PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF DEPRAVITY

We have amply discussed the Adamic origin of depravity, and its transmission by race-connection. It is the only Scriptural and rational and satisfactory theory.

I. We utterly reject the supralapsarian Calvinistic theory that before man was created God unconditionally elected some of the future race to certain salvation and reprobated the majority to: eternal damnation; and, to carry out this scheme, he determined the fall of man to make the election and reprobation possible. By no decree of predetermination or agency which occasioned the fall, could God be the author of such an evil as depravity. To every right-thinking mind, unperverted by a wretched theory, the holiness and goodness of God declare it an absolute impossibility.

II. We reject the imputation theory, in every branch of it, with all its disastrous logical and practical consequences. Cunning-ham says: "The great body of Calvinistic divines have regarded depravity as, in some measure, and to some extent, explained by the principle of its being a penal infliction upon men, resulting from the imputation to them of the guilt of Adam's FIRST SIN" (Historical Theology, Vol. I, pp. 511 and 526). We have sufficiently answered this doctrine in a previous chapter. We will only add here a quotation from Dr. N. W. Taylor of Yale: "The absurdity and injustice involved in this doctrine are its sufficient refutation, since, they are so palpable and gross, that we are fully authorized to say a priori that the doctrine itself is not to be found in a revelation from God. It is replete with absurdity, for what greater can there; be, than that the guilt of one being should become the guilt of another-yea, of the millions of his descendants to the end of time? :We might ask, was the whole or a part of the guilt of Adam transferred? If the whole, why did he not become innocent by the transfer? If a part, how was it divided between him and them? : Was it equally or unequally divided? Was he as guilty as had no : division been made, and each of them as guilty as he? Or, was the portion of each lessened at all by the division? I may further ask, , whether it could be thus divided into parts, and each part equal J to the whole; whether guilt like matter be infinitely divisible, and ; even whether when divided into parts as indefinitely as the supposition demands, there could be enough for all, and each the object of a just condemnation?

More gravely now I ask, what is guilt? What is guilt, if it be not a personal thing pertaining to the action, and solely to the action of an agent who acts? Plainly, if this be not true of all that can be called guilt, the human mind has no conception of it. If it be true of all that can be called guilt, then the doctrine is chargeable with the contradiction of affirming that a thing which is not guilt is guilt. There is no escape from this, but by denying that guilt pertains exclusively to the action of an agent; and this is fully too great to be reasoned with.

The injustice which the doctrine imputes to God is still more revolting: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" And is there no appeal to the reason of man as to what right is? If not, then why does God so often appeal to the reason of man as to what right is? If not, then why does God so often appeal to human reason on this very question? Every such an appeal is an admission that men do know what right or equity is; what it demands and what it forbids. If not, then there is an end not only to all reasoning and conclusion in theology, but to all confidence in God. If there be no standard of right or equity on which human reason is competent to decide, where is our proof of His justice or goodness? How can we reason or judge at all in respect to either His character or His government? But if there is such a standard, if there is an eternal rule of right which human reason does and must judge, or be of no use to man, then the appeal is fairly made to human reason. I ask, then, what violation of the eternal rule of right more palpable, than to transfer the guilt of one being to another; than to count another guilty, and to punish Him as guilty for another's acts? Admit that such a principle obtains in the moral administration of God, and what are the consequences? He who is not guilty becomes truly guilty; yea, he who is holy, may be really and at the same time as guilty as the guiltiest, and be treated accordingly. Such a principle subverts everything; law, equity, moral government, moral character, in respect to both God and man are overthrown, and the righteous as well as the wicked have cause for consternation and dismay.

Again; this doctrine derives no support from Scriptures. Allowing the possibility that it should be found in the Bible, still no passage can be properly understood to teach it which will admit of any other meaning. Before a doctrine so revolting to reason and common sense can be palmed upon the Word of God, it must be shown that the language cannot be interpreted in any other but the absurd meaning, and this I affirm to be impossible in respect to any passage cited to support it" (Revealed Theology, pp. 246-248).

III. Men who have rejected this theory of the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity, and yet hold that native depravity is a judicial infliction, and deserving of eternal punishment have resorted to the theory of "sin in a pre-existent life." They have held that the only valid ground of guilt and punishment must lie in a free, personal violation of duty in a previous state of existence. This doctrine was common in Grecian philosophy. Origen in the Third Century taught it. It was advocated by Dr. Edward Beecher, in his "Conflict of Ages." Julius Muller maintained it for the reason above stated that only free personal sinning can justify the sinful state in which he believed all men were born. And there could be no place for such sinning except in a pre-existent state.

The theory is a pure speculation, and quite out of harmony with the Bible doctrine of primitive holiness and the fall. The Bible clearly teaches that there is no self-recovery of sinners and that our first parents began their probation in negative holiness. When and where and how did they get their moral recovery? Scriptures teach that the depravity is the result of the fall. There is no relief in this untenable theory.

IV. THE REALISTIC MODE OF ADAMIC SIN. This theory holds the doctrine of the Imputation of Adam's first sin to all his posterity on the ground of A CONSTITUTED PERSONAL IDENTITY of Adam and his posterity, as follows: God in creating man, created not merely Adam, but mankind, human nature, Adam and his posterity, as one moral whole, one moral person, determining this oneness or identity by His sovereign constitution. The human race, man as thus created and constituted one moral person, was created morally upright, so that, as God's work, what Adam was as created, his posterity were also as created. The first sin of Adam was thus the sin which Adam committed both in number and in kind, and on the only equitable principle of imputing sin to any being, it was imputed to Adam and to his posterity-to Adam because he committed it, ' and to them because they committed it. Thus the original sin Of Adam's posterity is the sin which each of them, as one moral person with Adam, being like him created upright, committed, and as truly as Adam committed his original sin, and being then committed by each just as it was by Adam, it was imputed to each just as it was imputed to him. It was the act, the sin of each, the fall of each, the apostasy and fall of all his posterity, just as it was of Adam himself. It is this sin, with all its corruption and guilt, and with this only, that each of the posterity is born, not created; so that man, each individual of the race, not God, is the author of his own sin.

This, says Dr. N. W. Taylor, is the ancient doctrine of original sin, which first received its definite and permanent form from Augustine early in the fifth century, and then adopted by the scholastic theologians and reformers, and defended by Jonathan Edwards.

Augustine said: "We were all in that one man, since we were all that one man who fell into sin. In Adam all have sinned, as all were that one man. Infants belong to human nature and are guilty of original sin because human nature sinned in our first parents. All sinned in Adam; the human race were in the loins of Adam. Infants derive from him the guilt of sin and the punishment of death" (Taylor's Theology, pp. 169, 170).

Calvin said: "We all sinned before we were born and when born we have the corruption which each contracted in the sin of Eden, and therefore infants themselves, as they bring their condemnation into the world with them, are rendered obnoxious to punishment by their own sinfulness, not by the sinfulness of another" (Ibid, p. 172).

Let us say to the honor of Calvin that these views from his Institutes, B. II, p. 299, which were written in early life, were repudiated in his Commentary on Rom. 5: 12 written in his maturer age, in which he expressly affirms that the apostle had no thought of infants. "We may well admire the greatness and candor of Calvin," says Taylor, especially in changing his opinions on this subject, and on that of limited Atonement, after he had acquired a high theological reputation by his Institutes." It is only a rare lover of truth who can thus outgrow his own published errors.

Dr. Taylor says of this strange theory: "That Adam and his posterity are one moral person, or one moral being, and that the latter committed the selfsame sin which Adam committed while as yet they were not in existence is not a possible truth. It involves the palpable contradiction that beings who are not the same being, are the same being; that those who did not exist and act, did exist and act.

"The doctrine of a created or constitutional propensity to sin, which is itself sinful (in the sense of blameworthy) is also fraught with self-contradiction. We know what sin is and what it is not. We know that sin (as blameworthy) can no more pertain to the created properties or constitutional propensities of the mind, than to the features of the face, or the form and structure of the human body. To say therefore that a constitutional propensity of the soul is sinful, is as absurd and self-contradictory as to say that the soul is solid and extended, or that matter thinks and wills; it is saying that that is sinful which is not and cannot be sinful" (pp. 219, 220). "The doctrine then, that infants are sinners at the precise instant: of existence, in every conceivable form of it, is self-contradictory- cannot be true and therefore is not taught in the Word of God.

This interpretation of Scripture, which we oppose, contravenes common sense. This doctrine is a theological peculiarity. It was unknown in the early Christian Church; was derived from the philosophic doctrine of Realism in the Fourth Century; was devised to carry a point in polemic theology, and has, therefore, no other or higher authority than a speculation of heathen philosophy" (pp. 220-222). "But not to dwell on such absurdities, what shall be said of a moral government in which such a principle is acted upon, and what of its author? The mind unperverted by theological system cannot fail to see what appalling consequences must follow the adoption of the principle, that one being is to be considered and treated as having acted in another's act; nor indeed that God himself cannot make it true that one being is another, or the act of one is the act of the other. No constitution or covenant of God can make it true that a being can sin before he exists. All that can be said in extenuation of these FOOLERIES is that great and good men, may believe the most palpable absurdities without seeing them to be such, when they suppose themselves obliged to adopt them in defense of revealed truth" (p. 2SO).

We do not wonder that this theologian calls such doctrines "fooleries." If there had been a billion of souls in every drop of Adam's blood, he would not have had blood enough to hold the human race. "We sinned in Adam before we were born!" How? Actual sin is a matter of wicked choice. When Adam chose to eat the forbidden fruit did countless billions of us choose to eat at the same instant? And when he was rejoicing in his delicious but sinful repast, did we all smack our infinitesimal lips and say it tasted good? We remember when Dr. Timothy Dwight, the beloved, of Yale, was discussing this doctrine before our class, how, with both! elbows on his desk and stroking his bald head with his hands, he; declared: "I was not in Adam's jacket-pocket, and I declare that; I had nothing to do with his sin." But is not this making light of the opinions of very great men, Augustine, Calvin and Edwards? Certainly it is. But very great men were only men; and they often lost their common sense in their speculations. A noble Doctor of Divinity has written: "It takes a great man to make a great fool of himself." It is a true proverb that "everybody knows more than anybody."

President Fairchild disposed of this theory in six lines: "Nor is there occasion to accept the idea that we were in Adam, in a natural, realistic, sense; that he embodied in himself all the human race, and that all humanity acted responsibly in him. It is claimed that this is the realistic theory of Augustine; but whatever its source, it is a mere speculation without proof in Scripture or in reason" (Theology, p. 159).

Dr. Shedd of Union Theological Seminary, New York, adopted and developed Augustine's Realism. He quoted from Augustine and added: "These passages which might be multiplied indefinitely, are sufficient to indicate Augustine's theory of generic existence, generic transgression, and generic condemnation. The substance of the theory is-human nature apostatizes and the consequences appear in human individuals. In the order of nature mankind exists before the generations of mankind; the nature is prior to the individuals produced out of it" (History of Christian Doctrine, Vol. II, pp. 77, 78). This theory divides into two:

1st. Individuals have no separate being but are mere modes of generic nature. It is pantheistic.

2nd. Each individual has the essence of existence, which was previously in the generic nature, and is derived from it in a process of individuation, whereby individuals receive their separate existence.

Miley affirms that the first theory is "too senseless for any acceptance in rational thought." Each man, as a responsible person, must possess in himself the reality of individual existence. Each man's consciousness absolutely affirms such an existence (Vol. I, p. 475).

Miley says of the second: "It could not be thought that the substance of all human bodies in its phenomenal and bulk form existed in Adam." The existence of the race in a metaphysical form is a pure assumption. Generic human nature could not commit the primitive sin. There must be personal faculties for moral action (p. 476). He shows that all the Augustinian, Calvinistic writers aim to teach two things: 1, The fall of the human race as a unity; 2, and at the same time recognize the existence, freedom, and guilt ' of the individual in the fall (p. 478). He objects:

1. It is a pure assumption that there is any generic human nature apart from individual men.

2. The individuation of the generic nature into the individuals of the race is impossible, because a personality that could sin is indivisible. A spiritual essence cannot be so divided.

3. The theory would make us share not the first sin of Adam alone, but the second sin, and all his sins; and not the sin of one ancestor alone, but of all our ancestors, for we existed as much in each ancestor as in the first. According to the philosophy of realism there is no getting away from it. The sins of all ancestors would be upon us at birth-truly a horrible way to be born.

4. Generic nature, simply as such, could not sin.

5. The division and distribution of a spiritual essence, considered simply as an essence into the innumerable personalities of the race transcends the utmost reach of human philosophy. The notion of such a division and distribution of such an essence, already existing in personality and active in personal agency, is utterly aberrant from all rational thinking upon such a question. Free personal agency is necessary to the commission of sin, and the participation of all men in the sin of Adam was consequently impossible.

V. A LOWER FORM OF REALISM.

This teaches the germinal or seminal existence of the race in Adam. The aim is the same as in the Higher Realism, viz., to identify the offspring of Adam in some mysterious way with himself, and make them guilty with him in his sin. But the illustrations and arguments utterly fall short of proof. The primitive sin was an act of free personal agency, and could not else have been a sin. That agency was wholly in Adam. We had no such existence in him as made us sharers in his personal act, or in the guilt of his sin. Personal agency is necessary to sinful action. All attempts fail to prove that the assumed germinal entities, if really existent in Adam, had any personal existence in him. The whole argument starts with the assumption of the rudimentary existence of all men in Adam, souls as well as bodies. A premise so exceedingly doubtful can be the basis of no conclusive argument. Calvin rejected it; Augustine was in serious doubt of it, and most of the Reformed theologians agree with them. To this day theologians of all schools are divided between CREATIONISM, which holds that souls are created separately along with the process of propagation; and Traducianism, which holds that all souls were created in Adam.

The unanswerable objections to the theory are that: 1. It implies seminal guilt. There can be NO SUBJECT OF GUILT BELOW PERSONALITY. "The notion that souls existing only seminally in Adam, could be guilty of sin and subjects of divine wrath is too preposterous for the utmost credulity." 2. Like the Higher Realism, it would make us guilty of all ancestral sins. 3. If we shared Adam's sins, we should also share his repentance and his pardon. Why then should native depravity be inflicted as a penalty, when the sin, the ground of its infliction, was removed before the propagation of the race? The truth is, any form of realism is untenable, and breaks down utterly at the bar of reason.

VI. THE REPRESENTATIVE MODE OF ADAMIC GUILT.

In the Realistic theory all men are held to have participated in the commission of the primitive sin. In the Representative theory, there was no actual participation in that sin, but only a sharing in its guilt by imputation.

The theory is that God instituted a covenant with Adam whereby he was constituted the federal head and legal representative of the race in the primitive probation. This so-called Federal Headship constituted not an actual oneness of the race with Adam, but a legal oneness; so that the legal consequences of his conduct under probation, whether good or bad, should be attributed to them.

The abettors of this theory illustrate by acts of attainder when children suffer the evil consequences of a- parent's crime. They cite Achan; but they cannot prove that his family were not privy to the sin and sharers of guilt. They try to prove their theory by Rom. S: 12-19. But all the other rival theories we have named resort to the same passage for confirmation making it extremely probable that it supports none of them.

The objections to the theory are numerous and fatal:

1. After the Federal Headship of Adam is admitted, there is still the question how we are guilty of his sin, and the only answer is that it is by a judicial act of divine imputation. This imputation, so the modern defenders say, brings over to us not the act of Adam nor the demerit of Adam, but only its guilt in the sense of Amenability to punishment. Cunningham says: "Adam was constituted by God the representative and federal head of his posterity, so that his transgression without any injustice to them, becomes theirs, so that they were justly involved in its proper consequences" (History of Theology, Vol. I. pp. 337, 338). Dr. Hodge says: "When it is said that the sin of Adam is imputed to his posterity it is not meant that they committed his sin, nor that they are morally criminal, but simply that, in view of the union between him and them, his sin is the judicial ground of the condemnation of the race" (Hodge's Theology, Vol. II, pp. 192-195). So according to the advocates of this theory themselves, there is: 1. A separation between demerit and guilt; 2. The theory represents our holy God as imputing the sin of the guilty Adam to his innocent descendants, and holding them to be deserving of eternal damnation!

Well did the Arminian Remonstrants affirm against such an atrocious theory: "There is no ground for the assertion, that the sin of Adam was imputed to his posterity in the sense that God actually judged the posterity of Adam to be guilty of, and chargeable with the same sin and crime which Adam had committed. Neither Scripture, nor truth, nor wisdom, nor divine benevolence, nor the nature of sins, nor the idea of justice and equity, allow that they should say that the sin of Adam was thus imputed to his posterity. Scripture testifies that God threatened punishment to Adam alone, and inflicted it upon Adam alone; the Divine benevolence, veracity and wisdom do not permit that one person's sin should be imputed, strictly and literally, to another. It is contrary to the nature of sin, that that should be regarded as sin, and be properly imputed as sin, which was not committed by individual will. It is contrary to justice and equity, that any one should be charged as guilty, for a sin that is not his own, or that he should be judged as really guilty, who in respect to his individual voluntariness is innocent, or, rather, not guilty. And the injustice is the greater, in proportion as the punishment which follows the imputation is severer. Consequently it is the height of injustice, when the penalty is an eternal suffering." Arminius, also, in his defense, wrote: "The Remonstrants decide with confidence that God neither will, nor justly can, destine to eternal torment any infants who die without actual and individual sins, upon the ground of a sin which is called 'original' which is said to be contracted by infants by no individual fault of theirs, but by the fault of another person, and which is believed to be theirs for no other reason than that God wills arbitrarily to impute it to them. This opinion is contrary to divine benevolence, and to right reason; nay it is uncertain which is greater its absurdity or its cruelty" (Shedd's History of Church Doctrine, Vol. II, pp. 183-185).

2. There is or was no such federal or forensic headship, as the representative theory maintains. The word 'federal' is from foedus, meaning a covenant or league. The theory is that God made a covenant or league, with Adam that he should stand for his posterity, and that they should stand or fall in him. Now the term federal headship is not in the Bible, nor anything that teaches that there ever was any such "covenant." If Adam had assumed to; stand for the unborn billions of our race, it would have been a base usurpation of rights which by no possibility could belong to him. And that God should consent to let the fate of billions of immortal' beings be decided by the conduct of one man before they were born, is monstrous and unthinkable. It is simply one of the theological fictions of Calvinism, which should long ago have been relegated to the museum of intellectual and theological curiosities. It greatly annoys us to find the term 'federal headship' used approvingly in Methodist Literature. It never can be a consistent part of Methodist theology-the strongest and best in the world.

3. By such a covenant, the obedience of Adam would have secured to the race, the rewards of eternal life and heaven, without probation and without a struggle. There is no ground in reason, analogy or Scripture for such a position. "It assumes that all men would have been accounted personally righteous by the imputation of the personal righteousness of Adam. This is a most exaggerated notion of the possible effects of Adam's obedience and lifts it into rivalry with the atonement of Christ" (Miley, Vol. I, p. 503).

4. This theory denies the sharing of the race in the act of the demerit of Adam's sin, (while Realism asserts both) but still teaches the justice of the damnation of the race for that sin. Dr. Shedd declared that "the doctrine of a gratuitous damnation was unintelligible and absurd."

We remember Dr. Dwight saying to us in the classroom: "I voted for Hon. -- to be my representative in the lower House at Washington. Suppose now that without my knowledge he should kill a man. Who would say that it would be just for the government to hang me for that crime? But I did not even vote for Adam to represent me, and he committed his sin ages before I was born. How much more unjust in God to condemn me to eternal damnation for Adam's sin. 'But,' some one may say, 'justice in God is not like justice in man.' Very well, if that is so, if justice in God is not essentially like justice in man, let us close our theological books and go about some other business. We are all at sea and do not know what we are talking about."

5. This separation of guilt from demerit, and holding innocent beings responsible for a deed they did not commit, makes the guilt of the race an artificial, arbitrary and fictitious thing, utterly confusing to the moral nature of man. Men can never help questioning the justice of the Divine procedure, if one sin of one man plunges the unborn billions of the race into guilt as great as that the original sinner, and as liable as he to eternal damnation. Millions have revolted, against the doctrine and have remained in religion, or gone off into infidelity, rather than accept it. The doctrine insults the justice of God and the sense of justice which He has implanted in man.

6. It is contrary to the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. None in the Bible and none out of it, are convicted for Adam's sin. No such doctrine can be in the Word of God.