ABSTRACT
There was a wide spectrum of attitudes towards sin and evil within Slovak Lutheran ethics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ranging from a pillorying of any human sin or evil as the Devil’s deed, through a sympathetic attitude towards human weaknesses and faults, to a teleological conception that justifies sin and evil as a means of human moral development. The differentiation of attitudes towards sin and evil in Slovak Lutheran ethics in these centuries was predominantly an outcome of the internal development, or internal conditions, in the Lutheran Church in that given period. They were, for instance, influenced by the course of conflicts between pietism and orthodox Lutheranism in the eighteenth century, or between rationalism and orthodoxy in the nineteenth century.
