Section 62-169e

§79. Divine attributes that refer to consciousness of sin, even if this is done only with respect to redemption’s being conditioned by sin, can be set forth only inasmuch as God is, at the same time, considered² to be the originator of sin.³

1.⁴ First, we can take it to be established that we can attain notions regarding divine attributes in no way other than in our combining the contents of our self-consciousness with the concept of absolute divine causality, corresponding as it does with our feeling of absolute dependence.⁵ We can then anticipate that something is given to every Christian in one’s Christian self-consciousness, namely, the overcoming of sin by redemption and in such a form that it refers back to divine causality. Yet, divine attributes that would herewith be thought to be active would, nevertheless, be active in the process of redemption first of all, and they would be related to sin only by means of redemption.⁶

Now, if there were to be divine activities related to sin other than those that overcome sin, then sin would somehow have to persist⁷ by divine causality, and this divine causality would have to be defined, in particular, in relation to sin’s persistent presence. This is the case, for already above,8 discussion has shown that in general even sin viewed as deed is, at the same time, subsumed under divine cooperation, this besides its being established that in every instance sin is grounded in the interconnected process of nature—a phrase that is taken in a sense of including what is historical within it as well.⁹ However, this phrase points us only to the creating and preserving omnipotence of God. Now, suppose that a special divine activity were to be posited here, this because and inasmuch as sin persists. If we do this, then we should not forget that in using this detached reflection on consciousness of sin we also find ourselves in a state of abstraction. Hence, we should also not forget that we would not act correctly in seeking divine activities even in relation to sin, taken in and of itself. Instead, it must be possible to demonstrate somehow that sin in its relation to redemption persists by virtue of special divine activities—if this section is to have any content at all.¹⁰ In addition, it must indeed be possible to do this in view of our having explained regarding divine causality that every hard and fast difference in it between carrying out and permitting, as well as between creating and preserving is inadmissible.¹¹

1. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note here provides an outline for §§79–82: “Introduction: §79. [Divine attributes of this sort are] possible only if God is the originator in the same manner [as with all else in the world]. §80. However, [God is the originator] of sin and grace in different ways. §81. Relationship to ecclesial, negative propositions. §82. [Here the same things bear currency] for evil as for sin” (Thönes, 1873).

2. Ed. note: For Schleiermacher, the verb betrachten (“consider”) used here bears other important connotations, namely, to observe and devoutly to contemplate or reflect.

3. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note: “Condition under which divine attributes are possible. Relationship to the task of Part One” (Thönes, 1873).

4. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note: “The task is not directed, as it were, to a concept of sin that is of a strictly material nature, for this approach would yield no connection with redemption whatsoever” (Thönes, 1873).

5. Ed. note: See §§50–51.

6. Ed. note: See esp. §§32–35 and 38–39.

7. Ed. note: In this context, bestehen and Bestehen are translated “persist” and “persistent presence.” In German, both words connote an existence that is continual, that exists or subsists as an ongoing process. The current question then is How is the ultimate cause of sin to be attributed to God, as both its author or originator (Urheber) and as the agent of its overcoming (Aufgehobenenwerden)?

8. See §48.

9. Ed. note: This passage, in which the word (Wort) is itself used in an active sense (as, for example, in a more Hebraic sense, as in God’s active word creating and preserving the world), offers unusually clear, direct warrant for translating the word Naturzusammen-hang more generally as “the interconnected process of nature.”

10. Ed. note: In case the point made here be lost, the qualification “if … at all” (wenn … anders) has to indicate an only apparent difference between the attributes “presupposed” in the construction of Part One and attributes included in the exposition of grace and sin in accordance with “the redemption accomplished” in Jesus of Nazareth (§11). Any “detachment” from God’s gracious activity in Christ, thus of sin in relation to redemption, would be an inadmissible “abstraction.” The full and proper description of sin must therefore be placed only in Part Two, including, of course, God’s attributes in relation to sin.

11. Ed. note: See §81.4. The treatments of divine attributes in Part One do not admit any splits in God’s nature or regarding what God wills and does, thus effects, or carries out, and permits. Regarding the distinction without any real difference (Unterschied) between creation and preservation, see esp. §§36 and 49.P.S., also §§39.2 and 41.2.

12. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note here announces how this subsection will carry over into the remaining discussion of attributes in propositions to follow: “Relationship to the task of the second aspect [of this proposition].” That is, the two attributes to be considered here are those interwoven aspects which, first, relate to sin in our consciousness of grace and, second, take God to be the originator of sin—namely, justice and holiness, respectively. These two attributes, in turn, he relates to the set previously advanced in Part One. The second task is framed as answering a given question. Cf. §56n22.

13. Ed. note: See §54.1.

§80. Inasmuch as sin and grace are in contrast to each other in our self-consciousness, God cannot be thought to be the originator of sin and the originator of grace in the same way. Yet, inasmuch as we never possess a consciousness of grace without a consciousness of sin, we must also assert that for us sin’s being with and alongside grace is ordained by God.¹

2. Yet, all things considered, the second half of our proposition too is neither more nor less true than the first half is. That is to say, when we are conscious of being determined by this divine force,5 a force communicated to us by means of our God-consciousness, we are always conscious of this only in company with an incapacity of our own, albeit one that ever turns out to be codetermining. In consequence, that divine force does indeed overcome the accompanying resistance, but some residual of that resistance also continually remains. Accordingly, we can only conceive the divine will communicating that divine force to us in such a way that therein, at the same time, sin’s existence is coposited as disappearing alongside grace.⁶ This would be the case, for if the divine will were to be directed wholly against sin, without contents of such a kind being attached to its activity, then sin would also have to disappear entirely, indeed instantly.

This second aspect of our proposition, however, rests wholly on the presupposition that everywhere human wickedness is attached only to what is good and sin is attached only to grace. If it were possible to direct our discourse to a sin that has no interconnection with redemption, it would not be possible to assume a divine activity directed toward the persistence of such a sin. In contrast, if it is correct to claim that the state called hardness of heart is, in the strict sense, no human state at all,⁷ then a sin of this sort does not exist at all within the narrower domain of Christianity, a domain in which everyone is already received into some communion with the process of redemption. Nor, however, would it any more likely exist outside this domain, for there even the weakest and most defiled God-consciousness always, nonetheless, belongs to some collective life in which, at the same time, a better life exists, one proclaimed by use of doctrine and law. Moreover, even though every such collective life is itself incomplete and sinful, it is, nevertheless, in some internal connection with the redemptive process through presentiment and longing. Least of all, however, would it be possible to think, given God’s productive process in arrangement of the world,8 that sin could be posited without redemption. It would be most unlikely to think this, since in the divine will directed to the very existence of the whole human race, both sin and redemption are ordained in relation to each other.⁹ That is to say, it in no way follows from the assertion that the appearance of sin would have preceded redemption’s entering the scene that sin was ordained and willed for its own sake alone. Rather, to say precisely that the Redeemer appeared when the fullness of time had come¹⁰ already makes it clear that, from the very beginning on, everything¹¹ would have been related to his eventual appearance. One could then still add to this assertion the claims that sin which endures outside any direct interconnectedness with redemption would not cease to generate more sin¹² and that frequently only when a certain measure of sin has been reached does the efficaciousness of redemption enter in. In that case, one could bear no hesitation from saying that God is also the originator of sin, albeit only in relation to redemption.

1. Ed. note: In short form, Schleiermacher’s marginal note provides this heading: “In Christian self-consciousness each of the two accompanies the other in a different way” (Thönes, 1873).

2. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s next marginal note describes §80.1 as follows: “Justification of the first aspect [of the proposition].” In turn, that at §80.2 reads: “Justification of the second aspect” (Thönes, 1873).

3. Mitteilung. Ed. note: This term and the corresponding verb are used consistently by Schleiermacher to designate the mechanism for how Christ’s own God-consciousness appears and is shared with others.

4. Ed. note: In §§121–25 “the common feeling” (Gemeingefühl) of the church accompanies its “common spirit” (Gemeingeist). Both are identified with the activity of Holy Spirit. (See both terms in §§118.1 and 145.1; cf. 120.P.S.–124.3 on the Holy Spirit.) In his version of the doctrine, Schleiermacher simply identifies the divine Spirit working in and through the Christian community of faith as Holy Spirit but not as strictly identified with everything that goes on in what he calls “the visible church” or by certain authorities in the church. Instead, he considers what is “invisible,” not immediately, empirically observable in itself, to be at the core of Christian community. Moreover, he circumscribes the area of activity of Spirit as that in which God’s Spirit in Christ continues its corresponding activities within Christianity, not simply within one individual entity alone. In the church, grace comes to be activity within a collectivity, just as in the human species sin is especially to be viewed as a collective phenomenon, not only an individual one. This view infuses the whole of Part Two, already anticipated in the Introduction by general concepts borrowed from a more general concept of “church,” applied in a distinctively defining way to the Christian church (§§2–6). The Conclusion (§§170–72) then deals with this doctrine in relation to the overall “economic” activity of God among human beings but focused especially on the activity of redemption.

5. Kraft. Ed. note: Given the way this force is communicated, it is presumably a force of grace.

6. (1) Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), Loci praecipui theologica (1543–1559): “Concerning reborn adults, I reply that all must agree that sins still remain in them. See 1 John 1:8: ‘If we say that we do not have sin, we deceive ourselves and there is no truth in us.’” (2) Anglican Articles of Religion (1562) 15: “That all we the rest, although baptized and born again in Christ, yet offend in many things.” Ed. note: (1) ET Kienzles/Tice; Latin: CR 21:677. See §32n16. (2) In Anglican Articles, the quoted passage is from the 1562 Latin edition. ET Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 496. See §37n5; Latin: cf. Niemeyer (1840), 604.

7. Cf. §74.3.

8. Ed. note: Here Schäfer (2003) chooses not hervorbringenden (“productive,” meaning even procreative) from the original publication but hervortretenden (standout process of, or process coming to the fore in) from Schleiermacher’s uncorrected draft. It would seem to make less sense, however, to emphasize the obvious prominence of God’s order where the discourse is about redemption and improvement.

9. Ed. note: Here it would be appropriate to consult §§117–20, on the one eternal divine decree, a particularly Reformed contribution to doctrine stemming from the Reformation that Schleiermacher brings to the table. This decree, he avers, must hold true for the triune God in all aspects of God’s activity in creation and redemption, including God’s present spiritual activity toward and within Christian communities of faith. Thus, for him, nothing that God arranges in the world lacks purview or activity from God, even sin.

10. Gal. 4:4. Ed. note: See note under §13.1.

11. Ed. note: Since Schleiermacher is here speaking of certain major features of human life, sin and redemption, presumably by “everything” he means all that pertains to those two major features.

12. Cf. §71.

13. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note has this heading for the third section: “Difficulty in combining [the two halves, or aspects, of this proposition]” (Thönes, 1873).

14. Ed. note: In his Christian ethics (Christliche Sittenlehre), Schleiermacher’s conception, in language used especially in the 1822/23 lectures on the subject, includes broadening action, addressed in seeing one of three main categories of Christian action as participation in God’s mission to the entire world inhabited by human beings (missio Dei … οἰκουμένη, in traditional terms). The other two aspects of a Christian life are (1) presentational action (later called efficacious action), which includes proclaiming and sharing of faith, and (2) purifying action (variously referred to as critical, corrective, restorative, and reforming action), naturally leading to (3) broadening action. The three aspects are closely intertwined in his presentation of them. Thus, this passage is one of many occasions spread throughout his presentation of faith-doctrine (Glaubenslehre) when terminology (here “broadened consciousness”) itself closely links meaning shared between the two works. See James Brandt’s selection from 1822/23 (2011).

15. Ed. note: In Schleiermacher’s marginal note the heading he offers is this: “Protection against one-sided procedure” (Thönes, 1873).

16. Ed. note: These are two of four “natural heresies” (natürlichen Ketzereien) defined in §22. Typically, as in the present discussion, Schleiermacher also refers to them as “deviations” (Abweichungen). In Brief Outline §58 he characterizes heresies as “extraneous elements” with respect to “the distinctive nature of Christianity” expressed in doctrine, whereas in polity such elements are called “schism.” The two sets do not always go together, he finds. He also places them among “diseased conditions,” all of which require experienced, caring, and careful, critical attention in theology. This task belongs to the part of “philosophical theology” called “polemics” (always inner-, not outer-directed), as is the other part, called “apologetics,” which explains general features of Christianity to insiders. Cf. also §§59–62. In §62 selection of the term “deviation,” instead of presupposing that doctrines called heresy are entirely wrong in every aspect, is explained, in part, by his counsel to pay close attention “(a) to false tolerance of diseased elements, on the one hand, and (b) on the other hand, to the responsibility to maintain reasonable freedom for what stands to produce fresh differentiations within the whole” (§58). Accordingly, in BO §§203–10 he specifies “procedures” necessary for assuring authentic developments in doctrine—all followed with meticulous care in Christian Faith. These procedures hold fast to what is “generally acknowledged” to be orthodox, with natural inferences that follow from it. There he also offers the rule that “every element construed in the inclination to keep the conception of doctrine mobile and to make room for still other modes of apprehension,” which he terms “heterodox.” The positions considered in the doctrine of sin illustrate both inclinations and are considered with a precision of argument that might otherwise seem superfluous. It is also clear that, for him, the terms “heterodox” and “heretical” are never to be conflated.

17. Ed. note: Having chosen not to take much notice of a devil in §§44–45, the contrasted domain here could be that either of human free will or of the devil’s will. Cf. also §§72.3, 81.1, and 167.2.

§81. Wherever ecclesial doctrine seeks to smooth over this contradiction by proposing that God is not the originator of sin but that sin is grounded in human freedom, then that statement, nevertheless, needs to be supplemented by this one: God has ordained that dominion by the Spirit that has not yet come to pass in any given instance becomes sin for us.¹

(2) Solid Declaration (1577) I: “God is not a creator or author of sin.”³

(3) Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), Loci praecipui theologici (1544–1545), in the section on “The Causes of Sin … ”: “Therefore, God is not the cause of sin, nor is sin a thing established or ordained by God.”—“Sin sprang from the will of the devil and of man, and was not made by God’s will.⁴

(4) Second Helvetic Confession (1566) VIII: “We also know that what things are not evil with respect to the providence, will, and power of God but in respect of Satan and our evil opposing the will of God.”⁵

(5) Hungarian Confession (Confessio Czengerina, 1562), §51 (On the Cause of Sin): “Just as in an opposite manner it is impossible for things fighting among themselves … to be the efficient and formal cause of darkness of sin, … but Satan and human beings are the cause of all these. Whatsoever God forbids and on account of which he condemns he cannot make from himself and through himself.”⁶

1.⁷ That people have used the expressions “creator” and “created” as referring to what sin is and has done has become possible only through scholastic misuse of abstract words. This misuse took an odd turn in the fight over original sin as to whether such sin is a substance or an accident. In and of itself, however, it is totally inadmissible to take that turn, since sin is not a self-contained mode of existence nor does sin form a self-contained process. Furthermore, just as little—least of all inasmuch as some people do distinguish between “creation” and “preservation”—can one use those expressions for sinful nature. This is so, because even in sinning nature, sin does not form any beginning but first enters in during life’s course.

The first thought is this: In God, thinking and producing are one and the same,8 but sin cannot be a divine thought or aim.⁹ Thus, one could conclude that there can also be no productive will of God in relation to sin and to sinning nature. Yet, one could say the same thing of anything that has a finite nature, for sinning nature is a blending with regard to the being and not-being of God-consciousness, but every instance of finite nature is likewise a blending of being and not-being, and, one could assert, not-being likewise cannot be a divine aim in any case whatsoever. In contrast, in relation to each case of finite nature a productive divine will does indeed exist, yet it is not a will in and of itself but exists as divine will producing the collectivity of finite God-consciousness, which indeed includes redemption in itself as well. Accordingly, the initial, denying part of the ecclesial proposal requires a limiting adjustment above all—namely, in that its denial is not to be understood in such a way that sin must then be referred back to some other productive will that would actually be productive in the same sense in which God is simply originator everywhere. That is, in this general sense, God is originator by means of a timeless, eternal causality. This limitation is to be made, for otherwise the same causality would have to be the case for every single differentiated being, consequently for the collective whole of them ultimately. As a result, the only choice remaining open would be one between, first, a demiurge, viewed as a creator of the world distinct from God, one which would also have created precisely a sinning nature, as such, or, second, an evil primary being¹⁰ opposed to God, one in which a timeless causality of sin would also reside and which would, nevertheless, also have to have been the creator of finite being and indeed not only partially—as some have made a fable of the matter—but wholly so.¹¹ Thus, the only thing remaining regarding this first part is either to decide that no eternal cause is to be posited for sin at all or to decide that this cause must, for all that, be found in God.

A transition from the first main thought of our proposition to the other is still made available when one traces the collective sinful state 12 back to a situation in which what God-consciousness had originally been imparted¹³ to human nature by God would have been lost. That is to say, otherwise, to be sure, just as there could then also be no temporal being whatsoever, the cessation of something would be grounded in that same divine will wherein its beginning had also been grounded. However, it would seem that the situation must be different with regard to God-consciousness, the cessation of which, when God-consciousness is viewed as God’s being within human beings, could not be grounded in divine causality. This could make sense, to be sure, if sin were a total cessation of God-consciousness and sinning nature were comprised entirely of sin. In sinning nature, however, evil exists only connected to what is good, and no instant can be completely filled with sin. This is the case, because precisely sin itself presupposes God-consciousness, with the result that this nature always holds communication of God’s being-present, even if in the most limited way possible. Consequently, even in this relation, a shrinking of God-consciousness can also be grounded in that same divine will, just as communication of God’s being-present is.

The second thought from which our discussion began is this: God cannot possibly effect, thus also cannot be the originator of, what God forbids. Now, it must indeed be granted that the will of God that commands other beings, though we call it God’s will, is not identical with the producing will of God.¹⁴ This is so, for God’s command is not shown to be, at the same time, a will effecting what is acceptable to God in all cases that belong under the category of God’s command. Rather, Scripture even offers an expression 15 to the effect that what is acceptable to God does not exist by virtue of the commanding will of God. Moreover, we are all clearly conscious of the difference between God’s commanding will alone being given to us and God’s productive will being added to it afterward.¹⁶ Just as clearly, we are also conscious that the difference between God’s commanding will and God’s will to produce what is commanded is entirely other than the difference—taken only as an example—given in the creation narrative, which itself differentiates between a declaration announcing the decision to create and the will to bring the decision to create toward its completion. In this story the commanding divine will, however, would also not have been an effecting will at that point, because sin would have been committed only inasmuch as a commanding divine will was actually present, with which such an expression of human life would then have been in conflict.¹⁷ This would have been the case, for if sin were committed with an intention of bringing divine will to completion, then also not the action itself but only this false intention would have been sin, and only inasmuch as the supposed sin would have arisen in a struggle against a commanding will of God. Moreover, the same situation would also be the case if something sinful had occurred by way of just overlooking something. As a result, all sin occurring between the boundaries of innocence and hardness of heart¹⁸ would have presupposed consciousness of a commanding will of God.

2.²² Now, as concerns the second, affirming aspect of the ecclesial proposal, certainly this statement is completely correct. However, it cannot be adapted to overcome the limitations of the first aspect, limitations that we would have to lay claim to on behalf of our religious self-consciousness. Rather, in consequence of those limitations, we will be able to conceive the juxtaposition of both aspects only in such a way that insofar as there would be no divine causality for sin, sin would also not be grounded in human freedom either. This recognition alone also agrees with the contrast that was set forth by us between divine eternal causality and finite, temporal causality.²³ Yet, along with sin’s being grounded in our freedom, there is a further rooting of sin in divine causality, nonetheless. This other rooting of sin in divine causality could persist all the more as, in relation to the feeling of absolute dependence, we recognize no difference in that feeling between the greater or lesser liveliness of temporal causality.²⁴ At this point, only temporal cause is specified. Thus, to be prefaced above all else in this regard is an understanding that consciousness of sin may not be considered to be only a sheer illusion, as it were, inasmuch as no divine causality could be assumed to exist for for consciousness of sin. For this reason, sin would be referred to that supreme degree of inner liveliness which constitutes what is distinctive in our nature. Thus, what is asserted by this understanding is as follows: In between the state of the Redeemer, in whom no interruption in the dominion of God-consciousness could emerge based on his supreme spiritual liveliness, and those states of human derangement in which spiritual functions are placed under the exponential sway of disease,25 the result would be a deficiency in freedom. Thereby the attribution of supreme spiritual liveliness would cease. Moreover, sin would also be posited both throughout and alongside free development of one’s self. Thus, if this entire shape of human existence²⁶—that is, the natural human being—persists in consequence of the divine arrangement of things, then sin is also coposited, having proceeded from the experience of human freedom within this divine arrangement.

What is next expressed by our proposition, also regarding the domain of finite causality, is that in a sinful state we can in no way be truly viewed as simply passive and determined from some other quarter.²⁷ This is the case, for by “freedom of the will” we express a denial of all external coercion and the very nature of conscious life—that is, that no influence from outside determines our collective condition in such a way that even reactiveness would already be codetermined and present but that every stirring that we have would contain its own determinacy at its onset, issuing as it does from the innermost center of life. At that point, reactiveness too proceeds from that innermost determinacy. Thus, sin, viewed as proceeding from this center, is the sinner’s own deed every single time and not another’s deed.28 Likewise, the following notion is also denied by the expression “freedom of the will”: that, as it were, any given individual is already determined in all cases by the common nature of human beings. Instead, in reality everything held in common is, first, something that has come to be, and by this same expression every individual is deemed to be an originally distinctive being, different from all other individuals. As a result, no one can cast blame for sin from oneself onto this common nature. Rather, particular sinful self-determinations are each one’s own deed. This is the case both since these self-determinations proceed from one’s susceptibility to sin—which is also constitutive of the formula²⁹ for the distinctiveness of one’s will—as well as inasmuch as one’s sinful state comes to be increasingly consolidated by these self-determining factors. However, the possibility of a relation of sin to divine causality is abrogated by none of these determinative factors.

Besides these considerations, however, the proposition ought also to be understood only in such a way that it coheres with the statement that sin is a state of servitude.³⁰ Now, suppose that cessation of this servitude takes place when the efficaciousness of redemption enters in. This efficaciousness is not, however, to be thought of without divine causality, but is to be thought of in such a way that servitude is only gradually set aside by the efficaciousness of redemption, which is thus limited by it as servitude is continuing. Then, in turn, there must accordingly be a consideration left over to the effect that well-founded sin, attached to³¹ a freedom that is burdened with powerlessness, would, even as such, be ordained by God, unless the claim is to be taken absolutely that divine efficaciousness could be limited by something that is not dependent on divine causality.

3.32 Now, suppose that an ecclesial proposal, viewed as a correct expression of our self-consciousness, were not to exclude the possibility that in some sense or other God could be the originator of sin. However, suppose too that we are drawn to both sides of that issue by interests contrary to each other. Then, in order to solve the contradiction, the only thing that remains to do, in order to keep divine omnipotence unconfined and uncurtailed, is to claim the following. We must claim, first, that inasmuch as sin cannot be grounded in divine causality, to that degree it also does not exist for God; second, that, in contrast, inasmuch as consciousness of sin belongs to the truth of our existence³³ and sin is thus real, sin is also ordained by God, itself being viewed as that which makes redemption necessary. It will be all the more possible to eliminate all related difficulties completely, the more the following conditions are met. This can more nearly happen, first, the more exactly the two sides permit of being combined in the very subject itself, precisely as within ourselves the various features present in our Christian self-consciousness are one. The second condition is that in our reflection we more definitely distinguish the two sides from each other in such a way that each no longer seems to require the converse of the other position. The more these conditions are met, the more the result will be neither to ascribe to sin being independent of and opposed to God, a Manichean approach, nor gradually to attenuate and resolve the opposition between sin and grace, a Pelagian approach.

Now, the last part of our ecclesial proposal affirms the reality of sin as our deed, whereas the first part affirms that sin is not wrought by God.³⁴ Suppose that we then compare this proposal and the task still set before us with the cited passages from confessional documents. Then, in some of these documents sin’s being temporally grounded in human freedom stands out, but there is no word of an eternal divine causality also belonging to it. In others among these documents what stands out is that sin cannot be grounded in the divine will, but they do not say that insofar as God’s will for it is lacking, sin also would not exist for God.

Now, the more these two one-sided positions are cultivated, the more difficulties accumulate. Moreover, either people would have to resort to crafty differentiations in which our immediate religious self-consciousness does not recognize itself and that can just as little be combined to form vital perceptions 35; or, they would have to renounce that deeper inquiry, without which presentations of faith-doctrine would be hampered in their explication.³⁶ Suppose, for this reason, that we should want to remove the one-sidedness³⁷ examined here by combining the two viewpoints. If so, proceeding from one of the two sides, we might ask this question first: What, then, is it in sin for which, inasmuch as it is grounded in human freedom, we can also anticipate an eternal divine causality?

Now, in every self-contained sinful element there is, on the one hand, an expression of a natural sensory drive, whereby eternal divine causality is thus in place, itself viewed as cooperative. On the other hand, God-consciousness is in place that is viewed as relatable to that sensory drive, for otherwise there would be no talk of sin at all. This God-consciousness refers back to divine causality in God’s original revelation. Yet, just as those two features together do not yet constitute sin, so too this divine causality is not directed to sin either. Further, inasmuch as sin would have persisted in some lack of capacity in God-consciousness, it would also be only a negative factor, and such could not be a divine thought and also not a divine productive activity.³⁸ However, such a sheer negation of force would also not be sin, just as then our consciousness would never be content if sin were declared to be a sheer lack of some capacity.39 For us, however, that lack comes to be sin only by a certain process. In that process, a God-consciousness that is relatively lacking in power over against sensory-driven impetus, is viewed as containing some consciousness of the divine will but denies that this state of a lack in God-consciousness is itself God’s will. Whether this consciousness of God’s will happens at the same time or afterward does not matter in this case, for without such a denial, which lies precisely in recognition of a commanding or forbidding divine will, there is no sin. Accordingly, we will be able to say this:⁴⁰ Inasmuch as recognition of the commanding divine will is wrought in us by God, it is also wrought by God in that the nonefficacious result of God-consciousness will have come to be sin. Furthermore, this result is indeed wrought in relation to redemption.⁴¹ This is the case, for consciousness of a still meager force of God-consciousness would be consciousness of a state that has to be surpassed, but consciousness of a state that includes some resistance against the divine will is consciousness of a state that has to be abolished.

Suppose that we now take the other standpoint into account and ask:⁴² What sort of view could it be that would hold sin not to have been grounded by God and yet permits of being combined with the claim that sin would be our own deed? Suppose in this account that sin were not referred back to divine causality, because sin is a denial of God’s will. Then, sin would have this characteristic in common with all finite being, in accordance with an aforementioned claim, and thus sin could nonetheless be our own deed, just as finite being is the embodiment of our overall experience. However, sin would, nevertheless, also be wrought by God, in an eternal manner, in and with the collective development of God-consciousness wrought by God. Yet, suppose that no divine causality⁴³ could be assigned to sin, because sin would directly correspond to no commanding will of God. Then, sin would, nevertheless, certainly have something in common with all that is good, namely, being wrought by God. Sin would indeed still exist with respect to what is good, just as sin, in turn, would even in this way exist with respect to what is good and hence still itself be our own deed, albeit something distinctly different from a connection with the process of redemption.44 Only when sin would be an absolute resistance against the commanding will of God, with the result that it would entirely cancel out that will within us, could a productive will of God in relation to sin not be conceivable at all. However, this is also not the situation of sin, because this would be a state of an absolute hardness of heart, which we have already excluded from the human domain. Accordingly, the supplementary statement in our proposition seems to be completely justified. This is so, in that it is precisely the commanding will of God appearing within us by which any lack of power in our God-consciousness comes to be sin for us. Thus, although reference to a divine causality belonging to any particular sinful action cannot be made by the commanding will of God, sin is ordained by God, nevertheless. This is so, because otherwise even redemption could not be ordained by God. Thus, sin, viewed in and of itself, also could not be ordained by God. Instead, only sin viewed in its relation to redemption can be ordained by God.

4.⁴⁵ It is not to be denied, however, that our proposition does not obviate the difficulties that arise if sin should be thought to have emerged from a sinless state marked by morally perfect activity. That is to say, given this presupposition it would be necessary either to appeal to a withdrawal of God’s hand—a special, divine activity actually producing sin—or to present sin as a revolt arising out of such a sinless state, and directed to a complete suspension of God’s commanding will, which would be still less explicable than a revolt would be otherwise. Therefore, based on this presupposition, people would ordinarily rest satisfied with the additional makeshift explanation that because God would not have been the originator of sin, and sin nevertheless exists, sin exists by God’s permission. Yet, the term permission is borrowed from human government and the circumstances that adhere thereto; thus it has its proper location only in a domain wherein causality is divided. In contrast, eternal divine causality is not at all like this, and all that is temporal causality must relate to eternal causality in a uniform fashion. Still more perplexing 46 than assuming sheer permission of sin by God is the claim that, instead, God would surely have ordained sin but only as an indispensable means to other important ends.⁴⁷ On this view, God would have done this in that God would have made evil arising from sin a source of overweening advantages but, through Christ, God would have wholly eradicated the damage done by sin itself.⁴⁸ This claim is even more perplexing quite apart from the fact that the contrast between end and means cannot be present for an absolute, all-producing will.⁴⁹ The claim also does not make it any easier to imagine a more misguided presentation of Christianity than the claim that Christ would have come into the world simply in order to fix the damage that had emerged from sin, in that God could not ever do away with sin itself simply out of regard for all sorts of advantages that would accrue to it.

1. Ed. note: Here Schleiermacher’s marginal note supplements the text as follows: “God is not author [Autor] [of sin], inasmuch as sin is grounded in freedom. That is, by virtue of the divine order [of the world], we posit as a positive resistance that which we could have posited only as an incapacity. This incapacity is grounded in our freedom, inasmuch as our freedom is grounded in God.

“Inherent in the ‘us’ is the recognition that, for God, sin does not exist except in the way in which this ‘us’ also applies to all human beings beyond-each-other and beside-eachother. The first assertion abrogates what is moral [das Sittliche] just as little as the second assertion abrogates what is natural [das Natürliche]” (Thönes, 1873).

2. Ed. note: ET Book of Concord (2000), 53; Latin and German: Bek. Luth. (1963), 75.

3. Ed. note: ET Book of Concord (2000), 539; Latin and German: Bek. Luth. (1963), 856.

4. Ed. note: Melanchthon, ET Kienzles; Latin: CR 211:644, 647. See §32n16.

5. Ed. note: ET Cochrane (1972), 237; Latin only: Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 249. Cf. note at §37n3.

6. Ed. note: ET Kienzles; Latin in Niemeyer (1840), 549.

7. Ed. note: Here Schleiermacher’s marginal note begins the discussion in this way: “1. The denying aspect of the ecclesial proposal. What is ‘grounded’ consists in the following” (Thönes, 1873).

8. §§40.1 and 55.1.

9. Ed. note: The word Zweckbegriff (“aim”) literally denotes a “concept” directed to a purposeful end-in-view. Other words for holding an aim, such as the more familiar Absicht, tend to do so less directly.

10. Ed. note: This is an oblique reference to a devil, here called a Grundwesen (“primary being”) over against Supreme Being (höchstes Wesen).

11. It is clear enough that by mixing in the devil our confessions did not have this thought in view. This is so, for the devil is combined with human beings under the same concept of a finite free being. The result is that the devil’s sin was likewise supposed to be thought of as grounded in his freedom, but his relationship to the sin of a human being would not be supposed to impair sin’s being grounded in one’s own freedom in any way. The result here is that nothing Manichean intrudes on this ecclesial doctrine by mixing the devil into it; consequently this doctrinal deviation is also no easier to avoid if the devil is left out of it.

12. Cf. §72.

13. Ed. note: It would seem that, in this context at least, Schleiermacher is supposing that this “imparted” (mitgegebenen) God-consciousness could not have been “communicated” (mitgeteilt) in that early era, in the same way as he describes it when human beings were in relationship with God through their community, or communion, with God in that same community with Christ and the church’s “common spirit” (Holy Spirit) later on. This would be in accordance with his regular usage of the term mitteilen theologically. Instead, in the original case here, he has God-consciousness being directly “imparted” to them (mitgegeben)—that is, without interference from their having gone astray in sinning and thereby losing their God-consciousness by degrees.

14. Calvin, Institutes (1559) 1.18.4: “His will is wrongly confused with his precept: innumerable examples clearly show how utterly different these two are.” Ed. note: ET Battles, vol. 1 (1960), 235; Latin: CR 30:172, Opera selecta 3 (1957), 225. In his marginal note, Schleiermacher reports: “This contribution is to Calvin’s merit, not Augustine’s” (Thönes, 1873).

15. Rom. 7:8–9, 16–18. Ed. note: There Paul writes that even if he wills to do what God commands in the law, sin that is working within him can stifle obedience. Hence, God’s command requires a free human acceptance in order to work its way, and this acceptance does not always come automatically.

16. Phil. 2:13. Ed. note: Paul writes there: “For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” See sermon on Phil. 2:12–13, June 22, 1822, SW II.10 (1856), 527–44. It is also to be noted that, in accordance with Schleiermacher’s own rule not to use proof texts, both of these biblical “expressions” are cited, where creeds and confessions do not already give expression to them in largely alternative language. Occasionally he uses more than one biblical passage, as here, where the desirable exactness is not present in any one biblical text alone, while ever holding to ultimate authority within the New Testament witness itself. See index here on use of Scripture. See also BO §§103–8, 136, 148, 181–82, and 219.

17. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note clarifies the meaning of the sentence just completed: “Sin could not otherwise have existed, since it presupposes the commanding [will of God]” (Thönes, 1873).

18. Cf. §§66.1 and 74.3.

19. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note marks a second section of the argument that began with identifying the commanding will and the contrasting productive or effecting will of God. It states: “This commanding will also does not correspond to the productive will in the reign of grace” (Thönes, 1873).

20. Cf. §63.3.

21. Ed. note: Here a third step is indicated in Schleiermacher’s marginal note: “Hence, the limiting adjustment [a maneuver indicated in the text after footnote 9 above]” (Thönes, 1873). In both of these passages Beschränkung is the word, which is usually translated “limited,” “restricted,” “restriction,” or “restraint,” depending on context.

22. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note provides this heading: “The affirming aspect of the ecclesial proposal” (Thönes, 1873). Throughout above, the negating aspect of the proposal in ecclesial documents, translated as “denying” (verneinende) that God is the author, or cause, of sin, was taken up. Now to be discussed is the “affirming” (bejahende) aspect, namely, that freedom is the cause of sin, though it is not, as such, an agent but is only a state or condition of sin.

23. Cf. §51.1.

24. Cf. §49. Ed. note: At this point, Schleiermacher’s marginal note adds: “This claim might seem to be contrary to what was said earlier, but it means only this much: No eternal causality [Kausalität] could exist for something for which no temporal causality exists” (Thönes, 1873).

25. Ed. note: Because this is a compact use of mathematical terms to describe mental functioning, here is the entire phrase in German: wo die geistigen Functionen unter die Potenz der Krankheit gestellt sind. In scientific discourse, and to some extent in other kinds as well, Schleiermacher used what he had learned, especially from calculus, as a way of describing complex and scalar patterns in reality, reaching out toward infinity. Moreover, since all “spiritual” functions are also “mental” and, in the fullest sense, start inside, he uses these patterns not only in philosophical psychology but also in describing religious, or pious, functioning as well. Here we find a rare outbreak of mathematical terms: “function” (Function) and “power” and the allied notion of “exponential” power (Potenz), all three terms being directed to a very wide span of free versus diseased functioning. The Redeemer is at the supreme end of freedom, aspired to in “the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21), and “derangement” (Zerrüttung) is near the other end of the scale that he has in mind. In the sentence that follows, “imputation of “ translates Zurechnung, which, as a kind of reckoning, also carries at least the metaphor of working with numbers.

26. Ed. note: The phrase diese ganze Gestalt der Existenz is rare and instructive. He could have written “form” (Form, Bild, Ordnung) but meant to refer to a complex whole. He could have used Dasein for “existence,” as he usually does (meaning, literally, really being-there), or even Bestehung, meaning a continuing existence but usually translated “persistence” in this work, but he used the more comprehensive Latinate term Existenz instead. From Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) on, “existentialism” referred to a rather diverse but influential school of philosophy that, not accidentally, followed major elements of Schleiermacher’s leading.

27. Cf. Gen. 3:12–13.

28. Ed. note: In every case throughout this work, “deed” translates Tat, to distinguish it especially from Akt (“act”) but also from Tätigkeit (“activity”) and Handlung (“action” or “conduct”). In both German and English usage, a deed can be good or bad or some mixture of the two. Schleiermacher’s choice for “center,” among many possibilities, as here, is usually Mittelpunkt, at the very midpoint, as of a line or circle.

29. Ed. note: Here Formel (“formula”) refers to a formative element that determines the direction of a phrase or sentence in Schleiermacher’s grammatical usage or, as in this case, that serves as a similar rule or patterning influence within one’s distinctive inner life. Usually, however, it means simply a “formulation.”

30. Cf. §74.

31. Ed. note: This claim, for Schleiermacher unfounded, is that sin is founded on a freedom that is in a state of bondage such that sin is (a) attached to or (b) within that freedom. Actually our text has an, as is true right through the seventh edition (1960). There Redeker notes that an alteration is present in Schleiermacher’s earliest manuscript (in) and even at the same place in the 1821–1822 edition, but he does not choose it, whereas Schäfer (2003) does. Our belief is this. The originally published text is correct (an), but it makes little difference to Schleiermacher, since he would reject both positions at issue. That is, for him, divine causality is present despite either claim.

32. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note provides this heading: “3. Relationship of the being of sin to the ‘being-ordained-by-God’ of the same” (Thönes, 1873).

33. Ed. note: Here the term for “existence” is Dasein, referring to all of human life that involves our really being-there.

34. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note (Thönes, 1873) marks this two-part affirmation as having a “two-sided” character (Duplicität), but, despite the appearance of the German word to an English reader, it does not mean lying by speaking differently out of two sides of one’s mouth. It does indicate, however, that more needs to be said. See §81n37 below.

35. Ed. note: Here lebendigen Anschauungen. That is, such fine points do not accompany and are not grounded in actual, deep perceptions (or acts of beholding, as in John 1:14) in Christians’ own deeply held life experiences. Not only did Schleiermacher continue the pairing of Anschauung and Gefühl from his 1799 first edition of the discourses On Religion onward, but he also provided new instances of that paired usage in its third edition of 1821 and with the same meaning of these two terms in both editions of Christian Faith (1821–1822 and 1830–1831), though not directly paired. See index.

36. Ed. note: Both options had been variously adopted since the Reformation, but especially in the overly “scholastic” procedures of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Protestant scholasticism and of rationalism in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German Enlightenment. Both of these habits can be found in rationalist and absolute supernaturalist theologies of that time and since. In the present work, therefore, much of the space Schleiermacher uses is devoted to obviating doctrinal proposals that had been grounded in such procedures, among gospel-centered churches, chiefly those among Lutheran and Reformed thinkers within the German territories, and never in greater detail than in examining doctrines regarding sin in its relation to redemption. Having to do this here is the primary reason for his prefatory remark that he hoped presentations of faith-doctrine could be much shorter in the future.

37. Ed. note: Here “one-sidedness” translates Einseitigkeit. See §81n34. Schleiermacher’s marginal note at this point announces that he now intends to raise a “Question” (Thönes, 1873)—as it turns out, more than one—in order to overcome the one-sidedness by combining the two sides, of Lutheran versus Reformed emphasis, into one conjoint affirmation, not rationalist and absolute supernaturalist extremes but supplying an alternative to both.

38. Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), Loci praecipui theologici (1543–1559): “For although he sustains … nature, nevertheless those defects in the mind are not made by him.” Ed. note: ET Kienzles; Latin: CR 21:647. See §32n16.

39. Cf. §68. Ed. note: In Schleiermacher’s usage, Kraft essentially means “force” but can also bear the connotations of one’s “strength” (usually rendered Kräftigkeit) or “energy,” viewed as a power to move or cause, effect, affect. As a type of power, it is not strictly equivalent to “might” (Macht), usually translated “power” as also in “powerless” (ohnmächtig), “holding sway over” (Gewalt), “strength” (Stärke), or “potency” (Potenz). Thus, in accordance with the Newtonian physics available to him, he tends to view force as any mode of energy. In a human being, then, force is exercised, exerted; however, comparatively it can be either more active or more passive. Openness to God in one’s God-consciousness can be a combination of both features, being in a state of both feeling dependent on God and in an active, cooperative relationship with God at the same time. Here, however, a lack of force or capacity, in and of itself, cannot constitute sin.

40. Ed. note: “Answer” is the heading Schleiermacher’s marginal note gives here (Thönes, 1873).

41. Gal. 3:22. Ed. note: Sermon at Advent on Gal. 3:21–23, “Christ, Who Liberates Us from Sin and the Law,” Dec. 10, 1820, SW II.2 (1834), 21–33.

42. Ed. note: Here Schleiermacher’s marginal note provides this heading: “Second Question” (Thönes, 1873).

43. Ed. note: This is one of the rare uses of the word Kausalität for this concept.

44. Only in this sense can we consent to the following formulation in the Augsburg Confession (1530) 19: voluntas … non adiuvente Deo avertit se ad alias res (“the will … not assisted by God, turned away to other things”). To be sure, the original German expression, which, however, has been altered in the improved German confession, does indicate a more positive sense: “alsbald so Gott die Hand abgetan” (“in this way God forthwith withdrew God’s hand”), for as a special divine action this withdrawing of God’s hand [abandonment] by God would then be the initial condition of sin. Ed. note: see Bek. Luth. (1930), 75; and Book of Concord (2000), 53. These sources do not include the original expression quoted first, but Bek. Luth. does give the second quotation.

45. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note supplies this heading: “4. Appeal to a cast-off, positively primordial justice” (Thönes, 1873).

46. Ed. note: In Schleiermacher’s usage verwirrend, here “perplexing,” usually means “entangled” in conditions of this finite and temporal world, including sensory aspects of experience; it can also mean “complicated” and “confusing.” Here “perplexing” seems to be the best choice, but for him and as he shows readers, the reason for this response derives especially from the complex entanglements that he takes pains to point out.

47. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note appended here: “Given the appearance of redemption, in no way would what this claim asserts be alleged to have come up first” (Thönes, 1873).

48. See Franz Volkmar Reinhard (1753–1812), Dogmatik (1818), §75. Redeker note: There p. 272 reads: “(c) By the divine government moral evil becomes a source of innumerable advantages. Also, as will be shown in what follows, through Christ, God has created institutions that with exceeding abundance compensate for all the damage that sin gives rise to.” Ed. note: The term Schaden, used by both Reinhard and Schleiermacher, can easily mean not only “damage” but also a corresponding “disadvantage,” here compensated for.

49. Ed. note: As Schleiermacher often indicates, God does what God wills, and God has willed what God does, both without exception. Hence, in this respect God does not need to utilize intermediate means to reach an end. God’s activity, therefore, is immediate, not mediated by some intervening activity. This position underscores his claims regarding the immediate presence of God’s supernatural, supreme being in God’s own world through immediate religious self-consciousness, where God and humans are closely, internally in touch. However, this position does not obviate God’s becoming present, really and directly, in Jesus of Nazareth and subsequently within communities of faith, perhaps invisibly, by God’s own holy Spirit and, by “preparatory grace” through other mediating instruments of communication, including broader circles within the visible church and on out into the rest of the world. In these different respects, which do not necessarily have anything to do with a separation of end and means from a supernatural point of view, it would be quite natural to conceive of such a separation for any activity within the world, even for whatever God wills to do within it. This observation by itself, however, would not seem to resolve the problem of “miracles” occurring, or being used as proofs of divinity, within an orderly world or to support similar claims made by an absolutely supernatural doctrine of occasional divine interventions. See index on these topics.

50. Ed. note: “Stage of existence” translates Existenzstufe. Schleiermacher holds that the consummation of this process of redemption has to be treated only proleptically—that is, by hints and presentiment, at best—through what he calls “prophetic doctrine.” See §§157–63. In accordance with those propositions, as long as more stages, or levels, of development are incomplete, that final destination will not be reached by the species of human beings as it has existed throughout history; and before death none can absolutely know how that process might be completed for all human beings after death. Schleiermacher also preached on death, dying, and the afterlife, especially at funerals and at the Todtenfest, a celebration of the dead within the official church year.

§82. What has been stated in ecclesial doctrine regarding divine causality in relation to sin also has currency in relation to evil by virtue of its connection with sin.¹

(1) Solid Declaration (1577) I: “The punishment and penalty for original sin, which God laid upon Adam’s children and upon original sin, is death, eternal damnation, and also other corporal and spiritual, temporal and eternal miseries.” XI: “For as God is not the cause of sin, so he is also not the cause of punishment. …”²

(2) Confession of the Bohemian Brethren (1535), Art. IV: “Furthermore, they teach that all the misfortunes and affiliations by which we are shaken here—and we contend with them by God’s most just law— are inflicted on human beings on account of sins.”³

Just as little, however, do we have here any kind of occasion that would lead toward thought of an arbitrary divine penal legislation. Suppose that someone wanted to direct the Mosaic passages already cited above⁸ for explanatory purposes here. If so, it would then be necessary, at the same time, to bring in the hazardous notion that the constitution of earthly things would have been altered by the introduction of sin. In the arrangement of the world as it traces its source in divine causality, it would not be possible anywhere for one thing to be more arbitrary and another thing less so. Rather, everything would have to be either equally arbitrary or equally very much not so.

2.⁹ Now, if we stick with what is present in our self-consciousness on this matter, then we find two contrasted conceptions of evil. The first consists in our ascribing evil to ourselves, viewed as the result of our sin. Wherein, at the same time, it is denied that for human beings God is the originator of evil in the same manner as God is the originator of the world’s original perfection,10 this is sufficiently justified by there not being posited in that concept that the world would be the locus of evil. What is posited in that concept instead is that everything having to do with the relative contrast between our being and other interconnected being would also still be effectual in us only as stimuli.

The other conception is this: that we submit to all the evils that come in life as due to a divine decree issued upon us.¹¹ This conception would be justified to the fullest extent in all those cases wherein we would be able to regard evils that affect us as belonging to the reconciling suffering of Christ, just as it would have to be possible to have viewed every instance of community with Christ as communion with his suffering.¹² Yet, evils to which we simply have to submit, examined exclusively and as a whole, could be conceived as not evil at all. Rather, they could be conceived merely as summons and stimuli, with which one is joyously to comply in their moving us to some distinct spiritual activity. However, therewith we would, nevertheless, become conscious of evil, and the conception of actual evil would also be found in instances where a special connection of evil with our participation in redemptive activity is not present. Thus, the presupposition regarding a divine origination of evil, as such, is plainly present in such instances, though this evil is observed not in and of itself but only in relation to sin. This very presupposition conflicts with that aforementioned correct and pure conception of hindrances to sensory life, which conception views them merely as stimuli.

Thus, here too the correct adjustment 13 could not be one that would deny evil’s flowing from God for the reason that evil is grounded in our freedom by means of sin. Instead, it would rather be the case that since we posit that eternal causality exists along with temporal causality everywhere, evil too, precisely inasmuch as it would be grounded in our freedom, would have to be, at the same time, ordained by God, whereas inasmuch as evil would not be ordained by God, actually it also could not exist at all. Evil could not be grounded in God inasmuch as it would appear as a conflict between separate beings existing in this world,¹⁴ because these very conflicting beings would not be ordained by God as beings each of whom exists for oneself alone, but they could be ordained only in their belonging to one another and to the extent that they are doing so.¹⁵ Consequently, to that extent evil would not even exist in this case. Rather, for us evil would be a mere sham, which would emerge only from our sticking with the notion of isolated beings. In contrast, for evil to be ordained by God means that we conceive natural imperfections to be evil in the measure that God-consciousness does not yet have dominion in us. Likewise, in the measure that sin has dominion in us, it is formed into social evil, precisely as these two features are both grounded in freedom.

Postscript. We are able to set forth divine attributes only as modalities 17 assigned to divine causality. Thus if God were in no manner an originator of sin and of evil, there could also be no divine attribute by the force of which sin and evil would have persisted. On the other hand, if we were to have demonstrated such a causality satisfactorily, then particular divine attributes, differentiated from those divine attributes or modes of activity¹⁸ set forth thus far, would also very well have to be set forth here. To do so is all the more called for in that sin and evil are, in any case, ordained by God, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, they are, nevertheless, to be overcome by redemption.

1. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note (Thönes, 1873) refers to these two relations as in “parallel” (Parallele).

2. Ed. note: ET Book of Concord (2000), 534, 653; Latin and German: Bek. Luth. (1963), 849, 1086.

3. Ed. note: ET Kienzles; Latin: Niemeyer (1840), 790f. See §36n2.

4. Ed. note: Here Schleiermacher’s marginal note provides this heading: “General Reservation. Exclusion of arbitrariness from eternity [of causality]” (Thönes, 1873).

5. Ed. note: Systemen (systems) is a term Schleiermacher applies to his own presentation of faith-doctrine (Glaubenslehre). He chooses to be systematic because he saw considerable use of so-called logical argument to be based on false premises or to be illogically organized, both so as to preserve nonbiblical and isolated, nonauthoritative assertions and implications drawn from the biblical texts within Evangelical dogmatic treatises. Yet such assertions were still enjoying currency in his own period. See §§1 and 19 above, also Brief Outline (2011), p. 136f. and §§97 and 196, also the index there under “dogmatics.” This term he did not favor for more genuine, organic presentations of faith-doctrine. Nevertheless, he did apply it to the genre recognized as such in his own day.

6. Ed. note: Strafübel. That is, as the choice of this term indicates: “evils” are then strictly identified with God’s exacting punishment for sin, including punishment of those “children” and other descendants mentioned in the confessional statements quoted just above.

7. Ed. note: The injunction that “for God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26 and Mark 10:27) has been a contributive premise in positions being critiqued here. On what is “possible” for God, see the discussion under §54. The present proposition contains the most directly anticipatory aspect within his introduction (§§79–82) to the divine attributes of holiness and justice. All previous “presuppositions” regarding God’s having attributes, including the more focused discussions in Part One (§§50–56), likewise underlie this upcoming discussion (§§83–85).

8. Gen. 3:14, 16–18. Cf. §75.1. Ed. note: The verses in Genesis depict God’s punishing the serpent, the woman, and the man in response for their having disobeyed God’s command not to eat from one of the trees.

9. Ed. note: In this subsection, a series of headings is given in Schleiermacher’s marginal notes, beginning with this general one: “Content of self-consciousness: (a) Our own attribution [of evil to ourselves] with justification by God” (Thönes, 1873).

10. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s next marginal note reads: “In accordance with the manner [of God’s originating] the original perfection [of the world]” (Thönes, 1873).

11. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note: “(b) Divine decree with [our Christian] submission [to it]: divine origination [of evil] in relation to sin” (Thönes, 1873). Throughout this treatise, the pronouns “we,” “our,” and “us” consistently refer solely or chiefly to Evangelical persons of faith in Germany at that time, unless otherwise qualified, almost always when the subject is comprised of members of the human species.

12. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note reads: “Analogy of the two formulations with the two just previous ones above” (Thönes, 1873). See index for his frequent use of the concepts “community/communion [Gemeinschaft] with Christ” and “community with God in Christ.” All of these phenomena are, for him, most fully experienced in and through actual communal experiences, individually held in one’s mind and heart but not conveyed or capable of being sustained most fruitfully without ingredients of communal life among persons of faith. For an account of Christ’s reconciling work, see §§100–112, esp. 101, and index. These accounts and other related accounts of redemption are accomplished with a grasp of Christ’s whole life and work versus one that focuses exclusively on the cross, thus without an isolated theory of an atonement (Versöhnung, “reconciliation”) that is taken to be achieved at Jesus’ death. Instead, Schleiermacher sees redemption to be a process stretching over Jesus’ whole life, death, and resurrection and extending his influence through justification and sanctification, regeneration, and the continuing life of the divine Spirit in and through the church—in other words, through all that is described in Part Two concerning the life of the triune God with and through Christian communities of faith and on behalf of the entire human species. Regarding the latter aspect, see index under “species-consciousness,” “redemption, of the world,” and “human race/species.”

13. Ed. note: Here Schleiermacher’s marginal note calls the results of this adjustment a “definitive [Definitive] analogy” (Thönes, 1873).

14. Existenzen. Ed. note: For Schleiermacher: (1) God is not, in Godself, apart from existence in and of this world, a singular being, so that God could not take part in a conflict between “existing beings” and would not ground such evil. (2) Human beings are actually grounded in God as a species, not merely as isolated individuals. (3) God does ground free temporal causality (freedom) for the human species, thus for all members of it, but God’s activity among human beings does not involve being a party to conflict. (4) Hence the translation “separate beings existing in this world.”

15. Ed. note: Cf. Luke 6:38 and the larger context in 6:27–38 and similar passages elsewhere in the New Testament offering Jesus’ teachings on love and blessings toward and with (belonging to one another) those alienated from or doing violence to oneself. In the eighth of ten sermons celebrating the handing over of the Augsburg Confession in 1530, on October 10, 1830, Schleiermacher used the beginning of the same sentence in Luke 6:37 to proclaim a closely related theme on forgiving, not judging and condemning: “On the Condemnation in Our Confession of Those Who Believe Differently.” KGA III/12 (2013), 346–57; ET Nicol (1997), 127–40.

16. Ed. note: To open this subsection, Schleiermacher’s marginal note states: “Here too [an account] not related to the individual [alone]: In every case, one’s own evil, based on one’s own sin, is also collective evil” in every case (Thönes, 1873).

17. Ed. note: In logic, modalities are properties of propositions by which they assert or deny the possibility or impossibility, contingency or necessity of their content. In the propositions to follow—“God is holy” and “God is just”—the copula alone, “is,” is the modality, yet to be qualified in the explanatory subsections, as by earlier and subsequent discussions of divine attributes in this work. The copula itself can bear several rather different meanings. Schleiermacher tends to be very careful about which meaning he intends, if only by adding further qualifying terms such as “inasmuch as” (sofern als), “insofar as” or “to the extent/degree that” (insofern als), “indeed” (zwar, ja, inviting assent), “to be sure” (allerdings, requiring further explanation or supposition), “surely” (gewiß, meaning assuredly, probably to be taken for granted, but rarely apodictic or unchangeable certainty, given changing conditions; when referring to specific instances, as in “certain persons, places, or things, thus translated as “certain” only as a direct pointer to them, not a modality of a proposition), or “not” (nicht, simply a negation, perhaps to be further qualified), or “not at all” (gar nicht), and “if … then” or “suppose that … then” (wenn … so). He was surely undergirded in his precise usage of these and numerous other such words in his translations of Plato’s works (1804–1805, etc.), which contain many of them, though such careful selection of modalities is also typical even in his earliest writings.

18. Ed. note: Here Schleiermacher specifies what a divine attribute would be, namely, a “mode of activity” (Tätigkeitsweisen), not a strict descriptor of God in se, apart from an activity in the world where humans dwell and can and in some manner do receive or apprehend, undergo, or suffer from what God does. This qualification directly points to the difference between what has traditionally been called “the immanent Trinity,” in se, versus “the economic Trinity,” where humans dwell.

19. Ed. note: On Schleiermacher’s presentation of a limited use of the concept “divine recompense” (Belohnung) to Christian morality (Sitte), see OR (1821) II, supplemental note 21. This becomes a term for issues regarding “recompense” as punishment versus positive reward in CF §84, then §§101 and 112.3, earlier regarding the concept’s use in Judaism (§9.2).