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highest good, in harmony with the original moral constitution of his nature. Man has by nature
an irresistible bias for evil. He is not able to apprehend and love spiritual excellence, to seek
and do spiritual things, the things of God that pertain to salvation. This position, which is
Augustinian and Calvinistic, is flatly contradicted by 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.”[Our
Concern with the Theology of Crisis, p. 187.] Brunner has something to say about it in his recent
work on Man in Revolt.[Chap. 6.] 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 human race fell away from God; but it
belongs to the very nature of sin that we deny this solidarity in sin. The result of this initial sin is
that man is now a sinner; but the fact that man is now a sinner should not be regarded as the
cause of his individual sinful actions. Such a causal connection cannot be admitted, for every sin