ABSTRACT
This chapter turns to the greatest burden facing Schleiermacher’s account of sin, a burden he not only recognizes but also explicitly affirms: namely, that God is the author of sin and the cause of evil. This chapter carefully examines Schleiermacher’s claims to this effect, including what sense he gives to such claims, and what grounds he offers for making them. What becomes clear is that, despite its apparent burdens, Schleiermacher’s account of God’s intentional action with respect to sin and evil is at least as remote from the divine ends as many traditional accounts would have it. This chapter also turns to the all-important related doctrines of God’s justice and mercy to see not only how these divine attributes are reconcilable with God as the author of sin but also how they are specifically and dramatically recast in light of this difficult claim. In the end it is shown that even the divine punishment for sin is ordered to nothing but our deliverance from it, and that sin and evil are, themselves, a tragic double effect of the bringing about of humans’ highest good: communion with God.
