Systematic Theology, by Louis Berkhof - New Leaven

testimony of conscience, and so on, for all his knowledge is inadequate. Moreover, it
goes contrary to the experience of mankind, that the greatest intellects are often the
greatest sinners, Satan being the greatest of all.
4. THE THEORY THAT SIN IS A WANT OF GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS, DUE TO MAN’S SENSUOUS
NATURE. This is the view of Schleiermacher. According to him man’s consciousness of
sin is dependent on his God-consciousness. When the sense of God awakens in man, he
is at once conscious of the opposition of his lower nature to it. This opposition follows
from the very constitution of his being, from his sensuous nature, from the soul’s
connection with a physical organism. It is therefore an inherent imperfection, but one
which man feels as sin and guilt. Yet this does not make God the author of sin, since
man wrongly conceives of this imperfection as sin. Sin has no objective existence, but
exists only in man’s consciousness. But this theory makes man constitutionally evil. The
evil was present in man even in his original state, when the God-consciousness was not
sufficiently strong to control the sensuous nature of man. It is in flagrant opposition to
Scripture, when it holds that man wrongly adjudges this evil to be sin, and thus makes
sin and guilt purely subjective. And though Schleiermacher wishes to avoid this
conclusion, it does make God the responsible author of sin, for He is the creator of
man’s sensuous nature. It also rests upon an incomplete induction of facts, since it fails
to take account of the fact that many of the most hateful sins of man do not pertain to
his physical but to his spiritual nature, such as avarice, envy, pride, malice, and others.
Moreover, it leads to the most absurd conclusions as, for instance, that asceticism, by
weakening the sensuous nature, necessarily weakens the power of sin; that man
becomes less sinful as his senses fail with age; that death is the only redeemer; and that
disembodied spirits, including the devil himself, have no sin.
5. THE THEORY OF SIN AS WANT OF TRUST IN GOD AND OPPOSITION TO HIS KINGDOM, DUE
TO IGNORANCE. Like Schleiermacher, Ritschl too stresses the fact that sin is understood
only from the standpoint of the Christian consciousness. They who are outside of the
pale of the Christian religion, and they who are still strangers to the experience of
redemption, have no knowledge of it. Under the influence of the redemptive work of
God man becomes conscious of his lack of trust in God and of his opposition to the
Kingdom of God, which is the highest good. Sin is not determined by man’s attitude to
the law of God, but by his relation to the purpose of God, to establish the Kingdom.
Man imputes his failure to make the purpose of God his own to himself as guilt, but
God regards it merely as ignorance, and because it is ignorance, it is pardonable. This
view of Ritschl reminds us by way of contrast of the Greek dictum that knowledge is
virtue. It fails completely to do justice to the Scriptural position that sin is above all
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