B . Man after the Fall.
(De statu peccati.)
In recent times, according to the Gnostic ophites1558) ("Brothers of the Serpent"), sin has been understood as an exaltation of the human race. This is exactly the conception of sin by which the devil seduced the first men to sin, Gen. 3:5: "You will by no means die of death, but ... be like God." Schiller sees in the fall of man "the happiest and greatest event in the history of man"1559) Hegel has expressed himself to this effect: "The state of innocence, this paradisiacal state, is the animal one. Paradise is a park where only animals and not men can stay. … The fall of man is therefore the eternal myth, by which he becomes man." 1560) Even in our own country there is no lack of similar conceptions of the Fall and sin. Strong1561) provides ample quotations for this from the writings of Emerson, Hawthorne, Schurman, etc. From the humanistic and pantheistic point of view, sin is conceived as the necessary passage point or background for virtue. Sin, even as expressed in Thomas Paine, belongs, taken as a whole, to the perfection of the world.1562) This results, as Strong notes, in this overall view: "The Fall was a fall up and not down." This, as has already been reminded, is precisely the Satanic representation of sin, Gen. 3:5.
1558) on the Ophites RE. 2 V, 240 ff.
1559) In Nitzsch-Stephan, p. 322 f., from Schiller's "Etwas über die erste Menschengesellschaft, Übergang des Menschen zur Freiheit und Humanität". Secular Edition of the Works, Cotta, 13, 26 f.
1560) In Luthardt, comp. 10, p. 165, from Hegel's "Philosophy of History," p. 233. Nitzsch-Stephan, p. 322: "Hegel sees in sin the necessary point of passage through which the finite spirit rises from the bondage of nature to freedom."
1561) Augustus H. Strong, Systematic Theology, p. 563 ff.
1562) op. cit., p. 564: "His [Emerson's] view of Jesus is found in his Essays, 2, 263: 'Jesus would. absorb the race; but Tom Paine, or the coarsest blasphemer, helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power.'" "In his Divinity School Address he [Emerson] banished the person of Jesus from genuine religion. He thought 'one could not be a man if he must subordinate his nature to Christ's nature.'" p. 565: "Hawthorne hints, though rather hesitatingly, that without sin the higher humanity of man could not be taken up at all, and that sin may be essential to the first conscious awakening of moral freedom and the possibility of progress."
631 ><w:t xml:space="preserve">The doctrines of man. [English ed. 527-528]
According to the Scriptures, sin is not exaltation and happiness, but the deepest degradation and the only misfortune of men, because other evils are merely consequences of sin. And with this the human experience is true. All humanistic-pantheistic talk of sin as the necessary point of passage for "moral freedom" and for the development of "true humanity" fails because of the fact of human conscience. The human conscience has rightly been called the insurmountable enemy of pantheism and every other form of atheism. Man does not succeed in understanding sin as a necessary point of passage for "true humanity" or as "progress" and "the happiest event in human history. Man has a bad conscience before God because of his sin, and he feels just as "happy" because of his sin as Adam and Eve did when they hid under the trees in the garden before the face of God the Lord after the Fall, Gen. 3:8. But for us men, there is an extremely great and happy "event in human history" after the Fall through the grace of God. This is the incarnation of the Son of God. The purpose of this is, after all, to richly restore to us men, through his — the Son of God's — vicarious satisfaction, what we lost through the devil's deceit in the case of our first parents. To the personal appropriation of the divine restitution belongs, however, that we do not let the devil deceive us again about the fall of man and sin, but that we let the Word of God open our eyes rightly. Therefore, in a presentation of the Christian doctrines also the locus de peccato belongs. This doctrine can still be treated favorably, even in the face of modern opposition, in the three sections, a. de peccato in genere, b. de peccato originali, c. de peccatis actualibus.