Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

224 JOSEPH CHAPEL
Where the Fall is acknowledged, man’s predicament in the
world, especially in his spiritual existence in the world, can be
properly understood. Man became the “slave to sin,” forfeiting
that aspect of his personality that exists only in its relation to
God: by trying to be “free,” in the sense of absolute independence
or “I-aloneness,” man turns away from the other, and
avoids the Thou, in violation of the very definition of being a
person, an I, given by God in the word. This is the Fall. In trying
to be more free and independent, man ends up less so. Yet, when
the I moves out of this “I-aloneness,” there is an unfolding and
openness to the Thou which,
… has the meaning of an offering. God is the “being to whom
we sacrifice.” What does man sacrifice? Everything which he has
grasped as his own in his I-aloneness and taciturnity before the
Thou… The I must give up all that belongs to it, everything that it
grasped or willed to grasp… 45
For Ebner, there is not sin as such; there is sin only in man,
and then only insofar as it is revealed to him in faith. This is not
a theological consideration of objective matter, but rather an assertion
that sin is a “relational” reality. Therefore on the part of
the subject, sin is only subjectively possible once the reality of
the I-Thou relation is recognized, and in the final analysis, this
is always in reference to the I-Thou relation with God: “Man discerns
his ‘mortal sin’ in that action through which … he consciously
and deliberately affirms and approves of his fall from
God, the I-aloneness of his existence, the ‘original sin.’” 46 While
in reality there are many transgressions,
there is only one sin, the sin: only the single sin of interior closing
before God and before men… Born into evil itself is the fact
that man closes himself off and “does not come to the light…” All
evil happens in the “closure” of the I to the thou, in “aloneness.” 47
45 GREEN, 211; WR, Schriften 1:268-269.
46 GREEN, 252; WR, Schriften 1:307.
47 EBNER, Aphorismen, in Schriften 1:997-998.