Systematic Theology, by Louis Berkhof - New Leaven

y Pelagianism and Socinianism, and in part also by Semi-Pelagianism and
Arminianism. Modern liberalism, which is essentially Pelagian, naturally finds the
doctrine, that man has lost the ability to determine his life in the direction of real
righteousness and holiness, highly offensive, and glories in the ability of man to choose
and do what is right and good. On the other hand the dialectical theology (Barthianism)
strongly reasserts the utter inability of man to make even the slightest move in a
Godward direction. The sinner is a slave of sin and cannot possibly turn in the opposite
direction.
4. THE THEOLOGY OF CRISIS AND ORIGINAL SIN. It may be well at this point to define
briefly the position of the Theology of Crisis or of Barthianism with respect to the
doctrine of original sin. Walter Lowrie correctly says: “Barth has much to say about the
Fall — but nothing about ‘original sin.’ That man is fallen we can plainly see; but the Fall
is not an event we can point to in history, it belongs decidedly to pre-history,
Urgeschichte, in a metaphysical sense.” 42 Brunner has something to say about it in his
recent work on Man in Revolt. 43 He does not accept the doctrine of original sin in the
traditional and ecclesiastical sense of the word. The first sin of Adam was not and could
not be placed to the account of all his descendants; nor did this sin result in a sinful
state, which is passed on to his posterity, and which is now the fruitful root of all actual
sin. “Sin is never a state, but it is always an act. Even being a sinner is not a state but an
act, because it is being a person.” In Brunner’s estimation the traditional view has an
undesirable element of determinism in it, and does not sufficiently safeguard the
responsibility of man. But his rejection of the doctrine of original sin does not mean that
he sees no truth in it at all. It rightly stresses the solidarity of sin in the human race, and
the transmission “of the spiritual nature, of the ‘character,’ from parents to children.”
However, he seeks the explanation of the universality of sin in something else than in
“original sin.” The man whom God created was not simply some one man, but a
responsible person created in and for community with others. The isolated individual is
but an abstraction. “In the Creation we are an individualized, articulated unity, one
body with many members.” If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. He
goes on to say: “If that is our origin, then our opposition to this origin cannot be an
experience, an act, of the individual as an individual.... Certainly each individual is a
sinner as an individual; but he is at the same time the whole in its united solidarity, the
body, actual humanity as a whole.” There was therefore solidarity in sinning; the
42 Our Concern with the Theology of Crisis, p. 187.
43 Chap. 6.
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