, but also a visible paradise for the senses, without sickness, pain, or want of any sort. Still this state was only relatively perfect; in its kind, namely, as a child may be perfect in the character of a child, but yet is formed to become a man, or as the seed answers fully in itself to its own idea, but must become a tree. Only God is unchangeable and absolute in his being; man is subject to development in time, and by this of course to alteration also and change. The gifts which have been mentioned were bestowed upon him simply as powers, which included in themselves the possibility of a twofold development. Adam might proceed in a straight line, his nature unfolding itself harmoniously in undisturbed union with God, so as to attain gradually to a state of perfection; but it was possible for him also to fall away, and to come thus into a process of a different kind, in which his life should be developed only through the deep contradictions of sin. The mind included in itself the possibility of becoming incapable of error, the will the possibility of becoming incapable of sin, and the body the possibility of becoming incapable of death; and all this must have actually followed, in the case of regular evolution or growth. But this possibility was still only possibility, which for this very reason carried in itself the possibility also of the contrary. Let us observe more closely the possibility of sin. Augustine distinguishes between "posse non peccare" and "non posse peccare." The first is hypothetical freedom from sin, which may however strike over into its opposite, the slavery of sin. This potential freedom belonged to Adam before the fall. The second is the absolute incapability of sin, which pertains to God, the good angels, and the saints made perfect. This, according to Augustine, is the true freedom, the glorious liberty of the children of God. "If the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed." Freedom thus-and this is an essential point of difference between him and Pelagius, containing at the same time a most profound truth-is not a state of indecision between good and evil, but of decision in favor of good, and identical with moral neces sity. It is that state of the will, in which it can no longer do evil, because it will not, the beata necessitas boni, the direct opposite of the state of man before regeneration, or of the slavery of sin.1 Freedom and grace are for Augustine corresponding conceptions. The more grace, the more freedom; and so also the reverse. The will is free in proportion as it is sound; and it is sound, in proportion as it moves in its true life element, in God, and obeys him from its own inmost impulse. Deo servire, vera libertas est. This great word deserves to be well considered by those, who confound the precious name of liberty with its satanic caricature, unbridled licentiousness, and in their blindness call themselves free, while they are the wretched slaves in fact of their own lawless self-will. The case is similar also as regards the impossibility of death, on the part of the body. Augustine distinguished here again between "posse non mori," and "non posse mori." The last, denominated likewise immortalitas major, is the attribute of God, and of the saints after the resurrection, and so of course the negative expression only for eternal life. The first, immortalitas minor, is the capacity of immortality, which however is capable also of being corrupted, and so changed into mortality. This was the state before the fall. Adam had it in his power, by continuing obedient to God, the true centre of his being, to choose the non posse peccare and non posse mori; but he had power also not to will such choice. This power of not willing came not directly from God; for the same fountain cannot send forth at once sweet water and bitter; but it lay involved in the power of willing, as a possibility that should have been negated by the free volition of man. The possibility, however, was not thus neglected, but became actual, and this was the fall, the introduction of evil. We stand here before an abyss, a transcendent fact we may call it, which no thinking can fully fathom. It belongs however to the proper conception of evil, that it is unfathomable, contradiction itself indeed, the very negation of all reason and all sense. 1 Such is a connected representation of the statements of Augustine, Comp. also De Civit. Dei, 1. XIV. 11, where there is no reference to Pelagius: Arbitrium igitur voluntatis tunc est vere liberum, cum vitiis peccatisque non servit. Tale datum est a Deo; quod amissum proprio vitio, nisi a quo dari potuit, reddi non potest. Unde Veritas dicit: Si vos Filius liberavit, tunc vere liberi eritis. Idque ipsum est autem, ac si diceret: Si vos Filius salvos fecerit, tunc vere salvi eritis. Inde quippe liberator, unde salvator. Augustine's doctrine on this most difficult subject is far from being satisfactory at all points and admits of great improvements; but it contains the germs of a reasonable as well as scriptural theory on liberty. The historical character of our Essay, however, forbids us to enter more fully into this question, which we cheerfully leave to more competent hands. 1848.] Pelagius's view of the Apostasy and its Results. 221 in different places, on the subject of the primitive state. It agrees essentially both with the idea of a holy God, who can create only what is good, and with the idea also of man, as a creature, made in the image of God, but capable of change. It must be acknowledged, however, that our excellent church father is often too much inclined to an empirical delineation of the paradisiacal blessedness, which goes beyond the simple statements of the Bible, and fails to make a proper distinction at times between the original state, which we are to think of as the innocence of childhood, and the state of moral maturity or manhood, bringing thus the beginning and the end too near together. Setting aside, however, some rather too brilliant pencil strokes of speculative fancy, the view of Augustine is certainly the only one here that can be regarded as sound and true. For we have in it a real, living beginning, in which the whole present and future is comprehended, the possibility of a perfectly sinless harmonious development, and the possibility at the same time of the fall and redemption, and which is already a prophetic mirror also of the blessedness beyond the grave. Pelagius recognizes no true beginning, and so accordingly also no progress, no fall, no redemption, as will appear from what is to follow. § 2. The Doctrine of the Fall and its Consequences. PELAGIUS admitted indeed that Adam had sinned. It belonged of course to the very nature of free choice, that he might choose evil. But this fall of the first man was, in his view, a single isolated fact, just like the actual sins committed by other men, and in truth a very small offence. Julian compares it to the inconsiderate fault of a child, that allows itself to be blinded by some tempting object of sense, but is sorry afterwards for its disobedience. Hence also it had no further consequences. The power of free choice was not lost by it at all. It might turn again, the next moment, towards good. And just as little did it affect the understanding or the condition of the body. According to this then there is no original sin; but every child is still born into the world in the same state, in which Adam came from the hand of his Maker. Man is born without virtue as also without sin, but with the capacity for both. Only this much Pelagius would 1 Pelagius in August. De Pecc. Orig. 14: Omne bonum ac malum, quo vel laudabiles vel vituperabiles sumus, non nobiscum oritur, sed agitur a nobis; capaces enim utriusque rei, non pleni, nascimur, et ut sine virtute, ita et sine vitio procreamur; atque ante actionem propriae voluntatis, id solum in homine est, quod Deus condidit. allow, that Adam, by transgressing the divine command, had set a bad example, which exerts a more or less pernicious influence upon his posterity. Celestius says, sin is not born with man, it is not a product of nature, but of the will. The question he holds to be, whether sin is a matter of necessity or of free will. In the first case, it would not be sin; in the second it may be avoided, since the will is simply liberum arbitrium, the power of choice. With the denial of original sin, is rejected also of course the idea of imputed guilt. Such imputation of a foreign sin appeared besides to Pelagius, irreconcilable also with the justice of God. On the nature of sin, Pelagius expresses himself no further than this, that he places it in the influence exerted upon the will by the senses. He has no conception properly of sinfulness, but only of single sins. Here again, we have the same superficial, atomistic style of thinking, as before. In the first place Pelagius has no idea whatever of a general human life, an organism. Adam is for him an individual simply, like other men, and nothing more. His fall accordingly was that of an individual only, not that of the human race, as comprehended at the time in his person. Men are connected with one another only in an outward way, independent of one another, a mere living sand-heap. What is done by one therefore has no necessary influence upon another, every one commences the history of the human race as it were again from the start. This is perfectly atomistic, and utterly overthrows the idea of all history, and of everything like progressive development. Those passages of Paul in which he contrasts Adam and Christ as the two great representatives and progenitors of the human race, have for Pelagius no meaning. Where however no first Adam is admitted in the sense of Paul, as the bearer of the whole human race in its natural constitution, and so of course no original sin and imputed guilt, there also no second Adam can find room, no Redeemer of the human race, no imputation of the merit and righteousness of Christ. Pelagius has no power to conceive of the general as united with the individual and single. Christ also, then, for the system to be consistent, must have been a mere individual, whose life, death and resurrection, have no universal significance, reach not into the depths of the organic general life, but possess at best the force on 1 Symbol. Fragm. 1: In remissionem autem peccatorum baptizandos infantes non idcirco diximus, ut peccatum ex traduce, (that is, peccatum naturale,) firmare videamur, quod longe a catholico sensu alienum est. Quia peccatum non cum homine nascitur, quod postmodum exercetur ab homine; quia non naturae delictum, sed voluntatis esse, demonstratur. |