Part 5 — Chapter III. Sin, Or Man's State Of Apostasy. (continued 5)

B. It contradicts Scripture, in making the first result of Adam's sin to be God's regarding and treating the race as sinners. The Scripture, on the contrary, declares that Adam's offense constituted us sinners (Rom. 5:19). We are not sinners simply because God regards and treats us as such, but God regards us as sinners because we are sinners. Death is said to have “passed unto all men,” not because all were regarded and treated as sinners, but “because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12).

For a full exegesis of the passage Rom. 5:12-19, see note to the discussion of the Theory of Adam's Natural Headship, pages 625-627. Dr. Park gave great offence by saying that the so-called “covenants” of law and of grace, referred in the Westminster Confession as made by God with Adam and Christ respectively, were really “made in Holland.”The word fœdus, in such a connection, could properly mean nothing more than “ordinance”; [pg 615]see Vergil, Georgics, 1:60-63—“eterna fœdera.” E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theol., 185—“God's ‘covenant’ with men is simply his method of dealing with them according to their knowledge and opportunities.”

C. It impugns the justice of God by implying:

(a) That God holds men responsible for the violation of a covenant which they had no part in establishing. The assumed covenant is only a sovereign decree; the assumed justice, only arbitrary will.

We not only never authorized Adam to make such a covenant, but there is no evidence that he ever made one at all. It is not even certain that Adam knew he should have posterity. In the case of the imputation of our sins to Christ, Christ covenanted voluntarily to bear them, and joined himself to our nature that he might bear them. In the case of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us, we first become one with Christ, and upon the ground of our union with him are justified. But upon the Federal theory, we are condemned upon the ground of a covenant which we neither instituted, nor participated in, nor assented to.

(b) That upon the basis of this covenant God accounts men as sinners who are not sinners. But God judges according to truth. His condemnations do not proceed upon a basis of legal fiction. He can regard as responsible for Adam's transgression only those who in some real sense have been concerned, and have had part, in that transgression.

See Baird, Elohim Revealed, 544—“Here is a sin, which is no crime, 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 [pg 616] 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 [pg 617] 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 [pg 618]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 [pg 619] 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.”

[pg 620]

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 [pg 621]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 [pg 622]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 [pg 623]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 [pg 624]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. [pg 625] 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 [pg 626]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. [pg 627]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.

[pg 628]

No Condemnation Inherited.

Pelagian. Arminian. New School.

I. Origin of the soul. Immediate Creation. Immediate creation. Immediate creation.

II. Man's state at birth. Innocent, and able to obey God. Depraved, but still able to co-operate with the Spirit. Depraved and vicious, but this not sin.

III. Effects of Adam's sin. Only upon himself. To corrupt his posterity physically and intellectually. No guilt of Adam's sin imputed. To communicate visiosity to the whole race.

IV. How did all sin? By following Adam's example. By consciously ratifying Adam's own deed, in spite of the Spirit's aid. By voluntary transgression of known law.

V. What is corruption? Only of evil habit, in each case. Evil tendencies kept in spite of the Spirit. Uncondemnable, but evil tendencies.

VI. What is imputed? Every man's own sins. Only man's own sins and ratifying of this nature. Man's individual acts of transgression.

VII. What is the death incurred? Spiritual and eternal. Physical and spiritual death by decree. Spiritual and eternal death only.

VIII. How are men saved? By following Christ's example. By co-operating with the Spirit given to all. By accepting Christ under influence of truth presented by the Spirit.

Condemnation Inherited.

Federal. Placean. Augustinian.

I. Origin of the soul. Immediate creation. Immediate creation. Immediate creation.

II. Man's state at birth. Depraved, unable, and condemnable. Depraved, unable, and condemnable. Depraved, unable, and condemnable.

III. Effects of Adam's sin. To insure condemnation of his fellows in covenant, and their creation as depraved. Natural connection of depravity in all his descendants. Guilt of Adam's sin, corruption, and death.

IV. How did all sin? By being accounted sinners in Adam's sin. By possessing a depraved nature. By having part in the sin of Adam, as seminal head of the race.

V. What is corruption? Condemnable, evil disposition and state. Condemnable, evil disposition and state. Condemnable, evil disposition and state.

VI. What is imputed? Adam's sin, man's own corruption, and man's own sins. Only depraved nature and man's own sin. Adam's sin, our depravity, and our own sins.

VII. What is the death incurred? Physical, spiritual, and eternal. Physical, spiritual, and eternal. Physical, spiritual, and eternal.

VIII. How are men saved? By being accounted righteous through the act of Christ. By becoming possessors of a new nature in Christ. By Christ's work, with whom we are one.

[pg 629]

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 [pg 630] 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 [pg 631]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 personalis 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 [pg 632]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 [pg 633] 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 [pg 634]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 [pg 635]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 symptomsof 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 [pg 636]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.”