# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1860_S79
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Dr. v. Hofmann's Doctrine of the Fall. 79

a good as well, namely Himself in Christ, so that man might the rather win this than that evil which he had mistakenly held to be a good. In keeping with this we are taught, for instance at I, 214, that we are to grasp the concept of ἀποκυταλάσσειν [reconciliation] not, say, as a reconciling of enemies, but as a bringing-back out of an estrangement. In short, man is indifferent toward the forbidden fruit, and came to stand against God only in the way that the devil held out to him a worldly good; and if God now holds out to him only a heavenly good, he recognizes his error and turns back again to God; for what lies between — the guilt — we do not know.

The very same arguments by which v. Hofmann seeks to show that the gulf between the state before sin and that after it is not too great (I, 409) must now, quite consistently, also serve him to explain how God could let man live and see grace despite his sin: if man, as a result of seduction, by virtue of his division into man and woman, sinned not out of enmity against God but merely out of craving for a worldly good, then it was, after all, not so very bad; and if it was not so very bad, then God did not have to regard man's relation to Himself as forthwith negated, and to give him over to death. Indeed, the matter stood even better for man. God Himself, after all, set that forbidden tree, and thereby Himself made it possible that man's sin should be directed not at God but at the corporeal world; God Himself also created the woman, the temptress, and thus Himself made it possible that the deception should succeed; God Himself also created the serpent, which the devil made use of, and Himself gave the devil the power to tempt man, thus Himself making it possible that the unhappy self-determination should not originate in man himself. Thus God Himself made it possible that the matter should take this course. For God willed that man should become God's own, and created man for this purpose; but at the same time He bore in mind the possibility that this man might determine himself against His will; and so that, in that case, He should not be compelled to let man die and thus see the purpose of His creation thwarted, He Himself arranged those circumstances beforehand, so that man's sin, should man decide upon it, might find a less dangerous outlet. We, however, shall according to this do well no longer to thank God for His groundless mercy, which has snatched us from death, but rather to praise His prudence. For of grace there is no longer any question here. It is grace, if — as stands according to the churchly views — God has mercy, against all its merit and worthiness, on the creature that in incomprehensible blindness and wicked fashion tore apart its bond of love and life with Him, against His expressly safeguarding Word, Genesis 2:17, and withholds from its head the well-deserved death by a saving miracle, and grants it a history of redemption. But v. Hofmann's genetic progression, and his tendency not to let fallen man appear so incapable and unworthy of help, leave no