but a mere condition of being regarded and treated as sinners; and
a guilt, which is devoid of sinfulness, and which does not imply
moral demerit or turpitude,”—that is, a sin which is no sin, and a
guilt which is no guilt. Why might not God as justly reckon Adam’s
sin to the account of the fallen angels, and punish them for it?
Dorner, System Doct., 2:351; 3:53, 54—“Hollaz held that God treats
men in accordance with what he foresaw all would do, if they were
in Adam’s place” (_scientia media_ and _imputatio metaphysica_).
Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 141—“Immediate imputation is as
unjust as _imputatio metaphysica_, _i. e._, God’s condemning us
for what he knew we would have done in Adam’s place. On such a
theory there is no need of a trial at all. God might condemn half
the race at once to hell without probation, on the ground that
they would ultimately sin and come thither at any rate.”
Justification can be gratuitous, but not condemnation. “Like the
social-compact theory of government, the covenant-theory of sin is
a mere legal fiction. It explains, only to belittle. The theory of
New England theology, which attributes to mere sovereignty God’s
making us sinners in consequence of Adam’s sin, is more reasonable
than the Federal theory” (Fisher).
Professor Moses Stuart characterized this theory as one of
“fictitious guilt, but veritable damnation.” The divine economy
admits of no fictitious substitutions nor forensic evasions. No
legal quibbles can modify eternal justice. Federalism reverses the
proper order, and puts the effect before the cause, as is the case
with the social-compact theory of government. Ritchie, Darwin and
Hegel, 27—“It is illogical to say that society originated in a
contract; for contract presupposes society.” Unus homo, nullus
homo—without society, no persons. T. H. Green, Prolegomena to
Ethics, 351—“No individual can make a conscience for himself. He
always needs a society to make it for him....” 200—“Only through
society is personality actualized.” Boyce, Spirit of Modern
Philosophy, 209, note—“Organic Interrelationship of individuals is
the condition even of their relatively independent selfhood.” We
are “_members one of another_” (_Rom. 12:15_). Schurman,
Agnosticism, 176—“The individual could never have developed into a
personality but for his training through society and under law.”
Imagine a theory that the family originated in a compact! We must
not define the state by its first crude beginnings, any more than
we define the oak by the acorn. On the theory of a social-compact,
see Lowell, Essays on Government, 136-188.
(_c_) That, after accounting men to be sinners who are not sinners, God
makes them sinners by immediately creating each human soul with a corrupt
nature such as will correspond to his decree. This is not only to assume a
false view of the origin of the soul, but also to make God directly the
author of sin. Imputation of sin cannot precede and account for
corruption; on the contrary, corruption must precede and account for
imputation.
By God’s act we became depraved, as a penal consequence of Adam’s
act imputed to us solely as _peccatum alienum_. Dabney, Theology,
342, says the theory regards the soul as originally pure until
imputation. See Hodge on _Rom. 5:13_; Syst. Theol., 2:203, 210;
Thornwell, Theology, 1:343-349; Chalmers, Institutes, 1:485, 487.
The Federal theory “makes sin in us to be the penalty of another’s
sin, instead of being the penalty of our own sin, as on the
Augustinian scheme, which regards depravity in us as the
punishment of our own sin in Adam.... It holds to a sin which does
not bring eternal punishment, but for which we are legally
responsible as truly as Adam.” It only remains to say that Dr.
Hodge always persistently refused to admit the one added element
which might have made his view less arbitrary and mechanical,
namely, the traducian theory of the origin of the soul. He was a
creatianist, and to the end maintained that God immediately
created the soul, and created it depraved. Acceptance of the
traducian theory would have compelled him to exchange his
Federalism for Augustinianism. Creatianism was the one remaining
element of Pelagian atomism in an otherwise Scriptural theory. Yet
Dr. Hodge regarded this as an essential part of Biblical teaching.
His unwavering confidence was like that of Fichte, whom Caroline
Schelling represented as saying: “Zweifle an der Sonne Klarheit,
Zweifle an der Sterne Licht, Leser, nur an meiner Wahrheit Und an
deiner Dummheit, nicht.”
As a corrective to the atomistic spirit of Federalism we may quote
a view which seems to us far more tenable, though it perhaps goes
to the opposite extreme. Dr. H. H. Bawden writes: “The self is the
product of a social environment. An ascetic self is so far forth
not a self. Selfhood and consciousness are essentially social. We
are members one of another. The biological view of selfhood
regards it as a function, activity, process, inseparable from the
social matrix out of which it has arisen. Consciousness is simply
the name for the functioning of an organism. Not that the soul is
a secretion of the brain, as bile is a secretion of the liver; not
that the mind is a function of the body in any such materialistic
sense. But that mind or consciousness is only the growing of an
organism, while, on the other hand, the organism is just that
which grows. The psychical is not a second, subtle, parallel form
of energy causally interactive with the physical; much less is it
a concomitant series, as the parallelists hold. Consciousness is
not an order of existence or a thing, but rather a function. It is
the organization of reality, the universe coming to a focus,
flowering, so to speak, in a finite centre. Society is an organism
in the same sense as the human body. The separation of the units
of society is no greater than the separation of the unit factors
of the body,—in the microscope the molecules are far apart.
Society is a great sphere with many smaller spheres within it.
“Each self is not impervious to other selves. Selves are not
water-tight compartments, each one of which might remain complete
in itself, even if all the others were destroyed. But there are
open sluiceways between all the compartments. Society is a vast
plexus of interweaving personalities. We are members one of
another. What affects my neighbor affects me, and what affects me
ultimately affects my neighbor. The individual is not an
impenetrable atomic unit.... The self is simply the social whole
coming to consciousness at some particular point. Every self is
rooted in the social organism of which it is but a local and
individual expression. A self is a mere cipher apart from its
social relations. As the old Greek adage has it: ‘He who lives
quite alone is either a beast or a god.’ ” While we regard this
exposition of Dr. Bawden as throwing light upon the origin of
consciousness and so helping our contention against the Federal
theory of sin, we do not regard it as proving that consciousness,
once developed, may not become relatively independent and
immortal. Back of society, as well as back of the individual, lies
the consciousness and will of God, in whom alone is the guarantee
of persistence. For objections to the Federal theory, see Fisher,
Discussions, 401 _sq._; Bib. Sac., 20:455-462, 577; New Englander,
1868:551-603; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 305-334, 435-450; Julius
Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:336; Dabney, Theology, 341-351.
5. Theory of Mediate Imputation, or Theory of Condemnation for Depravity.
This theory was first maintained by Placeus (1606-1655), professor of
Theology at Saumur in France. Placeus originally denied that Adam’s sin
was in any sense imputed to his posterity, but after his doctrine was
condemned by the Synod of the French Reformed Church at Charenton in 1644,
he published the view which now bears his name.
According to this view, all men are born physically and morally depraved;
this native depravity is the source of all actual sin, and is itself sin;
in strictness of speech, it is this native depravity, and this only, which
God imputes to men. So far as man’s physical nature is concerned, this
inborn sinfulness has descended by natural laws of propagation from Adam
to all his posterity. The soul is immediately created by God, but it
becomes actively corrupt so soon as it is united to the body. Inborn
sinfulness is the consequence, though not the penalty, of Adam’s
transgression.
There is a sense, therefore, in which Adam’s sin may be said to be imputed
to his descendants,—it is imputed, not immediately, as if they had been in
Adam or were so represented in him that it could be charged directly to
them, corruption not intervening,—but it is imputed mediately, through and
on account of the intervening corruption which resulted from Adam’s sin.
As on the Federal theory imputation is the cause of depravity, so on this
theory depravity is the cause of imputation. In Rom. 5:12, “death passed
unto all men, for that all sinned,” signifies: “death physical, spiritual,
and eternal passed upon all men, because all sinned by possessing a
depraved nature.”
See Placeus, De Imputatione Primi Peccati Adami, in Opera,
1:709—“The sensitive soul is produced from the parent; the
intellectual or rational soul is directly created. The soul, on
entering the corrupted physical nature, is not passively
corrupted, but becomes corrupt actively, accommodating itself to
the other part of human nature in character.” 710—So this soul
“contracts from the vitiosity of the dispositions of the body a
corresponding vitiosity, not so much by the action of the body
upon the soul, as by that essential appetite of the soul by which
it unites itself to the body in a way accommodated to the
dispositions of the body, as liquid put into a bowl accommodates
itself to the figure of a bowl—sicut vinum in vase acetoso. God
was therefore neither the author of Adam’s fall, nor of the
propagation of sin.”
Herzog, Encyclopædia, art.: Placeus—“In the title of his works we
read ‘Placæus’; he himself, however, wrote ‘Placeus,’ which is the
more correct Latin form [of the French ‘de la Place’]. In Adam’s
first sin, Placeus distinguished between the actual sinning and
the first habitual sin (corrupted disposition). The former was
transient; the latter clung to his person, and was propagated to
all. It is truly sin, and it is imputed to all, since it makes all
condemnable. Placeus believes in the imputation of this corrupted
disposition, but not in the imputation of the first act of Adam,
except mediately, through the imputation of the inherited
depravity.” Fisher, Discussions, 389—“Mere native corruption is
the whole of original sin. Placeus justifies his use of the term
‘imputation’ by _Rom. 2:26_—‘_If therefore the uncircumcision keep
the ordinances of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be
reckoned_ [imputed] _for circumcision?_’ Our own depravity is the
necessary condition of the imputation of Adam’s sin, just as our
own faith is the necessary condition of the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness.”
Advocates of Mediate Imputation are, in Great Britain, G. Payne,
in his book entitled: Original Sin; John Caird, Fund. Ideas of
Christianity, 1:196-332; and James S. Candlish, Biblical Doctrine
of Sin, 111-122; in America, H. B. Smith, in his System of
Christian Doctrine, 169, 284, 285, 314-323; and E. G. Robinson,
Christian Theology. The editor of Dr. Smith’s work says: “On the
whole, he favored the theory of Mediate Imputation. There is a
note which reads thus: ‘Neither Mediate nor Immediate Imputation
is wholly satisfactory.’ Understand by ‘Mediate Imputation’ a full
statement of the facts in the case, and the author accepted it;
understand by it a theory professing to give the final explanation
of the facts, and it was ‘not wholly satisfactory.’ ” Dr. Smith
himself says, 316—“Original sin is a doctrine respecting the moral
conditions of human nature as from Adam—generic: and it is not a
doctrine respecting personal liabilities and desert. For the
latter, we need more and other circumstances. Strictly speaking,
it is not sin, which is ill-deserving, but only the sinner. The
ultimate distinction is here: There is a well-grounded difference
to be made between personal desert, strictly personal character
and liabilities (of each individual under the divine law, as
applied specifically, _e. g._, in the last adjudication), and a
generic moral condition—the antecedent ground of such personal
character.
“The distinction, however, is not between what has moral quality
and what has not, but between the moral state of each as a member
of the race, and his personal liabilities and desert as an
individual. This original sin would wear to us only the character
of evil, and not of sinfulness, were it not for _the fact_ that we
feel guilty in view of our corruption when it becomes known to us
in our own acts. Then there is involved in it not merely a sense
of evil and misery, but also a sense of guilt; moreover,
redemption is also necessary to remove it, which shows that it is
a moral state. Here is the point of junction between the two
extreme positions, that we sinned in Adam, and that all sin
consists in sinning. The guilt of Adam’s sin is—this exposure,
this liability on account of such native corruption, our having
the same nature in the same moral bias. The guilt of Adam’s sin is
_not to be separated_ from the existence of this evil disposition.
And this guilt is what is imputed to us.” See art. on H. B. Smith,
in Presb. Rev., 1881; “He did not fully acquiesce in Placeus’s
view, which makes the corrupt nature by descent the only ground of
imputation.”
The theory of Mediate Imputation is exposed to the following objections:
A. It gives no explanation of man’s responsibility for his inborn
depravity. No explanation of this is possible, which does not regard man’s
depravity as having had its origin in a free personal act, either of the
individual, or of collective human nature in its first father and head.
But this participation of all men in Adam’s sin the theory expressly
denies.
The theory holds that we are responsible for the effect, but not
for the cause—“post Adamum, non propter Adamum.” But, says Julius
Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:209, 331—“If this sinful tendency be in us
solely through the act of others, and not through our own deed,
they, and not we, are responsible for it,—it is not our guilt, but
our misfortune. And even as to actual sins which spring from this
inherent sinful tendency, these are not strictly our own, but the
acts of our first parents through us. Why impute them to us as
actual sins, for which we are to be condemned? Thus, if we deny
the existence of guilt, we destroy the reality of sin, and _vice
versa_.” Thornwell, Theology, 1:348, 349—This theory “does not
explain the sense of guilt, as connected with depravity of
nature,—how the feeling of ill-desert can arise in relation to a
state of mind of which we have been only passive recipients. The
child does not reproach himself for the afflictions which a
father’s follies have brought upon him. But our inward corruption
we do feel to be our own fault,—it is our crime as well as our
shame.”
B. Since the origination of this corrupt nature cannot be charged to the
account of man, man’s inheritance of it must be regarded in the light of
an arbitrary divine infliction—a conclusion which reflects upon the
justice of God. Man is not only condemned for a sinfulness of which God is
the author, but is condemned without any real probation, either individual
or collective.
Dr. Hovey, Outlines of Theology, objects to the theory of Mediate
Imputation, because: “1. It casts so faint a light on the justice
of God in the imputation of Adam’s sin to adults who do as he did.
2. It casts no light on the justice of God in bringing into
existence a race inclined to sin by the fall of Adam. The
inherited bias is still unexplained, and the imputation of it is a
riddle, or a wrong, to the natural understanding.” It is unjust to
hold us guilty of the effect, if we be not first guilty of the
cause.
C. It contradicts those passages of Scripture which refer the origin of
human condemnation, as well as of human depravity, to the sin of our first
parents, and which represent universal death, not as a matter of divine
sovereignty, but as a judicial infliction of penalty upon all men for the
sin of the race in Adam (Rom. 5:16, 18). It moreover does violence to the
Scripture in its unnatural interpretation of “all sinned,” in Rom.
5:12—words which imply the oneness of the race with Adam, and the
causative relation of Adam’s sin to our guilt.
Certain passages which Dr. H. B. Smith, System, 317, quotes from
Edwards, as favoring the theory of Mediate Imputation, seem to us
to favor quite a different view. See Edwards, 2:482 _sq._—“The
first existing of a corrupt disposition in their hearts is not to
be looked upon as sin belonging to them distinct from their
participation in Adam’s first sin; it is, as it were, the extended
pollution of that sin through the whole tree, by virtue of the
constituted union of the branches with the root.... I am humbly of
the opinion that, if any have supposed the children of Adam to
come into the world with a double guilt, one the guilt of Adam’s
sin, another the guilt arising from their having a corrupt heart,
they have not so well considered the matter.” And afterwards:
“Derivation of evil disposition (or rather co-existence) is in
consequence of the union,”—but “not properly a consequence of the
imputation of his sin; nay, rather antecedent to it, as it was in
Adam himself. The first depravity of heart, and the imputation of
that sin, are both the consequences of that established union; but
yet in such order, that the evil disposition is first, and the
charge of guilt consequent, as it was in the case of Adam
himself.”
Edwards quotes Stapfer: “The Reformed divines do not hold
immediate and mediate imputation _separately_, but always
together.” And still further, 2:493—“And therefore the sin of the
apostasy is not theirs, merely because God imputes it to them; but
it is truly and properly theirs, and on that ground God imputes it
to them.” It seems to us that Dr. Smith mistakes the drift of
these passages from Edwards, and that in making the identification
with Adam primary, and imputation of his sin secondary, they favor
the theory of Adam’s Natural Headship rather than the theory of
Mediate Imputation. Edwards regards the order as (1) apostasy; (2)
depravity; (3) guilt;—but in all three, Adam and we are, by divine
constitution, one. To be guilty of the depravity, therefore, we
must first be guilty of the apostasy.
For the reasons above mentioned we regard the theory of Mediate
Imputation as a half-way house where there is no permanent
lodgment. The logical mind can find no satisfaction therein, but
is driven either forward, to the Augustinian doctrine which we are
next to consider, or backward, to the New School doctrine with its
atomistic conception of man and its arbitrary sovereignty of God.
On the theory of Mediate Imputation, see Cunningham, Historical
Theology, 1:496-639; Princeton Essays, 1:129, 154, 168; Hodge,
Syst. Theology, 2:205-214; Shedd, History of Doctrine, 2:158;
Baird, Elohim Revealed, 46, 47, 474-479, 504-507.
6. The Augustinian Theory, or Theory of Adam’s Natural Headship.
This theory was first elaborated by Augustine (354-430), the great
opponent of Pelagius; although its central feature appears in the writings
of Tertullian (died about 220), Hilary (350), and Ambrose (374). It is
frequently designated as the Augustinian view of sin. It was the view held
by the Reformers, Zwingle excepted. Its principal advocates in this
country are Dr. Shedd and Dr. Baird.
It holds that God imputes the sin of Adam immediately to all his
posterity, in virtue of that organic unity of mankind by which the whole
race at the time of Adam’s transgression existed, not individually, but
seminally, in him as its head. The total life of humanity was then in
Adam; the race as yet had its being only in him. Its essence was not yet
individualized; its forces were not yet distributed; the powers which now
exist in separate men were then unified and localized in Adam; Adam’s will
was yet the will of the species. In Adam’s free act, the will of the race
revolted from God and the nature of the race corrupted itself. The nature
which we now possess is the same nature that corrupted itself in Adam—“not
the same in kind merely, but the same as flowing to us continuously from
him.”
Adam’s sin is imputed to us immediately, therefore, not as something
foreign to us, but because it is ours—we and all other men having existed
as one moral person or one moral whole, in him, and, as the result of that
transgression, possessing a nature destitute of love to God and prone to
evil. In Rom. 5:12—“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,”
signifies: “death physical, spiritual, and eternal passed unto all men,
because all sinned in Adam their natural head.”
Milton, Par. Lost, 9:414—“Where likeliest he [Satan] might find
The only two of mankind, but in them The whole included race, his
purpos’d prey.” Augustine, De Pec. Mer. et Rem., 3:7—“In Adamo
omnes tune peccaverunt, quando in ejus natura adhuc omnes ille
unus fuerunt”; De Civ. Dei, 13, 14—“Omnes enim fuimus in illo uno,
quando omnes fuimus ille unus.... Nondum erat nobis singillatim
creata et distributa forma in qua singuli viveremus, sed jam
natura erat seminalis ex qua propagaremur.” On Augustine’s view,
see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2; 43-45 (System Doct., 2:338, 339)—In
opposition to Pelagius who made sin to consist in single acts,
“Augustine emphasized the sinful state. This was a deprivation of
original righteousness + inordinate love. Tertullian, Cyprian,
Hilarius, Ambrose had advocated traducianism, according to which,
without their personal participation, the sinfulness of all is
grounded in Adam’s free act. They incur its consequences as an
evil which is, at the same time, punishment of the inherited
fault. But Irenæus, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, say Adam was not
simply a single individual, but the universal man. We were
comprehended in him, so that in him we sinned. On the first view,
the posterity were passive; on the second, they were active, in
Adam’s sin. Augustine represents both views, desiring to unite the
universal sinfulness involved in traducianism with the universal
will and guilt involved in cooperation with Adam’s sin. Adam,
therefore, to him, is a double conception, and = individual +
race.”
Mozley on Predestination, 402—“In Augustine, some passages refer
all wickedness to original sin; some account for different degrees
of evil by different degrees of original sin (Op. imp. cont.
Julianum, 4:128—‘Malitia naturalis.... in aliis minor, in aliis
major est’); in some, the individual seems to add to original sin
(De Correp. et Gratia, c. 13—‘Per liberum arbitrium alia insuper
addiderunt, alii majus, alii minus, sed omnes mali.’ De Grat. et
Lib. Arbit., 2:1—‘Added to the sin of their birth sins of their
own commission’; 2:4—‘Neither denies our liberty of will, whether
to choose an evil or a good life, nor attributes to it so much
power that it can avail anything without God’s grace, or that it
can change itself from evil to good’).” These passages seem to
show that, side by side with the race-sin and its development,
Augustine recognized a domain of free personal decision, by which
each man could to some extent modify his character, and make
himself more or less depraved.
The theory of Augustine was not the mere result of Augustine’s
temperament or of Augustine’s sins. Many men have sinned like
Augustine, but their intellects have only been benumbed and have
been led into all manner of unbelief. It was the Holy Spirit who
took possession of the temperament, and so overruled the sin as to
make it a glass through which Augustine saw the depths of his
nature. Nor was his doctrine one of exclusive divine
transcendence, which left man a helpless worm at enmity with
infinite justice. He was also a passionate believer in the
immanence of God. He writes: “I could not be, O my God, could not
be at all, wert not thou in me; rather, were not I in thee, of
whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are are all
things.... O God, thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is
restless, till it find rest in thee.—The will of God is the very
nature of things—Dei voluntas rerum natura est.”
Allen, Continuity of Christian Thought, Introduction, very
erroneously declares that “the Augustinian theology rests upon the
transcendence of Deity as its controlling principle, and at every
point appears as an inferior rendering of the earlier
interpretation of the Christian faith.” On the other hand, L. L.
Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 69, 368-397, shows that, while
Athanasius held to a dualistic transcendence, Augustine held to a
theistic immanence: “Thus the Stoic, Neo-Platonic immanence, with
Augustine, supplants the Platonico-Aristotelian and Athanasian
transcendence.” Alexander, Theories of the Will, 90—“The theories
of the early Fathers were indeterministic, and the pronounced
Augustinianism of Augustine was the result of the rise into
prominence of the doctrine of original sin.... The early Fathers
thought of the origin of sin in angels and in Adam as due to free
will. Augustine thought of the origin of sin in Adam’s posterity
as due to inherited evil will.” Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums,
161—“To this day in Catholicism inward and living piety and the
expression of it is in essence wholly Augustinian.”
Calvin was essentially Augustinian and realistic; see his
Institutes, book 2, chap. 1-3; Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 1:505, 506,
with the quotations and references. Zwingle was not an
Augustinian. He held that native vitiosity, although it is the
uniform occasion of sin, is not itself sin: “It is not a crime,
but a condition and a disease.” See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct. 2:256,
with references. Zwingle taught that every new-born child—thanks
to Christ’s making alive of all those who had died in Adam—is as
free from any taint of sin as Adam was before the fall. The
Reformers, however, with the single exception of Zwingle, were
Augustinians, and accounted for the hereditary guilt of mankind,
not by the fact that all men were represented in Adam, but that
all men participated in Adam’s sin. This is still the doctrine of
the Lutheran church.
The theory of Adam’s Natural Headship regards humanity at large as
the outgrowth of one germ. Though the leaves of a tree appear as
disconnected units when we look down upon them from above, a view
from beneath will discern the common connection with the twigs,
branches, trunk, and will finally trace their life to the root,
and to the seed from which it originally sprang. The race of man
is one because it sprang from one head. Its members are not to be
regarded atomistically, as segregated individuals; the deeper
truth is the truth of organic unity. Yet we are not philosophical
realists; we do not believe in the separate existence of
universals. We hold, not to _universalia ante rem_, which is
extreme realism; nor to _universalia post rem_, which is
nominalism; but to _universalia in re_, which is moderate realism.
Extreme realism cannot see the trees for the wood; nominalism
cannot see the wood for the trees; moderate realism sees the wood
in the trees. We hold to “_universalia in re_, but insist that the
universals must be recognized as _realities_, as truly as the
individuals are” (H. B. Smith, System, 319, note). Three acorns
have a common life, as three spools have not. Moderate realism is
true of organic things; nominalism is true only of proper names.
God has not created any new tree nature since he created the first
tree; nor has he created any new human nature since he created the
first man. I am but a branch and outgrowth of the tree of
humanity.
Our realism then only asserts the real historical connection of
each member of the race with its first father and head, and such a
derivation of each from him as makes us partakers of the character
which he formed. Adam was once the race; and when he fell, the
race fell. Shedd: “We all existed in Adam in our elementary
invisible substance. The _Seyn_ of all was there, though the
_Daseyn_ was not; the _noumenon_, though not the _phenomenon_, was
in existence.” On realism, see Koehler, Realismus und
Nominalismus; Neander, Ch. Hist., 4:356; Dorner, Person Christ,
2:377; Hase, Anselm, 2:77; F. E. Abbott, Scientific Theism,
Introd., 1-29, and in Mind, Oct. 1882:476, 477; Raymond, Theology,
2:30-33; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:69-74; Bowne, Theory of Thought
and Knowledge, 129-132; Ten Broeke, in Baptist Quar. Rev., Jan.
1892:1-26; Baldwin, Psychology, 280, 281; D. J. Hill, Genetic
Philosophy, 186; Hours with the Mystics, 1:213; Case, Physical
Realism, 17-19; Fullerton, Sameness and Identity, 88, 89, and
Concept of the Infinite, 95-114.
The new conceptions of the reign of law and of the principle of
heredity which prevail in modern science are working to the
advantage of Christian theology. The doctrine of Adam’s Natural
Headship is only a doctrine of the hereditary transmission of
character from the first father of the race to his descendants.
Hence we use the word “imputation” in its proper sense—that of a
reckoning or charging to us of that which is truly and properly
ours. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:259-357, esp. 328—“The
problem is: We must allow that the depravity, which all Adam’s
descendants inherit by natural generation, nevertheless involves
personal guilt; and yet this depravity, so far as it is natural,
wants the very conditions on which guilt depends. The only
satisfactory explanation of this difficulty is the Christian
doctrine of original sin. Here alone, if its inner possibility can
be maintained, can the apparently contradictory principles be
harmonized, viz.: the universal and deep-seated depravity of human
nature, as the source of actual sin, and individual responsibility
and guilt.” These words, though written by one who advocates a
different theory, are nevertheless a valuable argument in
corroboration of the theory of Adam’s Natural Headship.
Thornwell, Theology, 1:343—“We must contradict every Scripture
text and every Scripture doctrine which makes hereditary impurity
hateful to God and punishable in his sight, or we must maintain
that we sinned in Adam in his first transgression.” Secretan, in
his Work on Liberty, held to a _collective_ life of the race in
Adam. He was answered by Naville, Problem of Evil: “We existed in
Adam, not individually, but seminally. Each of us, as an
individual, is responsible only for his personal acts, or, to
speak more exactly, for the personal part of his acts. But each of
us, as he is man, is jointly and severally (_solidairement_)
responsible for the fall of the human race.” Bersier, The Oneness
of the Race, in its Fall and in its Future: “If we are commanded
to love our neighbor as ourselves, it is because our neighbor is
ourself.”
See Edwards, Original Sin, part 4, chap. 3; Shedd, on Original
Sin, in Discourses and Essays, 218-271, and references, 261-263,
also Dogm. Theol., 2:181-195; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 410-435,
451-460, 494; Schaff, in Bib. Sac., 5:220, and in Lange’s Com., on
Rom. 5:12; Auberlen, Div. Revelation, 175-180; Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, 3:28-38, 204-236; Thomasius, Christi Person und
Werk, 1:269-400; Martensen, Dogmatics, 173-183; Murphy, Scientific
Bases, 262 _sq._, _cf._ 101; Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 135;
Bp. Reynolds, Sinfulness of Sin, in Works, 1:102-350; Mozley on
Original Sin, in Lectures, 136-152; Kendall, on Natural Heirship,
or All the World Akin, in Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1885:614-626.
_Per contra_, see Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:157-164, 227-257; Haven,
in Bib. Sac., 20:451-455; Criticism of Baird’s doctrine, in
Princeton Rev., Apr. 1880:335-376; of Schaff’s doctrine, in
Princeton Rev., Apr. 1870:239-262.
We regard this theory of the Natural Headship of Adam as the most
satisfactory of the theories mentioned, and as furnishing the most
important help towards the understanding of the great problem of original
sin. In its favor may be urged the following considerations:
A. It puts the most natural interpretation upon Rom. 5:12-21. In verse 12
of this passage—“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned”—the great
majority of commentators regard the word “sinned” as describing a common
transgression of the race in Adam. The death spoken of is, as the whole
context shows, mainly though not exclusively physical. It has passed upon
all—even upon those who have committed no conscious and personal
transgression whereby to explain its infliction (verse 14). The legal
phraseology of the passage shows that this infliction is not a matter of
sovereign decree, but of judicial penalty (verses 13, 14, 15, 16,
18—“law,” “transgression,” “trespass,” “judgment ... of one unto
condemnation,” “act of righteousness,” “justification”). As the
explanation of this universal subjection to penalty, we are referred to
Adam’s sin. By that one act (“so,” verse 12)—the “trespass of the one” man
(v. 15, 17), the “one trespass” (v. 18)—death came to all men, because all
[not “have sinned”, but] sinned (πάντες ἥμαρτον—aorist of instantaneous
past action)—that is, all sinned in “the one trespass” of “the one” man.
Compare 1 Cor. 15:22—“As in Adam all die”—where the contrast with physical
resurrection shows that physical death is meant; 2 Cor. 5:14—“one died for
all, therefore all died.” See Commentaries of Meyer, Bengel, Olshausen,
Philippi, Wordsworth, Lange, Godet, Shedd. This is also recognized as the
correct interpretation of Paul’s words by Beyschlag, Ritschl, and
Pfleiderer, although no one of these three accepts Paul’s doctrine as
authoritative.
Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 2:58-60—“To understand the apostle’s
view, we must follow the exposition of Bengel (which is favored
also by Meyer and Pfleiderer): ‘_Because they_—viz., in Adam—_all
have sinned_’; they all, namely, who were included in Adam
according to the O. T. view which sees the whole race to its
founder, acted in his action.” Ritschl: “Certainly Paul treated
the universal destiny of death as due to the sin of Adam.
Nevertheless it is not yet suited for a theological rule just for
the reason that the apostle has formed this idea;” in other words,
Paul’s teaching it does not make it binding upon our faith.
Philippi, Com. on Rom., 168—Interpret _Rom. 5:12_—“_one sinned for
all, therefore all sinned_,” by _2 Cor. 5:15_—“_one died for all,
therefore all died._” Evans, in Presb. Rev., 1883:294—“_by the
trespass of the one the many died_,” “_by the trespass of the one,
death reigned __ through the one_,” “_through the one man’s
disobedience_”—all these phrases, and the phrases with respect to
salvation which correspond to them, indicate that the fallen race
and the redeemed race are each regarded as a multitude, a
totality. So οἱ πάντεσ in 2 Cor. 5:14 indicates a corresponding
conception of the organic unity of the race.
Prof. George B. Stevens, Pauline Theology, 32-40, 129-139, denies
that Paul taught the sinning of all men in Adam: “They sinned in
the same sense in which believers were crucified to the world and
died unto sin when Christ died upon the cross. The believer’s
renewal is conceived as wrought in advance by those acts and
experiences of Christ in which it has its ground. As the
consequences of his vicarious sufferings are traced back to their
cause, so are the consequences which flowed from the beginning of
sin in Adam traced back to that original fount of evil and
identified with it; but the latter statement should no more be
treated as a rigid logical formula than the former, its
counterpart.... There is a mystical identification of the
procuring cause with its effect,—both in the case of Adam and of
Christ.”
In our treatment of the New School theory of sin we have pointed
out that the inability to understand the vital union of the
believer with Christ incapacitates the New School theologian from
understanding the organic union of the race with Adam. Paul’s
phrase “_in Christ_” meant more than that Christ is the type and
beginner of salvation, and sinning in Adam meant more to Paul than
following the example or acting in the spirit of our first father.
In _2 Cor. 5:14_ the argument is that since Christ died, all
believers died to sin and death in him. Their resurrection-life is
the same life that died and rose again in his death and
resurrection. So Adam’s sin is ours because the same life which
transgressed and became corrupt in him has come down to us and is
our possession. In _Rom. 5:14_, the individual and conscious sins
to which the New School theory attaches the condemning sentence
are expressly excluded, and in _verses 15-19_ the judgment is
declared to be “_of one trespass_.” Prof. Wm. Arnold Stevens, of
Rochester, says well: “Paul teaches that Adam’s sin is ours, not
potentially, but actually.” Of ἥμαρτον, he says: “This might
conceivably be: (1) the historical aorist proper, used in its
momentary sense; (2) the comprehensive or collective aorist, as in
διῆλθεν in the same verse; (3) the aorist used in the sense of the
English perfect, as in _Rom. 3:23_—πάντες γὰρ ἥμαρτον καὶ
ὑστεροῦνται. In _5:12_, the context determines with great
probability that the aorist is used in the first of these senses.”
We may add that interpreters are not wanting who so take ἥμαρτον
in _3:23_; see also margin of Rev. Version. But since the passage
_Rom. 5:12-19_ is so important, we reserve to the close of this
section a treatment of it in greater detail.
B. It permits whatever of truth there may be in the Federal theory and in
the theory of Mediate Imputation to be combined with it, while neither of
these latter theories can be justified to reason unless they are regarded
as corollaries or accessories of the truth of Adam’s Natural Headship.
Only on this supposition of Natural Headship could God justly constitute
Adam our representative, or hold us responsible for the depraved nature we
have received from him. It moreover justifies God’s ways, in postulating a
real and a fair probation of our common nature as preliminary to
imputation of sin—a truth which the theories just mentioned, in common
with that of the New School, virtually deny,—while it rests upon correct
philosophical principles with regard to will, ability, law, and accepts
the Scriptural representations of the nature of sin, the penal character
of death, the origin of the soul, and the oneness of the race in the
transgression.
John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:196-232, favors the
view that sin consists simply in an inherited bias of our nature
to evil, and that we are guilty from birth because we are sinful
from birth. But he recognizes in Augustinianism the truth of the
organic unity of the race and the implication of every member in
its past history. He tells us that we must not regard man simply
as an abstract or isolated individual. The atomistic theory
regards society as having no existence other than that of the
individuals who compose it. But it is nearer the truth to say that
it is society which creates the individual, rather than that the
individual creates society. Man does not come into existence a
blank tablet on which external agencies may write whatever record
they will. The individual is steeped in influences which are due
to the past history of his kind. The individualistic theory runs
counter to the most obvious facts of observation and experience.
As a philosophy of life, Augustinianism has a depth and
significance which the individualistic theory cannot claim.
Alvah Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 175 (2d ed.)—“Every
child of Adam is accountable for the degree of sympathy which he
has for the whole system of evil in the world, and with the primal
act of disobedience among men. If that sympathy is full, whether
expressed by deed or thought, if the whole force of his being is
arrayed against heaven and on the side of hell, it is difficult to
limit his responsibility.” Schleiermacher held that the guilt of
original sin attached, not to the individual as an individual, but
as a member of the race, so that the consciousness of race-union
carried with it the consciousness of race-guilt. He held all men
to be equally sinful and to differ only in their different
reception of or attitude toward grace, sin being the universal
_malum metaphysicum_ of Spinoza; see Pfleiderer, Prot. Theol. seit
Kant, 113.
C. While its fundamental presupposition—a determination of the will of
each member of the race prior to his individual consciousness—is an
hypothesis difficult in itself, it is an hypothesis which furnishes the
key to many more difficulties than it suggests. Once allow that the race
was one in its first ancestor and fell in him, and light is thrown on a
problem otherwise insoluble—the problem of our accountability for a sinful
nature which we have not personally and consciously originated. Since we
cannot, with the three theories first mentioned, deny either of the terms
of this problem—inborn depravity or accountability for it,—we accept this
solution as the best attainable.
Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 20—“The whole swing of
the pendulum of thought of to-day is away from the individual and
towards the social point of view. Theories of society are
supplementing theories of the individual. The solidarity of man is
the regnant thought in both the scientific and the historical
study of man. It is even running into the extreme of a determinism
that annihilates the individual.” Chapman, Jesus Christ and the
Present Age, 43—“It was never less possible to deny the truth to
which theology gives expression in its doctrine of original sin
than in the present age. It is only one form of the universally
recognized fact of heredity. There is a collective evil, for which
the responsibility rests on the whole race of man. Of this common
evil each man inherits his share; it is organized in his nature;
it is established in his environment.” E. G. Robinson: “The
tendency of modern theology [in the last generation] was to
individualization, to make each man ‘a little Almighty.’ But the
human race is one in kind, and in a sense is numerically one. The
race lay potentially in Adam. The entire developing force of the
race was in him. There is no carrying the race up, except from the
starting-point of a fallen and guilty humanity.” Goethe said that
while humanity ever advances, individual man remains the same.
The true test of a theory is, not that it can itself be explained,
but that it is capable of explaining. The atomic theory in
chemistry, the theory of the ether in physics, the theory of
gravitation, the theory of evolution, are all in themselves
indemonstrable hypotheses, provisionally accepted simply because,
if granted, they unify great aggregations of facts. Coleridge said
that original sin is the one mystery that makes all other things
clear. In this mystery, however, there is nothing
self-contradictory or arbitrary. Gladden, What is Left?
131—“Heredity is God working in us, and environment is God working
around us.” Whether we adopt the theory of Augustine or not, the
facts of universal moral obliquity and universal human suffering
confront us. We are compelled to reconcile these facts with our
faith in the righteousness and goodness of God. Augustine gives us
a unifying principle which, better than any other, explains these
facts and justifies them. On the solidarity of the race, see
Bruce, The Providential Order, 280-310, and art. on Sin, by
Bernard, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary.
D. This theory finds support in the conclusions of modern science: with
regard to the moral law, as requiring right states as well as right acts;
with regard to the human will, as including subconscious and unconscious
bent and determination; with regard to heredity, and the transmission of
evil character; with regard to the unity and solidarity of the human race.
The Augustinian theory may therefore be called an ethical or theological
interpretation of certain incontestable and acknowledged biological facts.
Ribot, Heredity, 1—“Heredity is that biological law by which all
beings endowed with life tend to repeat themselves in their
descendants; it is for the species what personal identity is for
the individual. By it a groundwork remains unchanged amid
incessant variations. By it nature ever copies and imitates
herself.” Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 202-218—“In man’s
moral condition we find arrested development; reversion to a
savage type; hypocritical and self-protective mimicry of virtue;
parasitism; physical and moral abnormality; deep-seated perversion
of faculty.” Simon, Reconciliation, 154 sq.—“The organism was
affected before the individuals which are its successive
differentiations and products were affected.... Humanity as an
organism received an injury from sin. It received that injury at
the very beginning.... At the moment when the seed began to
germinate disease entered and it was smitten with death on account
of sin.”
Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 134—“A general notion has
no actual or possible metaphysical existence. All real existence
is necessarily singular and individual. The only way to give the
notion any metaphysical significance is to turn it into a law
inherent in reality, and this attempt will fail unless we finally
conceive this law as a rule according to which a basal
intelligence proceeds in positing individuals.” Sheldon, in the
Methodist Review, March, 1901:214-227, applies this explanation to
the doctrine of original sin. Men have a common nature, he says,
only in the sense that they are resembling personalities. If we
literally died in Adam, we also literally died in Christ. There is
no all-inclusive Christ, any more than there is an all-inclusive
Adam. We regard this argument as proving the precise opposite of
its intended conclusion. There is an all-inclusive Christ, and the
fundamental error of most of those who oppose Augustinianism is
that they misconceive the union of the believer with Christ. “A
basal intelligence” here “posits individuals.” And so with the
relation of men to Adam. Here too there is “a law inherent in
reality”—the regular working of the divine will, according to
which like produces like, and a sinful germ reproduces itself.
E. We are to remember, however, that while this theory of the method of
our union with Adam is merely a valuable hypothesis, the problem which it
seeks to explain is, in both its terms, presented to us both by conscience
and by Scripture. In connection with this problem a central fact is
announced in Scripture, which we feel compelled to believe upon divine
testimony, even though every attempted explanation should prove
unsatisfactory. That central fact, which constitutes the substance of the
Scripture doctrine of original sin, is simply this: that the sin of Adam
is the immediate cause and ground of inborn depravity, guilt and
condemnation to the whole human race.
Three things must be received on Scripture testimony: (1) inborn
depravity; (2) guilt and condemnation therefor; (3) Adam’s sin the
cause and ground of both. From these three positions of Scripture
it seems not only natural, but inevitable, to draw the inference
that we “_all sinned_” in Adam. The Augustinian theory simply puts
in a link of connection between two sets of facts which otherwise
would be difficult to reconcile. But, in putting in that link of
connection, it claims that it is merely bringing out into clear
light an underlying but implicit assumption of Paul’s reasoning,
and this it seeks to prove by showing that upon no other
assumption can Paul’s reasoning be understood at all. Since the
passage in _Rom. 5:12-19_ is so important, we proceed to examine
it in greater detail. Our treatment is mainly a reproduction of
the substance of Shedd’s Commentary, although we have combined
with it remarks from Meyer, Schaff, Moule, and others.
_Exposition of Rom. 5:12-19._—_Parallel between the salvation in
Christ and the ruin that has come through Adam_, in each case
through no personal act of our own, neither by our earning
salvation in the case of the life received through Christ, nor by
our individually sinning in the case of the death received through
Adam. The statement of the parallel is begun in
_Verse 12_: “_as through one man sin entered into the world, and
death through sin, and so death passed unto all men, for that all
sinned,_” so (as we may complete the interrupted sentence) by one
man righteousness entered into the world, and life by
righteousness, and so life passed upon all men, because all became
partakers of this righteousness. Both physical and spiritual death
is meant. That it is physical is shown (1) from _verse 14_; (2)
from the allusion to _Gen. 3:19_; (3) from the universal Jewish
and Christian assumption that physical death was the result of
Adam’s sin. See Wisdom 2:23, 24; Sirach 25:24; 2 Esdras 3:7, 21;
7:11, 46, 48, 118; 9:19; _John 8:44_; _1 Cor. 15:21_. That it is
spiritual, is evident from _Rom. 5:18, 21_, where ζωή is the
opposite of θάνατος, and from _2 Tim. 1:10_, where the same
contrast occurs. The οὔτος in _verse 12_ shows the mode in which
historically death has come to all, namely, that the _one_ sinned,
and thereby brought death to all; in other words, death is the
effect, of which the sin of the one is the cause. By Adam’s act,
physical and spiritual death passed upon all men, because all
sinned. ἐφ᾽ ᾦ = because, on the ground of the fact that, for the
reason that, all sinned. πάντες = all, without exception, infants
included, as _verse 14_ teaches.
Ἥμαρτον mentions the particular reason why all men died, _viz._,
because all men sinned. It is the aorist of momentary past
action—sinned when, through the one, sin entered into the world.
It is as much as to say, “because, when Adam sinned, all men
sinned in and with him.” This is proved by the succeeding
explanatory context (_verses 15-19_), in which it is reiterated
five times in succession that one and only one sin is the cause of
the death that befalls all men. Compare _1 Cor. 15:22_. The senses
“all were sinful,” “all became sinful,” are inadmissible, for
ἁμαρτάνειν is not ἁμαρτωλὸν γίγνεσθαι or εἶναι. The sense “death
passed upon all men, because all have consciously and personally
sinned,” is contradicted (1) by _verse 14_, in which it is
asserted that certain persons who are a part of πάντες, the
subject of ἥμαρτον, and who suffer the death which is the penalty
of sin, did not commit sins resembling Adam’s first sin, _i. e._,
individual and conscious transgressions; and (2) by _verses
15-19_, in which it is asserted repeatedly that only one sin, and
not millions of transgressions, is the cause of the death of all
men. This sense would seem to require ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἁμαρτάνουσιν.
Neither can ἥμαρτον have the sense “were accounted and treated as
sinners”; for (1) there is no other instance in Scripture where
this active verb has a passive signification; and (2) the passive
makes ἥμαρτον to denote God’s action, and not man’s. This would
not furnish the justification of the infliction of death, which
Paul is seeking,
_Verse 13_ begins a demonstration of the proposition, in _Verse
12_, that death comes to all, because all men sinned the one sin
of the one man. The argument is as follows: Before the law sin
existed; for there was death, the penalty of sin. But this sin was
not sin committed against the _Mosaic_ law, because that law was
not yet in existence. The death in the world prior to that law
proves that there must have been some other law, against which sin
had been committed.
_Verse 14_. Nor could it have been personal and conscious
violation of an _unwritten_ law, for which death was inflicted;
for death passed upon multitudes, such as infants and idiots, who
did not sin in their own persons, as Adam did, by violating some
known commandment. Infants are not specifically named here,
because the intention is to include others who, though mature in
years, have not reached moral consciousness. But since death is
everywhere and always the penalty of sin, the death of all must
have been the penalty of the common sin of the race, when πάντες
ἥμαρτον in Adam. The law which they violated was the Eden statute,
_Gen. 2:17_. The relation between their sin and Adam’s is not that
of _resemblance_, but of _identity_. Had the sin by which death
came upon them been one _like_ Adam’s, there would have been as
many sins, to be the cause of death and to account for it, as
there were individuals. Death would have come into the world
through millions of men, and not “_through one man_” (_verse 12_),
and judgment would have come upon all men to condemnation through
millions of trespasses, and not “_through one trespass_” (_v.
18_). The object, then, of the parenthetical digression in _verses
13_ and _14_ is to prevent the reader from supposing, from the
statement that “all men sinned,” that the individual
transgressions of all men are meant, and to make it clear that
only the one first sin of the one first man is intended. Those who
died before Moses must have violated some law. The Mosaic law, and
the law of conscience, have been ruled out of the case. These
persons must, therefore, have sinned against the commandment in
Eden, the probationary statute; and their sin was not _similar_
(ὁμοίος) to Adam’s, but Adam’s _identical_ sin, the very same sin
numerically of the “_one man_.” They did not, in their own persons
and consciously, sin as Adam did; yet in Adam, and in the nature
common to him and them, they sinned and fell (_versus_ Current
Discussions in Theology, 5:277, 278). They did not sin _like_
Adam, but they “sinned _in_ him, and fell _with_ him, in that
first transgression” (Westminster Larger Catechism, 22).
_Verses 15-17_ show how the work of grace differs from, and
surpasses, the work of sin. Over against God’s exact justice in
punishing all for the first sin which all committed in Adam, is
set the gratuitous justification of all who are in Christ. Adam’s
sin is the act of Adam and his posterity together; hence the
imputation to the posterity is just, and merited. Christ’s
obedience is the work of Christ alone; hence the imputation of it
to the elect is gracious and unmerited. Here τοὺς πολλούς is not
of equal extent with οἱ πολλοί in the first clause, because other
passages teach that “the many” who die in Adam are not
conterminous with “_the many_” who live in Christ; see _1 Cor.
15:22_; _Mat. 25:46_; also, see note on _verse 18_, below. Τοὺς
πολλούς here refers to the same persons who, in _verse 17_, are
said to “_receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness_.” _Verse 16_ notices a numerical difference between
the condemnation and the justification. Condemnation results from
_one_ offense; justification delivers from _many_ offences. _Verse
17_ enforces and explains _verse 16_. If the union with Adam in
his sin was certain to bring destruction, the union with Christ in
his righteousness is yet more certain to bring salvation.
_Verse 18_ resumes the parallel between Adam and Christ which was
commenced in _verse 12_, but was interrupted by the explanatory
parenthesis in _verses 13-17_. “_As through one trespass ... unto
all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness
... unto all men unto justification of_ [necessary to] _life_.”
Here the “_all men to condemnation_”—the οἱ πολλοί in _verse 15_;
and the “_all men unto justification of life_”—the τοὺς πολλούς in
_verse 15_. There is a totality in each case; but, in the former
case, it is the “_all men_” who derive their physical life from
Adam,—in the latter case, it is the “_all men_” who derive their
spiritual life from Christ (compare _1 Cor. 15:22_—“_For as in
Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive_”—in which
last clause Paul is speaking, as the context shows, not of the
resurrection of all men, both saints and sinners, but only of the
blessed resurrection of the righteous; in other words, of the
resurrection of those who are one with Christ).
_Verse 19._ “_For as through the one man’s disobedience the many
were constituted sinners, even so through the obedience of the one
shall the many be constituted righteous._” The many were
constituted sinners because, according to _verse 12_, they sinned
in and with Adam in his fall. The verb presupposes the fact of
natural union between those to whom it relates. All men are
declared to be sinners on the ground of that “_one trespass_,”
because, when that one trespass was committed, all men were one
man—that is, were one common nature in the first human pair. Sin
is imputed, because it is committed. All men are punished with
death, because they literally sinned in Adam, and not because they
are metaphorically reputed to have done so, but in fact did not.
Οἱ πολλοί is used in contrast with the one forefather, and the
atonement of Christ is designated as ὑπακοή, in order to contrast
it with the παρακοή of Adam.
Κατασταθήσονται has the same signification as in the first part of
the verse. Δίκαιοι κατασταθήσονται means simply “shall be
justified,” and is used instead of δικαιωθήσονται, in order to
make the antithesis of ἁμαρτωλοὶ κατεστάθησαν more perfect. This
being “_constituted righteous_” presupposes the fact of a union
between ὁ εἶς and οἱ πολλοί, _i. e._, between Christ and
believers, just as the being “_constituted sinners_” presupposed
the fact of a union between ὁ εἶς and οἱ πολλοί, _i. e._, between
all men and Adam. The future κατασταθήσονται refers to the
succession of believers; the _justification_ of all was, ideally,
complete already, but actually, it would await the times of
individual believing. “_The many_” who shall be “_constituted
righteous_”—not all mankind, but only “_the many_” to whom, in
_verse 15_, grace abounded, and who are described, in _verse 17_,
as “_they that receive abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness_.”
“But this union differs in several important particulars from that
between Adam and his posterity. It is not natural and substantial,
but moral and spiritual; not generic and universal, but individual
and by election; not caused by the creative act of God, but by his
regenerating act. All men, without exception, are one with Adam;
only believing men are one with Christ. The imputation of Adam’s
sin is not an arbitrary act in the sense that, if God so pleased,
he could reckon it to the account of any beings in the universe,
by a volition. The sin of Adam could not be imputed to the fallen
angels, for example, and punished in them, because they never were
one with Adam by unity of substance and nature. The fact that they
have committed actual transgression of their own will not justify
the imputation of Adam’s sin to them, any more than the fact that
the posterity of Adam have committed actual transgressions of
their own would be a sufficient reason for imputing the first sin
of Adam to them. Nothing but a real union of nature and being can
justify the imputation of Adam’s sin; and, similarly, the
obedience of Christ could no more be imputed to an unbelieving man
than to a lost angel, because neither of these is morally and
spiritually one with Christ” (Shedd). For a different
interpretation (ἡμαρτον—sinned personally and individually), see
Kendrick, in Bap. Rev., 1885:48-72.
No Condemnation Inherited.
Pelagian. Arminian. New School.
I. Origin of Immediate Immediate Immediate
the soul. Creation. creation. creation.
II. Man’s state Innocent, and Depraved, but Depraved and
at birth. able to obey still able to vicious, but
God. co-operate with this not sin.
the Spirit.
III. Effects of Only upon To corrupt his To communicate
Adam’s sin. himself. posterity visiosity to the
physically and whole race.
intellectually.
No guilt of
Adam’s sin
imputed.
IV. How did all By following By consciously By voluntary
sin? Adam’s example. ratifying Adam’s transgression of
own deed, in known law.
spite of the
Spirit’s aid.
V. What is Only of evil Evil tendencies Uncondemnable,
corruption? habit, in each kept in spite of but evil
case. the Spirit. tendencies.
VI. What is Every man’s own Only man’s own Man’s individual
imputed? sins. sins and acts of
ratifying of transgression.
this nature.
VII. What is Spiritual and Physical and Spiritual and
the death eternal. spiritual death eternal death
incurred? by decree. only.
VIII. How are By following By co-operating By accepting
men saved? Christ’s with the Spirit Christ under
example. given to all. influence of
truth presented
by the Spirit.
Condemnation Inherited.
Federal. Placean. Augustinian.
I. Origin of Immediate Immediate Immediate
the soul. creation. creation. creation.
II. Man’s state Depraved, Depraved, Depraved,
at birth. unable, and unable, and unable, and
condemnable. condemnable. condemnable.
III. Effects of To insure Natural Guilt of Adam’s
Adam’s sin. condemnation of connection of sin, corruption,
his fellows in depravity in all and death.
covenant, and his descendants.
their creation
as depraved.
IV. How did all By being By possessing a By having part
sin? accounted depraved nature. in the sin of
sinners in Adam, as seminal
Adam’s sin. head of the
race.
V. What is Condemnable, Condemnable, Condemnable,
corruption? evil disposition evil disposition evil disposition
and state. and state. and state.
VI. What is Adam’s sin, Only depraved Adam’s sin, our
imputed? man’s own nature and man’s depravity, and
corruption, and own sin. our own sins.
man’s own sins.
VII. What is Physical, Physical, Physical,
the death spiritual, and spiritual, and spiritual, and
incurred? eternal. eternal. eternal.
VIII. How are By being By becoming By Christ’s
men saved? accounted possessors of a work, with whom
righteous new nature in we are one.
through the act Christ.
of Christ.
II.—Objections to the Augustinian Doctrine of Imputation.
The doctrine of Imputation, to which we have thus arrived, is met by its
opponents with the following objections. In discussing them, we are to
remember that a truth revealed in Scripture may have claims to our belief,
in spite of difficulties to us insoluble. Yet it is hoped that examination
will show the objections in question to rest either upon false
philosophical principles or upon misconception of the doctrine assailed.
A. That there can be no sin apart from and prior to consciousness.
This we deny. The larger part of men’s evil dispositions and acts are
imperfectly conscious, and of many such dispositions and acts the evil
quality is not discerned at all. The objection rests upon the assumption
that law is confined to published statutes or to standards formally
recognized by its subjects. A profounder view of law as identical with the
constituent principles of being, as binding the nature to conformity with
the nature of God, as demanding right volitions only because these are
manifestations of a right state, as having claims upon men in their
corporate capacity, deprives this objection of all its force.
If our aim is to find a conscious act of transgression upon which
to base God’s charge of guilt and man’s condemnation, we can find
this more easily in Adam’s sin than at the beginning of each man’s
personal history; for no human being can remember his first sin.
The main question at issue is therefore this: Is all sin personal?
We claim that both Scripture and reason answer this question in
the negative. There is such a thing as race-sin and
race-responsibility.
B. That man cannot be responsible for a sinful nature which he did not
personally originate.
We reply that the objection ignores the testimony of conscience and of
Scripture. These assert that we are responsible for what we are. The
sinful nature is not something external to us, but is our inmost selves.
If man’s original righteousness and the new affection implanted in
regeneration have moral character, then the inborn tendency to evil has
moral character; as the former are commendable, so the latter is
condemnable.
If it be said that sin is the act of a person, and not of a
nature, we reply that in Adam the whole human nature once
subsisted in the form of a single personality, and the act of the
person could be at the same time the act of the nature. That which
could not be at any subsequent point of time, could be and was, at
that time. Human nature could fall _in Adam_, though that fall
could not be repeated in the case of any one of his descendants.
Hovey, Outlines, 129—“Shall we say that _will_ is the cause of sin
in holy beings, while _wrong desire_ is the cause of sin in unholy
beings? Augustine held this.” Pepper, Outlines, 112—“We do not
fall each one by himself. We were so on probation in Adam, that
his fall was our fall.”
C. That Adam’s sin cannot be imputed to us, since we cannot repent of it.
The objection has plausibility only so long as we fail to distinguish
between Adam’s sin as the inward apostasy of the nature from God, and
Adam’s sin as the outward act of transgression which followed and
manifested that apostasy. We cannot indeed repent of Adam’s sin as our
personal act or as Adam’s personal act, but regarding his sin as the
apostasy of our common nature—an apostasy which manifests itself in our
personal transgressions as it did in his, we can repent of it and do
repent of it. In truth it is this nature, as self-corrupted and averse to
God, for which the Christian most deeply repents.
God, we know, has not made our nature as we find it. We are
conscious of our depravity and apostasy from God. We know that God
cannot be responsible for this; we know that our nature is
responsible. But this it could not be, unless its corruption were
self-corruption. For this self-corrupted nature we should repent,
and do repent. Anselm, De Concep. Virg., 23—“Adam sinned in one
point of view as a person, in another as man (_i. e._, as human
nature which at that time existed in him alone). But since Adam
and humanity could not be separated, the sin of the person
necessarily affected the _nature_. This nature is what Adam
transmitted to his posterity, and transmitted it such as his sin
had made it, burdened with a debt which it could not pay, robbed
of the righteousness with which God had originally invested it;
and in every one of his descendants this impaired nature makes the
_persons_ sinners. Yet not in the same degree sinners as Adam was,
for the latter sinned both as human nature and as a person, while
new-born infants sin only as they possess the nature.”—more
briefly, in Adam a person made nature sinful; in his posterity,
nature makes persons sinful.
D. That, if we be responsible for Adam’s first sin, we must also be
responsible not only for every other sin of Adam, but for the sins of our
immediate ancestors.
We reply that the apostasy of human nature could occur but once. It
occurred in Adam before the eating of the forbidden fruit, and revealed
itself in that eating. The subsequent sins of Adam and of our immediate
ancestors are no longer acts which determine or change the nature,—they
only show what the nature is. Here is the truth and the limitation of the
Scripture declaration that “the son shall not bear the iniquity of the
father” (Ez. 18:20; _cf._ Luke 13:2, 3; John 9:2, 3). Man is not
responsible for the specifically evil tendencies communicated to him from
his immediate ancestors, as distinct from the nature he possesses; nor is
he responsible for the sins of those ancestors which originated these
tendencies. But he is responsible for that original apostasy which
constituted the one and final revolt of the race from God, and for the
personal depravity and disobedience which in his own case has resulted
therefrom.
Augustine, Encheiridion, 46, 47, leans toward an imputing of the
sins of immediate ancestors, but intimates that, as a matter of
grace, this may be limited to “_the third and fourth generation_”
(_Ex. 20:5_). Aquinas thinks this last is said by God, because
fathers live to see the third and fourth generation of their
descendants, and influence them by their example to become
voluntarily like themselves. Burgesse, Original Sin, 397, adds the
covenant-idea to that of natural generation, in order to prevent
imputation of the sins of immediate ancestors as well as those of
Adam. So also Shedd. But Baird, Elohim Revealed, 508, gives a
better explanation, when he distinguishes between the first sin of
nature when it apostatized, and those subsequent personal actions
which merely manifest the nature but do not change it. Imagine
Adam to have remained innocent, but one of his posterity to have
fallen. Then the descendants of that one would have been guilty
for the change of nature in him, but not guilty for the sins of
ancestors intervening between him and them.
We add that man may direct the course of a lava-stream, already
flowing downward, into some particular channel, and may even dig a
new channel for it down the mountain. But the stream is constant
in its quantity and quality, and is under the same influence of
gravitation in all stages of its progress. I am responsible for
the downward tendency which my nature gave itself at the
beginning; but I am not responsible for inherited and specifically
evil tendencies as something apart from the nature,—for they are
not apart from it,—they are forms or manifestations of it. These
tendencies run out after a time,—not so with sin of nature. The
declaration of Ezekiel (_18:20_), “_the son shall not bear the
iniquity of the father,_” like Christ’s denial that blindness was
due to the blind man’s individual sins or those of his parents
(_John 9:2, 3_), simply shows that God does not impute to us the
sins of our immediate ancestors; it is not inconsistent with the
doctrine that all the physical and moral evil of the world is the
result of a sin of Adam with which the whole race is chargeable.
Peculiar tendencies to avarice or sensuality inherited from one’s
immediate ancestry are merely wrinkles in native depravity which
add nothing to its amount or its guilt. Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
2:88-94—“To inherit a temperament is to inherit a secondary
trait.” H. B. Smith, System, 296—“Ezekiel 18 does not deny that
descendants are involved in the evil results of ancestral sins,
under God’s moral government; but simply shows that there is
opportunity for extrication, in personal repentance and
obedience.” Mozley on Predestination, 179—“Augustine says that
Ezekiel’s declarations that the son shall not bear the iniquity of
the father are not a universal law of the divine dealings, but
only a special prophetical one, as alluding to the divine mercy
under the gospel dispensation and the covenant of grace, under
which the effect of original sin and the punishment of mankind for
the sin of their first parent was removed.” See also Dorner,
Glaubenslehre, 2:31 (Syst. Doct., 2:326, 327), where God’s
visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children (Ex. 20:5) is
explained by the fact that the children repeat the sins of the
parents. German proverb: “The apple does not fall far from the
tree.”
E. That if Adam’s sin and condemnation can be ours by propagation, the
righteousness and faith of the believer should be propagable also.
We reply that no merely personal qualities, whether of sin or
righteousness, are communicated by propagation. Ordinary generation does
not transmit _personal_ guilt, but only that guilt which belongs to the
whole _species_. So personal faith and righteousness are not propagable.
“Original sin is the consequent of man’s _nature_, whereas the parents’
grace is a _personal_ excellence, and cannot be transmitted” (Burgesse).
Thornwell, Selected Writings, 1:543, says the Augustinian doctrine
would imply that Adam, penitent and believing, must have begotten
penitent and believing children, seeing that the nature as it is
in the parent always flows from parent to child. But see Fisher,
Discussions, 370, where Aquinas holds that no quality or guilt
that is _personal_ is propagated (Thomas Aquinas, 2:629). Anselm
(De Concept. Virg. et Origin. Peccato, 98) will not decide the
question. “The original nature of the tree is propagated—not the
nature of the graft”—when seed from the graft is planted.
Burgesse: “Learned parents do not convey learning to their
children, but they are born in ignorance as others.” Augustine: “A
Jew that was circumcised begat children not circumcised, but
uncircumcised; and the seed that was sown without husks, yet
produced corn with husks.”
The recent modification of Darwinism by Weismann has confirmed the
doctrine of the text. Lamarck’s view was that development of each
race has taken place through the _effort_ of the individuals,—the
giraffe has a long neck because successive giraffes have reached
for food on high trees. Darwin held that development has taken
place not because of effort, but because of _environment_, which
kills the unfit and permits the fit to survive,—the giraffe has a
long neck because among the children of giraffes only the
long-necked ones could reach the fruit, and of successive
generations of giraffes only the long-necked ones lived to
propagate. But Weismann now tells us that even then there would be
no development unless there were a spontaneous _innate tendency_
in giraffes to become long-necked,—nothing is of avail after the
giraffe is born; all depends upon the germs in the parents. Darwin
held to the transmission of acquired characters, so that
individual men are _affluents_ of the stream of humanity; Weismann
holds, on the contrary, that acquired characters are not
transmitted, and that individual men are only _effluents_ of the
stream of humanity: the stream gives its characteristics to the
individuals, but the individuals do not give their characteristics
to the stream: see Howard Ernest Cushman, in The Outlook, Jan. 10,
1897.
Weismann, Heredity, 2:14, 266-270, 482—“Characters only acquired
by the operation of external circumstances, acting during the life
of the individual, cannot be transmitted.... The loss of a finger
is not inherited; increase of an organ by exercise is a purely
personal acquirement and is not transmitted; no child of reading
parents ever read without being taught; children do not even learn
to speak untaught.” Horses with docked tails, Chinese women with
cramped feet, do not transmit their peculiarities. The rupture of
the hymen in women is not transmitted. Weismann cut off the tails
of 66 white mice in five successive generations, but of 901
offspring none were tailless. G. J. Romanes, Life and Letters,
300—“Three additional cases of cats which have lost their tails
having tailless kittens afterwards.” In his Weismannism, Romanes
writes: “The truly scientific attitude of mind with regard to the
problem of heredity is to say with Galton: ‘We might almost
reserve our belief that the structural cells can react on the
sexual elements at all, and we may be confident that at most they
do so in a very faint degree; in other words, that acquired
modifications are barely if at all _inherited_, in the correct
sense of that word.’ ” This seems to class both Romanes and Galton
on the side of Weismann in the controversy. Burbank, however, says
that “acquired characters are transmitted, or I know nothing of
plant life.”
A. H. Bradford, Heredity, 19, 20, illustrates the opposing views:
“Human life is not a clear stream flowing from the mountains,
receiving in its varied course something from a thousand rills and
rivulets on the surface and in the soil, so that it is no longer
pure as at the first. To this view of Darwin and Spencer, Weismann
and Haeckel oppose the view that human life is rather a stream
flowing underground from the mountains to the sea, and rising now
and then in fountains, some of which are saline, some sulphuric,
and some tinctured with iron; and that the differences are due
entirely to the soil passed through in breaking forth to the
surface, the mother-stream down and beneath all the salt, sulphur
and iron, flowing on toward the sea substantially unchanged. If
Darwin is correct, then we must change individuals in order to
change their posterity. If Weismann is correct, then we must
change environment in order that better individuals may be born.
That which is born of the Spirit is spirit; but that which is born
of spirit tainted by corruptions of the flesh is still tainted.”
The conclusion best warranted by science seems to be that of
Wallace, in the Forum, August, 1890, namely, that there is always
a _tendency_ to transmit acquired characters, but that only those
which affect the blood and nervous system, like drunkenness and
syphilis, overcome the fixed habit of the organism and make
themselves permanent. Applying this principle now to the
connection of Adam with the race, we regard the sin of Adam as a
radical one, comparable only to the act of faith which merges the
soul in Christ. It was a turning away of the whole being from the
light and love of God, and a setting of the face toward darkness
and death. Every subsequent act was an act in the same direction,
but an act which manifested, not altered, the nature. This first
act of sin deprived the nature of all moral sustenance and growth,
except so far as the still immanent God counteracted the inherent
tendencies to evil. Adam’s posterity inherited his corrupt nature,
but they do not inherit any subsequently acquired characters,
either those of their first father or of their immediate
ancestors.
Bascom, Comparative Psychology, chap. VII—“Modifications, however
great, like artificial disablement, that do not work into
physiological structure, do not transmit themselves. The more
conscious and voluntary our acquisitions are, the less are they
transmitted by inheritance.” Shaler, Interpretation of Nature,
88—“Heredity and individual action may combine their forces and so
intensify one or more of the inherited motives that the form is
affected by it and the effect may be transmitted to the offspring.
So conflict of inheritances may lead to the institution of
variety. Accumulation of impulses may lead to sudden revolution,
and the species may be changed, not by environment, but by contest
between the host of inheritances.” Visiting the sins of the
fathers upon the children was thought to be outrageous doctrine,
so long as it was taught only in Scripture. It is now vigorously
applauded, since it takes the name of heredity. _Dale, Ephesians,
189_—“When we were young, we fought with certain sins and killed
them; they trouble us no more; but their ghosts seem to rise from
their graves in the distant years and to clothe themselves in the
flesh and blood of our children.” See A. M. Marshall, Biological
Lectures, 273; Mivart, in Harper’s Magazine, March, 1895:682;
Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 176.
F. That, if all moral consequences are properly penalties, sin, considered
as a sinful nature, must be the punishment of sin, considered as the act
of our first parents.
But we reply that the impropriety of punishing sin with sin vanishes when
we consider that the sin which is punished is our own, equally with the
sin with which we are punished. The objection is valid as against the
Federal theory or the theory of Mediate Imputation, but not as against the
theory of Adam’s Natural Headship. To deny that God, through the operation
of second causes, may punish the act of transgression by the habit and
tendency which result from it, is to ignore the facts of every-day life,
as well as the statements of Scripture in which sin is represented as ever
reproducing itself, and with each reproduction increasing its guilt and
punishment (Rom. 6:19; James 1:15.)
_Rom. 6:19_—“_as ye presented your members as servants to
uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now present
your members as servants to righteousness unto sanctification_”;
_Eph. 4:22_—“_waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit_”; _James
1:15_—“_Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and
the sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death_”; _2 Tim.
3:13_—“_evil men and impostors shall wax worse and worse,
deceiving and being deceived._” See Meyer on _Rom.
1:24_—“_Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts
unto uncleanness._” All effects become in their turn causes.
Schiller: “This is the very curse of evil deed, That of new evil
it becomes the seed.” Tennyson, Vision of Sin: “Behold it was a
crime Of sense, avenged by sense that wore with time. Another
said: The crime of sense became The crime of malice, and is equal
blame.” Whiton, Is Eternal Punishment Endless, 52—“The punishment
of sin essentially consists in the wider spread and stronger hold
of the malady of the soul. _Prov. 5:22_—‘_His own iniquities shall
take the wicked._’ The habit of sinning holds the wicked ‘_with
the cords of his sin_.’ Sin is self-perpetuating. The sinner
gravitates from worse to worse, in an ever-deepening fall.” The
least of our sins has in it a power of infinite expansion,—left to
itself it would flood a world with misery and destruction.
Wisdom, 11:16—“Wherewithal a man sinneth, by the same also he
shall be punished.” Shakespeare, Richard II, 5:5—“I wasted time,
and now doth time waste me”; Richard III, 4:2—“I am in so far in
blood, that sin will pluck on sin”; Pericles, 1:1—“One sin I know
another doth provoke; Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke;”
King Lear, 5:3—“The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make
instruments to scourge us.” “Marlowe’s Faustus typifies the
continuous degradation of a soul that has renounced its ideal, and
the drawing on of one vice by another, for they go hand in hand
like the Hours” (James Russell Lowell). Mrs. Humphrey Ward, David
Grieve, 410—“After all, there’s not much hope when the craving
returns on a man of his age, especially after some years’
interval.”
G. That the doctrine excludes all separate probation of individuals since
Adam, by making their moral life a mere manifestation of tendencies
received from him.
We reply that the objection takes into view only our connection with the
race, and ignores the complementary and equally important fact of each
man’s personal will. That personal will does more than simply express the
nature; it may to a certain extent curb the nature, or it may, on the
other hand, add a sinful character and influence of its own. There is, in
other words, a remainder of freedom, which leaves room for personal
probation, in addition to the race-probation in Adam.
Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre, objects to the Augustinian view that if
personal sin proceeds from original, the only thing men are guilty
for is Adam’s sin; all subsequent sin is a spontaneous
development; the individual will can only manifest its inborn
character. But we reply that this is a misrepresentation of
Augustine. He does not thus lose sight of the remainders of
freedom in man (see references on page 620, in the statement of
Augustine’s view, and in the section following this, on Ability,
640-644). He says that the corrupt tree may produce the wild fruit
of morality, though not the divine fruit of grace. It is not true
that the will is absolutely as the character. Though character is
the surest index as to what the decisions of the will may be, it
is not an infallible one. Adam’s first sin, and the sins of men
after regeneration, prove this. Irregular, spontaneous,
exceptional though these decisions are, they are still acts of the
will, and they show that the agent is not _bound_ by motives nor
by character.
Here is our answer to the question whether it be not a sin to
propagate the race and produce offspring. Each child has a
personal will which may have a probation of its own and a chance
for deliverance. Denney, Studies in Theology, 87-99—“What we
inherit may be said to fix our trial, but not our fate. We belong
to God as well as to the past.” “_All souls are mine_” (_Ez.
18:4_); “_Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice_” (_John
18:37_). Thomas Fuller: “1. Roboam begat Abia; that is, a bad
father begat a bad son; 2. Abia begat Asa; that is, a bad father
begat a good son; & Asa begat Josaphat; that is, a good father a
good son; 4. Josaphat begat Joram; that is, a good father a bad
son. I see, Lord, from hence, that my father’s piety cannot be
entailed; that is bad news for me. But I see that actual impiety
is not always hereditary; that is good news for my son.” Butcher,
Aspects of Greek Genius, 121—Among the Greeks, “The popular view
was that guilt is inherited; that is, that the children are
punished for their fathers’ sins. The view of Æschylus, and of
Sophocles also, was that a tendency towards guilt was inherited,
but that this tendency does not annihilate man’s free will. If
therefore the children are punished, they are punished for their
own sins. But Sophocles saw the further truth that innocent
children may suffer for their fathers’ sins.”
Julius Müller, Doc. Sin, 2:316—“The merely organic theory of sin
leads to naturalism, which endangers not only the doctrine of a
final judgment, but that of personal immortality generally.” In
preaching, therefore, we should begin with the known and
acknowledged sins of men. We should lay the same stress upon our
connection with Adam that the Scripture does, to explain the
problem of universal and inveterate sinful tendencies, to enforce
our need of salvation from this common ruin, and to illustrate our
connection with Christ. Scripture does not, and we need not, make
our responsibility for Adam’s sin the great theme of preaching.
See A. H. Strong, on Christian Individualism, and on The New
Theology, in Philosophy and Religion, 156-163, 164-179.
H. That the organic unity of the race in the transgression is a thing so
remote from common experience that the preaching of it neutralizes all
appeals to the conscience.
But whatever of truth there is in this objection is due to the
self-isolating nature of sin. Men feel the unity of the family, the
profession, the nation to which they belong, and, just in proportion to
the breadth of their sympathies and their experience of divine grace, do
they enter into Christ’s feeling of unity with the race (_cf._ Is. 6:5;
Lam. 3:39-45; Ezra 9:6; Neh. 1:6). The fact that the self-contained and
self-seeking recognize themselves as responsible only for their personal
acts should not prevent our pressing upon men’s attention the more
searching standards of the Scriptures. Only thus can the Christian find a
solution for the dark problem of a corruption which is inborn yet
condemnable; only thus can the unregenerate man be led to a full knowledge
of the depth of his ruin and of his absolute dependence upon God for
salvation.
Identification of the individual with the nation or the race: _Is.
6:5_—“_Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips_”;
_Lam. 3:42_—“_We have transgressed and have rebelled_”; _Ezra
9:6_—“_I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God;
for our iniquities are increased over our head_”; _Neh. 1:6_—“_I
confess the sins of the children of Israel.... Yea, I and my
father’s house have sinned._” So God punishes all Israel for
David’s sin of pride; so the sins of Reuben, Canaan, Achan,
Gehazi, are visited on their children or descendants.
H. B. Smith, System, 296, 297—“Under the moral government of God
one man may justly suffer on account of the sins of another. An
organic relation of men is regarded in the great judgment of God
in history.... There is evil which comes upon individuals, not as
punishment for their personal sins, but still as suffering which
comes under a moral government.... _Jer. 32:18_ reasserts the
declaration of the second commandment, that God visits the
iniquity of the fathers upon their children. It may be said that
all these are merely ‘consequences’ of family or tribal or
national or race relations,—‘Evil becomes cosmical by reason of
fastening on relations which were originally adapted to making
good cosmical:’ but then God’s _plan_ must be in the
consequences—a plan administered by a moral being, over moral
beings, according to moral considerations, and for moral ends;
and, if that be fully taken into view, the dispute as to
’consequences’ or ’punishment’ becomes a merely verbal one.”
There is a common conscience over and above the private
conscience, and it controls individuals, as appears in great
crises like those at which the fall of Fort Sumter summoned men to
defend the Union and the Proclamation of Emancipation sounded the
death-knell of slavery. Coleridge said that original sin is the
one mystery that makes all things clear; see Fisher, Nature and
Method of Revelation, 151-157. Bradford, Heredity, 34, quotes from
Elam, A Physician’s Problems, 5—“An acquired and habitual vice
will rarely fail to leave its trace upon one or more of the
offspring, either in its original form, or one closely allied. The
habit of the parent becomes the all but irresistible impulse of
the child; ... the organic tendency is excited to the uttermost,
and the power of will and of conscience is proportionally
weakened.... So the sins of the parents are visited upon the
children.”
Pascal: “It is astonishing that the mystery which is furthest
removed from our knowledge—I mean the transmission of original
sin—should be that without which we have no true knowledge of
ourselves. It is in this abyss that the clue to our condition
takes its turnings and windings, insomuch that man is more
incomprehensible without the mystery than this mystery is
incomprehensible to man.” Yet Pascal’s perplexity was largely due
to his holding the Augustinian position that inherited sin is
damning and brings eternal death, while not holding to the
coördinate Augustinian position of a primary existence and act of
the species in Adam; see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:18. Atomism is
egotistic. The purest and noblest feel most strongly that humanity
is not like a heap of sand-grains or a row of bricks set on end,
but that it is an organic unity. So the Christian feels for the
family and for the church. So Christ, in Gethsemane, felt for the
race. If it be said that the tendency of the Augustinian view is
to diminish the sense of guilt for personal sins, we reply that
only those who recognize _sins_ as rooted in _sin_ can properly
recognize the evil of them. To such they are _symptoms_ of an
apostasy from God so deep-seated and universal that nothing but
infinite grace can deliver us from it.
I. That a constitution by which the sin of one individual involves in
guilt and condemnation the nature of all men who descend from him is
contrary to God’s justice.
We acknowledge that no human theory can fully solve the mystery of
imputation. But we prefer to attribute God’s dealings to justice rather
than to sovereignty. The following considerations, though partly
hypothetical, may throw light upon the subject: (_a_) A probation of our
common nature in Adam, sinless as he was and with full knowledge of God’s
law, is more consistent with divine justice than a separate probation of
each individual, with inexperience, inborn depravity, and evil example,
all favoring a decision against God. (_b_) A constitution which made a
common fall possible may have been indispensable to any provision of a
common salvation. (_c_) Our chance for salvation as sinners under grace
may be better than it would have been as sinless Adams under law. (_d_) A
constitution which permitted oneness with the first Adam in the
transgression cannot be unjust, since a like principle of oneness with
Christ, the second Adam, secures our salvation. (_e_) There is also a
_physical_ and _natural_ union with Christ which antedates the fall and
which is incident to man’s creation. The immanence of Christ in humanity
guarantees a continuous divine effort to remedy the disaster caused by
man’s free will, and to restore the _moral_ union with God which the race
has lost by the fall.
Thus our ruin and our redemption were alike wrought out without personal
act of ours. As all the natural life of humanity was in Adam, so all the
spiritual life of humanity was in Christ. As our old nature was corrupted
in Adam and propagated to us by physical generation, so our new nature was
restored in Christ and communicated to us by the regenerating work of the
Holy Spirit. If then we are justified upon the ground of our inbeing in
Christ, we may in like manner be condemned on the ground of our inbeing in
Adam.
Stearns, in N. Eng., Jan. 1882:95—“The silence of Scripture
respecting the precise connection between the first great sin and
the sins of the millions of individuals who have lived since then
is a silence that neither science nor philosophy has been, or is,
able to break with a satisfactory explanation. Separate the
twofold nature of man, corporate and individual. Recognize in the
one the region of necessity; in the other the region of freedom.
The scientific law of heredity has brought into new currency the
doctrine which the old theologians sought to express under the
name of original sin,—a term which had a meaning as it was at
first used by Augustine, but which is an awkward misnomer if we
accept any other theory but his.”
Dr. Hovey claims that the Augustinian view breaks down when
applied to the connection between the justification of believers
and the righteousness of Christ; for believers were not in Christ,
as to the substance of their souls, when he wrought out redemption
for them. But we reply that the life of Christ which makes us
Christians is the same life which made atonement upon the cross
and which rose from the grave for our justification. The parallel
between Adam and Christ is of the nature of analogy, not of
identity. With Adam, we have a connection of physical life; with
Christ, a connection of spiritual life.
Stahl, Philosophie des Rechts, quoted in Olshausen’s Com. on _Rom.
5:12-21_—“Adam is the original _matter_ of humanity; Christ is its
original _idea_ in God; both personally living. Mankind is one in
them. Therefore Adam’s sin became the sin of all; Christ’s
sacrifice the atonement for all. Every leaf of a tree may be green
or wither by itself; but each suffers by the disease of the root,
and recovers only by its healing. The shallower the man, so much
more isolated will everything appear to him; for upon the surface
all lies apart. He will see in mankind, in the nation, nay, even
in the family, mere individuals, where the act of the one has no
connection with that of the other. The profounder the man, the
more do these inward relations of unity, proceeding from the very
centre, force themselves upon him. Yea, the love of our neighbor
is itself nothing but the deep feeling of this unity; for we love
him only, with whom we feel and acknowledge ourselves to be one.
What the Christian love of our neighbor is for the heart, that
unity of race is for the understanding. If sin through one, and
redemption through one, is not possible, the command to love our
neighbor is also unintelligible. Christian ethics and Christian
faith are therefore in truth indissolubly united. Christianity
effects in history an advance like that from the animal kingdom to
man, by its revealing the essential unity of men, the
consciousness of which in the ancient world had vanished when the
nations were separated.”
If the sins of the parents were not visited upon the children,
neither could their virtues be; the possibility of the one
involves the possibility of the other. If the guilt of our first
father could not be transmitted to all who derive their life from
him, then the justification of Christ could not be transmitted to
all who derive their life from him. We do not, however, see any
Scripture warrant for the theory that all men are justified from
original sin by virtue of their natural connection with Christ. He
who is the life of all men bestows manifold temporal blessings
upon the ground of his atonement. But justification from sin is
conditioned upon conscious surrender of the human will and trust
in the divine mercy. The immanent Christ is ever urging man
individually and collectively toward such decision. But the
acceptance or rejection of the offered grace is left to man’s free
will. This principle enables us properly to estimate the view of
Dr. Henry E. Robins which follows.
H. E. Robins, Harmony of Ethics with Theology, 51—“All men born of
Adam stand in such a relation to Christ that salvation is their
birthright under promise—a birthright which can only be forfeited
by their intelligent, personal, moral action, as was Esau’s.” Dr.
Robins holds to an inchoate justification of all—a justification
which becomes actual and complete only when the soul closes with
Christ’s offer to the sinner. We prefer to say that humanity in
Christ is ideally justified because Christ himself is justified,
but that individual men are justified only when they consciously
appropriate his offered grace or surrender themselves to his
renewing Spirit. Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 312—“The grace of God is
as organic in its relation to man as is the evil in his nature.
Grace also reigns wherever justice reigns.” William Ashmore, on
the New Trial of the Sinner, in Christian Review,
26:245-264—“There is a gospel of nature commensurate with the law
of nature; _Rom. 3:22_—‘_unto all, and upon all them that
believe_’; the first ‘_all_’ is unlimited; the second ‘_all_’ is
limited to those who believe.”
R. W. Dale, Ephesians, 180—“Our fortunes were identified with the
fortunes of Christ; in the divine thought and purpose we were
inseparable from him. Had we been true and loyal to the divine
idea, the energy of Christ’s righteousness would have drawn us
upward to height after height of goodness and joy, until we
ascended from this earthly life to the larger powers and loftier
services and richer delights of other and diviner worlds; and
still, through one golden age of intellectual and ethical and
spiritual growth after another, we should have continued to rise
towards Christ’s transcendent and infinite perfection. But we
sinned; and as the union between Christ and us could not be broken
without the final and irrevocable defeat of the divine purpose,
Christ was drawn down from the serene heavens to the confused and
troubled life of our race, to pain, to temptation, to anguish, to
the cross and to the grave, and so the mystery of his atonement
for our sin was consummated.”
For replies to the foregoing and other objections, see Schaff, in
Bib. Sac., 5:230; Shedd, Sermons to the Nat. Man, 266-284; Baird,
Elohim Revealed, 507-509, 529-544; Birks, Difficulties of Belief,
134-188; Edwards, Original Sin, in Works, 2:473-510; Atwater, on
Calvinism in Doctrine and Life, in Princeton Review, 1875:73;
Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 96-100. _Per contra_,
see Moxom, in Bap. Rev., 1881:273-287; Park, Discourses, 210-233;
Bradford, Heredity, 237.