The corporate nature of evil

Indeed experience shows us daily how evil “infects” society, spreading from one person to another, and perhaps involving them in it against their will. The power of the “infection” is as great in the moral sphere as it is in physical epidemics. We ought to be aware of the fact—and to remind others of it—that evil spreads to institutions and conditions, “infects” them, and then breeds further evil, which, in turn “re-infects” the lives of human beings as individuals. Further, it is evident that the evil which is incorporated in social institutions, and the evil which becomes a mass phenomenon, waxes great and assumes demonic forms, which, as a rule, are not found in any individual evil. Evil which takes the shape of social wrong, or is incorporated in institutions, or as a mass phenomenon, is worse than evil in any individual form, in isolation. All this may be summed up in the idea of a “kingdom of evil”; in saying this we acknowledge our debt to Ritschl’s contribution to our thought. But all this does not yet lead us into the mystery of the Biblical idea of the solidarity of sin. This conception is strictly connected with the truth of the Christian revelation.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 96