Augustus Hopkins Strong
SECTION I.—THE LAW OP GOD.
As preliminary to a treatment of man's state of apostasy, it becomes necessary to consider the nature of that law of God, the transgression of which is sin. We may best approach the subject by inquiring what is the true conception of
I. Law In General.
The essential idea of law is that of a general expression of will enforced by power. It implies: (a) A lawgiver, or authoritative will. (6) Subjects, or beings upon whom this will terminates, (c) A general command, or expression of this will, (d) A power, enforcing the command.
These elements are found even in what we call natural law. The phrase 'law of nature' involves a self-contradiction, when used to denote a mode of action or an order of sequence behind which there is conceived to be no intelligent and ordaining will. Physics derives the term 'law' from jurisprudence, instead of jurisprudence deriving it from physics. It is first used of the relations of voluntary agents. Causation in our own wills enables us to see something besides mere antecedence and consequence in the world about us. Physical science, in her very use of the word * law,' implicitly confesses that a supreme Will has set general rules which control the processes of the universe.
Wayland, Moral Science, 1, unwisely defines law as " a mode of existence or order of sequence," thus leaving out of his definition all reference to an ordaining will. He subsequently says that law presupposes an establisher, but in his definition there is nothing to indicate this. We Insist, on the other hand, that the terra 'law' itself Includes the idea of force and cause. The word 'law' Is from 'lay' (Germiin Uyen) = something laid down; German Qcactz, from sctzen = something set or established: Greek *onos, from ><i» = something assigned or apportioned; Latin lex, from lego = something said or spoken.
All these derivations show that man's original conception of law is that of something proceeding from volition. Lewes, In his Problems of Life and Mind, says that the term * law' is so suggestive of a giver and impresser of law, t hat it ought to be dropped, and the word 'method' substituted. The merit of Austin's treatment of the subject Is that be "rigorously limits the term 'law' to the commands of a superior"; see John Austin, Province of Jurisprudence, 1: 88-93, 220-223. The defects of his treatment we shall note further on.
J. S. Mill: "It is the custom, wherever they [scientific men] can trace regularity of any kind, to call the general proposition which expresses the nature of that regularity, a law; as when In mathematics we speak of the law of the successive terms of a converging series. But the expression 'law of nature' Is generally employed by scientific men with a sort of tacit reference to the original sense of the word 'law,' namely, the expression of the will of a superior—the superior in this case being: the Rulor of the universe." Paley, Nat. Theology, chap. 1—" It is a perversion of language to assign any laic as the efficient operative cause of anything. A law presupposes an agent: this is the only mode according to which an agent proceeds; it implies a power, for it is the order according to which that power acts. Without this agent, without this power, which are both distinct from itself, the law dot's nothing."
The characteristic of law is generality. It is addressed to substances or persons in classes. Special legislation is contrary to the true theory of law. —It is, moreover, essential to the existence of law, that there be power to enforce. Otherwise law becomes the expression of mere wish or advice. Since physical substances and forces have no intelligence and no power to resist, the four elements already mentioned exhaust the implications of the term 'law' as applied to nature. In the case of rational and free agents, however, law implies in addition: (e) Duty, or obligation to obey; and (/) Sanctions, or pains and penalties for disobedience.
The order of an absolute despot, that an enemy be beheaded, Is not properly a law. Amos, Science of Law, 33, 34—" I-aw eminently deals in general rules." It knows not persons or personality. It must apply to more than one case. "The characteristic of law is generality, as that of morality is individual application." Special legislation is the bane of good government; it does not properly fall within the province of the lawmaking power; it savors of the caprice of despotism, which gives commands to each subject at will. Hence our more advanced political constitutions check lobby influence and bribery, by prohibiting special legislation in all cases where general laws already exist.
"Law that has no penalty is not law but advice, and the government in which infliction does not follow transgression is the reign of rogues or demons." On the question whether any of the punishments of civil law are legal sanctions, except the punishment of death, see N. W. Taylor, Moral Gov't, 2 : 367-387.
Rewards are motives, but they are not sanctions. Since public opinion may be conceived of as inflicting penalties for violation of her will, we speak figuratively of the laws of society, of fashion, of etiquette, of honor. Only so far as the community of nations can and does by sanctions compel obedience, can we with propriety assert the existence of international law.
But the will which thus binds its subjects by commands and penalties is an expression of the nature of the governing power, and reveals the normal relations of the subjects to that power. Finally, therefore, law (g) Is an expression of the nature of the lawgiver; and (h) Sets forth the condition or conduct in the subjects which is requisite for harmony with that nature. Any so-called law which fails to represent the nature of the governing power soon becomes obsolete. All law that is permanent is a transcript of the facts of being, a discovery of what is and must be, in order to harmony between the governing and the governed; in short, positive law is just and lasting only as it is an expression and republication of the law of nature.
Dlman, Theistic Argument, 106,107: John Austin, although he "rigorously limited the term law to the commands of a superior," yet " rejected Ulpian's explanation of the law of nature, and ridiculed as fustian the celebrated description in Hooker." This we conceive to be tho radical defect of Austin's conception. The Will from which natural law proceeds Is conceived of after a delstic fashion, instead of being Immanent in the universe. Lightwood, in his Nature of Positive Law, 78-90, criticizes Austin's definition of law as command, and substitutes the Idea of law as custom. Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Law has shown us that the early village communities had customs which only gradually took form as definite laws. But we reply that custom is not the ultimate source of anything. Repeated acts of will are necessary to constitute custom. The first customs are due to the commanding will of the father in the patriarchal family. So Austin's definition is justified. Behind this will, however, is something which Austin does not take account of, namely, the nature of things as constituted by God, as revealing the universal Reason, and as furnishing the standard to which all positive law, if it would be permanent, must conform.
See Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, book 1, sec. 14—"Laws are the necessary relations
arising from the nature of things There is a primitive Reason, and laws are the
relations subsisting between it and different beings, and the relations of these to one another.. . These rules are a fixed and invariable relation .... Particular intelligent beings may have laws of their own making, but they have some likewise that they never made.... To say that there is nothing just or unjust but what is commanded or forbidden by positive laws, is the same as saying thut before the describing of a circle all the radii were not equal. We must therefore acknowledge relations antecedent to the positive law by which they were established." Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics. 169-172— "By the science of law is meant the systematic knowledge of the principles of the law of nature—from which positive law takes its rise—which is forever the same, and carries its sure and unchanging obligations over all nations and throughout all ages."
It is true even of a despot's law, that it reveals his nature, and shows what is requisite in the subject to constitute him in harmony with that nature. A law which does not represent the nature of things, or the real relations of the governor and the governed, has only a nominal existence, and cannot be permanent. On the definition and nature of law, see also Pomeroy, in Johnson's Encyclopaedia, art.: Law; Ahrens, Cours de Droit Naturel, book 1, sec. 14; Lorimer, Institutes of Law, 258, who quotes from Burke: "All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory. They may alter the mode and application, but have no power over the substance of original Justice "; Lord Bacon: "Regula enim legem (ut acus nautica polos) indlcat, non statu!t." Duke of Argyl^ Reign of Law, 64; H. C. Carey, Unity of Law.
II. The Law Op God In Particular.
The law of God is a general expression of the divine will enforced by power. It has two forms: Elemental Law and Positive Enactment.
1. Elemental Law, or law inwrought into the elements, substances, and forces of the rational and irrational creation. This is twofold:
A. The expression of the divine will in the constitution of the material universe ;—this we call physical, or natural law. Physical law is not necessary. Another order of things is conceivable. Physical order is not an end in itself; it exists for the sake of moral order. Physical order has therefore only a relative constancy, and God supplements it at times by miracle.
Joseph Cook: "The laws of nature are the habits of God." But Campbell, Atonement, Introd., xxvi, says there is this difference between the laws of the moral universe and those of the physical, namely, that we do not trace the existence of the former to an act of will, as we do the latter. To say that God has given existence to goodness, as he has to the laws of nature, would be equivalent to saying that he has given existence to himself." Pepper, Outlines of Syst. Theol.. 91—" Moral law, unlike natural law, is a standard of action to be adopted or rejected in the exercise of rational freedom, i. e., of moral agency."
Mark Hopkins, in Princeton Rev., Sept., 1883:190—" In moral law there is enforcement by punishment only—never by power, for this would confound moral law with physical, and obedience can never be produced or secured by power. In physical law, on the contrary, enforcement is wholly by power, and punishment is impossible. So far as man is free, he is not subject to law at all. In its physical sense. Our wills are free from law, as enforced by ptneer; but are free under law, as enforced by punishment. Where law prevails in the same sense as In the material world, there can be no freedom. Law does not prevail when we reach the region of choice. We hold to a power in the mind of man originating a free choice. Two objects or courses of action, between which choice is to be made, are presupposed: (DA uniformity or set of uniformities implying a force by which the uniformity is produced [ physical or natural law]; (2) A command, addressed to free and intelligent beings, that can be obeyed or disobeyed, and that has connected with it rewards or punishments" [ moral law]. See also Wm. Arthur, Difference between Physical and Moral Law.
B. The expression of the divine will in the constitution of rational and free agents;—this we call moral law. This elemental law of our moral nature, with which only we are now concerned, has all the characteristics mentioned as belonging to law in general. It implies: (a) A divine Lawgiver, or ordaining Will. (6) Subjects, or moral beings upon whom the law terminates, (c) General command, or expression of this will in the moral constitution of the subjects, (d) Power, enforcing the command, (e) Duty, or obligation to obey. (/) Sanctions, or pains and penalties for disobedience.
All these are of a loftier sort than are found in human law. But we need especially to emphasize the fact that this law (ff) Is an expression of the moral nature of God, and therefore of God's holiness, the fundamental attribute of that nature; and that it (/V) Sets forth absolute conformity to that holiness, as the normal condition of man. This law is inwrought into man's rational and moral being. Man fulfils it, only when in his moral as well as his rational being he is the image of God.
Although the will from which the moral law springs is an expression of the nature of God, and a necessary expression of that nature in view of the existence of moral beings, it is none the less a personal will. We should be careful not to attribute to law a personality of its own. When Plutarch says: "Law is king both of mortal and of immortal beings," and when we say: "The law will take hold of you," "The criminal is in danger of the law," we are simply substituting the name of the agent for that of the principal. God is not subject to law; God is the source of law; and we may say: "If Jehovah be God, worship him; but if Law, worship it."
Since moral law merely reflects God, it is not a thing made. Men discover laws, but they do not make them, any more than the chemist makes the laws by which the elements combine. Instance the solidification of hydrogen at Geneva. Utility does not constitute law, although we test law by utility: see Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 53-71. The true nature of the moral law is set forth In the noble though rhetorical description of Hooker (Eccl. Pol., 1:194)—" Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is in the bosom of God; her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in a different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and Joy."
The law of God, then, is simply an expression of the nature of God in the form of moral requirement, and a necessary expression of that nature in view of the existence of moral beings (Ps. 19 : 7; c/. 1). To the existence of this law all men bear witness. The consciences even of the heathen testify to it (Rom. 2 : 14, 15). Those who have the written law recognize this elemental law as of greater compass and penetration (Rom. 7: 14; 8:4). The perfect embodiment and fulfilment of this law is seen only in Christ (Rom. 10: 4; Phil. 3 : 8, 9).
Ps. 19 : 7—" The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul"; cf. Terse 1—" The heavens declare the glory of God" = two revelations of God—one in nature, the other In the moral law. Rom. 2 :14,15—" For -when Gentiles which hare not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves; in that thej shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing them "—here the "work of the law "=, not the ten commandments, for of these the heathen were ignorant, but rather the work corresponding to them, i.e., the substance of them. Rom. 7 :14—" For we know that the law is spiritual "— this, says Meyer, is equivalent to saying "its essence Is divine, of like nature with the Holy Spirit who gave It, a holy self-revelation of God." Rom. 8 : 4—" that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit"; 10 : 4—"For Christ is the end of the law onto righteousness to every one that believeth "; Phil. 3:9—" That I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith"; Heb. 10 : 9—"Lo, I am come to do thy will." In Christ "the law appears Drawn out In living characters." Just such as he was and Is, we feel that we ought to be. Hence the character of Christ convicts us of sin, as does no other manifestation of God. See, on the passages from Romans, the Commentary of Philippi.
Fleming, Vocab. Philos., 288—" Moral laws are derived from the nature and will of God, and the character and condition of man." God's nature is reflected in the laws of our nature. Since law is inwrought Into man's nature, man is a law unto himself. To conform to his own nature, in which conscience is supreme, is to conform to the nature of God. The law is only the revelation of the constitutive principles of being, the declaration of what must be, so long as man Is man and God is God. It says in effect: "Be like God, or you cannot be truly man." So moral law is not simply a test of obedience, but Is also a revelation of eternal reality. Man cannot be lost to God, without being lost to himself. "The 'hands of the living God' (Heb. 10 : 31) Into which we fall, are the laws of nature." In the spiritual world "the same wheels revolve, only there Is no iron" (Druramond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 27). Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 2 : 82-92—" The totality of created being is to be in harmony with God and with Itself. The idea of this harmony, as active in God under the form of will, is God's law." For fuller treatment of the subject, see Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 321-344; Talbot, Ethical Prolegomena, in Bap. Quar., July, 1877: 257-274; Whewell, Elements of Morality, 2: 85.
Each of the two last-mentioned characteristics of God's law is important in its implications. We treat of these in their order.
First, the law of God as a transcript of the divine nature.—If this be the nature of the law, then certain common misconceptions of it are excluded. The law of God is
(a) Not arbitrary, or the product of arbitrary will. Since the will from which the law springs is a revelation of God's nature, there can be no rashness or unwisdom in the law itself.
(6) Not temporary, or ordained simply to meet an exigency. The law is a manifestation, not of temporary moods or desires, but of the essential nature of God.
(c) Not merely negative, or a law of mere prohibition,—since positive conformity to God is the inmost requisition of law.
(d) Not partial, or addressed to one part only of man's being,—since likeness to God requires purity of substance in man's soul and body, as well as purity in all the thoughts and acts that proceed therefrom. As law proceeds from the nature of God, so it requires conformity to that nature in the nature of man.
(c) Not outwardly published,—since all positive enactment is only the imperfect expression of this underlying and unwritten law of being.
(/) Not inwardly conscious, or limited in its scope by men's consciousness of it. Like the laws of our physical being, the moral law exists whether we recognize it or not.
(g) Not local, or confined to place,—since no moral creature can escape from God, from his own being, or from the natural necessity that unlikeness to God should involve misery and ruin.
(h) Not changeable, or capable of modification. Since law represents the unchangeable nature of God, it is not a sliding-scale of requirements which adapts itself to the ability of the subjects. God himself cannot change it without ceasing to be God.
The law, then, has a deeper foundation than that God merely "said so." God's word and God's will are revelations of his Inmost being; every transgression of the law is a stab at the heart of God.
The obligation to obey this law and to be conformed to God's perfect moral character is based upon man's original ability and the gifts which God bestowed upon him at the beginning. Created in the Image of God, it Is man's duty to render back to God that which God first gave, enlarged and Improved by growth und culture (Luke 19 : 23—" Wherefore gavest thou not my money into too bank, and I it mj coming should have required it with interest"). This obligation is not impaired by sin and the weakening of man's powers. To let down the standard would be to misrepresent God. Adolphe Monod would not save himself from shame and remorse by lowering the claims of the law: "Save first the holy law of my God," he says, "after that you shall save me!"
Even salvation is not through violation of law. The moral law is immutable, because it is a transcript of the nature of the immutable God. Shall nature conform to me, or I to nature? If I attempt to resist even physical laws, I am crushed. I can use nature only by ol>eying her laws. Lord Hacon: "Natura enim non nisi parendo vincitur." So in the moral realm. We cannot buy off nor escape the moral law of God. God will not, and God cannot, change his law by one hair's breadth, even to save a universe of sinners.
Secondly, the law of God as the ideal of human nature.—A law thus identical with the eternal and necessary relations of the creature to the Creator, and demanding of the creature nothing less than perfect holiness, as the condition of harmony with the infinite holiness of God, is adapted to man's finite nature, as needing law; to man's free nature, as needing moral law; and to man's progressive nature, as needing ideal law.
Man, as finite, needs law, Juet as railway cars need a track to guide them—to leap the track Is to And, not freedom, but ruin. "In vain shall spirits that are all unbound To the pure heights of pcrfectness aspire; In limitation first the Master shines. And law alone csn give us liberty."—Man, as a free being, needs moral law. He is not an automaton, a creature of necessity, governed only by physical influences. With conscience to command the right, and will to choose or reject it, his true dignity and calling are that he should freely realize the right.—Man, as a progressive being, needs nothing less than an ideal and infinite standard of attainment, a goal which he can never overpass, an end which shall ever attract and urge him forward. This he finds in the holiness of God.
The law of God is therefore characterized by:
(a) All-comprehensiveness.—It is over us at all times; it respects our past, our present, our future. It forbids every conceivable sin; it requires every conceivable virtue; omissions as well as commissions are condemned by it
Ps. 119 : 96—" I hare seen an end of all perfection thy commandment is exceeding broad "; Rom. 3 : 23—
"111 bare tinned, and fall abort of the glory of God "; James 4 :17—" To him therefore that knoveth to do good, and doetb it not, to bijn it is tin."
(b) Spirituality.—It demands not only right acts and words, but also right dispositions and states. Perfect obedience requires not only the intense and unremitting reign of love toward God and man, but conformity of the whole inward and outward nature of man to the holiness of God.
Mat 5 : 22, 28—the angry word is murder; the sinful look is adultery. Mark 12 : 30,31—"Thou shalt lore the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength .. Thou shalt lore thy neighbor as thyself"; 2 Cor. 10 : 5—"bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ"; Bph. 5 :1—" Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children "; 1 Pet. 1:16—" Te shall be holy; for I am holy."
(c) Solidarity.—It exhibits in all its parts the nature of the one Lawgiver, and it expresses, in its least command, the one requirement of harmony with him.
Mat S : 48—" To therefore shall be perfect, as jour heavenlj Father is perfect" ; Mark 12 : 29, 30—" The lord our God, the Lord is one : and thou shalt lore the Lord thy God "; Jamas 2 :10—" For whosoever shall keep the whole law. and jet stumble in one point, he is become guiltj of all"; 4 :12—"One onlj is the lawgiver and judge."
Only to the first man, then, was the law proposed as a method of salvation. With the first sin, all hope of attaining the divine favor by perfect obedience is lost. To sinners, the law remains as a means of discovering and developing sin in its true nature, and of compelling a recourse to the mercy provided in Jesus Christ.
Rom. 3 : 20— "Bj the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for through the law oometh the knowledge of sin ;5 : 20—" the law came in beside, that the trespass might abound "; 7:7, 8—" I had not known sin, except through the law: for I had not known coveting, except the law bad said, Thou shalt not covet: but sin, finding occasion, wrought in me through the commandment all manner of coveting: for apart from the law sin is dead "; 10 : 4 "Christ Is the end of the law unto righteousness to everj one that beliereth "; Gal. 3 : 24—" So that the law hath been our tutor to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified bj faith."
No man ever yet drew a straight line or a perfect curve; yet he would be a poor architect who contented himself with anything less. Since men never come up to their ideals, he who aims to live only an average moral life will inevitably fall helow the average. The law, then, leads to Christ. He who is the ideal is also the way to attain the ideal. He who is himself the Word and the Law embodied, is also the Spirit of life that makes obedience possible to us (John 14 : 6—" I am the waj, and the truth, and the life"; Rom. 8:2—" For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death " J.
Law, then, with its picture of spotless innocence, simply reminds man of the heights from which he has fallen. "It is a mirror which reveals derangement, but does not create or remove it." With Its demand of absolute perfection, up to the measure of man's original endowments and possibilities, it drives us, In despair of ourselves, to Christ as our only righteousness and our only Savior (Rom. 8 : 3—"For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending bis own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit"; Phil. 3:9—" that I maj gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God bj faith,") Thus law must prepare the way for grace, and John the Baptist must precede Christ. See Fairbairn, Revelation of Law in Scripture; Baird, Elobim Revealed, 187-242; Hovey, God with Us, 187-210; Julius MUllcr, Doctrine of Sin, 1: 45-50; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 53-71.
2. Positive Enactment, or the expression of the will of God in published ordinances. This is also twofold:
A. General moral precepts.—These are written summaries of the elemental law (Mat. 5 : 48; 22 : 37-40 ), or authorized applications of it to special human conditions (Ex. 20 : 1-17; Mat. 5-8).
Mat. S : 48—" Te therefore shall be perfect, as jour heavenlj Father is perfect"; 22 : 37-40—" Thou shalt love the Lord tbj God .... thou shall love thy neighbor as thjsalf. On these two commandments hangeth the whole law, and the prophets "; fix. 20 :1-17—the ten commandments; Mat. chap. 5-8—the sermon on the mount.
Solly, On the Will, 162, gives two illustrations of the fact that positive precepts are merely applications of elemental law or the law of nature: "' Thou shall not steal,' is a moral law which may be stated thus: thou shall not take that far thy own property, which is the property of another. The contradictory of this proposition would be: Miou mayest take that for thy own property which is the property of another. But this is a contradiction in terms; for it is the very conception of property, that the owner stands in a peculiar relation to its subject-matter; and what Is every man's property is no man's property, as It is proper to no man. Hence the contradictory of the commandment contains a simple contradiction directly it is made a rule universal; and the commandment itself is established as one of the principles for the harmony of individual wills."
"' Thnu shall not tell a lie,' as a rule of morality, may be expressed generally: thou ihall not try thy outward act make another to believe thy thought to he other than it in. The contradictory made universal is: every man may by hie outward act make another to> lielicve hi* thought to be other than it i*. Now this maxim also contains a contradiction, and is self-destructive. It conveys a permission to do that which is rendered impossible by the permission itself. Absolute and universal indifference to truth, or the entire mutual independence of the thought and symbol, makes the symbol cease to be a symbol, and the conveyance of thought by its means, an impossibility."
Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics, 48, 90—"Fundamental law of reason: So act, that thy maxims of will might become law in a system of universal moral legislation." This is Kant's categorical imperative. He expresses It in yet another form: "Act from maxims fit to be regarded as universal laws of nature." For expositions of the decalogue which bring out its spiritual meaning, see Kurtz, Keliglonslehre, 9-72; Dick, Theology, 2: 513554; Dwlght, Theology, 3 :163-560; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 3 : 259-465.
B. Ceremonial or special injunctions.—These are illustrations of the elemental law, or approximate revelations of it, suited to lower degrees of capacity and to earlier stages of spiritual training (Ez. 20 : 25; Mat. 19 : 8; Mark 10 : 5). Though temporary, only God can say when they cease to be binding upon us in their outward form.
All positive enactments, therefore, whether they be moral or ceremonial, are republications of elemental law. Their forms may change, but the substance is eternal. Certain modes of expression, like the Mosaic system, may be abolished, but the essential demands are unchanging (Mat. 5 : 17, 18; cf. Eph. 2 : 15). From the imperfection of human language, no positive enactments are able to express in themselves the whole content and meaning of the elemental law. "It is not the purpose of revelation to disclose the whole of our duties." Scripture is not a complete code of rules for practical action, but an enunciation of principles, with occasional precepts by way of illustration. Hence we must supplement the positive enactment by the law of being—the moral ideal found in the nature of God.
Ex. 20 : 25—" Moreover also I gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments wherein they should not lire ": Bat. 19 : 8—" Moses for jour hardness of heart suffered you to put awaj jour wires "; Hark 10 : 5—" for jour hardness of heart he wrote jou this commandment"; Mat 5 :17, 18—"Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: 1 came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I saj unto you. Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished " ; cf. Eph. 2:15—" having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances."
The written law was imperfect because God could, at the time, give no hlgher'to an unenlightened people. "But to say that the scope and ilcisign were imperfectly moral, la contradicted by the whole course of the history. We must ask what is the moral standard in which this course of education issues." And this we find in the life and preceptsof Christ. Even the law of repentance and faith does not take the place of the old law of being, but applies the latter to the special conditions of sin. Under the Levltical law, the prohibition of the touching of the dry bone (Num. 19:16), equally with thepuriflcatlous and sacrifices, the separations and penalties of the Mosaic code, expressed God's holiness and his repelling from him all that savored of sin or death. The laws with regard to leprosy were symbolic, as well as sanitary. So church polity and the ordinances are not arbitrary requirements, but they publish to dull sense-environed consciences, better than abstract propositions could have done, the fundamental truths of the Christian scheme. Hence they are not to be abrogated "till ho come" (1 Cor. 11:26).
The Puritans, however, in reenactlng the Mosaic code, made the mistake of confounding the eternal law of God with a partial, temporary, and obsolete expression of It. So we are not to rest In external precepts respecting women's hair and dress and speech, but to find the underlying principle of modesty and subordination which alone is of universal and eternal validity. Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book, 1:255—" God breathes, not speaks, his verdicts, felt not heard—Passed on successively to each court, I call Man's conscience, custom, manners, all that make More and more effort to promulgate, mark God's verdict in determinable words, Till last come human Juristssolidify Fluid results,—what's flxable lies forged, Statute,—the residue escapes in fume, Yet hangs aloft a cloud, as palpable To the finer sense as word the legist welds. Justinian's Pandects only make precise What simply sparkled in men's eyes before. Twitched in their brow or quivered on their lip, Waited the speech they called, but would not come." See Mozley, Ruling Ideas in Early Ages, 104; Tulloch, Doctrine of Sin, 141144; Finney, Syst. Theol., 1-40, 135-319; Mansel, Metaphysics, 378, 379; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 191-195.
III. Relation Op The Law To The Grace or God.
In human government, while law is an expression of the will of the governing power, and so of the nature lying behind the will, it is by no means an exhaustive expression of that will and nature, since it consists only of general ordinances, and leaves room for particular acts of command through the executive, as well as for "the institution of equity, the faculty of discretionary punishment, and the prerogative of pardon."
Amos, Science of Law, 29-48, shows how "the Institution of equity, the faculty of discretionary punishment, and the prerogative of pardon" all Involve expressions of will above and beyond what is contained in mere statute.
Applying now to the divine law this illustration drawn from human law, we remark:
(a) The law of God is a general expression of God's will, applicable to all moral beings. It therefore does not exclude the possibility of special injunctions to individuals, and special acts of wisdom and power in creation and providence. The very specialty of these latter expressions of will prevents us from classing them under the category of law.
Lord Bacon, Confession of Faith: "The soul of man was not produced by heaven or earth, but was breathed immediately from God; so the ways and dealings of God with spirits are not included in nature, that is, in the laws of heaven and earth, but are reserved to the law of his secret will and grace."
(6) The law of God, accordingly, is a partial, not an exhaustive, expression of God's nature. It constitutes, indeed, a manifestation of that attribute of holiness which is fundamental in God, and which man must possess in order to be in harmony with God. But it does not fully express God's nature in its aspects of personality, sovereignty, helpfulness, mercy.
The chief error of all pantheistic theology is the assumption that law Is an exhaustive expression of God: Strauss, Glaubenslebre, 1: 31—" If nature, as the self-realization of the divine essence, is equal to this divine essence, then it is infinite, and there can be nothing above and beyond it." This is a denial of the transcendence of God (see notes on pantheism, pages 55-57). Mere law is illustrated by the Buddhist proverb: "As the cartwheel follows the tread of the ox, so punishment follows sin." Donovan: "Apart from Christ, even if we have never yet broken the law, it is only by steady and perfect obedience for the entire future that we can remain justified. If we have sinned, we can be justified [without Christ] only by suffering and exhausting the whole penalty of the law."
(c) Mere law, therefore, leaves God's nature in these aspects of personality, sovereignty, helpfulness, mercy, to be expressed toward sinners in another way, namely through the atoning, regenerating, pardoning, sanctifying work of the gospel of Christ, As creation does not exclude miracles, so law does not exclude grace (Rom. 8 : 3—" what the law could not do God" did).
Murphy, Scientific Bases, 303-327, esp. 315—" To impersonal law, It is indifferent whether its subjects obey or not. But God desires, not the punishment, but the destruction, of sin." Campbell, Atonement, Introd., 28—"There are two regions of the divine selfmanifestation, one the reign of law, the other the kingdom of God." C. H. M.:—" Law is the transcript of the mind of God as to what man ought to be. But God is not merely law, but love. There is more in his heart than could be wrapped up in the 'ten words.' Not the law, but only Christ, is the perfect image of God" (John 1:17—" For ti« law was pyen by Mosra; grace and troth came by Jeans Const"). So there is more in man's heart toward God than exact fulfilment of requirement. The mother who sacrifices herself for her sick child does it, not because she must, but because she loves. To say that we are saved by grace, is to say that we are saved both without merit on our own part, and without necessity on the part of God. Grace is made known in proclamation, offer, command; but in all these it is gospel, or glad-tidings.
(d) Grace is to be regarded, however, not as abrogating law, but as republishing and enforcing it (Rom. 3 : 31—" we establish the law "). By removing obstacles to pardon in the mind of God, and by enabling man to obey, grace secures the perfect fulfilment of law (Rom. 8 : 4—"that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us"). Even grace has its law (Rom. 8 : 2—" the law of the Spirit of life "); another higher law of grace, the operation of individualizing mercy, overbears the "law of sin and of death,"—this last, as in the case of the miracle, not being suspended, annulled, or violated, but being merged in, while it is transcended by, the exertion of personal divine will.
Hooker, Eccl. Polity, 1:155, 185, ISM—"Man, having utterly disabled his nature unto those [natural] means, hath had other revealed by God, and hath received from heaven a law to teach him how that which is desired naturally, must now be supernaturally attained. Finally, we see that, because those latter exclude not the former as unnecessary, therefore the law of grace teaches and includes natural duties also, such as are hard to ascertain by the law of nature." The truth is midway between the Pelagian view, that there is no obstacle to the forgiveness of sins, and the modern rationalistic view, that since law fully expresses God, there can be no forgiveness of sins at all. Greg, Creed of Christendom, 2:217-228-"God is the only being who cannot forgive
sins Punishment is not the execution of a sentence, but the occurrence of an
effect." Robertson, Lect. on Genesis: "Deeds are irrevocable—their consequences ore knit up with them irrevocably." So Baden Powell, Law and Gospel, in Noyes' Theological Essays, 27. All this is true if God be regarded as merely the source of law. But there is such a thing as grace, and grace is more than law. There is no forgiveness In nature, but grace is above and beyond nature.
(«) Thus the revelation of grace, while it takes up and includes in itself the revelation of law, adds something different in kind, namely, the manifestation of the personal love of the Lawgiver. Without grace, law has only a demanding aspect. Only in connection with grace does it become "the perfect law, the law of liberty" (James 1 :25). In fine, grace is that larger and completer manifestation of the divine nature, of which law constitutes the necessary but preparatory stage.
Dorner, Person of Christ, 1:64, 78—" The law was a word (Ab>o?), but it was not a Aoyos rtAetat, a plastic word, like the words of God that brought forth the world, for it was only imperative, and there was no reality nor willing corresponding to the command (dent Sullen fehtte dm Seyn, dot WdUen). The Christian Ao>ov is Myn iKudtiat— rtfam T«Atiov T^s «A«i*«oiat—an operative and effective word, as that of creation .... So long, indeed, as the holiness of God is only directive and lawgiving, God himself is thought of only as absolute Moral Law, not yet as Love. So the Law tends forward to Prophecy—is an imperative word of God which does not lack entity, but which announces a higher revelation whereby the idea of holiness is powerfully presented, and thus the revelation of the divine holiness Is for the first time established in the world and completed. See Burton, in Bap. Rev., July, 1879:281-273, art.: Law and Divine Intervention; Farrar, Science and Theology, 184; Salmon, Reign of Law; Philippl, Glaubenalehre, 1:31.
SECTION II. — NATURE OF SIN.
L Definition Of Sin.
Sin is lack of conformity to the moral law of God, either in act, disposition, or state.
In explanation, we remark that (a) This definition regards sin as predicable only of rational and voluntary agents, (b) It assumes, however, that man has a rational nature below consciousness, and a voluntary nature apart from actual volition, (c) It holds that the divine law requires moral likeness to God in the affections and tendencies of the nature, as well as in its outward activities, (d) It therefore considers lack of conformity to the divine holiness in disposition or state as a violation of law, equally with the outward act of transgression.
In our discussion of the Will (pages 267-260), we noticed that there were permanent states of the will, us well as of the intellect and of the sensibilities. It is evident, moreover, that these permanent states, unlike man's deliberate acts, are always very imperfectly conscious, and In many cases are not conscious at all. Yet it is In these very states that man is most unlike God, and so, as law only reflects God (see pages 276-279), most lacking in conformity to God's law.
One main difference between Old School and New School views of sin Is that the latter constantly tends to limit sin to mere act, while the former finds sin In the states of the soul. We propose what we think to be a valid and proper compromise between the two. We make sin coBxtenslve, not with act, but with activity. The Old School and the New School are not so far apart, when we remember that the New School " choice" is elective, preference, exercised so soon as the child is born (Park) and reasserting Itself in all the subordinate choices of life; while the Old School "state" is not a dead, passive, mechanical thing, but is a state of active movement, or of tendency to move, toward evil.
The soul may not always be conscious, but it may always be active. At his creation man "became a living soul" (Gen. 2: 7), and It may be doubted whether the human spirit ever ceases Its activity, any more than the divine Spirit in whose Image it is made. There Is some reason to believe that even in the deepest sleep the body rests rather than the mind. And when we consider how large a portion of our activity Is automatic and continuous, wc see the impossibility of limiting the term 'sin' to the sphere of momentary act, whether conscious or unconscious.
On unconscious mental action, see Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 139, 515-543; Porteit Human Intellect, 333, 834; verstm Sir Wm. Hamilton, who adopts the maxim: "Non sentlinus, nisi seutiamus nos sentirc" (Philosophy, ed. Wight, 171). Observe also that sin may infect the body, as well as the soul, and may bring it into a state of non-conformity to God's law (see H. B. Smith, Syst. Theol., 267).
1. Proof.
As it is readily admitted that the outward act of transgression is properly denominated sin, we here attempt to show only that lack of conformity to the law of God in disposition or state is also and equally to be so denominated.
A. From Scripture.
(a) The words ordinarily translated 'sin,' or used as synonyms for it, are as applicable to dispositions and states as to acts (HOKn and a/iapTia — a missing, failure, coming short [sc. of God's will]).
See Num. 15 : 28—" sioneth unwittingly "; Pa. 51: 2—" cleanse me from mj sin "; 5—" Behold, I was ahapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me"; Rom. 7:17—"Sin which dwelleth in me"; compare Judges 20 :16, where the literal meaning of the word appears: "sling stones at a hair-breadth and not miss" (HNipn). In a similar manner, ywQ [ Lxx. oa«Scia ] — separation from, rebellion against [«. God ]; see Lev. 16 :16,21; cf. Delitzsch on Ps. 32 :1. J1J? L Lxx. iSticia ] = bending, perversion [ of what is right ], Iniquity; see Lev. 5 :17; cf. Join 7 :18. So also the Hebrew jn, >'Bn. [ — ruin, confusion ], and the Greek ixtxrTaaU, twidwtu'*, «'xi»pa, «<u«a, ••' !»•■ »«pf. None of these designations of sin limit It to mere act—most of them more naturally suggest disposition or state. On the words mentioned, see Girdlestone, O.T.Synonyms; Cremer, Lexicon N. T. Greek; Present Day Tracts, 5 : no. 28, pp. 4347; Trench, N. T. Synonyms, part 2 : 61, 73.
(6) The New Testament descriptions of sin bring more distinctly to view the states and dispositions than the outward acts of the soul (1 John 3 : 4— jj d/iapria iofiv r) aw/ila, where avo/xia =1 not "transgression of the law," but, as both context and etymology show, "lack of conformity to law " or "lawlessness "—Rev. Vers.).
See 1 Join 5 : 17—" ill unrighteousness is sin :Rom. 14 : 23—" whatsoever is not of faith is sm "; Junes 4 :17 —" To him therefore that knoveti to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." Where the sin is that of not doing, sin cannot be said to consist In act. It must then at least be a state.
(c) Moral evil is ascribed not only to the thoughts and affections, but to the heart from which they spring (we read of the "evil thoughts" and of the "evil heart "—Mat. 15 : 19 and Heb. 3 : 12).
See also Hat. 5: 22—anger in the heart is murder; 28—impure desire is adultery. Luis 6: 45 —" tie evil man out of tie evil treasure [of bis heart] bringetb forth that which is evil.' Heb. 3 :12—" an evil heart of unbelief"; cf. Is. 1: 5—"tie wiole iead is sick, and tie whole heart faint" ; Jer. 17 : 9—"Tie heart is deceitful above all things, and it is desperately sick: wio can know it ? "—the sin here that cannot be known is not sin of act, but sin of the heart.
(d) The state or condition of the soul which gives rise to wrong desires and acts is expressly called sin ( Bom. 7 : 8—" Sin .... wrought in me .... all manner of coveting ").
Join 8 : 34—"Every one that committeti sin is tie bondservant of sin"; Rom. 7 :11,13,14,17, 20—"sin
beguiled me .... working death to me .... I am carnal, sold under sin .... sin which dwelleti in me." These representations of sin as a principle or state of the soul are incompatible with the definition of it as a mere act.
(e) Sin is represented as existing in the soul, prior to the consciousness of it, and as only discovered and awakened by the law (Bom. 7 : 9, 10— "when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died "—if sin "revived," it must have had previous existence and life, even though it did not manifest itself in acts of conscious transgression).
Rom. 7 : 8—"apart from tie law sin was dead "—here is sin which is not yet sin of act. Dead or unconscious sin is still sin. The Arc in a cave discovers reptiles and stirs them, but they were there before; the light does not create them. Let a beatn of light, says Jean Paul Richter, through your window-shutter into a darkened room, and you reveal a thousand motes floating in the air whose existence was before unsuspected. So the law of God reveals our "hidden faults" (Ps. 19 :12)—Infirmities, imperfections, evil tendencies and desires —which cannot all be classed as acts of transgression.
(/) The allusions to sin as a permanent power or reigning principle, not only in the individual but in humanity at large, forbid us to define it as a momentary act, and compel us to regard it as being primarily a settled depravity of nature, of which individual sins or acts of transgression are the workings and fruits (Bom. 5 : 21—"sin reigned in death"; 6 : 12— "let not therefore sin reign in your mortal body " ).
In Rom. 5 : 21, the reign of sin is compared to the reign of grace. Ab grace is not an act but a principle, so sin is not an act but a principle. As the poisonous exhalations from a well indicate that there is corruption and death at the bottom, so the ever-recurring thoughts and acta of Bin are evidence that there is a principle of sin in the heart—in other words, that sin exists as a permanent disposition or state. A momentary act cannot " ntgn" nor "dw»U"; a disposition or state can.
(g) The Mosaic sacrifices for sins of ignorance and of omission, and especially for general sinfulness, are evidence that sin is not to be limited to mere act, but that it includes something deeper and more permanent in the heart and the life (Lev. 1 : 3; cf. Luke 2 : 24).
The sin-offering: for Bins of ignorance (Ur. 4 ; 14, 20, 31), the trespass-offering- for sins of omission (Lev. 5:5. 6), and the burnt-offering to expiate general sinfulness (l«t. 1:3; cf. Into 2 : 22-24), all witness that sin is not confined to mere act. See Oehler, O. T. Theology, 1:233; Schmld, Bib. Theol. N. T., 194, 381, 442, 488. 492, 004; Phllippi, Glaubenslebre, 3:210-217; Julius MUUer, Doctrine of t>in, 2 : 259-308; Edwards, Works, 3: 16-18. For the New School definition of sin, see Fitch, Nature of Sin, and Park, in Bib. Sac, 7 : 551.
B. From the common judgment of mankind.
(o) Men universally attribute vice as well as virtue not only to conscious and deliberate acts, but also to dispositions and states. Belief in something more permanently evil than acts of transgression is indicated in the common phrases, "hateful temper," "wicked pride," "bad character."
As the beatitudes (Hat. S: 1-12) are pronounced, not upon acts, but upon dispositions of the soul, so the curses of the law are uttered not so much against single acts of transgression as against the evil affections from which they spring. Compare the "works of the l«h" (Gal. 5:19) with the "fruit of the Spirit" (5:22). In both, dispositions and states predominate.
(6) Outward acts, indeed, are condemned only when they are regarded as originating in, and as symptomatic of, evil dispositions. Civil law proceeds upon this principle in holding crime to consist, not alone in the external act, but also in the evil motive or intent with which it is performed.
The mens rta is essential to the Idea of crime. The "idle word" (Mat 12:36) shall be brought into the Judgment, not because it is so important in itself, but because it is a floating straw that indicates the direction of the whole current of the heart and life. Murder differs from homicide, not in any outward respect, but simply because of the moti ve that prompts it—and that motive is always, in the last analysis, an evil disposition or state.
(c) The stronger an evil disposition, or, in other words, the more it connects itself with, or resolves itself into, a settled state or condition of the soul, the more blameworthy is it felt to be. This is shown by the distinction drawn between crimes of passion and crimes of deliberation.
Edwards: "Guilt consists in having one's heart wrong, and in doing wrong from the heart." There is guilt in evil desires, even when the will combats them. But there is greater guilt when the will consents. The outward act may be in each case the same, but the guilt of It is proportioned to the extent to which the evil disposition is settled and strong.
(d) This condemning sentence remains the same, even although the origin of the evil disposition or state cannot be traced back to any conscious act of the individual. Neither the general sense of mankind, nor the civil law in which this general sense is expressed, goes behind the fact of an existing evil will. Whether this evil will is the result of personal transgression, or is a hereditary bias derived from generations past, this evil will is the man himself, and upon him terminates the blame. We do not excuse arrogance or sensuality upon the ground that they are family traits.
The young murderer in Boston was not excused upon the ground of a congenitaUy cruel disposition. We repent In later years of sins of boyhood, which wo only now see to be sins; and converted cannibals repent, after becoming Christians, of the sins of heathendom which they once committed without a thought of their wickedness.
(e) When any evil disposition has such strength in itself, or is so combined with others, as to indicate a settled moral corruption in which no power to do good remains, this state is regarded with the deepest disapprobation of all. Sin weakens man's power of obedience, but the can-not is a will-not, and is therefore condemnable. The opposite principle would lead to the conclusion that, the more a man weakened his powers by transgression, the less guilty he would be, until absolute depravity became absolute innocence.
The boy who hates his father cannot change his hatred into love by a single act of will; but he is not therefore innocent. Spontaneous and uncontrollable profanity is the worst profanity of all. It is a sign that the whole will, like a subterranean Kentucky river, is moving away from God, and that no recuperative power is left in the soul which can reach into the depths to reverse Its course. See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:110114; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 2: T9-4B, 152-157; Richards, Lectures on Theology, 258-301; Edwards, Works, 2:134; Balrd, Elohim Revealed, 243-282; Princeton Essays, 2:224-239 5 Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 304.
C. From the experience of the Christian.
Christian experience is a testing of Scripture truth, and therefore is not an independent source of knowledge. It may, however, corroborate conclusions drawn from the word of God. Since the judgment of the Christian is formed under the influence of the Holy Spirit, we may trust this more implicitly than the general sense of the world. We affirm, then, that just in proportion to his spiritual enlightenment and self-knowledge, the Christian
(a) Regards his outward deviations from God's law, and his evil inclinations and desires, as outgrowths and revelations of a depravity of nature which lies below his consciousness; and
(6) Repents more deeply for this depravity of nature, which constitutes his inmost character and is inseparable from himself, than for what he merely feels or does.
In proof of these statements we appeal to the biographies and writings of those in all ages who have been by general consent regarded as most advanced in spiritual culture and discernment.
"Intelligentia prima est, ut te noris peccatorem." Compare David's experience, Ps. 51: 6—" Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: lud in the hidden part thou sh&H nuke me to know wisdom "— with Paul's experience in Rom. 7 : 24—"0 wretched man that I am I who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? "—with Isaiah's experience (6 :5), when In the presence of God's glory he uses the words of the leper (lev. 13 : 45) and calls himself "unclean," and with Peter's experience (Luke 5:8), when at the manifestation of Christ's miraculous power " he fell down at Jesus' knees, saving, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, 0 Lord." So the publican cries, "God be merciful to me the sinner" (Luke 18 :13), and Paul calls himself the "chief" of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). It is evident that in none of these cases were there merely single acts of transgression in view; the humiliation and self-abhorrence were in view of permanent states of depravity. Van Oosterzee: "What we do outwardly is only the revelation of our inner nature." It may be doubted, indeed, whether any repentance is genuine which is not repentance for sin rather than for Sim; compare John 16 : 8—the Holy Spirit " will convict the world in respect of sin."
Martensen, Dogmatics,389: Luther during his early experience "often wrote to Staupitz: 'Oh, my sins, my sins!' and yet In the confessional he could name no sins in particular which he had to confess; so that it was clearly a sense of the general depravity of his nature which filled his soul with deep sorrow and pain." Luther's conscience would not accept the comfort that he wixlied to be without sin, and therefore had no real sin. When he thought himself too great a sinner to be saved, Staupltz replied: "Would you have the semblance of a sinner, and the semblance of a Savior?"
After twenty years of religious experience, Jonathan Edwards wrote (Works, 1: 22, 23; also 3: 16-IH): "Often since I have lived in this town I have had very affecting views of my own sinfulness and vllencss, very frequently to such a degree as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping, sometimes for a considerable time together, so that I have been often obliged to shut myself up. I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wicked-* ness and the badness of my heart than ever I had before my conversion. It has often appeared to me that if God should mark iniquity against me, I should appear the very worst of all mankind, of all that have been since the beginning of the world to this time; and that I should have by far the lowest place in hell. When others that have come to talk with me about their soul's concerns have expressed the sense they have had of their own wickedness, by snying that it seemed to them they were as bad as the devil himself; I thought their expressions seemed exceeding faint and feeble to represent my wickedness."
Edwards continues: "My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly ineffable and swallowing up all thought and imagination—like an infinite deluge, or mountains over my head. I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite on Infinite and multiplying Infinite by infinite. Very often for these many years, these expressions are in my mind and in my mouth: 'Infinite upon infinite—infinite upon infinite!' When I look into my heart and take a view of my wickedness, It looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell. And It appears to me that were it not for free grace, exalted and raised up to the infinite height of all the fulness and glory of the great Jehovah, and the arm of his power and grace stretched forth in all the majesty of his power and in all the glory of his sovereignty, I should appear sunk down In my sins below hell itself, far beyond the sight of everything but the eye of sovereign grace that can pierce even down to such a depth. And yet it seems to me that my conviction of sin is exceeding small and faint; it is enough to amaze me that. I have no more sense of my sin. I know certainly that I have very little sense of my sinfulness. Whim I have had turns of weeping for my sins, I thought I knew at the time that my repentance was nothing to my sin .... It is affecting to think how Ignorant I was, when a 3'oung Christian, of the bottomless, infinite depths of wickedness, pride, hypocrisy, and deceit left in my heart."
Jonathan Edwards was not an ungodly man, but the holiest man of his time. He was not an enthusiast, but a man of acute, philosophic mind. He was not a man who indulged in exaggerated or random statements, for with bis powers of introspection and anal) sis he combined a faculty and habit of exact expression unsurpassed among the sons of men. If the maxim "cuique In arte sua credendum est" is of any value, Edwards's statements in a matter of religious experience are to be taken as correct interpretations of the facts. H. B. Smith (System Theol., 275) quotes Thomaslus as saying: "It is a striking fact in Scripture that statements of the depth and power of sin are chiefly from the regenerate." Another has said that "a serpent Is never seen at its whole length until It Is dead." Thomas a Kempis (ed. Gould and Lincoln, 142)—" Do not think that thou hast made any progress toward perfection, till thou feelest that thou art less than the least of all human beings."
Law's Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life: "You may justly condemn yourself for being the greatest sinner that you know, 1. Because you know more of the folly of your own heart than of other people's, and can charge yourself with various sins which you know only of yourself and cannot be sure that others are guilty of them. 2. The greatness of our guilt arises from the greatness of God's goodness to us. You know more of these aggravations of your sins than you do of the sins of other people. Hence the greatest saints have in all ages condemned themselves as the greatest sinners." We may add: 3. That, since each man is a peculiar being, each man is guilty of peculiar sins, and in certain particulars and aspects may constitute an example of the enormity and hatefulness of sin, such as neither earth nor hell can elsewhere show.
Of Cromwell, as a representative of the Puritans, Green says (Short History of the English People, 454): "The vivid sense of the divine Purity close to such men, made the life of common men seem sin." Dr. Arnold of Rugby (Life and Corresp., App. D.): "In a deep sense of moral evil, more perhaps than anything else, abides a saving knowledge of God." Augustine, on his death-bed, had the 32nd Psalm written over against him on the wall. For his expressions witli regard to sin, see his Confessions, book 10. See also Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 284, note.
2. Inferences.
In the light of the preceding discussion, we may properly estimate the elements of truth and of error in the common definition of sin as 'the voluntary transgression of known law.'
(a) Not all sin is voluntary as being a distinct and conscious volition; for evil disposition and state often precede and occasion evil volition, and evil disposition and state are themselves sin. All sin, however, is voluntary as springing either directly from will, or indirectly from those perverse affections and desires which have themselves originated in will. 'Voluntary' is a term broader than 'volitional,' and includes all those permanent states of intellect and affection which the will has made what they are. Will, moreover, is not to be regarded as simply the faculty of volitions, but as primarily the underlying determination of the being to a supreme end.
Will, as we have seen, Includes preference (d«A>u»a, voluntas, WiUe) as well as volition (SouA>i, arbttrium, Willkilr). We do not, with Edwards and Hodge, regard the sensibilities as states of the will. They are, however, in their character and their objects determined by the will, and so they may be called voluntary. The permanent state of the will (New School " elective preference ") is to be distinguished from the permanent states of the sensibilities (dispositions, or desires). But both are voluntary because both are due to past decisions of the will, and "whatever springs from will we are responsible for" (Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 243). Julius MUller, 2: 51—" We speak of self-consciousness and reason as something which the ego has, but we identify the will with the ego. No one would say, 'my will has decided this or that,' although we do say 'my ieason, my conscience teaches me this or that.' The will is the very man himself, as Augustine says: 'Voluntas est in omnibus; lmo omnes nihil aliud quam voluntates sunt.'"
For other statements of the relation of disposition to will, see Alexander, Moral Science, 151—" In regard to dispositions, we say that they are in a sense voluntary. They properly belong to the will, taking the word in a large sense. In judging of the morality of voluntary acts, the principle from which they proceed is always included in our view and comes in for a large part of the blame "; see also pages 201, 207, 208. Edwards on the Affections, 3:1-32; on the Will, 3: 4—"The affections are only certain modes of the exercise of the will." A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 234—" All sin is voluntary, in the sense that all sin has its root in the perverted dispositions, desires, and affections which constitute the depraved state of the will." But to Alexander, Edwards, and Hodge, we reply that the first sin was not voluntary in this sense, for there was no such depraved state of the will from which it could spring. We are responsible for dispositions, not upon the ground that they are a part of the will, but upon the ground that they are effects of will, In other words, that past decisions of the will have made them what they are.
(6) Deliberate intention to sin is an aggravation of transgression, but it is not essential to constitute any given act or feeling a sin. Those evil inclinations and impulses which rise unbidden and master the soul before it is well aware of their nature, are themselves violations of the divine law, and indications of an inward depravity which in the case of each descendant of Adam is the chief and fontal transgression.
Joseph Cook: "Only the surface-water of the Bea is penetrated with light. Beneath is a half-lit region. Still further down Is absolute darkness. We are greater than we know." Cf. Pa. 51: 6; 19 :12—"the inward parts ... the hidden part . . . hidden faulte"— hidden not only from others, but even from ourselves.
(c) Knowledge of the sinfulness of an act or feeling is also an aggravation of transgression, but it is not essential to constitute it a sin. Moral blindness is the effect of transgression, and, as inseparable from corrupt affections and desires, is itself condemned by the divine law.
Wc cannot excuse disobedience by saying: "I forgot." God's commandment Is: "Remember "—as In fa. 20 : 8; cf. 2 Pet 3 : 5—" for this they wilfullj forget" "Ignorantla legis neminem excusat." Rom. 2 :12—"As many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law"; Luke 12 : 48—"he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall bo beaten [though] with few stripes." The aim of revelation and of preaching is to bring man " to himself" (cf. lake 15 :17)—to show him what he has been doing and what he is. Goethe: "We are never deceived: we deceive ourselves."
(d) Ability to fulfil the law is not essential to constitute the non-fulfilment sin. Inability to fulfil the law is a result of transgression, and, as consisting not in an original deficiency of faculty but in a settled state of the affections and will, it is itself condemnable. Since the law presents the holiness of God as the only standard for the creature, ability to obey can never be the measure of obligation or the test of sin.
Not power to the contrary, in the sense of ability to change all our permanent states by mere volition, is the basis of obligation and responsibility; for surely Satan's responsibility does not depend upon his power at any moment to turn to God and be holy.
Definitions of Sin. Melancthon: Defectus vel inclinatio vel actio pugnans cum lege Dei. Calvin: Illegalltas, seu difforraitas a lege. Hollas;: Aberratlo a lege divina. Hollaz adds: "Voluntariness does not enter Into the definition of sin, gcnerically considered. Sin may be called voluntary, either in respect to Its cause, as it inheres in the will, or in respect to the act, as it proceeds from deliberate volition. Here is the antithesis to the Koman Catholics and to the Socinians, the latter of whom define sin as a voluntary [f. «., a volitional] transgression of law"—a view, says Hasc (Hutterus Redivivus, 11th ed., 162-164), "which is derived from the necessary methods of civil tribunals, and which is incompatible with the orthodox doctrine of original sin."
On the New School definition of Sin, see Fairchlld, Nature of Sin, in Bib. Sue, 25 : 3048; Whedon, in Bib. Sac, 19:251, and On the Will, 328. Per contra, see Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2 : 180-190; Lawrence, Old School in N. E. Theol., in Bib. Sac, 20 : 317-328; Julius Mtlller, Doct. Sin, 1:40-72; Nitzsch, Christ. Doct., 216; Lutliardt, Compendium der Dogm., 124-126.
II. The Essential PRiNon»iiE op Sin.
The definition of sin as lack of conformity to the divine law does not exclude, but rather necessitates, an inquiry into the characterizing motive or impelling power which explains its existence and constitutes its guilt. Only three views require extended examination. Of these the first two constitute the most common excuses for sin, although not propounded for this purpose by their authors: Sin is due (1) to the human body, or (2) to finite weakness. The third, which we regard as the Scriptural view, considers sin as ( 3) the supreme choice of self, or selfishness.
1. Sin as Sensuousness.
This view regards sin as the necessary product of man's sensuous nature —a result of the soul's connection with a physical organism. This is the view of Schleiermacher and of Rothe.
For statement of the view here opposed, see Schleiermacher, Der Christllche Glaube, 1:361-364—" Sin is a prevention of the determining power of the spirit, caused by the independence (SelbstUndlgkeit) of the sensuous functions." Kothe, Dogmatik, 1 :300-302. The advocates of this view would say that the child lives at first a life of sense, in which the bodily appetites are supreme. The senses are the avenues of all temptation, the physical domineers over the spiritual, and the soul never shakes off the body. Sin is, therefore-, a malarious exhalation from the low grounds of human nature, or. to use the words of Schleiermacher, "a positive opposition of the ilesh to the spirit." John Flske, Destiny of Man, 108—" Original sin is neither more nor less than the bruteinheritance which every man carries with him, and the process of evolution is an advance toward true salvation "—thus making sin a mere physical necessity.
In refutation of this view, it will be sufficient to urge the following considerations:
(a) It involves an assumption of the inherent evil of matter, at least so far as regards the substance of man's body. But this is either a form of dualism, and may be met with the objections already brought against that system, or it implies that God, in being the author of man's physical organism, is also the responsible originator of human sin.
This has been called the "caged-eagle theory " of man's existence: it holds that the body is a prison only, or, as Plato expressed it, "the tomb of the soul," so that the soul can be pure only by escaping from the body. But matter is not eternal. God made it, and made it pure. The body was made to be the servant of the spirit. We must not throw the blame of sin upon the senses, but upon the spirit that used the senses so wickedly. To attribute sin to the body is to make God, tho author of the body, to be also the author of sin—which is the greatest of blasphemies. Men cannot "Justly accuse Their Maker, or their making, or their fate " (Milton, Paradise Lost, 3 :112).
(6) It rests upon an incomplete induction of facts, taking account of sin solely in its aspect of self-degradation, but ignoring the worst aspect of it as self-exaltation. Avarice, envy, pride, ambition, malice, cruelty, revenge, self-righteousness, unbelief, enmity to God, are none of them fleshly sins, and upon this principle are incapable of explanation.
Goethe and Napoleon I were neither of them markedly sensual men; yet the spiritual vivisection which Goethe practised on Frederica Brion, his perfidious misrepresentation of his relations with Kestnor's wife in the "Sorrows of Werther," and bis flattery of Napoleon, when Wieland rejected with scorn the advances of the invader of his country, show Goethe to have been a very incarnation of heartlessness and selfishness; while of Napoleon it has been well said that "his self-sufficiency surpassed the self-sufficiency of common men as the great Sahara desert surpasses an ordinary sand-patch." Hutton calls Goethe " a Narcissus in love with himself." Like George Eliot's " Dinah," in Adam Bede, Goethe's "Confessions of a Beautiful Soul," in Wilhelm Meister, are the purely artistic delineation of a character with which he had no inner sympathy. And the most truthful epitaph to Napoleon was: "Tho little butchers of Ghent to Napoleon the Great" [butcher].
(c) It leads to absurd conclusions,—as, for example, that asceticism, by weakening the power of sense, must weaken the power of sin; that man becomes less sinful as his senses fail with age; that disembodied spirits are necessarily holy.
Asceticism only turns the current of sin in other directions. Spiritual pride and tyranny take the place of fleshly desires. The miser clutches his gold more closely as he nears death. Satan has no physical organism, yet he is the prince of evil.
(d) It interprets Scripture erroneously. In passages like Rom. 7 : 18— ova dial cv epot, Tovt' ia-tv iv rfj aapKi /jov, ayaS&v—ffdpf, or flesh, signifies, not man's body, but man's whole being when destitute of the Spirit of God. The Scriptures distinctly recognize the seat of sin as being in the soul itself, not in its physical organism. God does not tempt man, nor has he made man's nature to tempt him (James 1 : 13, 14).
In the use of the term "tab," Scripture puts a stigma upon sin, and intimates that human nature without God is as corruptible and perishable as the body would be without the soul to inhabit it. The "carnal mind," or "mind of the flesh" (Rom. 8:7), accordingly means, not the sensual mind, but the mind which is not under the control of the Holy Spirit, its true life. • See Meyer, on 1 Cor. 1:26—<ropf = " the purely human element in man, as opposed to the divine principle"; Pope, Theology, 2:65—<t±p( = "the whole being of man, body, soul, and spirit, separated from God and subjected to the creature ". Julius Mllller, Proof-texts, 19—tripf = "human nature as living in and for Itself, sundered from God and opposed to him." The earliest and best statement of this view of the term aipi is that of Julius MUller, Doctrino of Sin, 1 :295-333, especially 321. See also Dickson, St. Paul's Use of the Terms Flesh and Spirit, 270, 271—<rip{ = " human nature without the iri^Gna .... man standing by himself, or left to himself, over against God .... the natural man, conceived as not having yet received grace, or as not yet wholly under its influence."
(e) Instead of explaining sin, this theory virtually denies ite existence, —for if sin arises from the original constitution of our being, reason may recognize it as misfortune, but conscience cannot attribute to it guilt.
Sin which in its ultimate origin is a necessary thing Is no longer sin. On the whole theory of the sensuous origin of sin, see Neander, Planting and Training, 384, 428: Erncsti, Ursprung der SUnde, 1:29-27*; Phillppl, Glaubenslebre, 2:132-147; Tulloch, Doctrine of Sin, 144—" That which is an inherent and necessary power in the creation cannot be a contradiction of its highest law."
2. Sin as Finiteness.
This view explains sin as a necessary result of the limitations of man's finite being. As an incident of imperfect development, the fruit of ignorance and impotence, sin is not absolutely but only relatively evil—an element in human education and a means of progress.
This theory is advocated by Leibnitz, Theodlcee, part i, §8 20, 31; Spinoza, Ethics, part iv, prop. 20. Upon this view, sin is the blundering of Inexperience, the thoughtlessness that takes evil for good, the ignorance that puts its fingers into the fire, the stumbling without which one cannot learn to walk. It is a fruit which is sour and bitter simply because it is immature. It is a means of discipline and training for something betterit is holiness in the germ, good in the making—" Erhebung des Menschen zur freien Vernunft." The fall was a fall up, and not down.
We object to this theory, that
(a) It rests upon a pantheistic basis, as the sense-theory rests upon dualism. The moral is confounded with the physical; might is identified with right. Since sin is a necessary incident of finiteness, and creatures can never be infinite, it follows that sin must be everlasting, not only in the universe, but in each individual soul.
Goethe, Carlyle, and Emerson are representatives of this view in literature. Goethe spoke of the "idleness of wishing to Jump off from one's own shadow." Carlyle began by worshiping truth; then he worshiped sincerity; still later, will; finally, force. In our civil war he was upon the side of the slave-holder. Confounding all moral distinctions, as he did in his later writings, he was fit to wear the title which he invented for another: "President of the Heaven-and-Hell-Amalgamation Society." Froude calls him a "Calvinist without the theology" (a believer in predestination without grace?). Emerson nlso was the worshiper of successful force. His pantheism is most manifest in his poems " Cupido " and " Brahma," and in his Essays on " Spirit" and on the " Oversoul." He thought the Africans not worth the saving, and he would treat them as he would treat the ants of one of their great ant-hills—step on them. His view of Jesus is found in his Essays, 2 : 263—" Jesus would absorb the race; but Tom Psine, or the coarsest blasphemer, helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power." Sin is an inseparable factor in the nature of finite things. The highest archangel cannot be without it. Man in moral character is the "asymptote of God." The throne of iniquity is set up forever in the universe.
(6) It is inconsistent with known facts,—as for example, the following: Not all sins are negative sins of ignorance and infirmity; there are acts of positive malignity, conscious transgressions, wilful and presumptuous choices of evil. Increased knowledge of the nature of sin does not of itself give strength to overcome it; but, on the contrary, repeated acts of conscious transgression harden the heart in evil. Men of greatest mental powers are not of necessity the greatest saints, nor are the greatest sinners men of least strength of will and understanding.
Not the weak but the strong arc; the greatest sinners. We do not pity Nero and Ctcsar Borgia for their weakness; we abhor them for their crimes. Judas was an able man, a practical administrator; and Satan is a being of great natural endowments. Sin is not simply a weakness—it Is also a power. A pantheistic philosophy should worship Satan most of all: for he is tho truest type of godless intellect and selfish strength.
(c) Like the sense-theory of sin, it contradicts both conscience and Scripture by denying human responsibility and by transferring the blame of sin from the creature to the Creator. This is to explain sin, again, by denying its existence.
Oedipus said that his evil deeds had been suffered, not done. Agamemnon, in the Iliad, says the blame belongs, not to himself, but to Jupiter, and to fate. So sin blames everything and everybody but self. Geo. 3 :12—" The woman whom thou garest to be with mo, she gare ma of too tree, and I did eat." But self-vindicating is God-accusing. Made imperfect at the start, man cannot help his sin. By the very fact of his creation he is cut loose from God. That cannot be sin which is a necessary outgrowth of human nature, which is not our act but our fate. To all this, the one answer is found in Conscience. Conscience testifies that sin is not "dew dewordeiie" but "do* Uemachte," and that it was his own act when man by transgression fell. The Scriptures refer man's sin, not to tho limitations of his being, but to the free-will of man himself. On the theory here combatted, see MUller, Doctrine of Sin, 271-295; I'hllippi, Glaubenslehre, 3 :123-131.
3. Sin as Selfishness.
We hold the essential principle of sin to be selfishness. By selfishness we mean not simply the exaggerated self-love which constitutes the antithesis of benevolence, but that choice of self as the supreme end which constitutes the antithesis of supreme love to God. That selfishness is the essence of sin may be shown as follows:
A. Love to God is the essence of all virtue. The opposite to this, the choice of self as the supreme end, must therefore be the essence of sin.
We are to remember, however, that the love to God in which virtue consists is love for that which is most characteristic and fundamental in God, namely, his holiness. It is not to be confounded with supreme regard for God's interests or for the good of being in general. Not mere benevolence, but love for God as holy, is the principle and source of holiness in man. Since the love of God required by the law is of this sort, it not only does not imply that love, in the sense of benevolence, is the essence of holiness in God,—it implies rather that holiness, or self-loving and self-affirming purity, is fundamental in the divine nature. From this self-loving and self-affirming purity, love properly so-called, or the self-communicating attribute, is to be carefully distinguished (see page 129 .
Bossuet, describing heathendom, says: "Every thiug was God but God himself." Sin goes further than this, and says: "I am myself till things "—not simply as Louis XVI: "I am the state," but: "I am the world, the universe, God." Heine represents Napoleon as saying to the world: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Comte's religion is a "synthetic idealization of our existence"—a worship, not of God, but of humanity; and "the festival of humanity "among positlvists = Walt Whitman's "I celebrate myself." The most thorough discussion of the essential principle of sin is that of Julius MUller, Doct. Sin, 1 : 147-182. He defines sin as " a turning away from the love of God to self-seeking."
N. W. Taylor holds that self-love is the primary cause of all moral action; that selfishness is a different thing, and consists not in making our own happiness our ultimate end, which we must do if we are moral beings, but in love of the world, and In preferring the world to God as our portion or chief good (see N. W. Taylor, Moral Govt., 1:2426; 2:20-24; and Rev. Theol., 134-162; Tyler, Letters on the New Haven Theology, 72). We claim, on the contrary, that to make our own happiness our ultimate aim is Itself sin, and the essence of sin. As God makes his holiness the central thing, so we are to live for that, loving self only in God and for God's sake. This love for God as holy is the essence of virtue. The opposite to this, or supreme love for self, is sin. As the poet writes: "I could not love thee, dear, so much. Loved I not honor more," so Christian friends can say: "Our loves in higher love endure." The sinner raises some lower object of Instinct or desire to supremacy, regardless of God and his law, and this he does for no other reason than to gratify self. On the distinction between mere benevolence and the love required by God's law, see Hovey, God With Us, 187-200; Hopkins, Works, 1:235; F. W. Robertson, Sermon I. Emerson: "Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none."
B. All the different forms of sin can be shown to have their root in selfishness, while selfishness itself, considered as the choice of self as a supreme end, cannot be resolved into any simpler elements.
(a) Selfishness may reveal itself in the elevation to supreme dominion of any one of man's natural appetites, desires, or affections. Sensuality is selfishness in the form of inordinate appetite. Selfish desire takes the forms respectively of avarice, ambition, vanity, pride, acccording as it is set upon property, power, esteem, independence. Selfish affection is falsehood or malice, according as it hopes to make others its voluntary servants, or regards them as standing in its way; it is unbelief or enmity to God, according as it simply turns away from the truth and love of God, or conceives of God's holiness as positively resisting and punishing it.
Augustine and Aquinas held the essence of sin to be pride; Luther and Calvin regarded its essence to be unbelief. Kreibig (VersOhnungslehre) regards It as "worldlove " ; still others consider it as enmity to God. In opposing the view that sensuality is the essence of sin, Julius MUller says: "Wherever we find sensuality, there we find selfishness, but we do not find that, where there is selfishness, there Is always sensuality. Selfishness may embody itself in fleshly lust or Inordinate desire for the creature, but this last cannot bring forth spiritual sins which have no clement of sensuality in them."
Covetousness or avarice makes, not sensual gratification itself, but the things that may minister thereto, the object of pursuit, and in this last chase often loses sight of its original aim. Ambition is selfish love of power; vanity is selfish love of esteem. Pride is but the self-complacency, self-sufficiency, and self-isolation of a selfish spirit that desires nothing so much as unrestrained independence. Falsehood originates in selfishness, first as self-deception, and then, since man by sin Isolates himself and yet in a thousand ways needs the fellowship of his brethren, as deception of others. Malice, the perversion of natural resentment (together with hatred and revenge). Is the reaction of selfishness against those who stand, or are imagined to stand, In its way. Unbelief and enmity to God are effects of sin, rather than its essence: selfishness leads us first to doubt, and then to hate, the Lawgiver and Judge. Tacitus: "Human! generis proprium est odisse quem heseris."
(6) Even in the nobler forms of unregenerate life, the principle of selfishness is to be regarded as manifesting itself in the preference of lower ends to that of God's proposing. Others are loved with idolatrous affection because these others are regarded as a part of self. That the selfish element is present even here, is evident upon considering that such affection does A
not seek the highest interest of ite object, jfchat it often ceases when unreturned, and that it sacrifices to its own gratification the claims of God and his law.
Even In the mother's idolatry of her child, the explorer's devotion to science, the sailor's risk of his life to save another's, the gratification sought may be that of a lower instinct or desire, and any substitution of a lower for the highest object is non-conformity to law, and therefore sin. H. B. Smith, System Theology, 277—"Some lower affection Is supreme." And the underlying motive which leads to this substitution is self-gratification. There is no such tiling as disinterested sin, for "every one that loreth is begotten of God "(1 John 4 : 7). Thomas Hughes, The Manliness of Christ: Much of the heroism of battle Is simply "resolution in the actors to have their way, contempt for ease, animal courage which we share with the bulldog and the weasel, intense assertion of individual will and force, avowal of the rougb-handed man that he has that in him which enables him to defy pain and danger and death."
Mozley on Blanco White, in Essays, 2: 14a: Truth may be sougbt in order to absorb truth in self, not for the sake of absorbing self in truth. So Blanco White, in spite of the pain of separating from old views and friends, lived for the selfish pleasure of new discovery, till all his early faith vanished, and even immortality seemed a dream. He falsely thought that the pain he suffered in giving up old beliefs was evidence of selfsacrifice with which God must be pleased, whereas it was the inevitable pain which attends the victory of selfishness. Robert Browning, Paracelsus, 81—" I still must hoard, and heap, and class all truths With one ulterior purpose: I must know! Would God translate me to his throne, believe That I should only listen to his words To further my own ends." F. W. Robertson on Genesis, 57—" He who sacrifices his sense of right, his conscience, for another, sacrifices the God within him; he is not sacrificing self.... He who prefers his dearest friend or his beloved child to the call of duty, will soon show that he prefers himself to his dearest friend, and would not sacrifice himself for his child." Ib., 91—" In those who love little, love [for finite beings] is a primary affection —a secondary, in those who love much .... The only true affection is that which is subordinate to a higher." True love is love for the soul and its highest, its eternal interests, love that seeks to make it holy, love for the sake of God and for the accomplishment of God's idea in his creation.
Although we cannot, witli Augustine, call the virtues of the heathen " splendid vices" —for they were relatively good and useful—they still, except in possible instances where God's Spirit wrought upon the heart, were illustrations of a morality divorced from love to God, were lacking in the most essential element demanded by the law, were therefore infected with sin. Since the law judges all action by the heart from which it springs, no action of the unregenerate can be other than sin. The ebony-tree is white in its outer circles of woody fibre; at heart it is black as ink.
On the various forms of sin as manifestations of selfishness, see Julius Mllller, Doct. Sin, 1: 147-182; Jonathan Edwards, Works, 2 : 288, 269; Pbilippi, Glaubenslehre. 3 : B, 8; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 243-282; Stewart, Active and Moral Powers, 11-91; Hopkins, Moral Science, 86-158. On the Roman Catholic "Seven Deadly Sins" (Pride, Envy Anger, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, Lust), see Wetzer und Welte, Kirchenlexikon, and Orby Shipley, Theory about Sin, preface, xvi-xviii.
0. This view accords best with Scripture.
(a) The law requires love to God as its all-embracing requirement.
Mat. 22 : 37-39—the command of love to God and man; Rom. 13 : 8-10—"lore therefore is the fulfilment of the law "; Gal. 5 :14—" the whole lav is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shall lore thy neighbor •< thyself"; James 2 : 8—" the royal law."
(6) The holiness of Christ consisted in this, that he sought not his own
will or glory, but made God his supreme end.
John 5 : 30—" my judgment is righteous; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me": 7 :18—" He that speaketh from himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh the glory of him that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him "; Rom. 15 : 3—" Christ also pleased not himself."
(c) The Christian is one who has ceased to live for self. Rom. 14 : 7—" none of as liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself"; 2 Cor. 5:15—" he died for all, that they which live should no longer lira onto themselves, bnt onto him who for their sakes died and rose again "; Gal. 2 : 20— "I have boon crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me." Contrast 2 Tim. 3 : 2 —"lorors of self,"
(d) The tempter's promise is a promise of selfish independence. Gen. 3 : 5—" ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil."
(e) The prodigal separates himself from his father, and seeks his own interest and pleasure.
Luke 15 :12,13—" Give me the portion of thy substance .... gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country."
(/) The 'man of sin' illustrates the nature of sin, in 'opposing and exalting himself against all that is called God.'
2 Thess. 2 : 3, 4—"the man of sin ... the son of perdition, he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is -called God or that is worshipped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God."
Sin therefore is not merely a negative thing, or an absence of love to God. It is a fundamental and positive choice or preference of self, instead of God, as the object of affection and the supreme end of being. Instead of making God the centre of his life, surrendering himself unconditionally to God and possessing himself only in subordination to God's will, the sinner makes self the centre of his life, sets himself directly against God, and constitutes his own interest the supreme motive and his own will the supreme rule.
We may follow Dr. E. G. Robinson in saying that, while sin as a state is unlikeness to God, as a principle is opposition to God, and as an act is transgression of God's law, the essence of it always and everywhere is selfishness. It is therefore not something external, or the result of compulsion from without; it is a depravity of the affections and a perversion of the will, which constitutes mau's inmost character.
See Hams, in Bib. Sac, 18 :148—" Sin Is essentially egoism or selfism, putting self In God's place. It bas four principal characteristics or manifestations: (1) self-sufficiency, instead of faith; (21 self-will, instead of submission; (3) self-seeking, instead of benevolence; (4) self-righteousness. Instead of humility and reverence." All sin is either explicit or Implicit "enmity against God" (Rom. 8:7). All true confessions are like David's (Mil 4)—" against thee, thee only hare I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight" Of all sinners it might be said that they "Fight neither with small nor great, but only with the king of Israel" (1 L 22 : 31).
Not every sinner Is conscious of this enmity. Sin is a principle in course of development. It is not j'et "full-grown" (James 1:15—"the sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death")' Even now, as James Marttneau has said: "If It could be known that God was dead, the news would cause but little excitement In the streets of London and Paris." But this indifference easily grows, in the presence of threatening and penalty, into violent hatred to God and positive defiance of his law. If the sin which is now hidden In the sinner's heart were but permitted to develop itself according to Its own nature, it would hurl the Almighty from his throne, and would set up its own kingdom upon the ruins of the moral universe. See Dwlght, Works, Sermon 80.
SECTION III.—UNIVERSALITY OF SIN.
In showing that sin is universal in the human race, we divide our proof into two parts. In the first, we regard sin in its aspect as conscious violation of law; in the second, in its aspect as a bias of the nature to evil, prior to or underlying consciousness.
I. Every Hitman Being Who Has Arrived At Moral Consciousness
HAS COMMITTED ACTS, OR CHERISHED DISPOSITIONS, CONTRARY TO THE DIVINE LAW.
1. Proof from Scripture.
The universality of transgression is:
(a) Set forth in direct statement of Scripture.
IK. - 46—"there is no man that sinneth not"; Pa, 143 : 2—"enter not into judgment with thy servant; For in thy sight shall no man living be justified "; Prov. 20 : 9—" Who can say, I hare made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?" loci. 7 : 20—" Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good and ainneth not"; Rom. 3: 10,12—" There is none righteous, no. not one .... there is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one "; 19, 20— "that every mouth may he stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God: because by the work* of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for through the law oometh the knowledge of sin "; 23—" for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God "; Gal. 3 : 22—" the scripture shut up all things under sin "; 1 John 1: 8—"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Compare Hat 6 :12— "forgive us our debts "—given as a prayer for all men; 14—"il ye forgive men their trespasses' —the condition of our own lorgiveness. Luke 11:13—" If y« then, being Mil."
(6) Implied in declarations of the universal need of atonement, regeneration, and repentance.
Universal need of atonement: Mark 16 :16—" He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved" ( Mark 16 : 9-30, though probably not written by Mark, is nevertheless of canonical authority); John 3 :16—" God so lovod the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish "; 6 : 50—" This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die "; 12 : 47—" I came not to judge the world, but to save the world "; lets 4 :12—"in none other is there salvation; for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved." Universal
need of regeneration: John 3 i 3, 5—" Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God
eicopt a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Universal need of repentance: Acts 17 : 30—" commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent"
(f-) Shown from the condemnation resting upon all who do not accept Christ.
John 3 :18— "he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God "; 36—" he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him "; Compare 1 John 5 :19—"the whole world lieth in the evil one."
{d) Consistent with those passages which at first sight seem to ascribe to certain men a goodness which renders them acceptable to God, where a closer examination will show that in each case the goodness supposed is either a merely imperfect and fancied goodness, or else a goodness resulting from the trust of a conscious sinner in God's method of salvation.
In Hat 9 :12—"They that are whole hare no need of a physician, but they that are sick"—Jesus means those who In their own esteem are whole; cf. 13—"I came not to call the righteous, but sinners" = "If any were truly righteous, they would not need my salvation; if they think themselves so, they will not care to seek it" (An. Par. Bib.). In luke 10 : 30-37—the parable of the good Samaritan—Jesus intimates, not that the good Samaritan was not a sinner, but that there were saved sinners outside of the bounds of Israel. In Acts 10 : 35—"in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him "—Peter declares, not that Cornelius was not a sinner, but that God had accepted him through Christ; Cornelius was already Justified, but he needed to know (1) that he was saved, and (2) how he was saved; and Peter was sent to tell him of the fact, and of the method, of his salvation in Christ. In Rom. 2:14—"for when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these not having the law, are a law unto themselves"—it is only said that In certain respects the obedience of these Gentiles shows that they have an unwritten law in their hearts; it is not said that they perfectly obey the law and therefore have no sin—for Paul says immediately after (Rom. 3 :9) -" we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin."
So with regard to the words "perfect" and "upright" as applied to godly men. We shall see* when we come to consider the doctrine of sanctifleation, that the word "prefect," as applied to spiritual conditions already attained, signifies only a relative perfection, equivalent to sincere piety or maturity of Christian judgment. In other words, the perfection of a sinner who has long trusted in Christ, and In whom Christ has overcome his chief defects of character. See 1 Cor. 2 : 6—" we speak wisdom among the perfect" (Am. Rev.: "among them that are full-grown "); Phil. 3 :15—" Let us therefore, as manj as be perfect, be thus minded "—i. e. to press toward the goal—a goal expressly said by the apostles to be not yet attained (v. 12-14).
2. Proof from history, observation, and the common judgment of mankind.
(a) History witnesses to the universality of sin, in its accounts of the
universal prevalence of priesthood and sacrifice.
See references in Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 161-172, 335-339. Baptist Review, 1882 : 343— "Plutarch speaks of the tear-stained eyes, the pallid and woe-begone countenances which he sees at the public altars, men rolling themselves In the mire and confessing their sins. Among the common people the dull feeling of guilt was too real to be shaken off or laughed away."
(6) Every man knows himself to have come short of moral perfection,
and, in proportion to his experience of the world, recognizes the fact that
every other man has come short of it also.
Chinese proverb: "There are but two good men; one is dead, and the other is not yet born."
(c) The common judgment of mankind declares that there is an element of selfishness in every human heart, and that every man is prone to some form of sin. This common judgment is expressed in the maxims: "No man is perfect"; "Every man has his weak side," or "his price"; and every great name in literature has attested its truth.
Seneca, De Ira, 3:26—" We are all wicked. What one blames in another he will find in his own bosom. We live among the wicked, ourselves being wicked "; Ep., 22—" No one has strength of himself to emerge [from this wickedness]; some one must needs hold forth a hand; some one must draw us out." Ovid, Met., 7 :19—"I see the things
that are better and I approve them, yet I follow the worse We strive even after
that which is forbidden, and we desire the things that are denied." Cicero: "Nature has given us faint sparks of knowledge: we extinguish them by our immoralities."
Goethe: "I see no fault committed which I too might not have committed." Dr. Johnson: "Every man knows that of himself which ho dare not tell to his dearest friend." Thackeray showed himself a master in Action by having no heroes: the paragons of virtue belonged to a cruder age of romance. So George Eliot represents life correctly by setting before us no perfect characters: all act from mixed motives. Carlyle, hero-worshipper as he was Inclined to be, is said to have become disgusted with each of his heroes before he finished his biography.
Every man will grant (1) that he is not perfect in moral character; (2) that love to God has not been the constant motive of his actions, i. c, that he has been to some degree selfish; (3) that he has committed at least one known violation of conscience. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 86, 87—"Those theorists who reject revealed religion, and remand man to the first principles of ethics and morality as the only religion that he needs, send him to a tribunal that damns him "; for it is simple fact that "no human creature, in any country or grade of civilization, has ever glorified God to the extent of his knowledge of God."
3. Proof from Christian experience.
(a) In proportion to his spiritual progress does the Christian recognize evil dispositions within him, which but for divine grace might germinate and bring forth the most various forms of outward transgression. See Goodwin's Experience, in Baird, Elohlm Revealed, 409: Goodwin, member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, speaking of bis conversion, says: 11 An abundant discovery was made to me of my inward lusts and concupiscence, and I was amazed to see with what greediness I had sought the gratification of every sin." Tollner's experience, in Martensen's Dogmatics; TJjllner, though inclined to Pelagianism, says: "I look into my own heart and I see with penitent sorrow that I must in God's sight accuse myself of all the offences I have named "—and he had named only deliberate transgressions—" he who does not allow that he is similarly guilty, let him look deep into his own heart." John Newton sees the murderer led to execution, and says: "There, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton!" Count de Malstre: "I do not know what the heart of a villain may be—I only know that of a virtuous man, and that is frightful." Tholuck on the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship at Halle, said to his students: "In review of God's manifold blessings, the thing I seem most to thank him for is the conviction of sin."
(b) Since those most enlightened by the Holy Spirit recognize themselves as guilty of unnumbered violations of the divine law, the absence of any consciousness of sin on the part of unregenerate men must be regarded as proof that they are blinded by persistent transgression.
It is a remarkable fact that, while those who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit and who are actually overcoming their sins see more and more of the evil of their hearts and lives, those who are the slaves of sin see less and lees of that evil, and often deny that they are sinners at all. Rousseau, in his Confessions, confesses sin in a spirit which itself needs to be confessed. He glosses over his vices, and magnifies his virtues. "No man." he says, "can come to the throne of God and say: 'I am a better man than
Rousseau.' Let the trumpet of t he last Judgment sound when It will: I will present
myself before the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and I will say aloud: ■ Here is what I did, what I thought, and what I was.'" "Ah," said he. Just before he expired, "how happy a thing it Is to die, when one has no reason for remorse or selfreproach!" And then, addressing himself to the Almighty, he said: "Eternal Being, the soul that I am going to give thee buck is as pure at this moment as it was when it proceeded from thee; render it a partaker of thy felicity I" Yet, in his boyhood, Rousseau was a petty thief. In his writings, he advocated adultery and suicide. He lived for more than twenty years in practical licentiousness. His children, most of whom, if not all, were illegitimate, he sent off to the foundling hospital as soon as they were born, thus casting them upon the charity of strangers. He was mean, vacillating, treacherous, hypocritical, and blasphemous. And in his Confessions, he rehearses the exciting scenes of his life in the spirit of the bold adventurer. See N. M. Williams, in Bap. Review, art.: Rousseau, from which the substance of the above is taken.
Edwin Forrest, when accused of being converted in a religious revival, wrote an indignant denial to the public press, saying that he hud nothing to regret; his sins were those of omission rather than commission; he had always acted upon the principle of loving his friends and hating his enemies; and trusting in the Justice as well as the mercy of God, he hoped, when he left this earthly sphere, to 'wrap the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant dreams.' And yet no man of his time was more arrogant, self-sufficient, licentious, revengeful. It has been well said that "the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none."
The following reasons may bo suggested for men's unconsciousness of their sins: 1. We never know the force of any evil passion or principle within us, until we begin to resist it. 2. God's providential restraints upon sin have hitherto prevented Its full development. 3. God's Judgments against sin have not yet been made manifest, t. Sin itself has a blinding influence upon the mind. 5. Only he who has been saved from the penalty of sin is willing to look into the abyss from which he hat been rescued.—That a man is unconscious of any sin is therefore only proof that he is a great and hardened transgressor. This is also the most hopeless feature of his case, since for one who never realizes his sin there Is no salvation. In the light of this truth, we see the amazing grace of God, not only in the gift of Christ to die for sinners, but in the gift of the Holy Spirit to convince men of their sins and to lead them to accept the Savior. See Julius MUUer, Doctrine of Sin, 2: 248-259; Edwards, Works, 2: 328; John Caird, Reasons for Men's Unconsciousness of their Sins, In Sermons, 33; Rowland Hill: "The devil makes little of sin, that he may retain the sinner."
II. Evert Member Of The Human Rage, Without Exception, Possesses A Corrupted Nature, Which Is A Source Op Actual Sin, And Is Itself Sin.
1. Proof from Scripture.
A. The sinful acts and dispositions of men are referred to, and explained by, a corrupt nature.
By ' nature' we mean that which is born in a man, that which he has by birth. That there is an Inborn corrupt state, from which sinful acts and dispositions How, is evident from Luke 6 : 43-46—" There is no good tree that bnngelh forth corrupt fruit . ... the evil man out of the evil treasure [of his heart] bringeth forth that which is eril"; Hat 12 : 34—" To offspring of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things?" Ps. 58 : 3—" The wicked are estranged from the womb: They go astray as soon as they be bom, speaking lies."
This corrupt nature:
(a) Belongs to man from the first moment of his being. Ps. 51: S—" Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; And in sin did my mother conceive me "—here David is confessing-, not his mother's sin, but his own sin; and he declares that this sin goes back to the very moment of his conception. Tholuck, quoted by H. B. Smith, System, 281— "David confesses that sin begins with the life of man; that not only his works, but the man himself. Is guilty before God."
(6) Underlies man's consciousness.
Ps. 19 :12—" Who can discern his errors? Clear thou me from hidden faults"; 51: 6, 7—" Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: And in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."
(c) Cannot be changed by man's own power.
Jer. 13:23—"Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil"; Rom. 7 : 24- " 0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?"
(d) First constitutes him a sinner before God.
Ps. 51: 6—" Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts "; Jer. 17 : 9—" The heart is deceitful above all things and it is desperately sick."
(e) Is the common heritage of the race.
Job 14 : 4—" Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one "; John 3 : 6—" That which is born of the flesh is flesh," i. e. human nuture sundered from God. Pope, Theology, 2 : 53—" Christ, who knew what was in man, says: 'If ye then, being evil' (Mat 7 :11), and 1 That which is born of the flesh is flesh' (John 3:6), that is—putting the two together—' men are evil, because they are born evil.'"
B. All men are declared to be by nature children of wrath ( Eph. 2:3). Here 'nature' signifies something inborn and original, as distinguished from that which is subsequently acquired. The text implies that: (a) Sin is a nature, in the sense of a congenital depravity of the will. (6) This nature is guilty and condemnable,—since God's wrath rests only upon that which deserves it. (c) All men participate in this nature and in this consequent guilt and condemnation.
Iph. 2: 3—" were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest" Shedd: "Nature here Is not substance created by God, but corruption of that substance, which corruption is created by man." Nature (from nascor) may denote anything inborn, and the term may Just as properly designate inborn evil tendencies and state, as inborn faculties or substance. "By nature" therefore = "by birth "; compare GaL 2 :15—" Jews by nature."
Meyer, however, interprets the verse: "We become children of wrath by following a natural propensity." He claims the doctrine of the apostle to be, that man incurs the divine wrath by his actual sin, whop he submits his will to the Inborn sin-principle. So N. W. Taylor, Concio ad Clerum, quoted In H. H. Smith, System, 281—" We were by nature such that we became through our own act children of wrath." "But," says Smith, "if the apostle had meant this, he could have said Bo; there is a proper Greek work for ' became'; the word which is used can only be rendered ' were.'" So 1 Cor. 7 : 14 —"tist were jour children unclean —implies that, apart from the operations of grace, all men are denied in virtue of their very birth from a corrupt stock.
For the proper interpretation of Eph. 2 : 3, see Julius MUller. Doet. of Sin, 2: 278, and Commentaries of Harless and Olshnuscn. See also Phlllppi, Glaubenslchre, 3 :212 sq., and Thomasius, Cbristi Person und Werk, 1 :289. Per contra, see Keuss, Christ. Theol. in Apost. Age, 2: 29, 79-84; Weiss, Bib. Theol. N. T., 239.
C. Death, the penalty of sin, is visited even upon those who have never exercised a personal and conscious choice (Rom. 5 : 12, 14 ). This text implies that (a) Sin exists in the case of infants prior to moral consciousness, and therefore in the nature, as distinguished from the personal activity. (b) Since infants die, this visitation of the penalty of sin upon them marks the ill-desert of that nature which contains in itself, though undeveloped, the germs of actual transgression, (c) It is therefore certain that a sinful, guilty, and condemnable nature belongs to all mankind.
Rom. 5 : 12-14— " Therefore as through one nun sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned:—for until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Herertheless death reipned from Adam until Moses, eren over them that had not sinned after the likeness of adam's transgression "—that is, over those who, like infants, had never personally and consciously sinned. See a more full treatment of these last words, in connection with an exegesis of the whole passage—Rom. 5 :12-19—under the head: "Imputation of Sin."
N. W. Taylor maintained that infants, prior to moral agency, are not subjects of the moral government of God, any more than are animals. In this he disagreed with Edwards, Bellamy, Hopkins, Owight, Smalley, Griffin. See Tyler, Letters on N. E. Theol., 8,132-142—" To say that animals die, and therefore death can be no proof of sin in infants, is to take infidel ground. The infidel has just as good u right to say: Because animals die without being sinners, therefore adults may. If deutli may reign to such an alarming extent over the human race and yet be no proof of sin, then you adopt the principle that death may reign to any extent over the universe, yet never can be made a proof of sin in any case." We reserve our full proof that physical death is the penalty of sin to the section on Penalty as oue of the Consequences of Sin.
2. Proof from Reason.
Three facts demand explanation: (a) The universal existence of sinful dispositions in every mind, and of sinful acts in every life, (b) The preponderating tendencies to evil, which necessitate the constant education of good impulses, while the bad grow of themselves, (c) The yielding of the will to temptation, and the actual violation of the divine law, in the case of every human being so soon as he reaches moral consciousness.
Reason seeks an underlying principle which will reduce these multitudinous phenomena to unity. As we are compelled to refer common physical and intellectual phenomena to a common physical and intellectual nature, so we are compelled to refer these common moral phenomena to a common moral nature, and to find in it the cause of this universal, spontaneous, and all-controlling opposition to God and his law. The only possible solution of the problem is this, that the common nature of mankind is corrupt, or, in other words, that the human will, prior to the single volitions of the individual, is turned away from God and supremely set upon self-gratification. This unconscious and fundamental direction of the will, as the source of actual sin, must itself be sin; and of this sin all mankind are partakers.
The greatest thinkers of the world have certified to the correctness of this conclusion. Plato speaks of "that blind, many-headed wild beast of all that is evil within thee." He repudiates the idea that men are naturally (rood, and say9 that, if this were true, all that would be needed to make them holy would be to shut them up, from their earliest years, so that they might not bo corrupted by others.
See Aristotle's doctrine of "the slope," described in Chase's Introd. to Aristotle's Ethics, xxxv and 32—" In regard to moral virtue, man stands on a slope. His appetites and passions gravitate downward; his reason attracts him upward. Conflict occurs. A step upward, and reason grains what passion has lost; but the reverse is the case if he steps downward. The tendency in the former case is to the entire subjection of passion; in the latter case, to the entire suppression of reason. The slope will terminate upwards in a level summit where men's steps will be secure, or downwards in an irretrievable plunge over the precipice. Continual self-control leads to absolute self-mastery; continual failure to the utter absence of self-control. But all tie can see U the slope. No man is ever at the ip«»"'a of the summit, nor can we say that a man has irretrievably fallen into the abyss. How it is that men constantly act against their own convictions of what is right, and their previous determinations to follow right, is a mystery which Aristotle discusses, but leaves unexplained.
"Compare the passage in the Ethics, 1:11—' Clearly there is in them [men], besides the Reason, some other inborn principle (ir«*u*dt) which flghts with and strains against the Reason .... There is in the soul also somewhat besides the Reason which is opposed to this and goes against it.'—Compare this passage with Paul, in Rom. 7 : 23—'I see a different law in my members, warring against the lav of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members.' But as Aristotle does not explain the cause, so he suggests no cure. Revelation alone can account for the disease, or point out the remedy."
Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 1:102—" Aristotle makes the significant and almost surprising observation, that the character which has become evil by guilt can Just as little be thrown off again at mere volition, as the person who has made himself sick by his own fault can become well again at mere volition; once become evil or sick, it stands no longer within his discretion to cease to be so; a stone, when once cast, cannot be caught back from its flight; and so is It with the character that has become evil." Ho does not tell " how a reformation in character is possible—moreover he does not concede to evil any other than an individual effect,—knows nothing of any natural solidarity of evil in self-propagating, morally degenerated races" (Nic. Eth., 3:6, 7; 5:12; 7 :2, 3; 10 :10). The good nature, he says, "is evidently not within our power, but is by some kind of divine causality conferred upon the truly happy."
Plato, Meno, 89—"The cause of corruption is from our parents, so that we never relinquish their evil way, or escape the blemish of their evil habit." Horace, Ep., 1:10 —" Naturam expellas f urea, tamen usque recurrct." Latin proverb: " Nemo repente f uit turpissimus." Pascal: "Weare born unrighteous; for each one tends to himself, and the bent toward self is the beginning of all disorder." Kant spoke of "the radical evil of human nature." "Hegel, pantheist as he was, declared that original sin is the nature of every man—every man begins with it" (H. B. Smith). A sceptic who gave his children no religious training, with the view of letting them each in mature years choose a faith for himself, reproved Coleridge for letting his garden run to weeds; but Coleridge replied, that he did not think it right to prejudice the soil in favor of roses and strawberries. Van Oosterzee: Rain and sunshine make weeds grow more quickly, but could not draw them out of the soil if the seeds did not lie there already; so evil education and example draw out sin, but do not implant it. Tennyson: "He finds a baseness in his blood, At such strange war with what is good, He cannot do the thing he would."
Chief Justice Thompson, of Pennsylvania: "If those who preach had been lawyers previous to entering the ministry, they would know and say far more about the depravity of the human heart than they do. The old doctrine of total depravity is the only thing that can explain the falsehoods, the dishonesties, the licentiousness, and the murders which are so rife in the world. Education, refinement, and even a high order of talent, cannot overcome the inclination to evil which exists in the heart, and has taken possession of the very fibres of our nature." See Edwards. Original Sin, in Works, 2 : 309-510; Julius MUller, Doct. Sin, 2 : 25W-307; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2 : 231-238; Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 22tt-236.
SECTION IV.—ORIGIN OF SIN IN THE PERSONAL ACT OF ADAM.
With regard to the origin of this sinful nature which is common to the race, and which is the occasion of all actual transgressions, reason affords no light. The Scriptures, however, refer the origin of this nature to that free act of our first parents by which they turned away from God, corrupted themselves, and brought themselves under the penalties of the law.
I. THK Sortpttjral ACCOUNT OF THE TEMPTATION AND Fali IN GENESIS 3 : 1-7.
1. Its general character not mythical or allegorical, but historical.
We adopt this view for the following reasons :—(a) There is no intimation in the account itself that it is not historical. (6) As a part of a historical book, the presumption is that it is itself historical, (c) The later Scripture writers refer to it as a veritable history even in its details, (d) Particular features of the narrative, such as the placing of our first parents in a garden and the speaking of the tempter through a serpent-form, are incidents suitable to man's condition of innocent but untried childhood (e) This view that the narrative is historical does not forbid our assuming that the trees of life and of knowledge were symbols of spiritual truths, while at the same time they were outward realities.
See John 8 : 44—" Te ire of jour father the devil, and the lasts of jour father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and standeth not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speakcth of his own, for he is a liar and the father thereof"; 2 Cor. 11: 3—" the serpent beguiled Ere in his craftiness " • Rot. 20 : 2—" the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan."
Infantile and innocent man found his fit place and work in a garden. The language of appearances Is doubtless used. Satan might enter into a brute-form, and might appear to speak through it. In all languages, the stories of brutes speaking show that Buch a temptation is congruous with the condition of early man. Asiatic myths agree in representing the serpent as the emblem of the spirit of evil. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil watf the symbol of God's right of eminent domain, and indicated that all belonged to him. It is not necessary to suppose that it was known by this name before tho fall. By means of it man came to know good, by the loss of it; to know evil, by bitter experience; C. H. M.: "To know good, without the power to do it; to know evil, without the power to avoid it." Bible Com., 1: 40—The tree of life was sym. bol of the fact that "life is to be sought not from within, from himself, in his own powers or faculties; but from that which is without him, even from him who hath life in himself.
As the water of baptism and the bread of the Lord's supper, though themselves common things, are symbolic of tho greatest truths, so the tree of knowledge and the tree of life were sacramental. Mcllvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 90-141—" The two trees represented good and evil. The prohibition of the latter was a declaration that man of himself could not distinguish between good and evil, and must trust divine guidance. Satan urged man to discern between good and evil by his own wisdom, and so become independent of God. Sin is the attempt of the creature to exercise God's attribute of discerning and choosing between good and evil by his own wisdom. It is therefore self-conceit, self-trust, self-assertion, the preference of his own wisdom and will to the wisdom and will of God." Mcllvaine refers to Lord Bacon, Works, 1: 82,182. See also Pope, Theology, 2 :10,11; Boston Lectures for 1871: 80, 81. For the mythical or allegorical explanation of the narrative, see Hase, Hutterus Kedivlvus, 164,165, and Nltzsch, Christ. Doct., 218.
2. The course of the temptation, and the resulting fall. The stages of the temptation appear to have been as follows:
(a) An appeal on the part of Satan to innocent appetites, together with an implied suggestion that God was arbitrarily withholding the means of their gratification (Gen. 3:1). The first sin was in Eve's isolating herself and choosing to seek her own pleasure without regard to God's will. This initial selfishness it was, which led her to listen to the tempter instead of rebuking him or flying from him, and to exaggerate the divine command in her response (Gen. 3:3).
fan. 3 : t—" Tea. hita God said, It shall not eat of any tree of the gardes?" Satan emphasizes the limitation, but Is silent with regard to the generous permission—" Of every tree of the garden [but one] thou mayest froelj eat" (2:11). C. H. M., in Inco: "To admit the question 'Hath God said?' is already positive infidelity. To add to God's word is as bad as to take from it. • Hath God said ?' is quickly followed by 'thou shall not surely die.' Questioning: whether God has spoken results in open contradiction of what God has said. Eve suffered God's word to be contradicted by a creature, only because she had abjured Its authority over her conscience and heart." The command was simply: "Thou shall not eat of it" (Gen. 2 :17). In her rising dislike to the authority she had renounced, she exaggerates the command Into: "Te shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it" (Gen. 3:3). Here is already self-isolation. Instead of love.
(6) A denial of the veracity of God, on the part of the tempter, with a charge against the Almighty of jealousy and fraud in keeping his creatures in a position of ignorance and dependence (Gen. 3 : 4, 5 ). This was followed, on the part of the woman, by positive unbelief, and by a conscious and presumptuous cherishing of desire for the forbidden fruit, as a means of independence and knowledge. Thus unbelief, pride, and lust all sprang from the self-isolating, self-seeking spirit, and fastened upon the means of gratifying it (Gen. 3:6).
Gen. 3 : 4, 5—" And the serpent said unto the woman. Te shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye oat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and •Til"; 3 : 6—" And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat" —SO "taking the word of a Professor of Lying, that he does not lie" (John Henry Newman).
(c) The tempter needed no longer to urge his suit. Having poisoned the fountain, the stream would naturally be evil. Since the heart and its desires had become corrupt, the inward disposition manifested itself in act (Gen. 3 : 6—' did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her' = who had been with her, and had shared her choice and longing). Thus man fell inwardly, before the outward act of eating the forbidden fruit,—fell in that one fundamental determination whereby he made supreme choice of self instead of God. This sin of the inmost nature gave rise to sins of the desires, and sins of the desires led to the outward act of transgression (James 1 :15).
James 1:15—" Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin." Baird, Elohlm Revealed, 388—" The law of God had already been violated; man was fallen before tho fruit had been plucked, or the rebellion had been thus signalized. The law required not only outward obedience but fealty of the heart, and this was withdrawn before any outward token Indicated the change." Phlllppl, Glaubenslehre: "So man became like God, a setter of law to himself. Man's self-elevation to godhood was his fall. God's self-humiliation to manhood was man's restoration and elevation "The man has become as one of us' in his condition of self-centered activity—thereby losing all real likeness to God, which consists in having the same aim with God himself. De te fabtda narratur; it Is the condition, not of one alone, but of all the race." Sin once brought into being is self-propagating; its seed Is in itself: the centuries of misery and crime that have followed have only shown what endless possibilities of evil were wrapped up In that single sin. Keble: "'T was but a little drop of sin We saw this morning enter In, And lo, at eventide a world is drowned!" Farrnr, Fall of Man: "The guilty wish of one woman has swollen Into the irremediable corruption of a world." See Oehler, O. T. Theology, 1: 231; MUller, Doct. Sin, i : 381-385; Edwards on Original Sin, part 4, cbnp. 2.
EL Difficulties Connected With The Fall Consideked As The PerSonal Act Of Adam.
1. How could a holy being fall f
Here we must acknowledge that we cannot understand how the first unholy emotion could have found lodgment in a mind that was set supremely upon God, nor how temptation could have overcome a soul in which there were no unholy propensities to which it could appeal. The mere power of choice does not explain the fact of an unholy choice. The fact of natural desire for sensuous and intellectual gratification does not explain how this desire came to be inordinate. Nor does it throw light upon the matter, to resolve this fall into a deception of our first parents by Satan. Thenyielding to such deception presupposes distrust of God and alienation from him. Satan's fall, moreover, since it must have been uncaused by temptation from without, is more difficult to explain than Adam's fall.
But sin is an existing fact. God cannot be its author, either by creating man's nature so that sin was a necessary incident of its development, or by withdrawing a supernatural grace which was necessary to keep man holy. Reason, therefore, has no other recourse than to accept the Scripture doctrine that sin originated in man's free act of revolt from God — the act of a will which, though inclined toward God, was not yet confirmed in virtue and was still capable of a contrary choice. The original possession of such power to the contrary seems to be the necessary condition of probation and moral development. Yet the exercise of this power in a sinful direction can never be explained upon grounds of reason, since sin is essentially unreason. It is an act of wicked arbitrariness, the only motive of which is the desire to depart from God and to render self supreme.
Sin is ft "mystaj of lawlessness" (2 Thess. 2 : 7), at the beginning, as well as at the end. Neander, Planting and Training, 288—" Whoever explains sin, nullifies it." Man's power at the beginning to choose evil does not prove that, now that he has fallen, he has equal power of himself permanently to choose good. Because man has power to cast himself from the top of a precipice to the bottom, it does not follow that he has equal power to transport himself from the bottom to the top.
Hodge, Essays and Reviews, 30—" There is a broad difference between the commencement of holiness itnd the commencement of sin, and more is necessary for the former than for the latter. An act of obedience, if it is performed under the mere impulse of self-love, is virtually no act of obedience. It is not performed with any Intention to obey, for that is holy, and cannot, according to the theory, precede the act. But an act of disobedience, performed from the desire of happiness, is rebellion. The cases are surely different. If, to please myself, I do what God commands, it is not holiness: but if, to please myself, I do what he forbids, it is sin. Besides, no creature is Immutable. Though created holy, the taste for holy enjoyments may be overcome by a temptation sufficiently insidious and powerful, and a selfish motive or feeling excited in the mind. Neither is a sinful character immutable. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the truth may be clearly presented and so effectually applied as to produce that change which is called regeneration; that is, to call Into existence a taste for holiness, so that it is chosen for its own sake and not as a means of happiness."
H. B. Smith, System, 262—"The state of the case, as far as we can enter into Adam's experience, is this: Before the command, there was the state of love without the thought of the opposite: a knowledge of good only, a yet unconscious goodness: there was also the knowledge that the eating of the fruit was against the divine command. The temptation aroused pride: the yielding to that was the sin. The change was there. The change was not in the choice as an executive act, nor In the result of that act^the eating; but In the choice of supreme love to the world and self, rather than supreme devotion to Ood. It was an Immanent preference of the world,—not a love of the world following the choice, but a love of the world which is the choice itself."
283 —" We cannot account for Adam's fall, psychologically. In saying this we mean: It is Inexplicable by anything outside itself. We must receive the fact as ultimate and rest there. Of course we do not mean that it was not in accordance with the laws of moral agency,— that It was a violation of those laws: but only that we do not see the mode, that we cannot construct it for ourselves in a rational way. It differs from all other similar cases of ultimate preference which we know; viz., the sinner's immanent preference of the world, where we know there is an antecedent ground In the bias to sin, and the Christian's regeneration, or immanent preference of God, where we know there is an Influence from without, the working of the Holy Spirit." 264—" We must leave the whole question with the immanent preference standing forth as the ultimate fact In the case, which is not to be constructed philosophically, as far as the processes of Adam's soul are concerned: we must regard that Immanent preference as both a choice and an affection, not an affection the result of a choice, not a choloe which Is the consequence of an affection, but both together."
In one particular, however, we must differ with H. B. Smith: Since the power of voluntary Internal movement Is the power of will, we must regard the change from good to evil as primarily a choice, and only secondarily a state of affection caused thereby. Only by postulating a free and conscious act of transgression on the part of Adam, an act which bears to evil affection the relation not of effect but of cause, do we reach, at the beginning of human development, a proper basis for the responsibility and guilt of Adam and the race.
2. How could Ood justly permit Satanic temptation t
We see in this permission not injustice but benevolence.
(a) Since Satan fell without external temptation, it is probable that man's trial would have been substantially the same, even though there had been no Satan to tempt him.
Angels had no animal nature to obscure the vision; they could not be Influenced through sense; yet they were tempted and they fell.
(6) In this case, however, man's fall would perhaps have been without what now constitutes its single mitigating circumstance. Self-originated sin would have made man himself a Satan.
Mat. 13 :28—" in enemj k»Ui done this." See Trench, Studies in the Gospels, 16-29.
(c) As, in the conflict with temptation, it is an advantage to objectify evil under the image of corruptible flesh, so it is an advantage to meet it as embodied in a personal and seducing spirit.
Man's body, corruptible and perishable as It is, furnishes him with an illustration and reminder of the condition of soul to which sin has reduced him. The flesh, with its burdens and pains, is thus, under God, a help to the distinct recognition and overcoming of sin. So it was an advantage to man to have temptation confined to a single external voice. We may say of the Influence of the tempter, as Birks, in his Difficulties of Belief, 101, says of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: "Temptation did not depend upon the tree. Temptation was certain in any event. The tree was a type into which God contracted the possibilities of evil, so as to strip them of delusive vastness, and connect tbem with definite and palpable warning—to show man that It was only one of the many possible activities of his spirit which was forbidden, that God had right to all and could forbid all."
(d) Such temptation has in itself no tendency to lead the soul astray. If the soul be holy, temptation may only confirm it in virtue. Only the evil will, self-determined against God, can turn temptation into an occasion of ruin.
As the sun's beat has no tendency to wither the plant rooted In deep and moist soil, but only causes it to send down its roots the deeper and to fasten itself the more strongly, so temptation bus in itself no tendency to pervert the soul. It was only the seeds that "fell upon the rocky places, where they had not much earth" (Mat 13 : 5, 6), that "vers scorched" when "the nn was risen "; and our Lord attributes their failure, not to the sun, but to their lack of root and of soil: "Because thej had no root," "because thej had no deepness of earth." The same temptation which occasions the ruin of the false disciple stimulates to sturdy growth the virtue of the true Christian. Contrast with the temptation of Adam the temptation of Christ. Adam had everything to plead for God, the garden and its delights, while Christ had everything to plead against him, the wilderness and its privations. But Adam had confidence in Satan, while Christ had confidence in God; and the result was in the former case defeat, in the latter victory. See Baird, Elohlm Revealed, 385-896.
3. How could a penalty so great be justly connected with disobedience to so slight a command f
To this question we may reply:
(a) So slight a command presented the best test of the spirit of obedience.
Cicero: "Parva res est, at magna culpa." The child's persistent disobedience in one single respect to the mother's command shows that in all his other acts of seeming obedience he does nothing for his mother's sake, but all for his own sake—shows, in other words, that he does not possess the spirit of obedience in a single act.
(6) The external command was not arbitrary or insignificant in its substance. It was a concrete presentation to the human will of God's claim to eminent domain or absolute ownership.
John Hall, Lectures on the Religious Use of Property. 10—" It sometimes happens that owners of land, meaning to give the use of it to others, without alienating it, impose a nominal rent—a quit-rent, the passing of which acknowledges the recipient as owner and the occupier as tenant. This is understood in all lands. In many an old English deed 'three barley-corns,' 'a fat capon,' or 'a shilling' is the consideration which permanently recognizes the rights of lordship. God taught man by the forbidden tree that he was owner, that man was occupier. He selected the matter of property to be the test of man's obedience, the outward and sensible Bign of a right state of heart toward God; and when man put forth his hand and did eat, he denied God's ownership and asserted his own. Nothing remained but to eject him."
(c) The sanction attached to the command shows that man was not left ignorant of its meaning or importance.
Gen. 2 :17—"In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
(d) The act of disobedience was therefore the revelation of a will thoroughly corrupted and alienated from God—a will given over to ingratitude, unbelief, ambition, and rebellion.
The motive to disobedience was not appetite, but the ambition to be as gods. The outward act of eating the forbidden fruit was only the thin end of the wedge, behind which lay the whole mass —the fundamental determination to isolate self and to seek personal pleasure regardless of God and his law. So the man under conviction for sin commonly clings to some single passion or plan, only half-conscious of the fact that opposition to God in one thing is opposition in all.
ILL Consequences Op The Fai/l, So Far As Bespeots Adah.
1. Death.—This death was twofold. It was partly: A. Physical death, or the separation of the soul from the body.—The seeds of death, naturally implanted in man's constitution, began to develop themselves the moment that access to the tree of life was denied him. Man
from that moment was a dying creature.
In a true sense death began at onoe. To It belonged the pains which both man and woman should suffer In their appointed callings. The fact that man's earthly existenoe did not at onoe end, was due to Ood's counsel of redemption. "The law of the Spirit of life" (Rom. 8:2) began to work even then, and grace began to counteract the effects of the fall. Christ has now "aboliehed death" (2Tim. 1:10) by taking its terrors away, and by turning it into the portal of heaven. He will destroy it utterly (1 Cor. 15:26) when, by resurrection from the dead, the bodies of the saints shall be made immortal. We reserve the full proof that physical death is part of the penalty of sin until we discuss the Consequences of Sin to Adam's Posterity.
But this death was also, and chiefly,
B. Spiritual death, or the separation of the soul from God.—In this are included: (a) Negatively, the loss of man's moral likeness to God, or that underlying tendency of his whole nature toward God which constituted his original righteousness. (6) Positively, the depraving of all those powers which, in their united action with reference to moral and religious truth, we call man's moral and religious nature; or, in other words, the blinding of his intellect, the corruption of his affections, and the enslavement of his will.
Seeking to be a god, man becomes a slave; seeking independence, he ceased to be master of himself. Once his intellect was pure. He was supremely conscious of God, and saw all things else in God's light. Now he was supremely conscious of self, and saw all things as they affected self. This self-consciousness—how unlike the objective life of the first apostles, of Christ, and of every loving soul! Once man's affections were pure. He loved God supremely, and other things in subordination to God's will. Now he loved self supremely, and was ruled by inordinate affections towards the creatures which could minister to his selfish gratification. Now man could do nothing pleasing to God, because he lacked the love which is necessary to all true obedience.
In fine, man no longer made God the end of his life, but chose self instead. While he retained the power of self-determination in subordinate things, he lost that freedom which consisted in the power of choosing God as his ultimate aim, and became fettered by a fundamental inclination of his will toward evil. The intuitions of the reason were abnormally obscured, since these intuitions, so far as they are concerned with moral and religious truth, are conditioned upon a right state of the affections; and — as a necessary result of this obscuring of reason — conscience, which, as the moral judiciary of the soul, decides upon the basis of the law given to it by reason, became perverse in its deliverances. Yet this inability to judge or act aright, since it was a moral inability springing ultimately from will, was itself hateful and condemnable. ,
See Phillppi, Glaubenslehre, 3:61-78; Shedd, Sermons on the Natural Man, 202-230, esp. 205 —" Whatsoever springs from will we are responsible for. Man's inability to love God supremely results from his intense self-will and self-love, and therefore his impotence is a part and element of his sin, and not an excuse for it." And yet the question "ldam, where art thou?" (Gen. 3:9), says C.J. Baldwin, "was, (1) a question, not as to Adam's physical locality, but as to his moral condition; (2) a question, not of Justice threatening, but of love inviting to repentance and return; (3) a question, not to Adam as an individual only, but to the whole humanity of which he was tho representative."
2. Positive and formal conclusion from God's presence.—This included:
(a) The cessation of man's former familiar intercourse with God, and the setting up of outward barriers between man and his Maker (cherubim and sacrifice).
"In die Welt hlnausgestossen, Stehtder Mensch vcrlassenda." ThoughOodpunished Adam and Eve, he did not curse them as he did the serpent. Tbelr exclusion from the tree of life was a matter of benevolence as well as of Justice, for It prevented the immortality of sin.
(6) Banishment from the garden, where Ood had specially manifested his presence.—Eden was perhaps a spot reserved, as Adam's body had been, to show what a sinless world would be. This positive exclusion from God's presence, with the sorrow and pain which it involved, may have been intended to illustrate to man the nature of that eternal death from which he now needed to seek deliverance.
At the gates of Eden, there seems to have been a manifestation of God's presence, In the cherubim, which constituted the place a sanctuary. Both Cain and Abel brought offerings "onto the Lord'' (Gen. 4 : 3, 4), and when Cain fled, he Is said to have gone out "from the presence of the lord" (den. 4 :16). On the consequences of the fall to Adam, see Edwards, Works, 2 :380-405; Hopkins, Works, 1:806-246; Dwlght, Theology, 1: 398-434; Watson, Institutes, 2 :19-42; Martensen, Dogmatics, 155-173; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 402-412.
SECTION V.—IMPUTATION OF ADAM'S SIN TO HIS POSTERITY.
We have seen that all mankind are sinners; that all men are by nature depraved, guilty, and condemnable; and that the transgression of onr first parents, so far as respects the human race, was the first sin. We have still to consider the connection between Adam's sin and the depravity, guilt, and condemnation of the race.
(a) The Soriptures teach that the transgression of our first parents constituted their posterity sinners (Bom. 5 : 19—"through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners"), so that Adam's sin is imputed, reckoned, or charged to every member of the race of which he was the germ and head (Bom. 5 : 16 —" the judgment came of one [offence] unto condemnation "). It is because of Adam's sin that we are born depraved and subject to God's penal inflictions (Bom. 5 : 12—"through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin "; Eph. 2 : 3—"by nature children of wrath "). Two questions demand answer,—first, how we can be responsible for a depraved nature which we did not personally and consciously originate; and, secondly, how God can justly charge to our account the sin of the first father of the race. These questions are substantially the same, and the Scriptures intimate the true answer to the problem, when they declare that "in Adam all die" (1 Cor. 15 :22) and "that death passed unto all men, for that all sinned" when "through one man sin entered into the world" (Bom. 5:12). In other words, Adam's sin is the cause and ground of the depravity, guilt, and condemnation of all his posterity, simply because Adam and his posterity are one, and, by virtue of their organic unity, the sin of Adam is the sin of the race.
The steps of our treatment thus far are as follows: 1. God's holiness Is purity of nature. 2. God's law demands purity of nature. 3. Sin is Impure nature. 4. All men have this impure nature. 5. Adam originated this Impure nature. In the present section we expect to add: 6. Adam and we are one; and. In the succeeding section, to complete the doctrine with: 7. The guilt and penalty of Adam's sin are ours.
(6) According as we regard this twofold problem from the point of view of the abnormal human condition, or of the divine treatment of it, we may call it the problem of original Bin, or the problem of imputation. Neither of these terms is objectionable when its meaning is defined. By imputation of sin we mean, not the arbitrary and mechanical charging to a man of that for which he is not naturally responsible, but the reckoning to a man of a guilt which is properly his own, whether by virtue of his individual acts, or by virtue of his connection with the race. By original sin we mean that participation in the common sin of the race with which God charges us, in virtue of our descent from Adam, its first father and head.
We should not permit our use of the term 'imputation' to be hindered or prejudiced by the fact that certain schools of theology, notably the federal school, have attached to it an arbitrary, external, and mechanical meaning—holding- that Qod Imputes sin to to men, not because they are sinners, but upon the ground of a legal fiction whereby Adam, without their consent, was made their representative. We shall see, on the contrary, that (1) in the case of Adam's sin Imputed to us, (2) in the case of our sins imputed to Christ, and (3) in the case of Christ's righteousness imputed to the believer, there is always a realistic basis for the imputation, namely, a real union, (1) between Adam and his descendants; (2) between Christ and the race; and (3) between believers and Christ, such as gives in each case community of life, and enables us to say that God imputes to no man what does not properly belong to him.
(c) There are two fundamental principles which the Scriptures already cited seem clearly to substantiate, and which other Scriptures corroborate. The first is, that man's relations to moral law extend beyond the sphere of conscious and actual transgression, and embrace those moral tendencies and qualities of his being which he has in common with every other member of the race. The second is, that God's moral government is a government which not only takes account of persons and personal acts, but also recognizes race-responsibilities and inflicts race-penalties; or, in other words, judges mankind, not simply as a collection of separate individuals, but also as an organic whole, which can collectively revolt from God and incur the curse of his violated law.
On race-responsibility, see H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 288-302—"No one can apprehend the doctrine of original sin, nor the doctrine of redemption, who insists that the whole moral government of Qod has respect only to individual desert, who does not allow that the moral government of Ood, ax moral, has a wider scope and larger relations, so that Ood may dispense suffering and happiness (in his all-wise and Inscrutable providence) on other grounds than that of personal merit and demerit. The dilemma here is: the facts connected with native depravity and with the redemption through Christ either belong to the moral government of God, or not. If they do, then that government has to do with other considerations than those of personal merit and demerit (since our disabilities in consequence of sin and the grace offered In Christ are not In any sense the result of our personal choice, though we do choose in our relations to both). If they do not belong to the moral government of God, where shall we assign them? To the physical? That certainly cannot be. To the divine sovereignty? But that does not relieve any difficulty; for the question still remains, Is that sovereignty, as thus exercised, Just or unjust? We must take one or the other of these. The whole (of sin and grace) Is either a mystery of sovereignty—of mere omnipotence —or a proceeding of moral government. The question will arise with respect to grace as well as to sin: How can the theory that all moral government has respect only to the merit or demerit of personal acts, be applied to our Justification? If all sin is in sinning, with a personal desert of everlasting death, by parity of reasoning all holiness must consist in a holy choice with personal merit of eternal life. We say then, generally, that all definitions of sin which mean a sin are irrelevant here." Dr. Smith quotes Edwards, 2:306—" Original sin. the innate sinful depravity of the heart, includes not only the depravity of nature but the imputation of Adam's first sin, or, in other words, the liableness or expoaedneaa of Adam's posterity, in the divine judgment, to partake of the punishment of that sin." For further statements with regard to race-responslbllity, sec Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2 : 29-39 (System Doctrine, 2 :324-333), quoted on pages 311, 313, among objections to the Pelagian Theory.
The watchword of a large class of theologians—popularly called "New School "—is that "all sin consists in sinning "—that is, all sin is sin of act. But we have seen that the dispositions and states in which a man is unlike God and his purity are also sin according to the meaning of the law. We have now to add that each man is responsible also for that sin of our first father in which the human race apostatized from God. In other words, wc recognize the guilt of race-sin as well as of personal sin. We desire to say at the outset, however, that our view, and, as we believe, the Scriptural view, requires us also to hold: (1) that actual sin, in which the personal agent reaffirms the underlying evil determination of his will, Is more guilty than original sin alone; (2) that no human being is finally condemned solely on account of original sin; but that all who, like infants, do not commit personal transgressions, are saved through the application of Christ's atonement; and (3) that our responsibility for inborn evil dispositions, or for the depravity common to the race, can be maintained only upon the ground that this depravity was caused by an original and conscious act of free will, when the race revolted from God in Adam. Over against the maxim," All sin consists in sinning," we put the more correct statement: Personal sin consists in sinning, but in Adam's first sinning the race also sinned, Bo that "in idun ill die " (1 Cor. 15 : 22).
(d) There is a race-sin, therefore, as well as a personal sin; and that racesin was committed by the first father of the race, when he comprised the whole race in himself. All mankind since that time have been born in the state into which he fell—a state of depravity, guilt, and condemnation. To vindicate God's justice in imputing to us the sin of pur first father, many theories have been devised, a part of which must be regarded as only attempts to evade the problem, by denying the facts set before us in the Scriptures. Among these attempted explanations of the Scripture statements, we proceed to examine the six theories which seem most worthy of attention.
The first three of the theories which we discuss may be said to be evasions of the prohlem of original sin; all, In one form or another, deny that God imputes to all men Adam's sin, In such a sense that all are guilty for it. These theories are the Pelagian, the Arminian, and the New School. The last three of the theories which we are about to treat, namely, the Federal theory, the theory of mediate imputation, and the theory of Adam's natural headship, are all Old School theories, and have for their common characteristic that they assert the guilt of inborn depravity. All three, moreover, hold that we are in some way responsible for Adam's sin, though they differ as to the precise way in which we are related to Adam. We must grant that no one, even of these latter theories. Is wholly satisfactory. We hope, however, to show that the last of them—the Augustlnlan theory, the theory of Adam's natural headship, the theory that Adam and his descendants are naturally and organically one—explains the largest number of facts, is least open to objection, and is most accordant with Scripture.
I. Theories Of Imputation.
1. The Pelagian Theory, or Theory of Man's natural Innocence.
Pelagius, a British monk, propounded his doctrines at Borne, 409. They were condemned by the Synod of Carthage, 412. Felagianism, however, as opposed to Augustinianism, designates a complete scheme of doctrine with regard to sin, of which Pelagius was the most thorough representative, although every feature of it cannot be ascribed to his authorship. Socinians and Unitarians are the more modern advocates of this general scheme.
According to this theory, every human soul is immediately created by God, and created as innocent, as free from depraved tendencies, and as perfectly able to obey God, as Adam was at his creation. The only effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity is the effect of evil example; it has in no way corrupted human nature; the only corruption of human nature is that habit of sinning which each individual contracts by persistent transgression of known law.
Adam's sin therefore injured only himself; the sin of Adam is imputed only to Adam—it is imputed in no sense to his descendants; God imputes to each of Adam's descendants only those acts of sin which he has personally and consciously committed. Men can be saved by the law as well as by the gospel; and some have actually obeyed God perfectly, and have thus been saved. Physical death is therefore not the penalty of sin, but an original law of nature; Adam would have died whether he had sinned or not; in Bom. 5 : 12, "death passed unto all men, for that all sinned," signifies: "all incurred eternal death by sinning after Adam's example."
Wiggers, Augustlnism and Pelagianism, 59, states the seven points of the Pelagian doctrine as follows: (1) Adam was created mortal, so that he would have died even If he had not sinned; (2) Adam's sin Injured, not the human race, but only himself; (3) new-born Infants are in the same condition as Adam before the fall; (4) the whole human race neither dies on account of Adam's sin, nor rises on account of Christ's resurrection; (5) Infants, even though not baptized, attain eternal llfe; (6) the law is as good a means of salvation as the gospel; (7) even before Christ some men lived who did not commit Bin.
In Pelagius' Coin, on Rom. 5:12, published in Jerome's Works, vol. xl, we learn who these sinless men were, namely, Abel, Enoch, Joseph, Job, and, among the heathen, Socrates, Arlstldes, Nubia. The virtues of the heathen entitle them to reward. Their worthies were not indeed without evil thoughts and inclinations; but, on the view of Pelagius that all sin consists in act, these evil thoughts and inclinations were not sin. Won plenl Jiancimur: we are born, not full, but vacant, of character. Holiness, Pelagius thought, could not be concreated. Adam's descendants are not weaker, but stronger, than be; since they have fulfilled many commands, while did not fulfill so much as one. In every man there is a natural conscience; he has an Ideal of life; he forms right resolves; he recognizes the claims of law; he accuses himself when he sins—all these things Pelagius regards as Indications of a certain holiness in all men, and misinterpretation of these facts gives rise to his system. Grace, on the Pelagian theory. Is simply the grace of creation—God's originally endowing man with these high powers of reason and will. While Augustinlanism regards human nature as dead, and Seml-Pelaglanlsm regards it as Kirk, Pelagianism proper declares it to be ■well.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:43 (Syst. Doct., 2 : 338)—"Neither the body, man's surroundings, nor the Inward operation of God have any determining influence upon the will. God reaches man only through external means, such as Christ's doctrine, example, and promise. This clears God of the charge of evil, but also takes from him the authorship of good. It is Deism, applied to man's nature. God cannot enter man's being if he would, and he would not if he could. Free will Is everything." Ib., 1 : 626 (Syst. Doct., 2 :188,189)—" Pelagianism at one time counts It too great an honor that man should be directly moved upon by God, and at another, too great a dishonor that man should not be able to do without God. In this inconsistent reasoning, it shows Its desire to bo rid of God as much as possible. The true conception of God requires a living relation to man, as well as to the external universe. The true conception of man requires satisfaction of his longings and powers by reception of impulses and strength from God. Pelagianism, in seeking for man a development only like that of nature, shows that Its high estimate of man is only a delusive one; It really degrades blm, by Ignoring his true dignity and destiny." See lb., 1:124, 125 (Syst. Doct., 1:136, 137); 2 : 43-45 (Syst. Doct., 2 : 338, 339); 2 : 148 (Syst. Doct., 3 : 44). Also SchafT, Church History, 2 : 783-S56; Doctrines of the Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; WSrter, Pclaglanlsmus. For substantially Pelagian statements, see Sheldon, Sin and Redemption; Ellis, Half Century of Unitarian Controversy, 76.
Of the Pelagian theory of sin, we may say:
A. It has never been recognized as Scriptural, nor has it been formulated in confessions, by any branch of the Christian church. Held only sporadically and by individuals, it has ever been regarded by the church at large as heresy. This constitutes at least a presumption against its truth.
B. It contradicts Scripture in denying:
(a) That evil disposition and state, as well as evil acts, are sin.
Pelagianism, holding, as it does, that virtue and vice consist only in single decisions, does not account for character at all. There is no such thing as a state of sin, or a selfpropagating power of sin. And yet upon these the Scriptures lay greater emphasis than upon mere acts of transgression.
(6) That such evil disposition and state are inborn in all mankind.
John 3 : 6—" That which is born of the laah i> t«h " = " that which cornea of a sinful and guilty stock is itself, from the very beginning, sinful and guilty" (Dorner). Witness the tendency to degradation in families and nations.
(c) That men universally are guilty of overt transgression so soon as they come to moral consciousness.
(d) That no man is able without divine help to fulfil the law.
(e) That all men, without exception, are dependent for salvation upon God's atoning, regenerating, sanctifying grace.
(/) That man's present state of corruption, condemnation, and death is
the direct effect of Adam's transgression.
Schaff, on the Pelagian controversy, in Bib. Sac., 6:205-243—The controversy " resolves itself into the question whether redemption and sanctiiication are the work of man or or of God. Pclaglanlsm in its whole mode of thinking starts from man and seeks to work itself upward gradually, by means of an Imaginary good-will, to holiness and communion with God. Augustinism pursues the opposite way, deriving from God's unconditioned and all-working grace a new life and all power of working good. The first is led from freedom into a legal, self-righteous piety; the other rises from the slavery of sin to the glorious liberty of the children of God. For the first, revelation is of force only as an outward help, or the power of a high example; for the last, it is the inmost life, the very marrow and blood of the new man. The first involves an Ebionitic view of Christ, as noble man, not high-priest or king; the second finds in him one in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The first makes conversion a process of gradual moral purification on the ground of original nature; with the last, it is
a total change, in which the old passes away and all becomes new Rationalism is
simply the form In which Pelagianism becomes theoretically complete. The high opinion which the Pelagian holds of the natural will is transferred with equal right by the Rationalist to the natural reason. The one does without grace, as the other does without revelation. Pelagian divinity is rationalistic. Rationalistic morality is Pelagian."
C. It rests upon false philosophical principles; as, for example,
(a) That the human will is simply the faculty of volitions; whereas it is also, and chiefly, the faculty of self-determination to an ultimate end.
Neander, Church History, 2: 564-825, holds one of the fundamental principles of Pelagianism to be "the ability to choose, equally and at any moment, between good and evil.'" There is no recognition of the law by which acts produce states; the power which repeated acts of evil possess to give a definite character and tendency to the will itself. There is no continuity of moral life—no character in man, angel, devil, or God."
(6) That the power of a contrary choice is essential to the existence of will; whereas the will fundamentally determined to self-gratification has this power only with respect to subordinate choices, and cannot by a single volition reverse its moral state.
See art. on Power of Contrary Choice, in Princeton Essays, 1: 212-233— Pelagianism holds that no confirmation in holiness is possible. Thornwell, Theology: "The sinner Is as free as the saint; the devil as the angel." Harris, Phllos. Basis of Theism, 399—" The theory that indifference is essential to freedom implies that will never acquires character; that voluntary action is atomistic, every act disintegrated from every other; that character, if acquired, would be incompatible with freedom." On the Pelagian view of freedom, see Julius MUller, Doctrine of Sin, 87-44.
(c) That ability is the measure of obligation-—a principle which would dimmish the sinner's responsibility, just in proportion to his progress in sin
((/) That law consists only in positive enactment; whereas it is the demand of perfect harmony with God, inwrought into man's moral nature.
(e) That each human soul is immediately created by God, and holds no other relations to moral law than those which are individual; whereas all human souls are organically connected with each other, and together have a corporate relation to God's law, by virtue of their derivation from one common stock.
Notice the analogy of individuals who suffer from the effectsof parental mistakes or of national transgression. Julius MUller, Doct. Sin, 2: 310, 31"—" Neither the AUimistic nor the Organic view of human nature Is the complete truth." Each must be complemented by the other. For statement of race-responsibility, see Dorncr, Glaubenslehre, 2:30-39. 51-64, 181, 162 (System of Doctrine, 2:324-334, 345-359; 8 : 50-54)-" Among the Scripture proofs of the moral connection of the Individual with the race are the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children; the obligation of the people to punish the sin of the individual that the whole land may not incur guilt; the offering of sacrifice for a murder, the perpetrator of which Is unknown. Achan's crime is charged to the whole people. The Jewish race is the better for Its parentage, and other nations are the worse for theirs. The Hebrew people become a legal personality.
"Is it said that none are punished for the sins of their fathers unless they are like their fathers? But to be unlike their fathers requires a new heart. They who are not held accountable for the sins of their fathers are those who have recognized their responsibility for them, and have repented for their likeness to their ancestors. Only the self-Isolating spirit says: 4 la I mj brother's keeper?' (Gen. 4:9), and thinks to construct a constant equation between Individual misfortune and individual sin. The calamities of the righteous led to an ethical conception of the relation of the individual to the community. Such sufferings show that men can love God disinterestedly, that the good has unselfish friends. These sufferings are substitutionary, when borne as belonging to the sufferer, not foreign to him, the guilt of others attaching to him by virtue of his national or race-relation to them. So Moses in si. 34 : 9, David in Pi. 51: 6, Isaiah in Is. 59: 9-16, recognize the connection between personal sin and race-sin.
"Christ restores the bond between man and his fellows, turns the hearts of the fathers to the children. He is the creator of a new race-consciousness. In him as the head we see ourselves bound to, and responsible for, others. Love finds it morally impossible to isolate itself. It restores the consciousness of unity and the recognition of common guilt. Does every man stand for himself in the N. T.? This would be so, only if each man become a sinner solely by free and conscious personal decision, either in the present, or in a past state of existence. But this Is not Scriptural. Something comes before personal transgression: 'That which is born of the flesh ii flesh' (John 3:6). Personality is the stronger for recognizing the race-sin. We have common joy In the victories of the good; so in shameful lapses wc have sorrow. These are not our worst moments, but our best—there is something great in them. Original sin must be displeasing to God; for it perverts the reason, destroys likeness to God, excludes from communion with God, makes redemption necessary, leads to actual sin, influences future generations. But to complain of God for permitting its propagation is to complain of his not destroying the race—that is, to complain of one's own existence." See Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2: 93-110; Hagenbaeh, Hist. Doctrine. 1:287, 296-810; Martens, n. Dogmatics, 354-362; Princeton Essays, 1: 74-97; Dabney, Theology, 298-302,314,815.
2. The Arminian Theory, or Theory of voluntarily appropriated Depravity.
Arminius (1560-1609), professor in the University of Leyden, in South Holland, while formally accepting the doctrine of the Adamic unity of the race propounded both by Luther and Calvin, gave a very different interpretation to it—an interpretation which verged toward Semi-Pelagianism and the anthropology of the Greek Church. The Methodist body is the modern representative of this view.
According to this theory, all men, as a divinely appointed sequence of Adam's transgression, are naturally destitute of original righteousness, and are exposed to misery and death. By virtue of the mfirmity propagated from Adam to all bis descendants, mankind are wholly unable without divine help perfectly to obey God or to attain eternal life. This inability, however, is physical and intellectual, but not voluntary. As matter of justice, therefore, God bestows upon each individual from the first dawn of consciousness a special influence of the Holy Spirit, which is sufficient to counteract the effect of the inherited depravity and to make obedience possible, provided the human will cooperates, which it still has power to do.
The evil tendency and state may be called sin; but they do not in themselves involve guilt or punishment; still less are mankind accounted guilty of Adam's sin. God imputes to each man his inborn tendencies to evil, only when he consciously and voluntarily appropriates and ratifies these in spite of the power to the contrary, which, in justice to man, God has specially communicated. In Bom. 5 : 12, "death passed unto all men, for that all sinned," signifies that physical and spiritual death is inflicted upon all men, not as the penalty of a common sin in Adam, but because, by divine decree, all suffer the consequences of that sin, and because all personally consent to their inborn sinfulness by acts of transgression.
See Arminius, Works, 1: 252-254,317-324,325-327, 523-531, 575-583. The description given above is a description of Arinlnianlsm proper. The expressions of Arminius himself are so guarded that Moses Stuart (Bib. Repos., 1831) found it possible to construct an argument to prove that Arminius was not an Arminian. But it is plain that by Inherited sin Arminius meant only inherited evil, and that It was not of a sort to Justify God's condemnation. He denied any In being In Adam, such as made us justly chargeable with Adam's sin, except in the sense that we are obliged to endure certain consequences of it. This Shedd has shown in his History of Doctrine, 2:178-196. The system of Arminius was more fully expounded by Limborch and Eplscoplus. See Limborch, Theol. Christ., 3: 4 : 8 (p. 189). The sin with which we are born "does not inhere In the soul, for this [soul ] is Immediately created by God, and therefore, if It were Infected with sin, that sin would be from God." Many so-called Armlnians, such as Whitby and John Taylor, were rather Pelagians.
John Wesley, however, greatly modified and improved the Arminian doctrine. Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2: 329, 330—" Wesleyanlsm (1) admits entire moral depravity; < 2) denies that men In this state have any power to cooperate with the grace of God; <3) asserts that the guilt of all through Adam was removed by the Justification of all through Christ; (4) ability to cooperate is of the Holy Spirit, through the universal influence of the redemption of Christ. The order of the decrees is (1) to permit the fall of man; (2) to send the Son to be a full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; (3) on that ground to remit all original sin, and to give such grace as would enable all to attain eternal life; (4) those who improve that grace and persevere to the end are ordained to be saved." We may add that Wesley made the bestowal upon our depraved nature of ability to coSperate with God to be a matter of grace, while Arminius regarded it as a matter of Justice, man without it not being accountable.
Wesleyanlsm was systematized by Watson, who, in his Institutes, 2 : 53-55, 59, 77, although denying the imputation of Adam's sin in any proper sense, yet declares that "Limborch and others materially departed from the tenets of Arminius in denying inward lusts and tendencies to be sinful till complied with and improved by the will. But men universally choose to ratify these tendencies; therefore they are corrupt in heart. If there be a universal depravity of will previous to the actual choice, then it inevitably follows that though infants do not commit actual sin, yet that theirs is a sinful nature As to Infants, they are not indeed born Justified and regenerate; so that
to say original sin is taken away, as to Infants, by Christ, is not the correct view of the case, for the reasons before given; but they are all born under ' the free gift,' the effects of the 'righteousness' of one, which is extended to all men; and this free gift is bestowed on them in order to justification of life, the adjudging of the condemned to
live Justification in adults is connected with repentance and faith; in infants, we
do not know how. The Holy Spirit may be given to children. Divine and effectual influence may be exerted on them, to cure the spiritual death and corrupt tendency of their nature."
It will be observed that Watson's Wesleyanism is much more near to Scripture than what we have described, and properly described, as Arminianism proper. Pope, in his Theology, follows Wesley and Watson, and (2 : 70-86) gives a valuable synopsis of the differences between Arminius and Wesley. Whedon and Raymond, In America, better represent original Arminianism. They hold that God was under obligation to restore mini's ability, and yet they Inconsistently speak of this ability as a gracious ability. Two passages from Raymond's Theology show the inconsistency of calling that "grace," which God Is bound in justice to bestow, in order to make man responsible. 2 : 84-86— "The race came into existence under grace. Existence and justification are secured for it only through Christ; for, apart from Christ, punishment and destruction would have followed the first sin. So all gifts of the Spirit necessary to qualify him for the putting forth of free moral choices are secured for bim through Christ. The Spirit of God is not a bystander, but a quickening power. So man is by grace, not by his fallen nature, a moral being capable of knowing, loving, obeying, and enjoying God. Such be ever will be, if he does not frustrate the grace of God. Not till the Spirit takes his final flight is he in a condition of total depravity."
Compare with this the following passage of the same work in which this "grace" Is called a debt. 2:317—"The relations of the posterity of Adam to God are substantially those of newly created beings. Each individual person is obligated to God, and God to him, precisely the same as If God had created him such as he is. Ability must equal obligation. God was not obligated to provide a Redeemer for the first transgressors, but having provided Redemption for them, and through it having permitted them to propagate a degenerate race, an adequate compensation is due. The gracious Influences of the Spirit are then a debt due to man — a compensation for the disabilities of inherited depravity." McClintoek and Strong (Cyclopaedia, art.: Arminius) endorse Whedon's art. in the Bib. Sac, 19:241 as an exhibition of Arminianism, and Whedon himself claims it to be such. See Hagcnbach, Hist. Doct., 2:214-216.
With regard to the Arminian theory we remark:
A. It is wholly extra-Scriptural in its assumptions: (a) That there is a universal gift of the Holy Spirit, (b) That this gift remedies the general evil derived from Adam's fall, (c) That without this gift man would not be responsible for being morally imperfect, (d) That at the beginning of moral life men consciously appropriate their inborn tendencies to evil.
(a) Wesley adduced in proof of universal grace the text: John 1:9—"the light which lightcth ererj man" — which however refers, not to a universal gift of the Holy Spirit, but to the natural light of reason and conscience which the p reincarnate Logos bestowed on all men, though in different degrees, before his coming in the flesh. Rom. 5:18 was also referred to — " through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life "— but here the "all men" is conterminous with "the many" who are "made righteous" in Terse 19, and with the "all" who are "made alire" In 1 Cor. 15 : 22; In other words, the "all" in this case Is "all believers ": else the passage teaches, not a universal gift of the Spirit, but universal salvation.
(c) Must God bestow upon Satan a special gift of the Spirit, or a "gracious ability," before he can be responsible for his depravity or for the actual sin that proceeds therefrom? Dabney, Theology, 315, 316—"Arminianism is orthodox as to the legal consequences of Adam's sin to bis posterity; but what It (rives with one hand, it takes back with the other, attributing to grace the restoration of this natural ability lost by the fall. If the effects of Adam's fall on his posterity are such that they would have been unjust if not repaired by a redeeming plan that was to follow it, then God's act in providing a Redeemer was not an act of pure grace. He was under obligation to do some such thing — salvation is not grace, but debt."
B. It contradicts Scripture in maintaining: (a) That inherited moral evil does not involve guilt. (6) That the gift of the Spirit, and the regeneration of infanta, are matters of justice, (e) That the effect of grace is simply to restore man's natural ability, instead of disposing him to use that ability aright, (d) That election is God's choice of certain men to be saved upon the ground of their foreseen faith, instead of being God's choice to make certain men believers, (e) That physical death is not the just penalty of sin, but is a matter of arbitrary decree.
(a) See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2 :68 (System of Doctrine, 2:362-359)— " With Armlni us, original sin is original evil only, not tpitif. He explained the problem of original sin by denying the fact, and turning the native sinfulness Into a morally indifferent thing. No sin without consent; no consent at the beginning of human development; therefore, no guilt in evil desire. This Is the same as the Romanist doctrine of concupiscence, and like that leads to blaming God for an originally bad constitution of our nature.... .. Original sin is merely an enticement to evil addressed to the free will. All internal disorder and vltioslty is morally indifferent, and becomes sin only through appropriation by free will. But involuntary, loveless, proud thoughts are recognized in 8crlpture as sin; yet they spring from the heart without our conscious consent. Undeliberate and deliberate sins run into each other, so that it is Impossible to draw a line between them. The doctrine that there is no sin without consent, implies power to withhold consent. Rut this contradicts the universal need of redemption and our observation that none have ever thus entirely withheld consent from sin."
<JW H. B. Smith's Review of Whedon on the Will, in Faith and Philosophy, 359-399— "A child, upon the old view, needs only growth to make him guilty of actual sin; whereas, upon this view, he needs growth and grace too." See Bib. Sac, 20 :327, 328. According to Whedon, Com. on Rom. 5 :12, "the condition of an Infant apart from Christ is that of a sinner, an one mire to Hn, yet never actually condemned before personal apostasy. This utmhl be Its condition, rather, for In Christ the infant is regenerate and Justified and endowed with the Holy Spirit. Hence all actual sinners are apostates from a state of irrace." But we ask: 1. Why then do Infants die before they have committed actual sin? Surely not on account of Adam's sin, for they are delivered from all the evils of that, through Christ. It must be because they are still somehow sinners. 2. How can we account for all infants sinning so soon as they begin morally to act. If, before they sin, they are in a state of grace and sanctilication? It must be because they were still somehow sinners. In other words, the universal regeneration and Justification of Infants contradict Scripture and observation.
(c) Notice that this "gracious " ability does not involve saving grace to the recipient, because it is given equally to all men. Nor is it more than a restoring to man of bis natural ability lost by Adam'ssin. It is not sufficient to explain why one man who has the gracious ability chooses God, while another who has the same gracious ability chooses self. "Who made thee to differ?" Not God, but thyself. Over against this doctrine of Arminlans, who held to universal, resistible grace, restoring natural ability, Calvinists and Augustinians hold to particular. Irresistible grace, giving moral ability, or in other words bestowing the disposition to use natural ability aright. "Grace " is a word much used by Arminlans. Methodist Doctrine and Discipline, Articles of Religion, viil—"The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will." It Is important to understand that, in Arminian usage, grace is simply the restoration of man's natural ability to act for himself; it never actually saves him, but only enables him to save himself — If he will.
(d) In the Arminian Bystem, the order of salvation Is, (1) faith — by an unrenewed but convicted man; (2) justification; (3) regeneration, or a holy heart. God decrees. not to originate faith, but to reward It. Hence Wesleyans make faith a work, and regard election as God's ordaining those who, he foresees, will of their own accord believe.
0. It rests upou false philosophical principles, as for example: (a) That the will is simply the faculty of volitions. (6) That the power of contrary choice, in the sense of power by a single act to reverse one's moral state, is essential to will, (c) That previous certainty of any given moral act is incompatible with its freedom, (d) That ability is the measure of obligation, (e) That law condemns only volitional transgression. (/) That man has no organic moral connection with the race.
(b) Raymond says: "Man is responsible for character, but only so far as that character Is self-imposed. We are not responsible for character Irrespective of its origin. Freedom from an act is as essential to responsibility as freedom to it. If power to the contrary is impossible, then freedom does not exist in God or man. Sin was a necessity, and God was the author of It." But this is a denial that there is any such thing as character; that the will can give Itself a bent which no single volition can change; that the wicked man can become the slave of sin; that Satan, though without power now in himself to turn to God, is yet responsible for his sin. The power of contrary choice which Adam had exists no longer in its entirety; it is narrowed down to a power to the contrary in temporary and subordinate choices; it no longer is equal to the work of changing the fundamental determination of the being to selfishness as an ultimate end. Yet for this very inability, because originated by will, man is responsible.
Julius Mtiller. Doctrine of Sin, 2 :28—" Formal freedom leads the way to real freedom. The starting-point is a freedom which does not yet involve an inner necessity, but the possibility of something else; the goal Is the freedom which Is Identical with necessity. The first is a means to the last. When the will has fully and truly chosen, the power of acting otherwise may still be said to exist in a metaphysical sense; but morally, (.e. with reference to the contrast of good and evil, it is entirely done away. Formal freedom is freedom of choice, in the sense of volition with the express consciousness of other possibilities." Heal freedom Is freedom to choose the good only, with no remaining possibility that evil will exert a counter attraction. But as the will can reach a "moral necessity " of good, so it can through sin reach a "moral necessity " of evil.
(c) Park: "The great philosophical objection to Arminianlsm is its denial of the certainty of human action—the idea that a man may act either way without certainty how he will act—power of a contrary choice in the sense of a moral indifference which can choose without motive, or contrary to the strongest motive. The New School view is better than this, for that holds to the certainty of wrong choice, while yet the soul has power to make a right one The Arminlans believe that it Is objectively uncertain whether a man shall act In this way or in that, right or wrong. There is nothing, antecedently to choice, to decide the choice. It was the whole aim of Edwards to refute the idea that man would not certainly sin. The old Calvlnists believe that antecedently to the fall Adam was in this state of objective uncertainty, but that after the fall it was certain he would sin, and his probation therefore was closed. Edwards affirms that no such objective uncertainty or power to the contrary ever existed, and that man now has all the liberty he ever had or could have. The truth in' power to the contrary' is simply the power of the will to act contrary to the way it does act. President Edwards believed in this, though be is commonly understood as reasoning to the contrary. The false 'power to the contrary' is uncertainty how one will act, or a willingness to act otherwise than one does act. This is the Armlnian power to the contrary, and it is this that Edwards opposes."
(e) Whedon, On the Will, 838-360,388-395—" Prior to free volition, man may be unconformed to law, yet not a subject of retribution. The law has two offioes, one Judicatory and critical, the other retributive and penal. Hereditary evil may not be visited with retribution, as Adam's ooncreated purity was not meritorious. Passive, prevolitional holiness is moral rectitude, but not moral desert. Passive, prevolitional Impurity needs concurrence of active will to make it condemnable."
D. It renders uncertain either the universality of sin or man's responsibility for it. If man has full power to refuse consent to inborn depravity, then the universality of sin and the universal need of a Savior are merely hypothetical. If sin however be universal, there must have been an absence of free consent, and the objective certainty of man's sinning, according to the theory, destroys his responsibility.
Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2 : 86-89, holds It " theoretically possible that a child may be so trained and educated In the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as that he will never knowingly and willingly transgress the law of God; in which case he will certainly grow up into regeneration and final salvation. But it is grace that preserves him from sin—[common grace ?]. We do not know, either from experience or Scripture, that none have been free from known and wilful transgressions." Per contra, see Julius MUller, Doct. Sin, 2 :320-338; Balrd, Elohim Revealed, 479-494; Bib. Sac, 23:208; 28:278: Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3 : 56 sq.
8. The New School Theory, or Theory of uncondemnable Vitiosity.
This theory is called New School, because of its recession from the old Puritan anthropology of which Edwards and Bellamy in the last century were the expounders. The New School theory is a general scheme built up by the successive labors of Hopkins, Emmons, Dwight, Taylor, and Finney. It is held at present by New School Presbyterians, and by the larger part of the Congregational body.
According to this theory, all men are born with a physical and moral constitution which predisposes them to sin, and all men do actually sin so soon as they come to moral consciousness. This vitiosity of nature may be called sinful, because it uniformly leads to sin; but it is not itself sin, since nothing is to be properly denominated sin but the voluntary act of transgressing known law.
God imputes to men only their own acts of personal transgression; he does not impute to them Adam's sin; neither original vitiosity nor physical death are penal inflictions; they are simply consequences which God has in his sovereignty ordained to mark his displeasure at Adam's transgression, and subject to which evils God immediately creates each human soul. In Bom. 5 : 12, "death passed unto all men, for that all sinned," signifies "spiritual death passed on all men, because all men have actually and personally sinned."
Edwards held that God Imputes Adam's sin to his posterity by arbitrarily identifying them with him—Identity, on the theory of continuous creation (see pages 205,206), being only what God appoints. Since this did not furnish sufficient ground for imputation, Edwards Joined the Placean doctrine to the other, and showed the justice of the condemnation by the fact that man is depraved. He adds, moreover, the consideration that man ratifies this depravity by his own act. So Edwards tried to combine three views. But all were vitiated by his doctrine of continuous creation, which logically made God the only cause in the universe, and left no freedom, guilt, or responsibility to man. He believed in "a real union between the root and the branches of the world of mankind,
established by the author of the whole system of the universe the full consent of
the hearts of Adam's posterity to the first apostasy 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." Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2 : 435448, cap. 436, quotes from Edwards: "The guilt a man has upon his soul at his first existence Is one and simple, viz.: the guilt of the original apostasy, the guilt of the sin by which the species first rebelled against God."
Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2: 25, claims Edwards as a Traducianlst. But Fisher, Discussions, 240, shows that he was not. As we have seen (Prolegomena, page 26), Edwards thought too little of nature. He tended to Berkeleyanisra as applied to mind. Hence the chief good was in happiness—a form of scrurtbliitu- Virtue is voluntary choke of this good. Hence union of act* and exercise* with Adam was sufficient. This God's will might make identity of being with him. Balrd, Elohim Revealed, 250 so., says well, that "Edwards's idea that the character of on act was to be sought somewhere else than in its cause involves the fallacious assumption that acts have a subsistence and moral agency of their own apart from that of the actor." This divergence from the truth led to the Exercise-system of Hopkins and Emmons, who not only denied moral character prior to individual choices ((. e., denied sin of nature), but attributed all human acts and exercises to the direct efficiency of God. On Emmons, see Works, 4:502-507, and Bib. Sac., 7 : 479; 20 : 31"; also H. B. Smith, in Faith and Philosophy, 215-263.
N. W. Taylor, of New Haven, agreed with Hopkins and Emmons that there is no Imputation of Adam's sin or of inborn depravity. He called that depravity physical, not moral. But he repudiated the doctrine of divine efficiency in the production of men's acts and exercises, and made all sin to be personal. Ho held to the power of contrary choice. Adam had it, and contrary to the belief of Augustinians, he never lost it. Man "not only can if he will, but he can If he won't." He can, but, without the Spirit, will not. Yet he did not hold to the Armininn liberty of indifference or contlngence. He believed in the certainty of wrong action, yet in power to the contrary. See Moral Government, 2 : 132—"The error of Pelagius was not in asserting that man can obey God without grace, but in saying that man does actually obey God without grace." There is a part of the sinner's nature to which the motives of the gospel may appeal—a part of his nature which is neither holy nor unholy, viz. self-love, or innocent desire for happiness. Greatest happiness Is the ground of obligation. Under the influence of motives appealing to happiness, the sinner can suspend his choice of the world as his chief good, and can give his heart to God. He can do this, whatever the Holy Spirit does, or does not do; but the moral inability can be overcome only by the Holy Spirit, who moves the soul, without coercing, by means of the truth. On Dr. Taylor's system, and its connection with prior New England theology, see Fisher, Discussions, 285-354.
This form of New School doctrine suggests the following questions: 1. Can the sinner suspend his selfishness before he is subdued by divine grace? 2. Can his choice of God from mere self-love be a holy choice? 3. Since God demands love in every choice, must it not be a positively unholy choice? 4. If it is not itself a holy choice, how can it bo a beginning of holiness? 5. If the sinner can become regenerate by preferring God on the ground of self-interest, where is the necessity of the Holy Spirit to renew the heart? 6. Does not this asserted ability of the sinner to turn to God contradict consciousness and Scripture? For Taylor's views, see his Revealed Theology, 134-309. For criticism of them, see Hodge, in Princeton Rev., Jan., 1868 : 63 so., and 388-398; also, Tyler, Letters on the New Haven Theology. Neither Hopkins and Emmons on the one hand, nor Taylor on the other, represent most fully the general course of New England Theology. Smalley, Dwight, Woods, all held to more conservative views than Taylor, or than Finney, whose system had much resemblance to Taylor's. All three of these denied the power of contrary choice which Dr. Taylor so strenuously maintained, although all agreed with him in denying the imputation of Adam's sin or of our hereditary depravity. These are not sinful, except in the sense of being occasions of actual sin.
Dr. Park, of Andover, is understood to teach that the disordered state of the sensibilities and faculties with which we are born is the immediate occasion of sin, while Adam's transgression is the remote occasion of sin. The will, though Influenced by an evil tendency, Is still free; the evil tendency itself is not free, and therefore is not sin. The statement of New School doctrine given in the text is intended to represent the common New England doctrine, as taught by Smalley, Dwight, Woods, and Park; although the historical tendency, even among these theologians, has been to emphasize less and less the depraved tendencies prior to actual sin, and to maintain that moral character begins only with Individual choice, most of them, however, holding that this individual choice begins at birth. See Bib. Sac, 7 : 552, 567; 8 : 607-847; 20 : 462-471, 576-593; Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, 407-412.
To the New School theory we object as follows:
A. It contradicts Scripture in maintaining or implying: (a) That sin consists solely in acts, and in the dispositions caused in each case by man's individual acts, and that the state which predisposes to acts of sin is not itself sin. (6) That the vitiosity which predisposes to sin is a part of each man's nature as it proceeds from the creative hand of God. (c) That physical death in the human race is not a penal consequence of Adam's transgression, (d) That infants, before moral consciousness, do not need Christ's sacrifice to save them. Since they are innocent, no penalty rests upon them, and none needs to be removed, (e) That we are neither condemned upon the ground of actual inbeing in Adam, nor justified upon the ground of actual inbeing in Christ.
If a child may not be unholy before he voluntarily transgresses, then, by parity of reasoning, Adam could not have been holy before he obeyed the law, nor can a change of heart precede Christian action. New School principles would compel us to assert that right action precedes change of heart, and that obedience in Adam must have preceded his holiness. Emmons held that, if children die before they become moral agents, it is most rational to conclude that they are annihilated. They are mere animals. The common New School doctrine would regard them as saved either on account of their innocence, or because the atonement of Christ avails to remove the consequences as well as the penalty of sin.
But to say that Infants are pure contradicts Rom. 5:12—" ill sinned "; 1 Cor. 7:14—" «1» were your children unclean"; Eph. 2 : 3—"bj nature children of wrath." That Christ's atonement removes natural consequences of sin, Is nowhere asserted or Implied in Scripture. See, per contra, H. B. Smith, System, 271, where, however, It is only maintained that Christ saves from all the just consequences of sin. But all just consequences are penalty, and should be so called. The exigencies of New School doctrine compel It to put the beginning of sin in the Infant at the very first moment of its separate existence—In order not to contradict those Scriptures which speak of sin as being universal, and of the atonement as being needed by all. But by putting sin thus early in human experience, all meaning is taken out of the New School definition of sin as the " voluntary transgression of known law." It is difficult to say, upon this theory, what sort of a choice the infant makes of sin, or what sort of a known law it violates.
B. It rests upon false philosophical principles, as for example: (a) That the soul is immediately created by God. (6) That the law of God consists wholly in outward command, (c) That present natural ability to obey the law is the measure of obligation, (d) That man's relations to moral law are exclusively individual, (e) That the will is merely the faculty of individual and personal choices. (/) That the will, at man's birth, has no moral state or character.
See Balrd, Elohlm Revealed, 250 sq.—" Personality is inseparable from nature. The one duty is love. Unless any given duty is performed through the activity of a principle of love springing up in the nature, it is not performed at all. The law addresses the nature. The efficient cause of moral action is the proper subject of moral law. It is only in the perversity of unscriptural theology that we find the absurdity of separating the moral character from the substance of the soul, and tying it to the vanishing deeds of life. The idea that responsibility and sin are predicable of actions merely is only consistent with an utter denial that man's nature as such owes anything to God, or has an office to perform In showing forth his glory. It Ignores the fact that actions are empty phenomena, which in themselves have no possible value. It is the heart, soul, might, mind, strength, with which we are to love. Christ conformed to the law, by being •that holy thine;' (Lake 1: 36, nurg)."
0. It impugns the justice of God:
(a) By regarding him as the direct creator of a vicious nature which infallibly leads every human being into actual transgression. To maintain that, in consequence of Adam's act, God brings it about that all men become sinners, and that, not by virtue of inherent laws of propagation, but by the direct creation in each case of a vicious nature, is to make God indirectly the author of sin.
(6) By representing him as the inflicter of suffering and death upon millions of human beings who in the present life do not come to moral consciousness, and who are therefore, according to the theory, perfectly innocent. This is to make him visit Adam's sin on his posterity, while at the same time it denies that moral connection between Adam and his posterity which alone could make such visitation just.
(c) By holding that the probation which God appoints to men is a separate probation of each soul, when it first comes to moral consciousness and is least qualified to decide aright. It is much more consonant with our ideas of the divine justice, that the decision should have been made by the whole race, in one whose nature was pure and who perfectly understood God's law, than that heaven and hell should have been determined for each of us by a decision made in our own inexperienced childhood, under the influence of a vitiated nature.
On this theory, God determines, in his mere sovereignity, that because one man sinned, all men should be called Into existence depraved, under a constitution which secures the certainty of their sinning. But we claim that it is unjust that any should suffer without Ill-desert. To say that God thus marks his sense of the guilt of Adam's sin Is to contradict the main principle of the theory, namely, that men are held responsible only for their own sins. We prefer to Justify God by holding- that there is a reason for this infliction, and that this reason is the connection of the infant with Adam. If mere tendency to sin is innocent, then Christ might have taken It, when he took our nature. But if he had taken it, it would not explain the fact of the atonement, for upon this theory it would not need to be atoned for.
"Man kills a snake," says Baymond, "because it is a snake, and not because it is to blame for being a snake "—which seems to us a new proof that the advocates of innocent depravity regard Infants, not as moral beings, but as mere animals. "We must distinguish automatic excellence or badness," says Baymond again, "from moral desert, whether good or ill." This seems to us a doctrine of punishment without guilt. Princeton Essays, 1:138, quote Coleridge: "It is an outrage on common sense to affirm that it is no evil for men to be placed on their probation under such circumstances that not one of ten thousand millions ever escapes sin and condemnation to eternal death. There is evil inflicted on us, as a consequence of Adam's sin, antecedent to our personal transgressions. It matters not what this evil Is, whether temporal death, corruption of nature, certainty of sin, or death in Its more extended sense; if the ground of the evil's -coming on us is Adam's sin, the principle is the same." Baird, Elohlm Bevealed, 488— So, It seems, "If a creature is punished, it Implies that some one has sinned, but dors not necessarily intimate the sufferer to be the sinner I But this is wholly contrary to the argument of the apostle in Rom. 5 :12-19, which is based upon the opposite doctrine, and it Is also contrary to the Justice of God, who punishes only those who deserve it." See Julius MUUer, Doct. Sin, 2 : 67-74.
D. Its limitation of responsibility to the evil choices of the individual and the dispositions caused thereby is inconsistent with the following facts:
(a) The first moral choice of each individual is so undeliberate as not to be remembered. Put forth at birth, as the chief advocates of the New School theory maintain, it does not answer to their definition of sin as a voluntary transgression of known law. Responsibility for such choice does not differ from responsibility for the inborn evil state of the will which manifests itself in that choice.
(6) The uniformity of sinful action among men cannot be explained by the existence of a mere faculty of choices. That men should uniformly choose may be thus explained; but that men should uniformly choose evil, requires us to postulate an evil tendency or state of the will itself, prior to these separate acts of choice. This evil tendency or inborn determination to evil, since it is the real cause of actual sins, must itself be sin, and as such must be guilty and condemnable.
(c) Power in the ■will to preveut the inborn vitiosity from developingitself is upon this theory a necessary condition of responsibility for actual sins. But the absolute uniformity of actual transgression is evidence that the will is practically impotent. If responsibility diminishes as the difficulties in the way of free decision increase, the fact that these difficulties are insuperable shows that there can be no responsibility at all. To deny theguilt of inborn sin is therefore virtually to deny the guilt of the actual sin which springs therefrom.
The aim of all the theories Is to find a decision of the will which will justify God lr> condemning men. Where shall we find such a decision? At the age of fifteen, ten, five? Then all who die before this age are not sinners, cannot justly be; punished with death, do not need a Savior. Is it at birth? But decision at such a time is not such a conscious decision against God as, according to this theory, would make it the proper determiner of our future destiny. We claim that the theory of Augustine—that of a sin of therace in Adam—is the only one that shows a conscious transgression fit to be the causeand ground of man's guilt and condemnation.
Causa causa; est causa causati. Inborn depravity is the cause of the first actual sin. The cause of inborn depravity is the sin of Adam. If there be no guilt in original sinr then the actual sin that springs therefrom cannot be guilty. There are subsequent presumptuous sins in which the personal element overbears the element of race and heredity. But this cannot be said of the first acts which make man a sinner. These areso naturally and uniformly the result of the inborn determination of the will, that they cannot be guilty, unless that inborn determination is also guilty. In short, not all sin is personal. There must be a sin of nature—a race-sin—or the beginnings of actual sin, cannot be accounted for or regarded as objects of God's condemnation. Julius MUller, Doctrine of Sin, 2 : 320-328, 341—" If the deep-rooted depravity which we bring with usInto the world be not our sin, it at once becomes an excuse for our actual sins." Princeton Essays, 1:138, 139—Alternative: 1. May a man by his own power prevent the development of this hereditary depravity? Then we do not know that all men are sinners, or that Christ's salvation is needed by all. 2. Is actual sin a necessary consequence of hereditary depravity? Then it is, on this theory, a free act no longer, and is not guilty, since guilt is predlcable only of voluntary transgression of known law. See Balrd. Elohim Revealed, 256 mj.; Hodge, Essays, 571-633; Phillppi, Glaubenslehre, 3:61-73; Edwards on the Will, part ill, sec. 4; Bib. Sao., 20 :317-320.
4. The Federal Theory, or Theory of Condemnation by Covenant.
The federal theory, or theory of the covenants, had its origin with Cocceius (1603-1669), professor at Leyden, but was more fully elaborated by Turretin (1623-1687). It has become a tenet of the Reformed as distinguished from the Lutheran church, and in this country it has its main advocates in the Princeton school of theologians, of whom Dr. Hodge isthe representative.
According to this view, Adam was constituted by God's sovereign appointment the representative of the whole human race. With Adam as their representative, God entered into covenant, agreeing to bestow upon them eternal life on condition of his obedience, but making the penalty of his disobedience to be the corruption and death of all his posterity. In accordance with the terms of this covenant, since Adam sinned, God accounts all his descendants as sinners, and condemns them because of Adam'a transgression.
In execution of this sentence of condemnation, God immediately creates each soul of Adam's posterity with a corrupt and depraved nature, which infallibly leads to sin, and which is itself sin. The theory is therefore a theory of the immediate imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity, their corruption of nature not being the cause of that imputation, but the effect of it. In Bom. 5 : 12, "death passed unto all men, for that all men sinned," signifies: "physical, spiritual, and eternal death came to all, because all were regarded and treated as sinners."
Fisher, Discussions, 355-409, compares the Augustinian and Federal Theories of Original Sin. His account of the Federal theory and its origin is substantially as follows: The federal theory is a theory of the covenants (/fwiiw, a covenant). 1. The covenant Is a sovereign constitution Imposed by God. 2. Federal union is the legal ground of Imputation, though kinship to Adnm Is the reason why Adam and not another was selected as our representative. 3. Our guilt for Adam's sin is simply a legal responsibility. 4. That Imputed sin is punished by Inborn depravity, and that inborn depravity by eternal death. Augustine could not reconcile inherent depravity with the justice of God; hence he held that we sinned in Adam.
So Anselm says: "Because the whole human nature was in them (Adam and Eve), and outside of them there was nothing of it, the whole was weakened and corrupted." After the first sin "this nature was propagated Just as it had made Itself by sinning." All sin belongs to the will; but this is a part of our inheritance. The descendants of Adam were not in him as individuals; yet what he did as a person, he did not do sine natura, and this nature is ours as well as his. So Peter Lombard. Sins of our Immediate ancestors, because they are qualities which are purely personal, are not propagated. After Adam's first sin, the actual qualities of the first parent or of other later parents do not corrupt the nature as concerns its qualities, but only as concerns the qualities of the person.
Calvin maintained two propositions: 1. We are not condemned for Adam's sin apart from our own inherent depravity which is derived from him. The sin for which we are condemned is our own sin. 2. This sin is ours, for the reason that our nature 1b vitiated in Adam, and we receive it in the condition in which it was put by the first transgression. Melancthon also held to an Imputation of the first sin conditioned upon our innate depravity. The impulse to federalism was given by the difficulty, on the pure Aumistinian theory, of accounting for the non-imputation of Adam's subsequent sins, and those of his posterity.
Cocceius, the author of the covenant-theory, conceived that he had solved this difficulty by making Adam's sin to be imputed to us upon the ground of a covenant between God and Adam, according to which Adam was to stand as the representative of his posterity. In Cocceius's use of the term, however, the only difference between covenant and command is found in the promise attached to the keeping of it. Fisher remarks on the mistake, In modern defenders of imputation, of ignoring the capital fact of a true and real participation in Adam's sin. The great body of Calvinistlc theologians in the 17th century were Augustlnians as well as federalists. So Owen and the Westminster Confession. Turretin, however, almost merged the natural relation to Adam in the Federal.
Edwards fell back on the old doctrine of Aquinas and Augustine. He tried to make out a real participation in the first sin. The first rising of sinful inclination, by a divinely constituted identity, is this participation. But Hopkins and Emmons regarded the sinful inclination, not as a real participation, but only as a constructive consent to Adam's first sin. Hence the New School theology, in which the imputation of Adam's sin was given up. On the contrary, Calvlnists of the Princeton school planted themselves on the federal theory, and taking Turretin as their text book, waged war on New England views, not wholly sparing Edwards himself. After this review of the origin of the theory, for which we are mainly indebted to Fisher, It can be easily seen how little show of truth there is in the assumption of the Princeton theologians that the federal theory is "the Immemorial doctrine of the church of God."
Statements of the theory are found in Cocceius, Summa Doctrtna de Foedere, cap. 1, 5; Turretin, Inst., loc. 9, quaes.9; Princeton Essays, 1:98-185, esp. 120—"In imputation there is, first, an ascription of something to those concerned; secondly, a determination to deal with them accordingly." The ground for this imputation is " the union between Adam and his posterity, which is twofold —a natural union, as between father and children, and the union of representation, which is the main Ulea here insisteil on." 123 —"As in Christ we are constituted righteous by the imputation of righteousness, so
in Adam we are made sinners by the imputation of his sin Guilt Is liability or
exposedness to punishment; It does not in theological usage imply moral turpitude or criminality." 182 —Turretin Is quoted: "The foundation therefore of imputation is not merely the natural connection which exists between us and Adam—for, were this the case, all his sins would be Imputed to us—but principally the moral anil federal, on the ground of which God entered Into covenant with him as our head. Hence In that sin Adam acted not as a private but a public person and representative." The oneness results from contract; the natural union is frequently not mentioned at all. Marck: All men sinned in Adam, "eos representantc." The acts of Adam and of Christ are ours "jure rcjneitentatUmUi."
G. W. Northrup makes the order of the Federal theory to be: (1) imputation of Adam's guilt: (2) condemnation on the ground of this imputed guilt; (3) corruption of nature consequent upon treatment as condemned." So judicial imputation of Adam's sin Is the cause and ground of Innate corruption. The Presb. Rev., Jan., 1882: 30, claims that Kloppenburg (1642) preceded Coccelus (1648) in holding to the theory of the covenants, as did also the Canons of Dort. For additional statements of federalism, see Hodge, Essays, 49-88, and Syst. Theol., 2 :192-204; Bib. Sac. 21: 95-107; Cunningham, Historical Theology.
To the federal theory we object:
A. It is extra-Scriptural, there being no mention of such a covenant with Adam in the account of man's trial. The assumed allusion to Adam's apostasy in Hosea 6 : 7, where the word "covenant" is used, is too precarious and too obviously metaphorical to afford the basis for a scheme of imputation (see Henderson, Com. on Minor Prophets, in loco). In Heb. 8 : 8—"new covenant"—there is suggested a contrast, not with an Adamic, but with the Mosaic covenant ((■/. verse 9).
In Hosea 6 : 7 —"tk«y lik< idam [mug. 'mm'] have transgressed the covenant" (Rev. Vcr.)—the correct translation Is given by Henderson, Minor Prophets: "Butthej, like men that break a covenant there they proved false to me." LX.V: avro'i fie tiatv wc on*po>7ro« nafmfiaivntv diatrijftqi'. DeWette: "Aber sie Ubertreten den Bund nach Menschenart; daselbst sind sie mlr treulos." Here the word adam, translated " man," either means "a man," or "man," 4. e., generic man. "Israel had as little regard to their covenants with God as men of unprincipled character have for ordinary contracts." "Like a man " = as men do. Compare Pa. 82 : 7 — " Te shall die like men "; Hosea 8 :1, 2 — " Thej hare transgressed m_v corenant" — an allusion to the Abrahamlc or Mosaic covenant. Heb. 8 : 9 —"Behold the dajs come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers in the daj that I took them bj the hand to lead them out of the land of Bgjpt."
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 offence 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 331-333.
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.
(6) That upon the basis of this covenant God accounts men as sinners who are not sinners. But Qod 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 fullen 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" (acientia media and imputatlo metaphyirtca). Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 141—" Immediate imputation is as unjust as imputatin metaphyirtca, 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).
(c) That, after accounting men to be sinners who are not sinners, God makes them sinners by immediately creating each human soul with a corrupt nature such as will correspond to his decree. This is not only to assume a false view of the origin of the soul, but also to make God directly the author of sin. Imputation of sin cannot precede and account for corruption; on the contrary, corruption must precede and account for imputation.
By God's act we became depraved, as a penal consequence of Adam's act imputed to us solely as peecatum alienum. Dabney, Theology, 342, says the theory regards the soul as originally pure until Imputation. See Hodge on Rom. 5 :13; Syst. Theol., 2 :208, 210; Thornwell, Theology, 1: 348-349; 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 bis view less arbitrary and mechanical, namely, the traducian theory of the origin of the soul. He was a creationist, and to the end maintained that God Immediately created the soul, and created it depraved. For objections to the Federal Theory, see Fisher, Discussions, 401 «q.; Bib. Sac, 20: 455-462, 577; New Englander, 1868 : 551-603; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 305-334, 435-450; Julius Mttller, Doct. Sin, 2 : 336; Dabney, Theology, 341-351.
5. Theory of Mediate Imputation, or Theory of Condemnation for Depravity.
This theory was first maintained by Placeus (1606-1655), professor of Theology at Saumur in France. Placeus originally denied that Adam's sin was in any sense imputed to his posterity, but after his doctrine was condemned by the Synod of the French Beformed 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 Bom. 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."
Bee Placeus, De Imputatione Primi Peccati Adami, in Opera, 1: 708—"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." "10—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 the bowl. God was therefore neither the author of Adam's fall, nor of the propagation of sin."
Herzog, Encyclopa"dio, art.: Placeus—" In the title of Ills Works we read ' Plaeoeus'; he himself, however, wrote 'Placeus,' which Is the more correct Latin form [of the French 'dela Place']. In Adam's flrst sin, Placeus distinguished between the actual sinning- and the flrst 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 condcmnable. Placeus believes in the imputation of this corrupted disposition, but not in the imputation of the flrst act of Adam, except mediately, through the imputation of the inherited depravity." Fisher, Discussions, 38K—" Merc native corruption is the whole of original sin. Placeus justifies his use of the term 'imputation' by Rom. 2 : 26—' If therefore the uncireumcision keep the ordinances of the law, shall not his uncireumcision 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."
The two most noted modern advocates of the theory of Mediate Imputation are in Great Britain, G.Payne, in his book entitled: Original Sin: and in America, H. B. Smith, in his System of Christian Doctrine, 284, 285, 314-323. The editor of Dr. Smith's work says: "On the whole, he favored the theory of Mediate Imputation. There is a note which reads thus: 'Neither Mediate nor Immediate Imputation is wholly satisfactory.' Understand by ' Mediate Imputation ' a full statement of the facts In the case, and the author accepted it; understand by it a theory professing to give the final explanation of the facts, and it was 'not wholly satisfactory.'" Dr. Smith himself says, 316—" Original sin is a doctrine respecting the moral conditions of human nature as from Adam—generic: and it is not a doctrine respecting personal liabilities and desert. For the latter, we need more and other circumstances. Strictly speaking, it is not sin, which is 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 tbe 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 tbe same moral bias. Tbe 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 MUUer, 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 verm." Thornwell, Theology, 1:3*8, 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.
0. It contradicts those passages of Scripture which refer the origin of
human condemnation, as well as of human depravity, to the sin of our first
parents, and which represent universal death, not as a matter of divine
sovereignty, but as a judicial infliction of penalty upon all men for the sin
■of the race in Adam ( Bom. 5 : 16, 18). It moreover does violence to the
Scripture in its unnatural interpretation of "all sinned," in Kom. 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 "The first existing of a corrupt disposition In their hearts Is not tobe 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 Bin, 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 seiiaratcln, 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 eeems 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.
See Cunningham, Hist. Theology, 1:496-839; Princeton Essays, 1:129,154,188; Hodge, Syst. Thcol., 2 : 205-214; Shedd, Hist. 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 ite head. The total life of humanity was then in Adam; the race as yet had its being only in him. Its essence was not yet individualized; its forces were not yet distributed; the powers which now exist in separate men were then unified and localized in Adam; Adam's will was yet the will of the species. In Adam's free act, the will of the race revolted from God and the nature of the race corrupted itself. The nature which we now possess is the same nature that corrupted itself in Adam—"not the same in kind merely, but the same as flowing to us continuously from him."
Adam's sin is imputed to us immediately, therefore, not as something foreign to us, but because it is ours—we and all other men having existed as one moral person, or one moral whole, in him, and, as the result of that transgression, possessing a nature destitute of love to God and prone to evil. In Bom. 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."
Augustine, De Pec. Mer. et Rem., 3 : 7—" In Adamo omnes tunc peccaverunt, quando in ejus natura adhuc omnes ille unus fuerunt"; De Civ. Dei, 13:14—"Omnes enim fuimus in lllo uno, quando omnes fuimus ille unus Nondum erat nobis singlllatlm creata et distribute forma In qua singuli viveremus, sed jam nature erat seinlnalls ex qua prupaKuremur." 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 nets, "Augustine emphasized the sinful state. This was a deprivation of original righteousness + inordinate love. Tertullian, Cyprian, Hllarius. Ambrose bad advocated traducianlsm, 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 Irenteus, Athanaslus, 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 traducianlsm with the universal will and guilt involved in cooperation with Adam's sin. Adam, therefore, to him, is a double conception, and = individual f 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 arbitriuin alia insuper addiderunt, alii majus, alii minus, sed omnes mall.' 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.
Calvin was essentially Augustinian and realistic; see his Institutes, book 2, chap. 1-3; Hagenbach, Hist. Theol., 1: 505,306, with the quotations and references. Zwingle was not an Augustinian. He held that native vitioslty, 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. The Reformers, with the single exception of Zwingle, were Augustlnians, 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.
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 atomlstically, 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 univcrsals. We hold to "univermlta in re, but insist that the universale must be recognized as reoUtien, as truly as the individuals are" (H. B. Smith, System, 319, note). Our realism only asserts the real historical connection of each member of the race with Its first father and head, and to 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. On realism, see Koehler, Rcallsmus und Nominalismus; Neander, Ch. Hist., 4 : ,356; Dorner, Person of Christ, 2 : 377; Hase, Anselm, 2:77; F. E. Abbott, Scientific Theism, Introd., 1-29, and in Mind, Oct.f 1882 : 476, 477; Raymond, Theology, 2 : 30-33.
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. Sec Julius Mtlller, 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 advocate* a different theory, are nevertheless a valuable argument In corroboration of the theory of Adam's Natural Headship.
Thornwell, Theology, 1: 3*3 — " Wo 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." Secre tan, in his Work on Liberty, held to a oUeettre life of the race in Adam. He was answered by Naville, Problem of Evil: We existed in Adam, not individually, but seminally. Bcrsler, 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, 218-371, and references, 261-283; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 410-435, 451-460, 494; Schaff, in Rib. Sac, 5 :230, and in Lange's Com., on Rom. 5: 12; Auberlen, Div. Revelation, 175-180; Phillppi, Glaubenslehre, 3 : 28-38, 204-238; Thomaslus, Chrlstl Person und Werk, 1: 280-400; Martensen, Dogmatics, 173-183; Murphy, Scientific Bases, 282 sq., cf. 101; Blrks, Difficulties of Belief, 135; Bp. Reynolds, Sinfulness of Sin, in Works, 1: 102350; Mozley on Original Sin, in Lectures, 136-152; Kendall, on Natural Heirship, or All the World Akin. In Nineteenth Century, Oct., 1885: 614-026. Per contra, see Hodge, Syst, Theol., 2 :157-164, 227-357; Haven, in Bib. Sac, 20 : 451-455; Criticism of Balrd's doctrine, in Princeton Rev., Apr., 1880 : 335-376: of Schaff's doctrine, in Princeton Rev., Apr., 1870 : 239-282.
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 groat 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 (irdvrec tjiiaprm — aorist of instantaneous past action)—that is, all sinned in "the one trespass" of "the one" man. Qorapare 1 Cor. 15 : 22 — "As in Adam all die" — where the contrast with physical resurrection shows that physical death is meant; 2 Oor. 5 :14 —" one died for all, therefore all died." See Commentaries of Meyer, Bengel, Olshausen, Philippi, Wordsworth, Lange, Godet, Shedd.
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.
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.
D. 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; (8) Adam's sin the causo 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 Augustlnlan 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.
Philippi, Com. on Kom., 168 — Interpret Rom. 5 :12 — " one sinned for all, therefore all sinned," by 2 Cor. 5 :15 — " on« died for ill, therefore all died." Evans, In Presb. Rev.. 1883 : 294 — "By the trespass of the one the many died," "By the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one," "Through the one man's disobedience" _all these phrases, and the phrases with respect to salvation which correspond to them, indicate that the fallen race and the redeemed race are each regarded as a multitude, a totality. So oi irai-res in 2 Cor. 5:14 indicates a corresponding conception of the organic unity of the race. Of inapro" in Rom. 5 :12, Prof. W. A. Stevens says: "This might conceivably be: (1) the historical aorist proper, used in its momentary sense; (2) the comprehensive or collective aorist, as in Cii/Mtv in the same verse; < 3) the aorist used In the sense of the English perfect, as in Rom. 3 :23 — iroirei yip rmaprov «ai io-TepoOirai. 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 waproi. in 3 :23; see also margin of Rev. Version. But since the passage Rom. 5:1219 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 wo have combined with it remarks from Meyer, Schaff, Moule, and others.
Exposition Of Rom. 5 :12-19.—Parallel between the mlvatinn <n Christ anil the ruin that ha* 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 reoeived through Adam. The statement of the parallel in begun in
Verse 12: "is through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned," so (as we may complete the interrupted sentence) by one man righteousness entered into the world, and life by righteousness, and so life passed upon all men, because all became partakers of this righteousness. Both physical and spiritual death is meant. That it is physical, is shown (1) from rem 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. 48, 4«, 118; 9 :19; John 8 : 44; 1 Cor. 15 : 21. That it is spiritual. Is evident from Rom. 5 :18, 21, 23, where <<■»> is the opposite of ddvarot, and from 2 Tim. 1:10. where the same contrast occurs. The Outws 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, liecause all sinned. •«>' <5 - because, on the ground of the fact that, for the reason that, all sinned, vivrn = all, without exception. Infants included, as raw 14 teaches.
JiMopToi' 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 ( Tows 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 auMpr+vuv is not anaprwlbv yiyvevdai or clrcu. The sense " death passed upon all men, because all have consciously and personally sinned," is contradicted (1) by Terse 14, in which it is asserted that certain persons who are a part of iraires, the subject of . and who suffer the death which is the penalty of sin, did not commit sing , resembling Adam's first sin, (. 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 «'*' <£ wmmt AjiapToi'ouim". Neither can ijjmproi' 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 ij/ioproi- 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 Jfosafc 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 iroirtt rmaprov 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 siti by which death came upon them been one like Adam's, there would have been as many sins, to lie 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" (verso 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 ease. These persons must, therefore, have sinned against the commandment In Eden, the probationary statute; and their sin was not similar |i|uiw| to Adam's, but Adam's identical sin, the very same sin numerically of the "one man." They did not sin lUce Adam, but they "sinned in him, and fell with him, in that first transgression "(Westminster larger Catechism, 22).
Verses 15-17 show how the work of grace differs from, and surpasses, the work of sin. Over against God's exact justice in punishing all for the first sin which all committed in Adam, Is set the gratuitous justification of all who are in Christ. Adam's sin is the act of Adam and his posterity together; hence the imputation to the posterity is Just and merited. Christ's obedience is the work of Christ alone; hence the imputation of it to the elect is gracious and unmerited. Here rain »oAAous is not of equal extent with oi iroAAot in the first clause, because other passages teach that "the muij" who die in Adam are not conterminous with "the many" who live In Christ; see i Cor. 15 : 22; Mat 25 : 46; also, see note on verse 18, below, Tous *oaaovc here refers to the same persons who, in ferae 17, are said to 11 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 offence; justification delivers from many offences. Tarsi 17 enforces and explains Tana 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 terse 12, but was interrupted by the explanatory parenthesis in vena* 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 oi iroAAoi in verse 15; and the "all men unto justification of life" = the rov* iroAAovc in Terse 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 man" 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).
Terse 19. "For as through the one man's disobedience the many were constituted sinners, even so through tha obedience of the one shall the many be constituted righteous." The many were constituted sinners because, according to Terse 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. Oi iroAAoi is used in contrast with the one forefather, and the atonement of Christ is designated as iira«oij, In order to contrast it with the irapa«o>i of Adam.
KoTdc7Tai*ii(roi'Tai has the same signification as in the first part of the verso. Auceuoi iciiTa<rra#i)c-oiTai means simply "shall be justified," and is used Instead of {ucauatfijo-o^ai, in order to make the antithesis of afiapTuAoi *art<rridriaay more perfect. This being " constituted righteous" presupposes the fact of a union between o e!t and oi iroAAot, (. e. between Christ and believers, just as the being "constituted sinners" presupposed the fact of a union between o *U and oi roAAoi, f. c. between all men and Adam. The future KaTturra&qixovrai 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 man;" to whom, in Terse 15. grace abounded, and who are described, In Terse 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 Ood, 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 the New School interpretation, see Kendrick, in Bap. Rev., 1885:48-72.
H.—Objections To The Auoustinian 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 misconceptions 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 And 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 of 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 wronu de»ire Is the cause of sin in unholy beings? Augustine held this." Pepper, Outlines, 112—" We do not fall each one by himself. We were so on probation in Adam, that his fall was our fall."
C. That Adam's sin cannot be imputed to us, since we cannot repent of it
The objection has plausibility only so long as we fail to distinguish between Adam's sin as the inward apostasy of the nature from God, and Adam's sin as the outward act of transgression which followed and manifested that apostasy. We cannot indeed repent of Adam's sin as our personal act or as Adam's personal act, but regarding his sin as the apostasy of our common nature—an apostasy which manifests itself in our personal transgressions as it did in his, we can repent of it and do repent of it. In truth it is this nature, as self-corrupted and averse to God, for which the Christian most deeply repents.
God, we know, has not made our nature as we flnil 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 s'.iould repent, and do repent. Anselm, De Concep. Virg., 23—" Adam sinned in one point of view as a person, in another as man ({. t. as human nature which at that time existed in him alone). But since Adam and humanity could not be separated, the sin of tlie 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 person* 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 flrat 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 af 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 " ( Ei. 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, Elohlm 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 snail not boar 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 showB that God does not impute to us the sins of our immediate ancestors; it is not inconsistent with the doctrine that all the physical and moral evil of the world Is the result of a sin of Adam with which the whole race is chargeable.
H. B. Smith, System, 296—" Isekiel 18 does not deny that descendants arc involved in the evil results of ancestral sins, under Qod's moral government; but simply shows that there is opportunity for extrication, in personal repentance and obedience." Mozley on Predestination, 179—" Augustine says that Ezeklel'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 tbe 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., 2:826,327), where God's visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children (It 20 :5) is explained by the fact that the children repeat the Bins 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 guilt or righteousness, are communicated by propagation. Ordinary generation does not transmit personal qualities, but only those qualities which belong to the whole species. "Original sin is the consequent of man's nature, whereas the parents' grace is a personal excellence, and cannot be transmitted" (Burgesse).
Thornwell, Selected Writings, 1 : 543, says the Augustinian doctrine would Imply that Adam, penitent and believing, must have begotten penitent and believing children, seeing that the nature as it is in the parent always flows from parent to child. But see Fisher, Discussions, 370, where Aquinas holds that no quality or guilt that is personal 1b propagated (Thomas Aquinas, 2 : 629). Anselm (Do Concept.Virg. et Origin. Peceato, 98) will not decide the question. "The original nature of the tree is propagated — not tbe nature of the graft"—when seed from the graft is planted. Burgess: "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 unclrcumclsed; and the seed that was sown without husks, yet produced corn with husks."
F. That, if all moral consequences are properly penalties, sin, considered as a sinful nature, must be the punishment of sin, considered as the act of our first parents.
But we reply that the impropriety of punishing sin with sin vanishes when we consider that the sin which is punished is our own, equally with the sin with which we are punished. The objection is valid as against the federal theory or the theory of mediate imputation, but not as against the theory of ^Adam's natural headship. To deny that God, through the operation of second causes, may punish the act of transgression by the habit and tendency which result from it, is to ignore the facts of every-day life, as well as the statements of Scripture in which sin is represented as ever reproducing itself, and with each reproduction increasing its guilt and punishment (Bom. 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 yonr members as servants to righteousness unto nanctiflcation "; James 1:15 — " Then the lost, Then it bath conceived, be&reth sin: and tbe sin, when it is fall grown, bringeth forth death"; 2 Tim. 3 :13 — "evil men and impostors shall wai worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." See Meyer on Rom. 1: 24 — "Wherefore Cod gave them ap 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 Bin: "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." Whlton, Is Eternal Punishment Endless, 62—"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. Tbe sinner gravitates from worst; to worse, in an ever deepening*fall."
Q. 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.
Krelbig, Versfihnungalehre, objects to the AugtiRtlnian 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 329, in the statement of Augustine's view, and In the section following this, on Ability, page 345). 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 tbe surest index as to what the decisions of tbe 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.
Julius MUller, Doct. Sin, 2: 316 —"The merely organic theory of sin leads to naturalism, which endangers not only tbe doctrine of a final judgment, but that of personal immortality generally." In preaching, therefore, we should begin with the known and acknowledged Bins of men. We should lay the same stress upon our connection with Adam that tbe 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.
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 (ef. 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 I for I im undone; because I am a man of andean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips "; Lam. 3 : 42 — " W» hare transgressed and rebelled "; Ezra 9 : 6 — "I am ashamed and blush to lilt up mj 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 mj father's house have sinned." So God punishes all Israel for David's sin of pride; so the sins of Reuben, Canaan, Achan, Qehazl, are visited on their children or descendants.
H. B. Smith, System, 298, 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 raoe relations,— ' Evil becomes coemical by reason of fastening on relations which were originally adapted to making good cosmlcal:' 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."
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." Atomism Is egotistic. The purest and noblest feel most strongly that humanity is not like a heap of sandgrains 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 Augustlnian view Is to diminish the sense of guilt for personal sins, we reply that only those who recognize King as rooted in Kin can properly recognize the evil of them. To such they are symptoms of an apostasy from God so deep-seated and universal that nothing but infinite grace can deliver us from it.
I. That a constitution by which the sin of one individual involves the nature of all men who descend from him in guilt and condemnation 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. Our ruin and our redemption were alike wrought out without personal act of ours. As all the natural life of humanity was in Adam, so all the spiritual life of humanity was in Christ. As our old nature was corrupted in Adam and propagated to us by physical generation, so our new nature was restored in Christ and communicated to us by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. If then we are justified upon the ground of our inbeing in Christ, we may in like manner be condemned on the ground of our inbeing in Adam.
Stearns, in N. Eng., Jan., 1882 : 95—"The silence of Scripture respecting the precise connection between the first great sin and the sins of the millions of individuals who have lived since then is a silence that neither science nor philosophy has been, or Is, able to break with a satisfactory explanation. Separate the twofold nature of man, corporate and individual. Recognize in the one the region of necessity; In the other the region of freedom. The scientific law of heredity has brought into new currency the doctrine which the old theologians sought to express under the name of original sin,— a term which bad a meaning ax it was at first used by Augustine, but which is an awkward misnomer if we accept any other theory but his."
Dr. Hovey claims that the Aug-ustinlan view breaks down when applied to the connection between the justification of believers and the righteousness of Christ; for believers were not in Christ, as to the substance of their souls, when he wrought out redemption for them. But we reply that the life of Christ which makes us Christians is the same life which made atonement upon the cross and which rose from the grave for justification. The parallel between Adam and Christ is of the nature of analogy, not of Identity. With Adam, we have a connection of physical life; with Christ, a connection of spiritual life.
Stahl, Phllosophle des Bechts, quoted In Olshausen's Com. on Rom. 5 :12-21 —" Adam is the original matter of humanity; Christ is its original idea in God; both personally living. Mankind is one In them. Therefore Adam's sin became the sin of all; Christ's sacrifice the atonement for all. Every leaf of a tree may be green or wither by itself; but each suffers by the disease of the root, and recovers only by its healing. The shallower the man, so much more isolated will everything appear to him; for upon the surface all lies apart. He will see In mankind, in the nation, nay, even in the family, mere individuals, where the act of the one has no connection with that of the other. The profounder the man, the more do these inward relations of unity, proceeding from the very centre, force themselves upon him. Yea, the love of our neighbor is Itself nothing but the deep feeling of this unity; for we love him only, with whom we feel and acknowledge ourselves to be one What the Christian love of our neighbor is for the heart, that unity of race is for the understanding. If sin through one, and redemption through one, is not possible, the command to love our neighbor is also unintelligible. Christian ethics and Christian faith are therefore In truth lndlssolubly united. Christianity effects in history an advance like that from the animal kingdom to man, by Its revealing the essential unity of men, the consciousness of which in the ancient world had vanished when the nations were separated."
For replies to the foregoing and other objections, see Schaff, In Bib. Sac., 5 : 230; Shedd, Sermons to the Nat. Man, 268-284; Balrd, Elohlm Revealed, 607-609, 628-644; Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 134-188; Edwards, Original Sin, in Works, 2 : 473-610; Atwater, on Calvinism in Doctrine and Life, in Princeton Review, 1875 : 73. Per contra, see Moxom, in Bap. Rev., 1881:273-287; Park, Discourses, 210-233.
SECTION VI.—CONSEQUENCES OF SIN TO ADAM'S POSTERITY.
As the result of Adam's transgression, all his posterity are born in the same state into which he fell. But since law is the all-comprehending demaud of harmony with God, all moral consequences flowing from transgression are to be regarded as sanctions of law, or expressions of the divine displeasure through the constitution of things which he has established. Certain of these consequences, however, are earlier recognized than others and are of minor scope; it will therefore be useful to consider them under the three aspects of depravity, guilt, and penalty.
I. Depravity.
By this we mean, on the one hand, the lack of original righteousness or of holy affection toward God, and, on the other hand, the corruption of the moral nature, or bias toward evil. That such depravity exists has been abundantly shown, both from Scripture and from reason, in our consideration of the universality of sin. Two questions only need detain us:
1. Depravity partial or total f
The Scriptures represent human nature as totally depraved. The phrase "total depravity," however, is liable to misinterpretation, and should not be used without explanation. By the total depravity of universal humanity we mean:
A. Negatively,—not that every sinner is:
(a) Destitute of conscience,—for the existence of strong impulses to right, and of remorse for wrong doing, show that conscience is often keen.
John 8 : 9—"And the/, when they heard it, went oat one bj one, beginning from the eldest, even onto the last" (John 7: 53 — 8: it though not written by John, is a perfectly true narrative, descended from the apostolic age). This natural conscience, combined with the principle of selflove, may even prompt choice of the good, though no love for God is in the choice.
(6) Devoid of all qualities pleasing to men, and useful when judged by a human standard,—for the existence of such qualities is recognized by Christ.
lurk 10 : 21 -" And Jesus looking upon him loved him.''
(c) Prone to every form of sin,—for certain forms of sin exclude certain others.
Mat. 23 : 23—" Ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, judgment, and mercy, and faith: but theae ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone "; Rom. 2 : 14—11 When Gentiles that have not the law do bj nature the things of the law, these not having the law are a law unto themselves; in that they shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith." The sin of miserliness may exclude the sin of luxury; the sin of pride may exclude the sin of sensuality.
(d) Intense as he can be in his selfishness and opposition to God,—for
he becomes worse every day.
G«n. 15 :16—" The iniquity of the imorite is not yet full"; 2 Tim. 3 :13—" Evil men and impostors shall wax worse and worse."
B. Positively,—that every sinner is:
(a) Totally destitute of that love to God which constitutes the fundamental and all-inclusive demand of the law. John 5 : 42—" But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in yourselves."
(6) Chargeable with elevating some lower affection or desire above regard for God and his law.
2 Tim. 3 : 4*—"lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God"; cf. Mai. 1: 6—"1 son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honor? and if I be a master, where is my fear?"
(c) Supremely determined, in his whole inward and outward life, by a preference of self to God.
2 Tim. 3 : 2—" lovers of self."
(d) Possessed of an aversion to God, which, though sometimes latent, becomes active enmity, so soon as God's will comes into manifest conflict with his own.
Horn. 8 : 7—" the mind of the lesh is enmity against God."
(e) Disordered and corrupted in every faculty, through this substitution of selfishness for supreme affection toward God.
»
Eph. 4 :18 — "darkened in their understanding ... hardening of their heart"; TIL 1:15—"both their mind and their conscience are defiled "; 2 Cor. 7 :1—"defilement of flesh and spirit"; Heb. 3 :12—"an evil heart of unbelief.'
(/) Credited with no thought, emotion, or act of which divine holiness can fully approve.
Rom. 3 : 9—" they are all under sin "; 7:18—" in me, that is, in my flesh, dvelleth no good thing."
(g) Subject to a law of constant progress in depravity, which he has no recuperative energy to enable him successfully to resist.
Rom. 7 :18—" to will is present with me, bnt to do that which is good is not"; 23—" law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity nnder the law of sin which is in mj members."
Every sinner would prefer a milder law and a different administration. But whoever does not love God's law does not truly love God. The sinner seeks to secure his own interests rather than God's. Even so called religious acts he performs with preference of his own good to God's glory. He disobeys, and always has disobeyed, the fundamental law of love.
H. B. Smith, System, 277—" By total depravity is never meant that men are as bad as they can be; nor that they have not, in their natural condition, certain amiable qualities; nor that they may not have virtues in a limited sense ijitxtitia firf/to). But it Is meant (1) that depravity, or the sinful condition of man, infects the whole man: intellect, feeling, heart and will; (2) that in each unrenewed person some lower affection is supreme; and (3) that each such is destitute of love to God. On these positions: as to (1) the power of depravity over the whole man, we have given proof from Scripture; as to (2) the fact that in every unrenewed man some lower affection Is supreme, experience may be always appealed to; men know that their supreme affection Is fixed on some lower good—Intellect, heart, and will going together in it; or that some form of selfishness Is predominant—using selfish in a general sense—self seeks its happiness in some Inferior object, giving to that its supreme affection; as to (3) that every unrenewed person is without supreme love to God, it is the point which is of greatest force, and is to be urged with the strongest effect, In setting forth the depth and 'totality' of man's sinfulness: unrenewed men have not that supreme love of God which is the substance of the first and great command." See also Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 248; Raird, Elohlrn Revealed, 510-622; Chalmers, Institutes, 1: 519-642; Cunningham, Hist. Theology, 1: 516-531; Princeton Review, 1877 : 470.
2. Ability or inability f
In opposition to the plenary ability taught by the Pelagians, the gracious ability of the Arminians, and the natural ability of the New School theologians, the Scriptures declare the total inability of the sinner to turn himself to God or to do that which is truly good in God's sight (see Scripture proof below). A proper conception also of the law, as reflecting the holiness of God and as expressing the ideal of human nature, leads us to the conclusion that no man whose powers are weakened by either original or actual sin can of himself come up to that perfect standard. Tet there is a certain remnant of freedom left to man. The sinner can (a) avoid the sin against the Holy Ghost; (b) choose the less sin rather than the greater; (c ) refuse altogether to yield to certain temptations; ( d) do outwardly good acts, though with imperfect motives; (e ) seek God from motives of self-interest.
But on the other hand the sinner cannot" (a) by a single volition bring his character and life into complete conformity to God's law; (6) change his fundamental preference for self and Bin to supreme love for God; nor (c) do any act, however insignificant, which shall meet with God's approval or answer fully to the demands of law.
So long, then, as there are states of intellect, affection, and will which man cannot, by any power of volition or of contrary choice remaining to liim, bring into subjection to God, it cannot be said that he possesses any sufficient ability of himself to do God's will; and if a basis for man's responsibility and guilt be sought, it must be found, if at all, not in his plenary ability, his gracious ability, or his natural ability, but in his original ability, when he came, in Adam, from the hands of his maker.
Man's present inability is natural, in the sense of being inborn — it is not acquired by our personal act, but is congenital. It is not natural, however, as resulting from the original limitations of human nature, or from the subsequent loss of any essential faculty of that nature. Human nature, at its first creation, was endowed with ability perfectly to keep the law of God. Man has not, even by his sin, lost his essential faculties of intellect, Affection, or will. He has weakened those faculties, however, so that they are now unable to work up to the normal measure of their powers. But more especially has man given to every faculty a bent away from God which renders him morally unable to render spiritual obedience. The inability to good which now characterizes human nature is an inability that results from sin, and is itself sin.
We hold, therefore, to an inability which is both natural and moral, — moral, as having its source in the self-corruption of man's moral nature and the fundamental aversion of his will to God; — natural, as being inborn, and as affecting with partial paralysis all his natural powers of intellect, affection, conscience, and will. For his inability, in both these aspects of it, man is responsible.
To the use of the term "natural ability " to designate merely the sinner's possession of all the constituent faculties of human nature, we object upon the following grounds:
A. The phrase is misleading, since it seems to imply that the existence of the mere powers of intellect, affection, and will is a sufficient quantitative qualification for obedience to God's law, whereas these powers have been weakened by sin, and are naturally unable, instead of naturally able, to render back to God with interest the talent first bestowed. Even if the moral direction of man's faculties were a normal one, the effect of hereditary and of personal sin would render naturally impossible that large likeness to God which the law of absolute perfection demands. Man has not therefore the natural ability perfectly to obey God. He had it once, but he lost it with the first sin.
B. Since the law of God requires of men not so much right single volitions as conformity to God in the whole inward state of the affections and will, the power of contrary choice in single volitions does not constitute a natural ability to obey God, unless man can by those single volitions change the underlying state of the affections and will. But this power man does not possess. Since God judges all moral action in connection with the general state of the heart and life, natural ability to good involves not only a full complement of faculties but also a bias of the affections and will toward God. Without this bias there is no possibility of right moral action, and where there is no such possibility, there can be no ability either natural or moral.
C. In addition to the psychological argument just mentioned, we may urge another from experience and observation. These testify that man is cognizant of no such ability. Since no man has ever yet, by the exercise of his natural powers, turned himself to God or done an act truly good in God's sight, the existence of a natural ability to good is a pure assumption. There is no scientific warrant for inferring the existence of an ability which has never manifested itself in a single instance since history began.
D. The practical evil attending the preaching of natural ability furnishes a strong argument against it. The Scriptures, in their declarations of the sinner's inability and helplessness, aim to shut him up to sole dependence upon God for salvation. The doctrine of natural ability, assuring him that he is able at once to repent and turn to God, encourages delay by putting salvation at all times within his reach. If a single volition will secure it, he may be saved as easily to-morrow as to-day. The doctrine of inability presses men to immediate acceptance of God's offers, lest the day of grace for them pass by.
Let us repeat, however, that the denial to man of all ability, whether natural or moral, to turn himself to God or to do that which is truly good in God's sight, does not imply a denial of man's power to order his external life in many particulars conformably to moral rules, or even to attain the praise of men for virtue. Man has still a range of freedom in acting out his nature, and he may to a certain limited extent act down upon that nature, and modify it, by isolated volitions externally conformed to God's law. He may choose higher or lower forms of selfish action, and may pursue these chosen courses with various degrees of selfish energy. Freedom of choice, within this limit, is by no means incompatible with complete bondage of the will in spiritual things.
John 1:13 — " born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of nun, but of God "; 3:5 — " Except a nun bo born of water and the Spirit, ho cannot enter the kingdom of God "; 6 : 44 — "No man can come to me, except the Father which sent me draw him "; 8:34 — " Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin "; 15 : 4,5— "the branch cannot bear fruit of itaelf..... apart from me ye can do nothing "; Rom. 7:18 —"In me, that is, in my flesh, dveUeth no good thing; for to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not"; 24 — "Oh wretched man that I am I who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" 8 : 7, 8 — "The mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be: and they that are in the flesh cannot please God "; 1 Cor. 2 :14 — "the natural man recei veth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged "; 2 Cor. 3 : 5 — "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves"; Eph. 2:1 — " dead through your trespasses and sins"; 8-10 —11 by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works "; Heb. 11: 6 — " without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing unto him."
Kant's "I ought, therefore I can" Is the relic of man's original consciousness of freedom — the freedom with which man was endowed at his creation — a freedom, now, alas 1 destroyed by sin. Or, it may be the courage of the soul In which God is working anew by his Spirit. Emerson, in his poem entitled " Voluntariness," says: "So near is grandeur to our dust. So near is God to man. When duty whispers low Thou must, The youth replies, lean." But, apartfrom special grace, all the ability which man at present possesses comes far short of fulfilling the spiritual demands of God's law. Parental and civil law Implies a certain kind of power. Puritan theology called man "free among the dead" (Ps. 88 : 5, A. V.), There was a range of freedom inside of slavery — the will was "a drop of water imprisoned in a solid crystal" (Oliver Wendell Holmes).
Westminster Confession, 16: 7 —"Man by his fail Into a state of sin hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so, as a natural man, being altogether averse to that of good, and dead in sin, he is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto." Hopkins, Works, 1: 233235 — " So long as the sinner's opposition of heart and will continues, he cannot come to Christ. It is impossible, and will continue so, until his unwillingness and opposition be removed by a change and renovation of his heart by divine grace, and he be made willing in the day of God's power." Hopkins speaks of "utter inability to obey the law of Ood, yea, utter Impossibility."
Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2 :257-277 — " Inability consists, not in the loss of any faculty of the soul, nor in the loss of free agency, for the sinner determines his own acts, nor In mere disinclination to what is good. It arises from want of spiritual discernment, and hence want of proper affections. Inability belongs only to the things of the Spirit. What man cannot do is to repent, believe, regenerate himself. He cannot put forth any act which merits the approbation of God. Sin cleaves to all he does, and from its dominion he cannot free himself. The distinction between natural and moral ability Is of no value. Shall we say that the uneducated man can understand and appreciate the Iliad, because he has all the faculties that the scholar has? Shall we say that man can love God, if he will? This is false. If will means volition. It is a truism, if will means affection. The Scriptures never thus address men and tell them that they have power to do all that God requires. It is dangerous to teach a man this, for until a man feels that he can do nothing, God never saves him. Inability is Involved in the doctrine of original sin; in the necessity of the Spirit's influence in regeneration. Inability is consistent with obligation, when Inability arises from sin and is removed by the removal of sin."
Shedd, on the Bondage of Sin, in South Church Sermons, 33-59 — " The origin of this helplessness lies, not in creation, but in sin. God can demand the ten talents or the five which he originally committed to US', together with a diligent and faithful Improvement of them. Because the servant has lost the talents, is he discharged from obligation to return them with interest? Sin contains In itself the element of servitude. In the very act of transgressing the law of God, there is a reflex action of the human will upon itself, whereby it becomes less able than before to keep that law. Sin is the suicidal action of the human will. To do wrong destroys the power to do right. Total depravity carries with It total impotence. The voluntary faculty may be ruined from within; may be made impotent to holiness, by Its own action ; may surrender itself to appetite and selfishness with such an intensity and earnestness, that it becomes unable to convert itself and overcome its wrong inclination."
For the Arminian 'gracious ability,' see Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2 :130; McCUntock & Strong, Cyclopaedia, 10 : 890. Per contra, see Calvin, Institutes, bk. 2, chap. 2 (1: 282); Edwards, Works, 2 : 464 (Orig. Sin., 8:1): Bennett Tyler, Works, 73. See also Baird, Blohlm Revealed, 523-528; Cunningham, Hist. Theology. 1: 567-839; Turretin, 10 : 4 :19; A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 260-289; Thomwell, Theology, 1 :394-399; Alexander, Moral Science, 89-208; Princeton Essays, 1:224-239; Richards, Lectures on Theology. On real as distinguished from formal freedom, see Julius MUller, Doct. Sin, 2:1-225. On Augustine's Uneatnenta extretna (of the divine Image in man), see Wiggors, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 119, note. See also art. by A. H. Strong, on Modified Calvinism, or Remainders of Freedom in Man, in Bap. Rev., 1883 :219-242.
EL Quilt.
1. Nature of guilt.
By guilt we mean desert of punishment, or obligation to render satisfaction to God's justioe for self-determined violation of law.
Schiller, Die Braut von Messina: "Das Leben 1st der GUter hoobstes nlcht; Der TJebel grosstes abcr 1st die Schuld"—" Life is not the highest of possessions; the greatest of ills, however, Is guilt." Delitzsch: "Die Schamrothe 1st das Abendrtithe der untergegangenen Sonne der ursprllngllchen Gerechtigkeit"—" The blush of shame Is the evening red after the sun of original righteousness has gone down." E. G. Robinson— "Pangs of conscience do not arise from fear of penalty—they are the penalty itself." See chapter on Fig-leaves, in Mcllvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 142-154—" Spiritual shame for sin sought an outward symbol, and found it in the nakedness of the lower parts of the body."
The following remarks may serve both for proof and for explanation:
A. Guilt is incurred only through self-determined transgression either
on the part of man's nature or person. We are guilty only of that sin which we have originated or have had part in originating. Guilt is not, therefore, mere liability to punishment, without participation in the transgression for which the punishment is inflicted—in other words, there is no such thing as constructive guilt under the divine government. We are accounted guilty only for what we have done, either personally or iu our first parents, and for what we are, in consequence of such doing.
It. t8 : 20—" the Kin shall not bear the iniquity of the father" = as Calvin says (Com. fn toco): "The son shall Dot bear the father's Iniquity, since he shall receive the reward due to himself,
and shall bear his own burden All are guilty through their own fault. Every
one perishes through his own iniquity." In other words, the whole race fell In Adam, and is punished for its own gin In him, not for the sins of Immediate ancestors, nor for the sin of Adam as a person foreign to us. John 9 : 3—"Neither did this man sin. nor his parent!" (that he should be born blind) = Do not attribute to any special later sin what Is a consequence of the sin of the race—the first sin which "brought death into the world, and all our woe."
B. Guilt is an objective result of sin, and is not to be confounded with subjective pollution, or depravity. Every sin, whether of nature or person, is an offense against God (Ps. 51 : 4-6), an act or state of opposition to his will, which has for its effect God's personal wrath (Ps. 7 : 11; John 3 : 18, 36), and which must be expiated either by punishment or by atonement (Heb. 9 : 22). Not only does sin, as unlikeness to the divine purity, involve pollution,—it also, as antagonism to God's holy will, involves guilt. This guilt, or obligation to satisfy the outraged holiness of God, is explained in the New Testament by the terms '' debtor " and '' debt" (Mat. 6:12; Luke 13 : 4; Mat. 5 : 21; Bom. 3 :19; 6 : 23; Eph. 2 : 3). Since guilt, the objective result of sin, is entirely distinct from depravity, the subjective result, human nature may, as in Christ, have the guilt without the depravity (2 Cor. 5 : 21), or may, as in the Christian, have the depravity without the guilt (1 John 1: 7, 8).
Ps. 51: 4-6—" Against thee, thee only, hare I sinned and done that which is eril in thy sight: that thou merest be justified when thou speakest. and be clear when thou judgest"; 7 : 11—" God is a righteous judge, yea, a God that hath indignation every day"; John 3 :18—"He that belieyeth not hath been judged already "; 36—"he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him "; Heb. 9 : 22—" Apart from shedding of blood there is no remission "; Mat. 6 : 12—" debts ": Luke 13 : i —" offenders" (marg. "debtors " ); Mat. 5 : 21—" shall be in
danger of [exposed to] the judgment"; Rom. 3 : 19—"that all the world may be brought under the
judgment of God "; 6 : 23—"the wages of sin is death " = death in sin's desert; Kph. 2 : 3—" by nature children of wrath"; 2 Cor. 5 : 21—"Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf"; 1 John 1: 7, 8— "The blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin. [ Yet ] If we say that ve have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
Sin brings in its train not only depravity but guilt, not only macula but realm. Scripture sets forth the pollution of sin by its similes of "a cage of unclean birds " and of "wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores "; by leprosy and Levitical uncleanness, under the old dispensation; by death and the corruption of the grave, under both the old and the new. But Scripture sets forth the guilt of sin, with equal vividness, in the fear of Cain and in the remorse of Judas. The revulsion of God's holiness from sin, and its demand for satisfaction, are reflected in the shame and remorse of every awakened conscience. There Is an Instinctive feeling in the sinner's heart that sin will be punished, and ought to be punished. All great masters In literature have recognized it. The inextinguishable thirst for reparation constitutes the very essence of tragedy. Marguerite, in Goethe's Faust, fainting in the great cathedral under the solemn reverberations of the Dies Irae; Dimmesdale, in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, putting himself side by side with Hester Prynne, his victim, in her place of obloquy; Bulwer's Eugene Aram, coming forward, though unsuspected, to confess the murder be had committed, all these are illustrations of the inner Impulse that moves even a sinful soul to satisfy the claims of justice upon It.
Nor are such scenes confined to the pages of romance. In a recent trial at Syracuse, Earl, the wife-murderer, thanked the Jury that had convicted him; declared the verdict Just, begged that no one would Interfere to stay the course of justice; said that the greatest blessing that could be conferred on him would be to let him suffer the penalty of his crime. In Plattsburg, at the close of another trial in which the accused was a lifeconvict who had struck down a fellow-convict with an axe, the Jury, after being out two hours, came in to ask the judge to explain the difference between murder in the first and second degree. Suddenly the prisoner rose and said: "This was not a murder in the second degree. It was a deliberate and premeditated murder. I know that I have done wrong, that I ought to confess the truth, and that I ought to be hanged." This left the jury nothing to do but render their verdict, and the Judge sentenced the murderer to be hanged, as he confessed he deserved to be.
Such is the movement and demand of the enlightened conscience. The lack of conviction that crime ought to be punished is one of the most certain signs of moral decay, in either the individual or the nation (Pi. 97 :10—" Tt that love the lord, lute svil"; 149 : 6—" Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, And a two-edged sword in their hand"—to execute God's Judgment upon iniquity.
C. Quilt, moreover, as an objective result of sin, is not to be confounded with the subjective consciousness of guilt (Lev. 5 : 17). In the condemnation of conscience, God's condemnation partially and prophetically manifests itself (1 John 3 : 20). But guilt is primarily a relation to God, and only secondarily a relation to conscience. Progress in sin is marked by diminished sensitiveness of moral insight and feeling. As "the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none," so guilt may be great, just in proportion to to the absence of consciousness of it ( Ps. 19 : 12; 51 : 6; Eph. 4 : 18, 19 —am?/ly)?if<Sre{-). There is no evidence, however, that the voice of conscience can be completely or finally silenced. The time for repentance may pass, but not the time for remorse. Progress in holiness, on the other hand, is marked by increasing apprehension of the depth and extent of our sinfulness, while with this apprehension is combined, in a normal Christian experience, the assurance that the guilt of our sin has been taken, and taken away, by Christ (John 1: 29).
Leu. 5 :17—" And if an; one sin, and do anj of the things which the Lord hath commanded not to be done, though he knew it not, jet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity "; 1 John 3 : 20—" because if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things "; Pa, 19 :12—" Who can discern his errors? clear thou me from hidden faults "; 51: 6—" Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: And in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom "; Eph. 4 :18,19—" darkened in their understanding.., , being past feeling "; John 1: 29—" Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away [marg. 1 beareth'] the sin of the world."
See, on the nature of guilt, Julius MUller, Doct. Sin, 1:193-267; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 203-209; Thomaslus, Christ! Person und Work, 1:848; I laird, Elohim Revealed, 461-473; Delitzsch, Bib. Psychologic, 121-148; Thornwell, Theology, 1 : 400-424.
2. Degrees of guilt.
The Scriptures recognize different degrees of guilt as attaching to different kinds of sin. The variety of sacrifices under the Mosaic law, and the variety of awards in the judgment, are to be explained upon this principle.
Lnke 12 1 47, 48—" shall be beaten with many stripes ... shall be beaten with few stripes "; Rom. 2 i 6—" who will render to every man according to his works." See also John 19 :11—" ho that delivered me unto thee hath greater
sin "; Heb. 2 : 2, 3—if "every transgression received a just recompense of reward; how shall we escape, if we
neglect so great salvation?" 10 : 28, 29—" s man that hsth set at nought Hoses' law dieth without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses: of how much sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God?"
Casuistry, however, has drawn many distinctions which lack Scriptural foundation. Such is the distinction between venial sins and mortal sins in the Roman Catholic Church,—every sin unpardoned being mortal, and all sins being venial, since Christ has died for all. Nor is the common distinction between sins of omission and sins of commission more valid, since the very omission is an act of commission.
Mxt 25 : 45—"Inasmuch u ye did it not nnto on« of then lout"; James * : 17—"To him therefore that knoweth to do good, ud doeth it not, to him it n sin.'' The Roman Catholic Church proceeds upon the supposition that she can determine the precise malignity of every offence, and assign its proper penance at the confessional. Thornwell, Theology, 1: 424-441, says that "all sins are venial but one—for there is a sin against the Holy Ghost," yet "not one is venial In itself—for the least proceeds from an apostate state and nature." We shall see, however, that the hindrance to pardon, in the case of the sin against the Holy Ghost, is subjective rather than objective.
The following distinctions are indicated in Scripture as involving different degrees of guilt:
A. Sin of nature and personal transgression.
Sin of nature involves guilt, yet there is greater guilt when this sin of nature reasserts itself in personal transgression; for while this latter includes in itself the former, it also adds to the former a new element, namely, the conscious exercise of the individual and personal will, by virtue of which a new decision is made against God, special evil habit is induced, and the total condition of the soul is made more depraved. Although we have emphasized the guilt of inborn sin, because this truth is most contested, it is to be remembered that men reach a conviction of their native depravity only through a conviction of their personal transgressions. For this reason, by far the larger part of our preaching upon sin should consist in applications of the law of God to the acts and dispositions of men's lives.
Mat. 19 : H—"to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven" = relative innocence of childhood; 23 : 32— "Fill jo up then the measure of jour fathers" = personal transgression added to inherited depravity. In preaching, we should first treat Individual transgressions, and thence proceed to heart-sin, and race-sin. Man is not wholly a spontaneous development of inborn tendencies, a manifestation of original sin. Motives do not determine but they perauvfe the will, and every man is guilty of conscious personal transgressions which may, with the help of the Holy Spirit, be brought under the condemning Judgment of conscience. Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 160-174—" Original sin does not do away with the significance of personal transgression. Adam was pardoned; but some of his descendants are unpardonable. The second death is referred, in Scripture, to our own personal guilt."
B. Sins of ignorance, and sins of knowledge.
Here guilt is measured by the degree of light possessed, or in other words, by the opportunities of knowledge men have enjoyed, and the powers with which they have been naturally endowed. Genius and privilege increase responsibility. The heathen are guilty, but those to whom the oracles of God have been committed are more guilty than they.
Mat. 10 :15—"more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that citj "; Lake 12 : 47, 48—" that servant, which knew his Lord's vill.... shall be beaten with many stripes; bnt he that knew not.... shall be beaten with few stripes "; 23 : 34—11 father, forgive them; for thej know not what they do" = complete knowledge would put them beyond the reach of forgiveness. John 19:11—" he that delivered me onto thee hath greater sin ': Acts 17 : 30—" The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked "; Rom. 1: 32—" who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they who practise each things are worthy of death, not only do the seme, but also consent with them that practise them"; 2 :12—"for as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without lav: and as many as have sinned under the law shall be judged by law "; 1 Tim. 1:13,15—" I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief."
O. Sins of infirmity, and sins of presumption.
Here the guilt is measured by the energy of the evil will. Sin may be known to be sin, yet may be committed in haste or weakness. Though haste and weakness constitute a palliation of the offense which springs therefrom, yet they are themselves sins, as revealing an unbelieving and disordered heart. But of far greater guilt are those presumptuous choices of evil in which not weakness, but strength of will, is manifest.
Ps. 19:12,13—" Clear thou me from hidden faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins "; Is. S: 18—" Woe to them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and tin as it were with a cart-rope" = not led away Insensibly by sin, but earnestly, perseveringly, and wilfully working: away at It; GaL 6: 1—" overtaken in any trespass"; 1 Tim. 5 : 24 —" Some men's sins are evident, going before unto judgment; and some men also they follow after" = some men's sins are so open, that they act as officers to bring to Justice those who commit them; whilst others require after-proof (An. Par. Bible). Luther represents one of the former class as saying to himself: "Esto peccator, et pecca fortlter." On sins of passion and of reflection, see Bittinger, in Princeton Kev., 1873 :219.
D. Sin of incomplete, and sin of final, obduracy.
Here the guilt is measured, not by the objective sufficiency or insufficiency of divine grace, but by the degree of unreceptiveness into which sin has brought the soul. As the only sin unto death which is described in Scripture is the sin against the Holy Ghost, we here consider the nature of that ■an.
Mat. 12 : 31—"Ivory sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not bt forgiven "; 32—" and whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come"; Mark 3 : 29—" whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"; 1 John 5 :16,17—" If any man see his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and God will give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: not concerning this do I say that ho should make request ill unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death "; Heb. 10 : 26 —"If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries."
The sin against the Holy Ghost is not to be regarded as an isolated act, but rather as the external symptom of a heart so radically and finally set against God that no power which God can consistently use will ever save it. The sin, therefore, can be only the culmination of a long course of self-hardening and self-depraving. He who has committed it must be either profoundly indifferent to his own condition, or actively and bitterly hostile to God; so that anxiety or fear on account of one's condition are evidences that it has not been committed. The sin against the Holy Ghost cannot be forgiven, simply because the soul that has committed it has ceased to be receptive of divine influences, even when those influences are exerted in the utmost strength which God has seen fit to employ in his spiritual administration.
The commission of this sin Is marked by a loss of spiritual sight; the blind fish of the Mammoth Cave left light for darkness, and so In time lost their eyes. It is marked by a loss of religious sensibility; the sensitive-plant loses Its sensitiveness, in proportion to the frequency with which it Is touched. It is marked by a loss of power to will the good; "the lava hardens after it has broken from the crater, and in that state cannot return to its source" (Van Oosteraee). The same writer also remarks (Dogmatics, 2: 428): "Herod Antipas, after earlier doubt and slavishness, reached such deadness as to be able to mock the Saviour, at the mention of whose name he had not long before trembled." Julius MUller, Doctrine of Sin, 2 : 425—" It is not that divine grace is absolutely refused to any one who in true penitence asks forgiveness of this sin; but he who commits it never fulfils the subjectivo conditions upon which forgiveness is possible, because the aggravation of sin to this ultimatum destroys in him all susceptibility of repentance. The way of return to God is closed against no one who does not close it against himself." Drummond, Natural law In the Spiritual World, 97-120, Illustrates the downward progress of the sinner by the law of degeneration in the vegetable and animal world: pigeons, roses, strawberries, all tend to revert to the primitive and wild type. "How skill we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" ( Eeb. 2:3).
Dr. J. P. Thompson: "The unpardonable sin is the knowing, wilful, persistent, contemptuous, malignant spurning of divine truth and grace, as manifested to the soul by the convincing and illuminating power of the Holy Ghost." Dorner says that "therefore this sin does not belong to Old Testament times, or to the mere revelation of law. It implies the full revelation of the grace in Christ, and the conscious rejection of it by a soul to which the Spirit has made it manifest" (acts 17 : 30—"the times of ignorance, therefore. God overlooked "; Rom. 3 : 25—"the passing over of the sins done aforetime "). But was it not under the Old Testament that God said: "Mr Spirit shall not strive with nun forever" (Gen. 6:3), and "Iphraim is joined to idols; let him alone" (Hoeea 4 :17)? The sin against the Holy Ghost is a sin against grace, but it does not appear to be limited to New Testament times.
It is still true that the unpardonable sin is a sin committed against the Holy Spirit rather than against Christ: Mat. 12 : 32—" whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; bat whosoever shall speak a word against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come." Jesus warns the Jews against it—he does not say they had already committed it. They would seem to have committed It when, after Pentecost, they added to their rejection of Christ the rejection of the Holy Spirit's witness to Christ's resurrection. See Schaff, Sin against the Holy Ghost; Lemme, SUnde wider den Helligen Gelst; Davis, in Bap. Rev., 1888.: 317-326; Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine, 283-288. On the general subject of kinds of sin and degrees of guilt, see Kahnls, Dogmatik, 3 :284, 298.
III. Penalty.
1. Idea of penalty.
By penalty, we mean that pain or loss which is directly or indirectly inflicted by the Lawgiver, in vindication of his justice outraged by the violation of law.
Turretin, 1 :213 — " Justice necessarily demands that all sin be punished, but it does not equally demand that it be punished in the very person that sinned, or in Just such time and degree." So far as this statement of the great federal theologian Is intended to explain our guilt in Adam and our Justification in Christ, we can assent to his words: but we must add that the reason, In each case, why we suffer the penalty of Adam's sin, and Christ suffers the penalty of our sins, is not to be found in any covenant-relation, but rather in the fact that the sinner is one with Adam, and Christ is one with the believer—in other words, not covenant-unity, but life-unity. The word ' penalty,' like 'pain,' is derived from poena, iron-ij, and it implies the correlative notion of desert. As under the divine government there can be no constructive guilt, so there can be no penalty Inflicted by legal Action. Christ's sufferings were penalty, not arbitrarily Inflicted, nor yet borne to expiate personal guilt, but as the Just due of the human nature with which he had united himself, and a part of which he was.
In this definition it is implied that:
A. The natural consequences of transgression, although they constitute a part of the penalty of sin, do not exhaust that penalty. In all penalty there is a personal element — the holy wrath of the Lawgiver — which natural consequences but partially express.
We do not deny, but rather assert, that the natural consequences of transgression are a part of the penalty of sin. Sensual sins are punished, in the determination and corruption of the body; mental and spiritual sins, in the deterioration and corruption of the soul. Prov. 5:22 —"His own iniquities shall take the wicked, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sin" — as the hunter Is caught in the toils which be has devised for the wild beast. Sin is selfdetecting' and self-tormenting. But this is only half the truth. Those who would confine all penalty to the reaction of natural laws are in danger of -forgetting that God is not simply immanent in the universe, but is also transcendent, and that "to fill into the hinds of the living God" (Hob. 10 :31) is to fall into the hands, not simply of the law, but also of the Lawgiver.
B. The object of penalty is not the reformation of the offender or the ensuring of social or governmental safety. These ends may be incidentally secured through its infliction, but the great end of penalty is the vindication of the character of the Lawgiver. Penalty is essentially a necessary reaction of the divine holiness against sin. Inasmuch, however, as wrong views of the object of penalty have so important a bearing upon our future studies of doctrine, we make fuller mention of the two erroneous theories which have greatest currency.
(a) Penalty is not essentially reformatory. By this we mean that the reformation of the offender is not its primary design—as penalty, it is not intended to reform. Penalty, in itself, proceeds not from the love and mercy of the Lawgiver, but from his justice. Whatever reforming influences may in any given instance be connected with it are not parts of the penalty, but are mitigations of it, and they are added not in justice but in grace. If reformation follows the infliction of penalty, it is not the effect of the penalty, but the effect of certain benevolent agencies which have been provided to turn into a means of good what naturally would be to the offender only a source of harm.
That the object of penalty is not reformation appears from Scripture, where punishment is often referred to God's justice, but never to God's love; from the intrinsic ill-desert of sin, to which penalty is correlative; from the fact that upon this theory punishment would not be just when the sinner was already reformed or could not be reformed, so that the greater the sin the less the punishment must be.
Punishment is essentially different from chastisement. The latter proceeds from love (Jar. 10 : 24—" Cornet me, but with judgment; not in thine anger ; leb. 12 : 6—" whom the Lord loreth he chattonelh.") Punishment proceeds not from love but from Justice—see It 28 : 22—"I shall hare snouted judgments in her, and sha.ll be sanctified in her "; 36 : 21, 22—in judgment, " I do not this for jour take, but for mj holj name "; Heb. 12 : 29—" Our God is a consuming fire "; Rot. 15 :1, 4—" wrath of God ... thou only
art holy .... thy righteous acts hare been made manifest"; 19 : 5—" Righteous art thou thou Holy One, because
thou didst thus judge"; 19 : 2—"true and righteous are his judgments; for he hath judged the great harlot." So untrue is the saying of Sir Thomas More's Utopia: "The end of all punishment is the destruction of vice, and the saving of men." Luther: "God has two rods: oneof mercy and goodness; another of anger and fury." Chastisement is the former; penalty the latter.
If the reform-theory of penalty is correct, then to punish crime, without asking about reformation, makes the state the transgressor; Its punishments should be proportioned, not to the greatness of the crime, but to the sinner's state; the death-penalty should be abolished, upon the ground that it will preclude all hope of reformation. But the same theory would abolish any final Judgment, or eternal punishment; for, when the soul becomes so wicked that there is no more hope of reform, there is no longer any justice in punishing it. The greater the sin, the less the punishment; and Satan, the greatest sinner, should have no punishment at all. See Julius MUller, Lehre von der SUnde, 1:334; Thornton, Old Fashioned Ethics, 70-73; see also references on Holiness, A. (d) page 129.
(6) Penalty is not essentially deterrent and preventive.—By this we mean that its primary design is not to protect society, by deterring men from the commission of like offences. We grant that this end is often secured in connection with punishment, both in family and civil government and under the government of God. But we claim that this is a merely incidental result, which God's wisdom and goodness have connected with the infliction of penalty — it cannot be the reason and ground for penalty itself. Some of the objections to the preceding theory apply also to this. But in addition to what has been said, we urge:
Penalty cannot be primarily designed to secure social and governmental safety, for the reason that it is never right to punish the individual simply for the good of society. No punishment, moreover, will or con do good to others that is not just and right in itself. Punishment does good, only when the person punished deserves punishment; and that desert of punishment, and not the good effects that will follow it, must be the ground and reason why it is inflicted. The contrary theory would imply that the criminal might go free but for the effect of his punishment on others, and that man might rightly commit crime if only he were willing to bear the penalty.
A certain English judge, in sentencing a criminal, said that he punished him, not for stealing sheep, but that sheep might not be stolen. But it is the greatest Injustice to punish a man for the mere sake of example. Society cannot be benefited by such injustice. The theory can give no reason why one should be punished rather than another, nor why a second offence should be punished more heavily than the first. On this theory, moreover, if there were but one creature in the universe, and none existed beside himself to be affected by his suffering, he could not justly be punished, however great might be his sin. The only principle that can explain punishment is the principle of desert.
"Crime is most prevented by the conviction that crime deserves punishment; the greatest deterrent agency is conscience." So in the government of God "there is no hint that future punishment works good to the lost or to the universe. The integrity of the redeemed is not to be maintained by subjecting the lost to a punishment they do not deserve. The wrong merits punishment, and God is bound to punish it, whether good comes of it or not. Sin is intrinsically lU-deservlng. Impurity must be banished from God. God must vindicate himself, or cease to be holy" (see art. on the Philosophy of Punishment, by F. L. Patton, In Brit, and For. Evang. Rev., Jan., 1878 :126-139).
F. W. Robertson: "Does not the element of vengeance exist in all punishment, and does not the feeling exist, not as a sinful, but as an essential, part of human nature? If so, there must be wrath in God." Lord Bacon: "Revenge is a wild sort of Justice." Stephens: "Criminal law provides legitimate satisfaction of the passions of revenge." Dorner, Glaubeuslehre, 1: 287. Per contra, see Bib. Sac., Apr., 1881 :286-802; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 46,47.
2. The actual penalty of Bin.
The one word in Scripture which designates the total penalty of sin is death. Death, however, is twofold:
A. Physical death, — or the separation of the soul from the body, including all those temporal evils and sufferings which result from disturbance of the original harmony between body and soul, and which are the working of death in us. That physical death is a part of the penalty of sin, appears:
(a) From Scripture.
This is the most obvious import of the threatening in Gen. 2 :17—" thou shalt surely die "; cf. 3 : 19—"unto dust shalt thou return." Allusions to this threat in the O. T. confirm this interpretation: Num. 16 :29— "visited after the visitation of all men," where = judicial visitation, or punishment; 27 : 3 (lxx. —6i' i/tapriav avrov). The prayer of Moses in Ps. 90: 7-9, 11, and the prayer of Hezekiah in Is. 38 : 17, 18, recognize plainly the penal nature of death. The same doctrine is taught in the N. T., as for example, John 8 : 44; Bom. 5 : 12, 14, 16, 17, where the judicial phraseology is to be noted (cf. 1 :32); see 6 : 23 also. In 1 Pet. 4 : 6, physical death is spoken of as God's judgment against sin. In 1 Cor. 15 : 21, 22, the bodily resurrection of all believers, in Christ, is contrasted with the bodily death of all men, in Adam. Bom. 4 : 24, 25; 6 : 9, 10; 8:3, 10, 11; Gal. 3 : 13, show that Christ submitted to physical death as the penalty of sin, and by his resurrection from the grave gave proof that the penalty of sin was exhausted and that humanity in him was justified. "As the resurrection of the body is a part of the redemption, so the death of the body is a part of the penalty."
Pb. 90 : 7, 9 — " We are consumed in thine anger.... ill our days are passed away in thy wrath "; Is. 38 :17,18 — 41 thon hast in love to my son] delivered it from the pit... toon hast cast mj sins behind thy back ... For the grave cannot praise thee"; John 8 : 44 — "fie [Satan] was a murderer from the beginning"; Rom. 5 :12,14,16,17 —
"death through sin... death passed unto all men, for that all sinned ... death reigned even over them that had
not sinned after the likeness of idam's transgression ... the judgment came of one [ trespass ] unto condemnation ... by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one "; cf. the legal phraseology in 1: 32 — " who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they which practise such things are worthy of death." Rom. 6 : 23 — " the wages of sin is death" = death is sin's just due. 1 Pet 4 : 8 — " that they might be judged according to men in the flesh" = that they might suffer physical death, which to men In general Is the penalty of sin. 1 Cor. 15 :21, 22 — " is in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive "; Rom. 4 : 24, 25 — " raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification "; 6 : 9,10 — "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he li vein, he liveth onto God "; 8:3, 10. 11 — " God, sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh the body is dead because of sin (= a corpse,
on account of sin — Meyer; so Julius MUller, Doct. Sin, 2 :291); "he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies"; Gal. 3 :13 —"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree."
(6) Prom reason.
The universal prevalence of suffering and death among rational creatures cannot be reconciled with the divine justice, except upon the supposition that it is a judicial infliction on account of a common sinfulness of nature belonging even to those who have not reached moral consciousness.
The objection that death existed in the animal creation before the fall may be answered by saying that, but for the fact of man's sin, it would not have existed. We may believe that God arranged even the geologic history to correspond with the foreseen fact of human apostacy ( cf. Bom. 8 : 20-23 — where the creation is said to have been made subject to vanity by reason of man's sin).
On Rom. 8 : 20-23 — " the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will" — see Meyer's Com., and Bap. Quar., 1:143: also Gen. 3 :17-19 — " cursed is the ground for thy sake." See also note on the Relation of Creation to the Holiness and Benevolence of God, and references, pages 198,199. As the vertebral structure of the first fish was an "antlclpatl ve consequence" of man, so the suffering and death of fish pursued and devoured by other flsh were an "antlclpatlve consequence" of man's foreseen war with God and with himself.
The translation of Enoch and Elijah, and of the saints that remain at Christ's second coming, seems intended to teach us that death is not a necessary law of organized being, and to show what would have happened to Adam if he had been obedient. He was created a "natural," "earthly" body, but might have attained a higher being, the "spiritual," "heavenly" body, without the intervention of death. Sin, however, has turned the normal condition of things into the rare exception (c/. 1 Cor. 15 : 42-50). Since Christ endured death as the penalty of sin, death to the Christian becomes the gateway through which he enters into full communion with his Lord (see references below ).
Through physical death all Christians will pass, except those few who like Enoch and Elijah were translated, and those many who shall be alive at Christ's second coming. Nicoll, Life of Christ: "We have every one of us to face the last enemy, death. Ever since the world began, all who have entered It sooner or later have had this struggle, and the battlo has always ended in one way. Two Indeed escaped, but they did not escape by meeting and mastering their foe; they escaped by being taken away from the battle." But this physical death, for the Christian, has been turned by Christ into a blessing. A pardoned prisoner may be still kept in prison, as the best possible benefit to an exhausted body; so the external fact of physical death may remain, although it has ceased to be penalty.
John 14: 3 — " And if I pi and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive yon nnto myself; that where 1 am, there je may be also "; 1 Cor. 15 : 54-57 — " Death is swallowed np in victory .... 0 death, where is thy sling? The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law"; (. e. the law's condemnation, its penal infliction; 2 Cor. 5 :1-9 — " For we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from God ... we are of good courage, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord"; Phil. 1: 21, 23 — "to die is gain ... having the desire to depart and be with Christ; for it is very far better," In Christ and his bearing the penalty of sin, the Christian has broken through the circle of natural race-connection, and is saved from corporate evil so far as It is. punishment. The Christian may be chgstlsed, but he is never punished: Rom. 8:1 — " There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus."
The idea that punishment yet remains for the Christian is "the bridge to the papal doctrine of purgatorial fires." Browning's words, in The Ring and the Book, 2 : 80•' In His face is light, but in His shadow healing too," are applicable to God's fatherly chastenings, but not to his penal retributions. On Acts 7:60 —"he fell asleep"—Arnot remarks: "When death becomes the property of the believer, it receives a new name, and is called sleep." Another has said: "Christ did not send, but came himself to save; The ransom-price he did not lend, but gave; Christ <fi«f, the shepherd for the sheep; We only fall aitlcep." Per contra, see Kreibig, VersOhnungslehre, 375, and Hcngstenberg, Ev. K.-Z., 1864 :1085 — " All suffering Is punishment."
B. Spiritual death,—or the separation of the soul from God, including all that pain of conscience, loss of peace, and sorrow of spirit, which result from disturbance of the normal relation between the soul and God.
(a) Although physical death is a part of the penalty of sin, it is by no means the chief part. The term 'death' is frequently used in Scripture in a moral and spiritual sense, as denoting the absence of that which constitutes the true life of the soul, namely, the presence and favor of God.
Hat 8 : 22—" Follow me; and leave the [spiritually] dead to bury their own [physically] dead "; Luke 15: 32—" this thy brother was dead, and is alive again "; John 5 : 24—" he that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life "; 8 : 51—" If a man keep my word, he shall never see death "; Rom. 8 :13—" if ye live after the lesh, ye must die; bat if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live "; Sph. 2 ; 1—" when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins"; 5:14—" Awake, thou that steepest, and arise from the dead": 1 Tim. 5 : 6—" she that giveth herself to pleasure is dead while she liveth "; James 5 : 20 — " he that oonverteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death "; 1 John 3 :14—" he that loveth not abideth in death "; Rev, 3 : t—" Thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead."
(6) It cannot be doubted that the penalty denounced in the garden and fallen upon the race is primarily and mainly that death of the soul which consists in its separation from God. In this sense only, death was fully visited upon Adam in the day on which he ate the forbidden fruit (Gen. 2: 17). In this sense only, death is escaped by the Christian (John 11 : 26). For this reason, in the parallel between Adam and Christ (Bom. 5 : 12-21), the apostle passes from the thought of mere physical death in the early part of the passage to that of both physical and spiritual death at its close (verse 21—"as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord "—where "eternal life" is more than endless physical existence, and "death " is more than death of the body).
Gen. 2 :17—" in the day that thou Mtast thereof thou shalt surely die "; John 11 : 26—" whosoever liveth end believeth on me shall never die "; Rom. 5 :12-21 —" justification of life ... eternal life "; contrast these with "death reigned ... sin reigned in death,."
(c) Eternal death may be regarded as the culmination and completion of spiritual death, and as essentially consisting in the correspondence of the outward condition with the inward state of the evil soul (Acts 1 : 25 ). It would seem to be inaugurated by some peculiar repellent energy of the divine holiness (Mat. 25 : 41; 2 Thess. 1:9), and to involve positive retribution visited by a personal God upon both the body and the soul of the evil doer (Mat. 10 : 28; Heb. 10 : 31; Rev. 14 : 11).
let> 1: 25—" Judas fell away, that he might go to his own place" ; Hat. 25 : 41—" Depart from mo. ye cursed, into the eternal lire which is prepared for the devil and his angels "; 2 Thess. 1: 9—"who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might"; Vat. 10 : 28— " fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in bell": Heb. 10 : 31—" It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God "; Rev. 14 :11—" the smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever."
Kurtz, Religionslehre, 67—" So long as God Is holy, he must maintain the order of the world, and where this Is destroyed, restore It. This however can happen in no other way than this: the injury by which the sinner has destroyed the order of the world falls back upon himself—and this is penalty. Sin is the negation of the law. Penalty is the ( negation of that negation, that is, the reestablishment of the law. Sin Is a thrust of the sinner against the law. Penalty Is the adverse thru9t of the elastic because living law, which encounters the sinner."
On the general subject of the penalty of sin, see Julius MUller, Doct. Sin, 1 :245 sq.; 2:286-397; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 283-279; Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 194-219; Krabbe, Lehre von der Stlnde und vom Tode; Weisse, in Studicn und Kritiken, 1836 :371; 8. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 369-384; Bartlett, in New Englander, Oct., 1871: 677, 678.
SECTION VII.—THE SALVATION OF INFANTS.
The views which have been presented with regard to inborn depravity and the reaction of divine holiness against it suggest the question whether infants dying before arriving at moral consciousness are saved, and if so, in what way. To this question we reply as follows:
(o) Infants are in a state of sin, need to be regenerated, and can be saved only through Christ.
Job 14 : 4—" Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one"; Pa. 51: 5—" Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother oonoeive me "; John 3:6—" That which is born of the flesh is flesh "; Rom. 5:14— "Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam s transgression"; Bph. 2:3—"by nature children of wrath"; 1 Cor. 7:14—"else were your children unclean "—clearly Intimates the naturally Impure state of infants; and Mat. 19 :14—"Suffer the little children, and forbid them not. to come unto me "—Is not only consistent with this doctrine, but strongly confirms it; for the meaning: is: "forbid them not to come auto me "—whom the}' need as a Savior. "Coming1 to Christ" is always the coming- of a sinner, to him who is the sacrifice for sin.
(6) Tet as compared with those who have personally transgressed, they are recognized as possessed of a relative innocence, and of a submisaiveness and trustfulness, which may serve to illustrate the graces of Christian character.
Dent. 1: 39—" Tour little oaee ... and your children, which this day hare no knowledge of good and evil"; Jonah 4 :11—" Six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand "; Rom. 9:11— "for the children being not yet born, neither baring done anything good or bad "; Mat 18 : 3, 4—" Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." See Julius Mliller, Doct. Sin. 2 : 265.
(f) For this reason, they are the objects of special divine compassion and care, and through the grace of Christ are certain of salvation.
Mat 18 : 5, 6,10.14—" Whoso shall receive one snch Utile child in my name reoeireth me; but whoso shall cause one of these little ones which believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his nock, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea .... See that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that in hearen their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in hearen .... Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in hearen, that one of these little ones should perish "; 19 :14—"Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to corns onto me: for to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven "—not God's kingdom of nature, but bis ktng-dom of (trace, the kingdom of saved sinners. On the passages in Matthew, see Commentaries of Beng-el, De Wette, Lange; also Neander, Planting and Training (ed. Robinson), 407.
Meyer refers these passages to spiritual infants only. So Dr. Kendrlck, in 8.8. Times: "To infants and children, as such, the language cannot apply. It must be taken figuratively, and must refer to those qualities in childhood, its dependence, its trustfulness, its tender affection, its loving obedience, which are typical of the essential Christian graces .... If asked after the topic of our Savior's words—how he could assign, as a reason for allowing; literal little children to be brought to him, that apirituof little chiidred have a claim to the kingdom of heaven—I reply: the persons that thus, as a class, typify the subjects of God's spiritual kingdom cannot be In themselves objects of indifference to him, or be regarded otherwise thon with Intense Interest The class thot
in Its very nature thus shadows forth the brightest features of Christian excellence must be subjects of God's special concern and care."
To these remarks of Dr. Kendrick we would add, that Jesus' words seem to us to intimate more than special concern and core. While these words seem Intended to exclude all idea that Infants are saved by their natural holiness, or without application to them of the blessings of his atonement, they also seem to us to Include infants among- the number of those who have the rlg-ht to these blessings; in other words, Christ's concern and care go so far as to choose Infants to eternal life, and to make them subjects of the kingdom of heaven. Cf. Mat 18 :14—" it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish" - those whom Christ has received here, he will not reject hereafter. Of course this Is said to infants, as Infants. To those, therefore, who die before comingto moral consciousness, Christ's words assure salvation. Personal transgression, however, involves the necessity, before death, of a personal repentance and faith. In order to salvation.
(<2) The descriptions of God's merciful provision as coextensive with the ruin of the fall also lead us to believe that those who die in infancy receive salvation through Christ as certainly as they inherit sin from Adam.
John 3 :16—"For God so loved the world" —Includes infants. Rom. 5 :14—"death reigned from adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of idam's transgression, who is a figure of him that was to oome" —- there Is an application to Infante of the life in Christ, as there was an application to them of the death in Adam; 19-31—" For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous. And the law came in beside that the trespass might abound; but where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly: that, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternsl life through Jesus Christ our Lord" = as without personal act of theirs Infante Inherited corruption from Adam, so without personal act of theirs salvation is provided for them in Christ. ,
(e) The condition of salvation for adults is personal faith. Infants are incapable of fulfilling this condition. Since Christ has died for all, we have reason to believe that provision is made for their reception of Christ in some other way.
2 Cor. 5 : IS—"lie died for ill": Mark 16 :16—"He that believeth and ii baptised shall be saved: but he that diibelieveth shall be condemned" (verses 9 20 arc of canonical authority, though probably not written by Mark).
(/) At the final judgment, personal conduct is made the test of character. But infants are incapable of personal transgression. We have reason, therefore, to believe that they will be among the saved, since this rule of decision will not apply to them.
Mat. 25 : 45, 46—" Inasmuch as je did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me. and these shall go away into eternal punishment"; Rom. 2 : 5, 6—" the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to everj man according to bis works."
(g) Since there is no evidence that children dying in infancy are regenerated prior to death, either with or without the use of external means, it seems most probable that the work of regeneration may be performed by the Spirit in connection with the infant soul's first view of Christ in the other world. As the remains of natural depravity in the Christian are eradicated, not by death, but at death, through the sight of Christ and union with him, so the first moment of consciousness for the infant may be coincident with a view of Christ the Savior which accomplishes the entire sanctification of its nature.
2 Cur. 3 : 18—" But we all, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the lord, are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit"; 1 John 3 : 2—" We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." If asked why more la not said upon this subject in Scripture, we reply: It Is according to the analogy of God's general method to hide things that are not of Immediate practical value, In some past ages, knowledge of the fact that all children dying In Infancy are saved might have seemed to make Infanticide a virtue.
While, in the nature of things and by the express declarations of Scripture, we are precluded from extending this doctrine of regeneration at death to any who have committed personal sins, we are nevertheless warranted in the conclusion that, certain and great as is the guilt of original sin, no human soul is eternally condemned solely for this sin of nature, but that, on the other hand, all who have not consciously and wilfully transgressed are made partakers of Christ's salvation.
See Prentiss, in Presb. Rev., July, 1883 : 548-580—" Lyman Beecher and Charles Hodge first made current in this country the doctrine of the salvation of all who die in infancyIf this doctrine be accepted, then It follows: (1) that these partakers of original sin must be saved wholly through divine grace and power; (2) that in the child unborn there Is the promise and potency of complete spiritual manhood; (3) that salvation is possible entirely apart from the visible church and the means of grace; (4) that to a full half of the race this life is not in any way a period of probation; (5) that heathen may be saved who have never even heard of the gospel; (6) that the providence of God includes in Its scope both infants and heathen." See also Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1: 28, 27; Ridgeley, Body of Divinity, 1:422-425; Calvin, Institutes, 11,1,8; Westminster Larger Catechism, x, 3; Krauth, Infant Salvation In the Calvinistiu System; Candlish on Atonement, part ii, chap. 1; Geo. P. Fisher, in New Englander, Apr., 1868 :338; J. F. Clarke, Truths and Errors of Orthodoxy, 380.