# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1860_S78
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

78 Dr. v. Hofmann's Doctrine of the Fall.

first, inwardly, to set his will against the will of God; he first had to break with God, and had to do this, moreover, consciously, since he knew what God had forbidden him. Thus his sin began inwardly with the falling away from God, with enmity against God, and only out of this followed the sin-in-act, that he reached after the world's good — which sin-in-act was, without that inward falling-away, altogether impossible. Indeed, so it still goes to this very day: wherever man commits sin in the world, it is because he has, more nearly or more remotely, already inwardly fallen away from God and set himself against God beforehand; for the moral creature originally hangs living upon its Creator, and, so long as this bond is preserved, it cannot, even in its various other relations, act against its Creator's will. This simple truth brings v. Hofmann's view of the origin and development of sin to nothing. For this reason, too, v. Hofmann's view stands in a consequential opposition to the churchly views on these matters. According to the latter, a man standing in the state of holiness and blessedness, living in union with God, tore himself inwardly away from God, in incomprehensible blindness loosed his will from the will of God against his God's express Word, and thus came to the sin-in-act, to the leaping over of the divine boundary, in his worldly life as well. There sin begins with enmity against God, and sin-in-act and a disordered worldly life are its consequences. With v. Hofmann, a man standing indifferent toward God lets himself be beguiled by the devil, reaches after a thing of this world, and thus — since he really ought not to have it — comes unawares to stand against God, indeed, further on, perhaps even under some circumstances into enmity with God. There sin begins as a lower sin-in-act committed in worldly life, and becomes, in the last stage of its development, enmity against God. Thus, where the churchly views begin, there v. Hofmann leaves off; and where the latter leaves off, there the former begin; and the one is the exact opposite of the other. The further difference between the two is then this: that v. Hofmann's hamartiogony is very accessible to unenlightened reason, because according to it everything appears to develop quite genetically, and because it leaves no room for the concepts of the Fall, of falling-away, of enmity with God, and weakens the concepts of sin and evil; whereas, by contrast, the churchly views hold out grave words leading to repentance, and thereby to eternal life.

Where there is no knowledge of sin, there is also none of redemption; where sin is not fall and falling-away, there salvation, too, is not grace; and where sin does not begin with enmity against God, there redemption, too, does not begin with reconciliation. This always keeps step. In order to make plain here at once the effect which v. Hofmann's hamartiogony must necessarily have upon his soteriology, we recall the passage cited above, where v. Hofmann draws a parallel between the Fall and redemption: just as Satan's deception held out a good to man, and thereby enticed him to seize an evil instead of a good, so God holds out to man